Notes and articles tagged with “pointers”
Filed under Notes on 7. June 2007 »
If we look at the thought patterns of the ego, most if not all of them are characterized by a tendency to want something other than what already is. Whenever the ego is not completely preoccupied with future-projection and fantasy, and actually takes a moment to stop and look at what is, the usual attitude is to think that “this should be different.” There may be a fleeting pause here and there of thinking that the situation is finally perfect, but the major flaw in how the ego works is that no situation or configuration of events can ever satisfy it. Nothing is ever enough, because the sense of lack is built into the structure of how the ego operates. Which means that whatever content is added, sooner or later there will be a need for more.
Saying yes to now, yes to what is, can be a powerful way of snapping out of this habitual attitude of “no.” Complete acceptance of what is signals the death of the ego, because the ego thrives on having something to resist. It feeds on complaining about what is, feeling offended by what is, being angry at what is, and simply being against what is whatever the cost.
However the idea of accepting what is can be misinterpreted, and the ego can, with great subtlety sometimes, twist it around for its own purposes in order to remain in control. There are two main aspects to this misinterpretation; to mistake the yes for a no in disguise, and to mistake what is for a story about what is.
The former has to do with equating acceptance with resignation, of saying “yes” with an attitude of resistance and underlying negativity. In this way the yes to now is seen as being defeatist, something along the lines of saying “oh all right then, I accept that I am fat and miserable. C’est la vie.” Which might look like acceptance on the surface, but in reality it comes from an attitude of negativity and resistance that has absolutely nothing to do with saying yes to what is.
Which leads to the other aspect, namely the mistake of thinking that you must say yes to a story. I remember Eckhart Tolle taking a hypothetical example of an unemployed actress working as a waitress. She had a story about how she had failed as an actress, and how she must now do something that she resents while being deprived of what she really wants. This is the story of a personal self and a certain configuration of concepts, and has nothing much to do with reality at all. So the mistake in this case is thinking “okay, I accept that I am a waitress because I failed at being an actress.” Which is not really accepting what is, because none of it is real and so has very little to do with what is. The only reality it has is as a current of noise running through the mind, which you can then accept as part of what is at this moment.
So now there’s the usual concern; if you give up resisting what is, will anything ever change? In the above example, will she now just be a waitress for the rest of her life because she said yes to what is?
This is yet another misconception, or rather just another aspect of the big misinterpretation of what it means to say yes to what is. The truth is that things can only really change when you accept what already is. Saying yes to now might seem passive, a resignation to leaving things stagnant, but in fact it is just the opposite.
To realize what the words are actually pointing to, it may be helpful to play around with them a little, even if only just to shake the old thought patterns loose to make room for a clearer interpretation. For example, contemplate the idea of dynamic acceptance of what is, describing an attitude of saying, “this is what is; now what can I do with it?”
This is also vulnerable to misinterpretation, because the ego can go into the pattern of seeking the next thing and projecting into the future, but at least it shakes things up a bit. When you think of it in this manner, you go from the habitual stance of being in resistance to what is to being aligned with it. Approaching the present moment with an attitude of asking “what can I do with this?” gets you beyond the old pitfall of thinking “this shouldn’t be as it is.”
It is important to keep in mind when practicing this that the focus is on the process and not the outcome, because otherwise the ego will jump right in there with future projection and attachment to results. Asking “what can I do with this?” is not about what you can get out of it, or what you can achieve through it, but what you can do with it.
Saying yes to what is is about aligning yourself to reality. You see what is, accept that it is already so, and then go from there.
Filed under Notes on 21. April 2007 »
The essence of the delusion that we talk about here, the source of all suffering and the subject of all spiritual teachings, is the mind’s identification with form. The conditioned belief that who you are is a human body plus a bundle of labels that together make up the mind-made sense of self. And much of what we are doing when going through some form of spiritual practice is to realize this as illusion, to break free of it and gain perspective on the duality that is ‘me and myself’.
We could say that it all goes towards realizing that the mind-made sense of self is an illusion, so that we can find underneath it the one true self that had been obscured. This identification with the one true self is enlightenment, the state of peace, joy, stillness, and unconditional love that so many people are looking for. And so the purpose of spiritual teaching is to point towards that state, and to provide words and practices that are designed to trigger that realization, the shift in identification from form to the formless.
I remember hearing stories of St. Francis, and how he used to refer to his body as ‘it’. Saying it is hungry, and it is tired, instead of I’m this, and I’m that, which is the custom in our culture. And simply making this change in the way you refer to your body, replacing ‘I’m’ with ‘it’, can be a subtle way of breaking the conditioning and thus dissolving the identification with form.
A similar practice, and what the title of this note refers to, is thinking of yourself as an invisible observer instead of a person in a body. You then see yourself as an invisible entity, a ghost if you will, hovering above this particular human body all day long — looking through its eyes but simultaneously being aware that who you are is beyond the body, being in the world but not of it. The body is of the world, and so are all the thoughts, concepts, and labels that you’ve associated with it, but who you are is not of the world. And this little exercise is a pointer to that identity shift.
Another aspect of this, particularly useful if there are certain situations you are afraid of or want to avoid (think social rejection, financial ruin, etc.), is to look at the situation from the perspective of an invisible observer. You can ask yourself, “what would this situation look like if I were only there as an invisible observer?,” effectively removing your self from the mental image of the situation. If this pointer works for you, it allows you to see what the world looks like unburdened by all the conceptual baggage of the conditioned sense of self. Or at least give you a hint of what life can be like without this self, and what the world looks like without the distorting element of ego.
What would you do, and where would you go, if you could be there as an invisible observer? As an example we can take all the classic ‘self-confidence’ related issues and situations, such as asking someone out on a date, changing jobs, starting a business — whatever it is, imagine what the situation might look like if you could be there as an invisible observer. Without the fear of failure and rejection, situations that are usually seen as heavily problematic and daunting can even take on an air of playfulness. And you then see how all of life can be experienced in this playful manner, free of the heaviness that comes with being identified with, and trapped in, the mind-made sense of self.
The exercise of imagining yourself to be an invisible observer is only an intermediary stage, of course, but as you apply these kinds of pointers more and more, the shift in identity from form to the formless, from something to nothing, noise to stillness, will settle in as your natural state of being. What may begin as a silly little mental image of yourself as a ghost-like entity that hovers above and beyond the physical body, can point you towards that state of feeling deeply that you are not anything on the level of form. Which is the state of freedom, and a state of having an intuitive sense of being in the world but not of the world.
Filed under Notes on 27. March 2007 »
I’m now going to present you with what will probably be perceived as a rather unusual pointer, a silly little meditation technique that sounds too simple to be effective. But as you know, a pointer doesn’t necessarily have to make sense to the thinking mind; it’s meant to trigger a deeper sense of knowing than rational thought can ever provide you with.
This pointer, or meditation technique, is to focus with vigilance on not saying anything, focusing intently on not speaking at all. Even going so far as to contemplate never uttering a single word ever again. Acting as if you were suddenly unable to speak.
The point of this exercise is not to stop speaking forever, but to entertain the possibility as a means of connecting to stillness. What happens when you do this is that the reactive entity in you, the ego, is made redundant in one of its main areas of function. In most people, most of the time, the act of speaking is heavily influenced by patterns of conditioned reaction, connected to the stream of compulsive thought that is so characteristic of the normal human state of consciousness.
When you focus on not speaking, you may even notice that your tongue and facial muscles suddenly become more relaxed. There is also a sense of stillness and silence, because the mind automatically quiets down and lets down its defenses. A large part of our conditioned thinking is verbal and subvocalized, in that we talk to ourselves using words and may even whisper or talk out loud without noticing. Because of this connection between mental noise and the act of speaking, contemplating the cessation of speaking is a powerful way of cutting off the reactive patterns of thinking.
So however silly it may sound, focusing intently on not saying anything can be a very practical meditation tool, and a useful pointer to stillness in the midst of everyday life.
Filed under Notes on 18. March 2007 »
One of the most powerful spiritual practices, taught in many different forms throughout the ages, is surrender to limitations. Jesus on the cross is the archetypal image of this, and the lives of everyone born into this world will be full of limitations in one form or the other. We could even say that limitation is the very purpose of the world of form, and that it is only here to give us challenges so that we can surrender and discover that which is beyond form.
More often than not, spiritual awakening comes about through surrender to these limitations, often severe ones, such as life threatening diseases, paralysis, loss of some kind — you are more likely to become enlightened through losing everything you have than winning millions of dollars in the lottery, for example.
And in this practice of allowing what is, of surrendering to whatever arises in the moment, be it a thought, an emotion, a person, a situation, or whatever, there is an obstacle that can easily go unnoticed and sabotage your practice. This obstacle is in the form of a little voice that comes in and says yes, I will surrender to what is but let’s get out of this situation first. This is the voice that tells you that saying yes to what is sounds good, but only after you get out of this job, lose weight, move someplace quiet, etc. That when you’ve just figured out this one last thing, just a little bit more, then you will finally be able to surrender. The voice is usually subconscious, and if it were conscious and obvious to you then it’d be seen for what it is instantly, namely resistance arising from the ego.
There is a simple pointer I heard of that deals with this little obstacle, a mantra that says ‘this, too’ and applies to whatever arises in the present moment. So when something happens, you can meet it with this mantra and thus prevent the ego from sneaking in its own mantra which is always ‘everything but this.’ It is a way of seeing that everything is part of what you need to surrender to. Every challenge that arises is there for you to go beyond it, and realizing this can accelerate the process of awakening quite a bit.
So whatever happens, see that this, too, is part of your spiritual practice. Include everything.
Filed under Notes on 3. March 2007 » [3]
During one of his later talks, J. Krishnamurti said to his audience, some of whom had been following him for over a decade and not yet grasped the essence of his teaching: “You want to know my secret? I don’t mind what happens.”
Simple as that. Not minding what happens.
When you don’t mind what happens, we could say that you have seen that nothing can change except the surface layer of your experience. Things may go well or go wrong, according to the judgment of the world, but none of it can really affect you; in other words, none of it has the power to disturb your peace. Not minding what happens is to have gone beyond the world, a state of being in the world but not of it as the saying goes.
You can still prefer certain things and attempt to make situations work out, but you will have a deep knowing that none of it really matters. It is a game of form, something to be honored and played with, but the outcome of which matters only in a relative sense. In the same way as you can experience a videogame: it does matter whether or not your character gets injured or killed, but not absolutely. You enjoy playing, but what happens in the game doesn’t effect you all that deeply.
Nothing important can happen in the future, because all that is important has always been and always will be. Nothing can happen in the future that makes you more than you are right now, and neither can anything happen in the future that makes you less than you are now.
Nothing can be added, and nothing can be taken away. When you realize this, you will no longer mind what happens.
Filed under Articles on 8. February 2007 »
If you were to read a transcript summary of your thinking over the course of a normal day, you might find that a lot of it centers around what you want for yourself; looking at things in terms of what’s in it for you, what you need to do in order to ensure your own comfort, how you can turn situations in your favor etc. And while you may not have many obviously self-serving thoughts, on a deeper level the general theme may still revolve around them to a certain degree
Filed under Articles on 26. January 2007 » [7]
In spiritual teachings, the word ‘attachment’ is widely used to describe our relationship with the world and is often talked about as being the root of human suffering. Basically, it is said that the more you are attached to the world of form the more you will suffer. And thus to become free of suffering, you must relinquish attachment
Filed under Articles on 13. December 2006 » [2]
I was out walking the other night, Chopin playing in my headphones and a crisp sort of winter stillness in the air. And despite the peaceful ambiance I was experiencing a hangover after a bit of binge-thinking earlier that day. The sort of thought trajectory that starts out when something great happens and opens up a flood of positive thinking; a thought stream that then gathers momentum and ultimately turns negative, as all unattended thought does eventually when left to proliferate
Filed under Articles on 4. December 2006 »
In the normal state of consciousness, it can be said that our attention is almost continuously occupied with form. Thoughts, objects, situations, and externally derived sense experience, leave us almost no room at all for looking within and being aware of that which is beyond form. If we were to look at life in terms of balance between inner and outer, the formless and form, the habitual ratio between the two is almost always in favor of the outer; something like 95% things, thoughts, and noise, 5% stillness and peace
Everyday Wonderland is a weblog on the subject of spiritual awakening, creativity, enthusiasm, inspiration, and generally everything having to do with the higher levels of human consciousness. The author is Helgi Páll Einarsson, 24 years old and currently living in Iceland. He likes books in the morning, making things, and taking long walks.