Notes and articles tagged with “problems”
Filed under Notes on 16. August 2007 »
Earlier this week I got an email from a reader regarding the post External circumstances and inner peace, asking for clarification on some of the concepts having to do with seeing the world of form as only the surface level of being. And believe me, I can see how these ideas can get confusing. They sound far-fetched, and I don’t really have a logical understanding of them as such, but they work very well for me as pointers none the less.
Ultimately they are only words, of course, and no words or concepts can ever really capture the truth; they can only point beyond themselves. The concepts can be contradictory, illogical, weird, and still fulfill the function of pointing you towards that which cannot be put into words directly.
And so the key to being able to use them is to not get hung up on trying to make sense of the concepts on the level of thinking and reason, but rather allowing them to sink in and do their work. In many cases, something you read today that makes no sense to you whatsoever may later hit you in a sudden flash of insight. Truth is beyond reason, and yet blindingly simple and obvious when you see it.
Following is the question and then the answer I gave in the email:
"Whatever problems you have in your external situation at the moment, they are neither better nor worse than any other problems that have or can ever come up in your life. On the surface level, this problem is worse and more complicated than that problem, but the differences are only relative to that level. If the surface level is 1% and the problems on that level scale from 1-10, even a level 10 problem will never exceed 1% of the totality."
In a previous article you mentioned something similar with the 95/5 formula. I am not clear what qualifies as the 1% of the surface level, and what the rest of the 99% is? It's difficult for me to accept that the life that i experience 100% of the time is only 1% of my being. Please go into more detail about what the 99% is and what the 1% is. Is everything we experience on a daily basis filed under the 1% of our being and we shouldn't really mind what happens? Or are there things that we experience (relaxation, love, friendship) which occur on the surface but are filed under the 99% of importance? I'm really confused.
It's important to remember that even the surface is part of the totality, so I am in no way dismissing the importance of that 5% (or 1%, 0.001%, 10%, whatever). It's just a matter of depth. When you look at a human being and are only aware of the surface, what you see is only a collection of labels. Whereas when you look at a human being while aware of the totality, you see/sense much more. It's almost like the difference of meeting someone online vs. face to face; the former is a bundle of abstracted labels and information, while the latter is (potentially) a much deeper and richer experience.
Now, the mind cannot possibly make sense of what it means to be aware of the totality. It's impossible to try and figure it out, and the numbers are just a method of pointing towards something that doesn't really make any logical sense. It's not at all about the numbers, or about words or explanations for that matter.
To look at some other perspectives on this:
If you're in a relatively quiet environment, close your eyes for a moment and listen. Observe that there is silence, and then there are sounds that arise and dissolve out of that stillness. The more you are aware of the silence, the more you sense its depth and how the sounds that appear in it are relatively fleeting and insignificant. In fact, consciously being aware of the silence that underlies everything is a great pointer towards sensing the depth beyond the surface level.
Yet another way of looking at it is to use the sea metaphor. The totality is the entire sea, unimaginable stillness, depth and vastness, while the world of form is the continuous play of forms on the surface of the sea, the waves. Sometimes the waves are huge and restless, sometimes it's almost completely still, but whatever happens on the surface doesn't affect the stillness in the depths.
The whole deal with the numbers and all these pointers and tricks is to trigger shifts in awareness. Although I think it's a bad idea and not worth the health risks involved, you could probably do this to some extent with mind-altering drugs also.
Regarding what you mention with relaxation, love and friendship, I would suggest that in a way these can provide glimpses of what is beyond the surface. Remember also that everything is part of the 100%, and so everything is 100% important. So let's say an orange is a 100% important, but we only see the skin of it and believe that to be 100% important, overlooking the fruit inside.
I'm not sure how to explain it any better, but remember that you don't necessarily need to understand any of it on a conceptual level. In fact, trying to work it out on that level may hinder you in gaining the deeper level of understanding, the flash of insight where it everything makes sense on a much deeper level than the thinking-mind can comprehend.
Filed under Notes on 11. August 2007 »
See if this sounds familiar: “My life is problematic right now, but if ______ then I would be okay.” Mostly the blank space is filled with something to do with externally derived security, such as financial independence, a happy marriage, a solid career, a nicer house, and so on and so on. And no matter how often people get over that bump in the road, the initial feeling of safety and relaxation is soon replaced by the need for just this one more thing. And however many problems we manage to solve or stomp into the ground, it’s a game of endless whack-a-mole.
In essence, we are looking for home in our external situation; looking for inner peace in outer circumstances. And the reason for this is that we believe that inner peace, that elusive feeling of being safe, of having arrived, etc., can be derived somehow from the world of form. Furthermore we think that not only can it be derived from external circumstances, but that it depends on the external circumstances of our lives. In the conditioned and unconscious state most people still find themselves in, all they see is the world of form and so they simply cannot fathom where else to look. It is a case of only perceiving the surface level of life, and looking for fulfillment there while completely missing the vastness of depth beyond. It’s like picking up a single piece from a 1.000.000 piece puzzle, expecting it to show you the entire picture. You look real hard at it for years and years, tilt it this way and that, bang your head against it in frustration, and then pass on to the next generation that “yes, the picture is there, but you have to look really hard to see it.”
We’ve been conditioned to think that the surface is all there is, that the world of form is life itself in completion, and a side effect of that is the essence of human suffering, the problem behind all our problems; namely, our identification with form. When we are identified with form, our appetite for more forms is bottomless. It is a philosophy that assumes we are incomplete, and yet doesn’t have any real idea about what completion is. A feeling of lack and incompleteness is at the core of the illusion of form identity, and so merely feeding the appetite for more is an exercise in futility. On that level, there will never be enough. We can never find permanent satisfaction on the level of form, mostly because the satisfaction of our needs on that level is illusory. Any externally derived sense of safety is an illusion; we think for a moment that there really is permanence to be found in the world, until something changes or the feeling wears off. It’s like thinking that a really big hamburger is all you need to never be hungry again. Naive, sure, but this is what our conditioning is like.
Whatever problems you have in your external situation at the moment, they are neither better nor worse than any other problems that have or can ever come up in your life. On the surface level, this problem is worse and more complicated than that problem, but the differences are only relative to that level. If the surface level is 1% and the problems on that level scale from 1-10, even a level 10 problem will never exceed 1% of the totality.
When you perceive the surface level of life in context with the totality, it becomes very clear that nothing on that level can ever fulfill you. And with that comes the recognition that nothing that can ever happen on that level is all that serious. There are challenges, and when they are seen for what they are, instead of being turned into problems by the form-identified mind, you can deal with them easily and without effort. Challenges arise continuously on the surface level of life, but these only become an issue when the surface level is seen as all there is.
So whatever your current external situation looks like at the moment, realize that it will keep changing, shifting, doing its thing, and that none of it has anything much to do with your sense of fulfillment or inner peace.
Paraphrasing J. Krishnamurti, freedom from the world is not minding what happens.
Filed under Notes on 14. May 2007 » [2]
I remember listening to a radio show with Byron Katie a few months ago, where she was taking calls from people and guiding them through their issues using The Work. A man called in with a list of potential problems and scenarios in his life situation, the usual sort of worries and dilemmas that people have regarding fulfillment and survival, how this might happen and that might happen; basically just the fearful and generic story of how everything might go wrong in the future.
So Katie asked him the question, “what is the worst that could happen?” He answered and she asked him “and then what?” Again he answered, and she repeated “and then what?,” again and again until the man had traced back his story, only to find that there wasn’t really anything there to be afraid of in the first place.
The thing with these fearful stories we tell ourselves about the future and how everything might come crashing down all around us, is that they are like a vague cloud of “something bad that might happen,” never really giving you a clear image of what exactly it is you are afraid of.
This is because the fear isn’t really about the particular content of your story — it is built into the structure of the conditioned sense of self, and so it doesn’t really matter what your story is about because the element of fear is independent of the content.
The method of writing out your stories of worst-case scenarios is briefly mentioned in Katie’s book Loving What Is
, where she writes:
“... imagine the worst outcome that reality could hand you. Imagine your worst fears lived out on paper. Be thourough. Take it to the limit. ... After each frightening scenario that comes to mind, imagine what could happen next. And then what could happen? And then what? Be a frightened child. Don’t hold back.”
When we do this, grab a hold of the cloud of fear and dissect it by going through the worst-case scenarios step-by-step, it helps us peel back the layers of fear and illusion we’ve constructed for ourselves, only to reveal nothing but thin air.
So ask yourself, again and again, “what is the worst that could happen? And then what?”
Filed under Notes on 7. May 2007 » [6]
A defining characteristic of our conditioning is a stubborn, illogical and counterproductive habit of resisting what is. The ego always wants to be against something, and the default mode of approaching the world is that of resistance, denial and avoidance.
Among spiritual seekers, this can manifest as a desire to use the spiritual path as a means of escaping or avoiding challenges they are faced with in the world of form. It can be subtle, sometimes so much so that it turns into a difficult obstacle. The mind is very clever when it comes to future-projected promises of salvation, some magical solution to all your problems that will get you to a point of arrival or “making it” sometime in the future, and the spiritual path can be seen by the ego as a means to that end.
It can be seen as a way of constructing a safe story for yourself, basically the same old “story of me” but without all the problems. And in this way, you approach the spiritual path as an alternative story line you can use to replace the old one.
And in a certain way this is true; spiritual awakening is indeed the end to all problems. But not in the way the conditioned mind thinks of it though. Becoming free of problems is not about one day finding yourself living in a world where you are free of the polarities of gain and loss, birth and death, success and failure. Things will continue to come and go, but it only becomes a problem when viewed through the filter of conditioned thinking. To quote Shakespeare again, “nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
I will go more into this later, in-depth, but for now let me leave you with a little exercise that deals with the issue directly; a pointer that shifts you from being in a mode of resistance, which is more or less our default response to challenges in the conditioned state, and on to being able to work with whatever you are presented with in the world of form. What this entails is simply to act as if you had chosen whatever arises in the moment. It already is, and so you might as well work with it instead of resisting it.
In this way, you can face all challenges completely without turning them into problems that you then want to avoid having to deal with. When you face everything fully in this way, you will begin to see solutions and opportunities instead of problems and obstacles. And so not only will the challenges seem lighter and less serious than before, you will actually be much more able to deal with them effectively.
Practicing this is particularly useful to overcome the obstacle we talked about earlier, of wanting to use the spiritual path as a story device, and can help you shake loose from what can sometimes be a very subtle trap of conditioned thinking.
Filed under Articles on 13. January 2007 » [36]
So, you want your life to be stressful? Didn’t think so, but it’s amazing how many people consistently apply habits and actions in their daily lives that guarantee stressful results. They repeat the same things over and over again, expecting different results, which is, if I recall correctly, the textbook definition of insanity. After hitting the same wall every day for 20 years, people think “okay, if I just really hammer it this time then maybe it suddenly won’t be there.”
Filed under Articles on 7. January 2007 » [5]
Although it may sound like the title of an article from Cosmo Girl magazine, except for the last part perhaps, issues having to do with our parents are not limited to the lives of children and adolescents only. Even if you are in your 50s, 60s, or even 90 years old, the fundamental beliefs you have about yourself and the world can probably be traced back to what you were taught to believe as a child. Growing up, our whole picture of the world is limited to our immediate environment, and so the way in which a child perceives the world is heavily dependent on the outlook of its parents, siblings, and relatives
Filed under Articles on 22. December 2006 »
Do you have a problem? Chances are you have several. The car just started developing a strange noise in the wrong place, you have three different bosses at work and none of them seems to like you very much, the NASDAQ is taking a beating, your back hurts, and so on and so on
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.