The respect you earn is no lesser or greater than the respect than your own self-respect.
Therefore, respect yourself and God and the world will respect you.
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Ten questions
1. Why is there something, rather than nothing?
2. Does God exist?
3. Are you your brain?
4. How should we treat animals?
5. What is knowledge?
6. How do you know aliens haven't stolen your brain?
7. Could you survive a brain transplant?
8. What, ultimately, is real?
9. Where does morality come from?
10. Is everything relative?
2. Does God exist?
3. Are you your brain?
4. How should we treat animals?
5. What is knowledge?
6. How do you know aliens haven't stolen your brain?
7. Could you survive a brain transplant?
8. What, ultimately, is real?
9. Where does morality come from?
10. Is everything relative?
'The Maitreya has come and is here'
You have PERSONALITY!
What?
Uh?
UH?
Oh really?
Oh really?
Whatever...
In the title of that famous song, ‘You’ve Got Personality’, lies a basic truth i.e. you’ve ‘got’ personality! In other words your personality is not you. It is not what you are, it’s what you’ve got. More accurately it’s what you have created.
This is good news because many believe they are stuck with their personality and believe it can’t be changed. On the contrary it can. Is there something within your personality that you don’t particularly like which seems to surface in your behaviour without your permission?
Would you like to change it?
From 'whatever' or 'oh really?' or 'uh uh'?
Do you find some people occasionally letting you know there is an aspect of your personality that doesn’t quite…suit you? Like any old suit, it can be changed!
Some people insist you cannot change your personality, that you are born with it and it is part of your ‘genetic inheritance’. They either truly believe this ‘learned belief’ or they use it to avoid the work of changing something within their personal portfolio of habits. It’s an easy belief system to refute. Take a moment and look back on your own life and see what has changed within your personality.
Perhaps you used to be carefree and never worried, but now you do.
Perhaps you never used to react angrily to certain events, but now you do, and perhaps have done for some time.
So what’s changed within you? Have you ever noticed a change within the personality of another? Nothing is more startling than watching almost overnight changes within most teenagers personalities when they realise they don’t have to follow orders from the commanders and controllers whom they encounter every morning around the kitchen table!
When it comes to making changes to your personality anything is possible.
Why?
Because your personality is simple a tapestry of traits, tendencies and habits that you have created by your actions in the past. Many are copied from parents or childhood heroes, others are forged in the company of peer groups at school, and many have been influenced by the media dominant environment in which we all now live. These traits, tendencies and habits are living records within our consciousness that are stimulated into life either consciously or subconsciously by some external trigger event. But it is a mistake to think that any particular trait, or cluster of tendencies, is actually you. The creator is not the creation.
The origins of each strand in the invisible fabric of your personality may lie at the level of your thoughts and actions, or even deeper, at the level of your attachments and beliefs. Any effective method of meditation or contemplation, when practiced regularly, will allow you to see the true origin or ‘true cause’ of any trait. But how do you change what may seem like the habit of a lifetime? Here’s how. Select a habit you would like to be free of.
For example, do you ever find yourself reactively judging and condemning others? It’s a common habit today as we are intensively exposed to the medias interpretations and judgments of others. It’s easy to allow this habit to grow and not notice that whenever you judge and condemn another you lose your peace and only create suffering for your self in the process. But it’s not quite enough to know which tendency you would like to atrophy. What would be a new trait worth replacing the old habit with? What would be a better response to the same events, which would not generate this stress and discomfort for your self, look like? Compassion is perhaps the more appropriate, definitely kinder, not to mention stress free response.
So let’s say you have decided you would like to be free of the particular trait of judgment/condemnation and you would prefer to respond with greater compassion. The creation of anything at any level requires energy. To put more light into a room requires more electricity to pass into the light bulb, or more light bulbs. To create compassion as a strand in your cloak of many colours, your personality, also requires an input of energy. Unfortunately not the kind of energy you will find in the electrical socket or on the beach in Spain.
First we need to create the blueprint of compassion as an idea. Where? On the screen of our mind, the arena of all that we create. It is the canvas upon which you will create your life. What are the essential component parts of compassion?
Empathy, understanding, acceptance and respect would be a good framework upon which to ‘grow’ our new compassionate tendency.
As yet these components are only just ideas, and have no real power in our life to affect any change to the old and well-established reactionary habit of condemnation. Where will we find that power to make the components of compassion come to life within our consciousness, and then in our behaviour? The primary source of real, creative, transformative power in all our lives life is our own heart. Not our physical heart, but the heart of the self , the heart of our consciousness.
We are all already there but mostly not aware of it. Distracted by the world we lose our awareness that we are in permanent residence in our heart, and have instant access to its power whenever we need it. That’s why it is necessary to take some ‘time out’ and restore our awareness and our connection to our inner power. Otherwise we tend not to live ‘from’ the heart and so the power ‘of’ our heart is not as available to us as often as it could be. It is only from there that we can generate the energy to create the compassionate response by empowering and ‘enlivening’ the framework of compassion as follows.
The core component of compassion is unbreakable respect for the other. Not easy in a world that often seems bereft of mutual respect. In our heart of hearts there is a core truth that we tend to forget, and that’s the idea that every human being is innately good and worthy. Reconnecting with the power of this truth restores the ability to see past the weaknesses and mistakes of others and into their heart where their goodness, their worth, always resides, regardless of their history. Just as ours does, regardless of our history!
Then comes acceptance which is our wisdom saying, “I may not agree with them, and I may not condone what they have done, but I accept them as they are, I accept what is done is done, now how can we go forward together, as one, not separately as the judge and the judged”?
Then comes understanding which is our wisdom acknowledging the fact that everyone makes mistakes and mistakes can be corrected.
And finally empathy is the capacity to be sensitive to the others emotional state without being swamped by or recreating the others emotions. Not easy in a world where we tend to learn that it’s only when you share another’s pain i.e. recreate their emotional pain within your self, that you are able to empathise them. But that’s not empathy, it’s sympathy, it’s feeling sorry for the other and that doesn’t help them or us. It easily becomes another debilitating habit
Each of the four components of compassion requires attention and actualization, first intellectually (in theory) and then mentally (the beginning of practice) on the screen of your mind as we visualise our self bringing each component to life in relation to the other.
All the while the old habit of judgment/condemnation will be kicking at the door wondering why we have tried to shut it out. It’s in those moments that the art of ignoring the old habit requires another energy along side the wisdom of our heart i.e. the power of determination, some perseverance and of course our old friend patience.
So there you have it – how to change an old deep seated habit within the fabric of your personality in six simple steps.
Easy really! If only!
Question: Select a trait or tendency within your personality that you would like to ‘atrophy’ and a new trait that you would like to replace it with. (Oh really? - yes!)
Reflection: Take a moment to explore why you think that old trait comes to life so often. Can you see a cause, an origin, contributing factors?
Action: Create a framework of the components/aspects of the new trait and then meditate/contemplate upon each one allowing them to come to life within your consciousness as they are nourished by the power of your heart.
Why me...etc
The process by which we realize our true identity is one that requires the ‘noticing’ of all the ‘things’ that we learn to identify with but are in ‘truth’ not us. This can be a lengthy process of elimination in terms of corporeal time, or it can be an almost instantly induced realization of the ‘I’ that says I am. In both instances meditation and contemplation tend to be the ‘traditional’ methods. However, we live in a world with a thousand voices all trying to convince us to identify with something we are not, and it’s easy to forget our self even once we have tasted that deeper sense of who we are! Hence the need to remember and the effort to remind our self about our self! The value of this process is only fully appreciated when it is clearly seen that any and all our unhappiness, suffering, stress and conflict are always due to one thing, and that is not being aware of our authentic self i.e. not BEING our authentic self.
And so to the second dimension in our trilogy of short but slightly significant questions. Why HERE? Just as why ME cannot be addressed without exploring who is the I that is me, so too Why HERE first requires an enquiry into WHERE Am I? WHERE exactly is HERE? In other words what is the ‘context’ we find ourselves in. Once again our sense of context, or ‘where’ we are, is hugely influenced by our sense of identity and the beliefs and perceptions we have assimilated from others about the world around us. For example if we have learned to identify our self with a ‘national label’ our sense of context will be largely influenced by the concept of a country and the culture that comes with a national identity. We will see our self positioned within and as a part of a ‘national context’. But if we have realized that countries are just groups of people who have learned to collude in identifying with a label given to a piece of land, then we transcend the narrow sense of a context defined by nationality. We will more likely see our self not as a member or citizen of a country, but more as a human being within all humanity. Quite a jump in our ‘contextual awareness’ after a lifetime of ‘nationalistic conditioning’.
Not long ago, perhaps only 100 years ago, most people’s sense of context was quite narrow. They were born, grew up, worked and died in a small community with little or no awareness of anything beyond that context. Today, huge numbers of us will not only travel the world but even work around the world. And even if we don’t visit the world in person we can watch the world from our armchair. From this purely physical point of view our sense of context has expanded exponentially in a relatively short space of time. When Mother Theresa started her work her sense of context was quite ‘small’ and narrow as she sought only to help those in need in a very small local community. But by the time she passed on she had a ‘sense of context’ that was global. Her work spread around the world through her organization as she served the world.
And so from a three dimensional ‘world out there’ point of view we can each choose and create our own sense of context if we wish. We can confine our awareness and our focus in life to a small localised context, or we could choose to do something in the world, perhaps for the world, throughout the world. Just as our truest sense of who we are can contract around a false sense of identity or expand into the unbounded and undivided being of ‘pure awareness’ that we are, so too our sense of context is an awareness that can contract or expand.
A slightly less visible and less tangible dimension of context is relationship. Life is relationship and relationship is not a static condition. It is ‘dynamic’ and ever changing. And if we don’t understand these dynamics, if we don’t learn to align with the laws and principles behind these dynamics, if we don’t develop an ability to ‘play’ within the dynamics of relationship there will always be a ‘jarring’ effect within our exchanges with others. Over time we will start to feel like the stranger at the party wondering both where we are and why we are here!
The basic dynamic of relationship that defines the ‘context of relationship’ is an exchange of energy. It could be said that there is harmony in relationship when there is a natural giving and receiving of positive energy. This is the law of harmony. And if there is a feeling of disharmony, if there is any negative thinking or emotional turmoil during an exchange, it usually means giving and receiving has turned into wanting, taking or keeping. When HERE is seen to be our relationship with everyone and everything around us, and when we are able read the internal signals that indicate disharmony, we can begin to re-align with the dynamics of relationship that generate and sustain harmony. As we attempt to do so we may discover it’s not that easy being ‘harmonious’ with ALL others in the HERE. Others can be easily perceived to be anything from kind and generous to sly and manipulative, from caring and benevolent to nasty and brutish. Consistent good character, necessary to the creation of harmony in relationship, can be a rare find in a world where few really know who they are, and where most spend their life defending and sustaining an identity which is not true, not real. While at the same time some of our own habitual inclinations, include attempting to control others, judging and criticizing others or simply complaining about others, are not exactly born of the intention to create harmony. A harmonious exchange can be challenging to create and it often seems easily lost. Realising we have moved away from giving and receiving and into wanting, taking or keeping is always the first step back to the co-creation of harmony in a ‘relational context’.
When we see HERE (the context of our life) as relationship the essential realization that follows is that this is a creative context. We are HERE to be creative. Unfortunately for many, if not most of us, we either don’t or cannot see our life happening as a creative process but more as a consumptive process. We learn more to consume than to create. Why? Simply because we don’t know our self accurately. When we see ourselves as solely physical forms then consumption tends to become the primary intention and behaviour. Our sense of HERE is as a place and opportunity to get, to acquire and to consume. Opportunity quickly becomes necessity. Whereas when we know our self as the conscious being that ‘occupies’ form we begin to restore our awareness of our true creative potential. We begin to fully understand and how we create not only our life HERE but also co-create with others the state of the world out THERE!
It’s in this attempt to ‘create harmony’ in your relationships, and perhaps the repeated failure to do so, that you may notice that the ‘real HERE’ is not ‘out there’! The deepest HERE is prior to your relationships ‘out there’! The deepest awareness of the context of our life is closer to home than we think. We tend to see HERE as somewhere ‘out there’ in the world around us. But in truth HERE is within you, within you the being of consciousness. And it is HERE, within your self, that you do what you are designed to do, which is not to watch others in the world, not to judge others in the world, not to argue with others in the world or attempt to fix the others in the world, it is to ‘create’ the world, including others.
The world in this sense does not mean physical objects or other people’s forms, or indeed the consciousness of others. Objects and forms are already created, as is the consciousness of others. However, the ‘real world’ is HERE within your consciousness, where you, the artist of life, abide. The canvas is the screen of your mind and you paint (create) the world with your perceptions, thoughts, feelings and intuitions. But you are unlikely to find this easy to ‘see’ until you see and realise that everything, which means every ‘thing’, exists in two places at once. Out there and in HERE…so to speak. What appears to be ‘there’ is really HERE! And HERE is where ‘I am’. And it is the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’ that creates what appears ‘out there’ in HERE.
The simplest proof of this, if it can be called ‘proof’ is as follows. We all know that we each interpret the same external scene, event or circumstance differently. We will each create a different perception within our consciousness of what ‘seems’ to be happening ‘out there.’ Regular contemplation, reflection and meditation increases the capacity to see that to perceive is to create and that you perceive/create the world/people out there according to your state of consciousness in HERE, within the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’. To a realised ‘I’, to the one who is aware that they are simply pure awareness, it is clearly seen that the ‘real world’ is not out there, it’s HERE … right HERE! The world out there becomes a secondary reality, a projection and co-projection of ‘projectors’, known as human beings. For example, those human beings who call themselves news reporters or journalists create their perception of what is happening out THERE in their HERE, in their primary reality (consciousness), and then project it out into the secondary reality of the world in the form of paper and ink. The rest of us then project our perception of their projection, created within the primary reality of our consciousness, out into the world of our relationships. This of course is an action that triggers/stimulates/creates more actions, which makes more news! And so the world out there, which isn’t ‘out there’, is really just a projection of the world in HERE.
The awakening of our awareness to the realization that our ‘primary reality’, and therefore our deepest awareness of context, is within our own consciousness, has massive implications for the way we live (create) our lives.
It becomes obvious that you are obviously totally responsible for your own sense of reality, which you create within your own consciousness. Everything that emerges from that ‘reality’ including your thoughts, feelings, attitudes and actions, regardless of what seems to be happening ‘out there’, is one hundred percent the responsibility of the self . Occasionally we encounter someone who seems to intuitively know and live this way. Nothing ‘out there’ disturbs them because they know it’s not what happens out there but how they create HERE what happens out THERE that allows them to stay calm, focused and proactively responsive.
The tension of searching comes to an end as ‘the truth’ is found, seen and known within consciousness. Truth is ‘reality’, truth is what is real, and the highest reality is the universe of ‘the self’, and the self does not need to be searched for, as it is never lost. Neither is anything missing from the self other than the self being aware that reality is ‘self’, is consciousness, and that consciousness is the creator, all else is creation, all else is ‘play’ in a lower reality, including going to work!
Which all adds up to one single conclusion – ultimately, to a being that knows they are a being of consciousness and not the form they occupy, there is no THERE only HERE. Wherever you go, which means wherever you take your form, HERE is always where you are! If you believe YOU are going somewhere it’s an illusion. When the illusion is ‘seen through’, it’s a fun illusion, you can play with it and within it, as it ceases to have power over you the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’. But until it is ‘seen through’ it is an illusion that clouds your awareness of reality and generates disharmony and suffering in HERE! And so when someone asks you WHERE are you going, you can now reply with conviction, “Nowhere really, for in reality I am always HERE…in reality”. They are unlikely to understand a word you are saying but it can be a great conversation opener into the most important questions WHY ME, WHY HERE!
Question: Why is the ‘real’ world (reality) not ‘there’ but always HERE?
Reflection: Where is HERE exactly and how do you know?
Action: Take five minutes at the end of each day this week, look back on the day and find two perceptions that you could have created differently.
And so to the second dimension in our trilogy of short but slightly significant questions. Why HERE? Just as why ME cannot be addressed without exploring who is the I that is me, so too Why HERE first requires an enquiry into WHERE Am I? WHERE exactly is HERE? In other words what is the ‘context’ we find ourselves in. Once again our sense of context, or ‘where’ we are, is hugely influenced by our sense of identity and the beliefs and perceptions we have assimilated from others about the world around us. For example if we have learned to identify our self with a ‘national label’ our sense of context will be largely influenced by the concept of a country and the culture that comes with a national identity. We will see our self positioned within and as a part of a ‘national context’. But if we have realized that countries are just groups of people who have learned to collude in identifying with a label given to a piece of land, then we transcend the narrow sense of a context defined by nationality. We will more likely see our self not as a member or citizen of a country, but more as a human being within all humanity. Quite a jump in our ‘contextual awareness’ after a lifetime of ‘nationalistic conditioning’.
Not long ago, perhaps only 100 years ago, most people’s sense of context was quite narrow. They were born, grew up, worked and died in a small community with little or no awareness of anything beyond that context. Today, huge numbers of us will not only travel the world but even work around the world. And even if we don’t visit the world in person we can watch the world from our armchair. From this purely physical point of view our sense of context has expanded exponentially in a relatively short space of time. When Mother Theresa started her work her sense of context was quite ‘small’ and narrow as she sought only to help those in need in a very small local community. But by the time she passed on she had a ‘sense of context’ that was global. Her work spread around the world through her organization as she served the world.
And so from a three dimensional ‘world out there’ point of view we can each choose and create our own sense of context if we wish. We can confine our awareness and our focus in life to a small localised context, or we could choose to do something in the world, perhaps for the world, throughout the world. Just as our truest sense of who we are can contract around a false sense of identity or expand into the unbounded and undivided being of ‘pure awareness’ that we are, so too our sense of context is an awareness that can contract or expand.
A slightly less visible and less tangible dimension of context is relationship. Life is relationship and relationship is not a static condition. It is ‘dynamic’ and ever changing. And if we don’t understand these dynamics, if we don’t learn to align with the laws and principles behind these dynamics, if we don’t develop an ability to ‘play’ within the dynamics of relationship there will always be a ‘jarring’ effect within our exchanges with others. Over time we will start to feel like the stranger at the party wondering both where we are and why we are here!
The basic dynamic of relationship that defines the ‘context of relationship’ is an exchange of energy. It could be said that there is harmony in relationship when there is a natural giving and receiving of positive energy. This is the law of harmony. And if there is a feeling of disharmony, if there is any negative thinking or emotional turmoil during an exchange, it usually means giving and receiving has turned into wanting, taking or keeping. When HERE is seen to be our relationship with everyone and everything around us, and when we are able read the internal signals that indicate disharmony, we can begin to re-align with the dynamics of relationship that generate and sustain harmony. As we attempt to do so we may discover it’s not that easy being ‘harmonious’ with ALL others in the HERE. Others can be easily perceived to be anything from kind and generous to sly and manipulative, from caring and benevolent to nasty and brutish. Consistent good character, necessary to the creation of harmony in relationship, can be a rare find in a world where few really know who they are, and where most spend their life defending and sustaining an identity which is not true, not real. While at the same time some of our own habitual inclinations, include attempting to control others, judging and criticizing others or simply complaining about others, are not exactly born of the intention to create harmony. A harmonious exchange can be challenging to create and it often seems easily lost. Realising we have moved away from giving and receiving and into wanting, taking or keeping is always the first step back to the co-creation of harmony in a ‘relational context’.
When we see HERE (the context of our life) as relationship the essential realization that follows is that this is a creative context. We are HERE to be creative. Unfortunately for many, if not most of us, we either don’t or cannot see our life happening as a creative process but more as a consumptive process. We learn more to consume than to create. Why? Simply because we don’t know our self accurately. When we see ourselves as solely physical forms then consumption tends to become the primary intention and behaviour. Our sense of HERE is as a place and opportunity to get, to acquire and to consume. Opportunity quickly becomes necessity. Whereas when we know our self as the conscious being that ‘occupies’ form we begin to restore our awareness of our true creative potential. We begin to fully understand and how we create not only our life HERE but also co-create with others the state of the world out THERE!
It’s in this attempt to ‘create harmony’ in your relationships, and perhaps the repeated failure to do so, that you may notice that the ‘real HERE’ is not ‘out there’! The deepest HERE is prior to your relationships ‘out there’! The deepest awareness of the context of our life is closer to home than we think. We tend to see HERE as somewhere ‘out there’ in the world around us. But in truth HERE is within you, within you the being of consciousness. And it is HERE, within your self, that you do what you are designed to do, which is not to watch others in the world, not to judge others in the world, not to argue with others in the world or attempt to fix the others in the world, it is to ‘create’ the world, including others.
The world in this sense does not mean physical objects or other people’s forms, or indeed the consciousness of others. Objects and forms are already created, as is the consciousness of others. However, the ‘real world’ is HERE within your consciousness, where you, the artist of life, abide. The canvas is the screen of your mind and you paint (create) the world with your perceptions, thoughts, feelings and intuitions. But you are unlikely to find this easy to ‘see’ until you see and realise that everything, which means every ‘thing’, exists in two places at once. Out there and in HERE…so to speak. What appears to be ‘there’ is really HERE! And HERE is where ‘I am’. And it is the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’ that creates what appears ‘out there’ in HERE.
The simplest proof of this, if it can be called ‘proof’ is as follows. We all know that we each interpret the same external scene, event or circumstance differently. We will each create a different perception within our consciousness of what ‘seems’ to be happening ‘out there.’ Regular contemplation, reflection and meditation increases the capacity to see that to perceive is to create and that you perceive/create the world/people out there according to your state of consciousness in HERE, within the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’. To a realised ‘I’, to the one who is aware that they are simply pure awareness, it is clearly seen that the ‘real world’ is not out there, it’s HERE … right HERE! The world out there becomes a secondary reality, a projection and co-projection of ‘projectors’, known as human beings. For example, those human beings who call themselves news reporters or journalists create their perception of what is happening out THERE in their HERE, in their primary reality (consciousness), and then project it out into the secondary reality of the world in the form of paper and ink. The rest of us then project our perception of their projection, created within the primary reality of our consciousness, out into the world of our relationships. This of course is an action that triggers/stimulates/creates more actions, which makes more news! And so the world out there, which isn’t ‘out there’, is really just a projection of the world in HERE.
The awakening of our awareness to the realization that our ‘primary reality’, and therefore our deepest awareness of context, is within our own consciousness, has massive implications for the way we live (create) our lives.
It becomes obvious that you are obviously totally responsible for your own sense of reality, which you create within your own consciousness. Everything that emerges from that ‘reality’ including your thoughts, feelings, attitudes and actions, regardless of what seems to be happening ‘out there’, is one hundred percent the responsibility of the self . Occasionally we encounter someone who seems to intuitively know and live this way. Nothing ‘out there’ disturbs them because they know it’s not what happens out there but how they create HERE what happens out THERE that allows them to stay calm, focused and proactively responsive.
The tension of searching comes to an end as ‘the truth’ is found, seen and known within consciousness. Truth is ‘reality’, truth is what is real, and the highest reality is the universe of ‘the self’, and the self does not need to be searched for, as it is never lost. Neither is anything missing from the self other than the self being aware that reality is ‘self’, is consciousness, and that consciousness is the creator, all else is creation, all else is ‘play’ in a lower reality, including going to work!
Which all adds up to one single conclusion – ultimately, to a being that knows they are a being of consciousness and not the form they occupy, there is no THERE only HERE. Wherever you go, which means wherever you take your form, HERE is always where you are! If you believe YOU are going somewhere it’s an illusion. When the illusion is ‘seen through’, it’s a fun illusion, you can play with it and within it, as it ceases to have power over you the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’. But until it is ‘seen through’ it is an illusion that clouds your awareness of reality and generates disharmony and suffering in HERE! And so when someone asks you WHERE are you going, you can now reply with conviction, “Nowhere really, for in reality I am always HERE…in reality”. They are unlikely to understand a word you are saying but it can be a great conversation opener into the most important questions WHY ME, WHY HERE!
Question: Why is the ‘real’ world (reality) not ‘there’ but always HERE?
Reflection: Where is HERE exactly and how do you know?
Action: Take five minutes at the end of each day this week, look back on the day and find two perceptions that you could have created differently.
Why ME Why HERE Why NOW ?
It’s that moment just after disaster has struck, when you are reflecting on what just happened that you are likely to hear a voice in your head that says, “Why me, why now?” And it can be even more frustrating to discover there is usually no reply!
For those who see themselves as someone encountering frequent misfortune this question is a regular visitor to their consciousness. For others it seems that the backdrop to their entire life has always contained the nagging mystery of …me, here, now … why? As these somewhat esoteric questions gnaw away at our consciousness we might suppress them, ignore them or try to shut them down with the distraction of action. However there are some amongst us who earnestly pursue the answers, as if called by a deeper part of our ‘self’ that keeps reminding us that these are the most important questions, and that life will be incomplete without knowing. And there are those at the other end of the spectrum who would never give a second thought to questions that they regard as somewhat irrelevant. They simply get on with living their life. But it’s almost certain that at some moment, and it may only be ‘one’ moment, when even they will at least hesitate in their tracks with a self reflective enquiry into, “Why am I me?”.
Why me, here, now, are questions that point straight at the heart of almost all philosophical musings, the core of almost all spiritual understanding, the underlying wisdom of almost all of those considered to be wise, and to what is sometimes referred to as enlightenment. They are the classic starting points of the earnest seeker who is hunting truth. And they are both signposts and stepping stones as you embark on what is known as the ‘spiritual journey’, which is essentially a process of clarifying three things – identity, meaning and purpose.
Playing with, digging under, looking behind and silently contemplating each question is essential if you are to follow the signs and set out on the seeker’s trail. For example, WHY ME cannot be fully answered until you are clear about WHO IS ME. Why did most of the major philosophers through the ages finally decide there was really only one question worth exploring? Why did they say that when you get the answer to this question you will realise and know all you will ever need to know? That question of course is WHO AM I? Paradoxically it is the one question that can never be fully answered as it points to a place beyond language, beyond all philosophy, beyond all symbology. However, it is in the attempt to answer it that everything else becomes clear. In the context of the first question - WHY ME or WHO IS ME - there are three ways to proceed ‘towards clarity’ – elimination, realisation and re-memorisation. Ultimately the first leads to the second, which initiates the third.
Applying the process of elimination is similar to stripping off your many layers of clothing to reveal your naked physical form. By ‘seeing’ what you are not, what the ‘I’ is not, you gradually ‘uncloak’ the true self who is always present and naked at the centre. Instead of starting with WHO AM I, experiment with WHO or WHAT AM I NOT? Then identify all the things you identify with, and in the revealing light of your awareness, challenge each with the question IS THAT WHAT I AM? It will not be long before you start to see that you are not things like your nationality, your profession, your location, even your family! They are all either labels or ‘things’ quite separate from the ‘I’.
As you proceed you may catch a glimpse of the truth that you are not your race, gender and even your body as they are also not what the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’...is! Once again they are labels or in the case of the body just the piece of meat and bone that is closest to the ‘I’! If you stick with it, at an even subtler level, you will begin to eliminate all the things you momentarily believe are you, but are not! Things like your thoughts, feelings and even your beliefs and memories can also be a source of a false sense of identity. It becomes obvious that all of these ‘things’, like all other ‘things’, come and go, and yet the ‘I’, the ME, always remains.
So what is left after the process of elimination, after peeling away all the layers of false identity. Nothing is left. No thing. Only awareness. This can sound a bit scary in theory. It can sound like a complete loss of identity. In reality however, it is the restoration of ‘real identity’ because it was already lost in all those other ‘things’. This regaining of identity, of who I am, however, is not an idea or a theory, that would be to identify again with just another idea or theory. At the end of the process of elimination you are left with an awareness of your self as awareness, as the one who is aware of being aware, knowing your self as the one who knows they don’t know! While this sounds abstract (as it must in physical language) in practice and in reality (of consciousness), it is both freeing and energising. What falls away is all the fighting and defending of what were false identities, all the struggling and striving to survive the perceived threats to those identities and all the suffering and the stress that have their roots in misidentification.
Freeing the ME from all that has trapped it, releases a long suppressed enthusiasm for life and the joy of living. However until there is this ‘revealing of the self to the self’ many will resist and fight against this idea of being ‘no thing’ and say things like, “But I like to struggle... I need to fight...life and suffering go together…don’t they?” They are really saying they are a little addicted to the ‘pain of living’, a pain they probably have not yet realised they create themselves. For them WHY ME or who AM I really, is irrelevant…at the moment!
The second route to the awareness of the ‘I’ that says I AM is realisation. Just as science creates a theory and then conducts experiments to affirm the truth or the reality of the theory, so the self contemplates a theory of WHO I AM. The laboratory is consciousness, the method is meditation, the raw materials are thoughts, the measures of progress are feelings and insight, and the result of the internal experiment is ‘self realisation’.
.
First the theory, which is not new, and which goes something like this. The ‘I” is a conscious being, or a being of consciousness. Consciousness is energy but not an energy that you can see with physical eyes. This energy is indestructible and is often referred to as spirit, soul or the authentic self. It is not separate from the self. It is the ME that says I AM ME! It is the life force that animates the form. It is ‘I’. And the original and unchanging nature of the ‘I’ is peaceful and loving. That’s the theory. The experiment is conducted in the laboratory of consciousness and its aim, like all scientific experiments, is to validate or invalidate the theory. The methodology is meditation. As the self meditates upon the ideas/beliefs/concepts contained within the theory it focuses its entire attention inwards upon such thoughts. Gradually those thoughts penetrate the heart of consciousness while at the same time fading into silence. It’s as if they knock on the door of the heart, and as the heart of the self opens there is insight (sight in) into the heart, and the ‘realisation’ of ‘I am’ and that nothing need be added to ‘I am’. There is not even the thought ‘I am’, simply pure awareness. In that moment the self insperiences the highest reality, and it is silent and still, yet radiantly peaceful, and it is the power of ‘I’. The self realises the self as pure awareness. From that moment all other identities have no power over the self, and they dissolve into the background (well almost) as they are clearly seen to be the illusions that they are.
The maintenance of self realisation, or the ‘realised self’, then becomes the ‘inner work’ of day-to-day life. The insight (sight in) into who I am is sustained by re-memorisation. The lifetime habit of identifying with what you are not is so strong that there are inevitable moments through the day when you fall asleep to your ‘realisation of self’, and back into misidentification. So there is an ‘effort’ to remember, remind and restore your consciousness of your self as the ‘I’ that says I AM, as pure awareness and nothing more. This memorisation and re-memorisation over time weakens the habit of allowing those old false identities to re-invade your consciousness and thereby hijack your thoughts and feelings. And as the self stabilises its self, your true sense of your own pure being becomes clear and consistent.
A sure sign that self realisation is genuine is a change of perception. There is a perceptual shift from seeing others as the enemy, as dangerous or threatening, and seeing the world as a place of struggle and survival, to where one is able to accept and embrace all, metaphorically speaking, and to embrace and dance with all of life… metaphorically speaking!
The proof that the self has realised the self will be the disappearance of all questions that begin with WHY including WHY ME. It drops away. When the ‘I’ knows the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’ no reason is needed to…be. Being is enough. There IS no reason to be, no reason for being, other than to be. WHY ME only arises while there is ignorance of who am I. When WHY ME arises it is simply a sign that says you are not fully aware of your self, and not yet aware that to be, to live, to be alive, to be life, and to live life is enough. Reasons are unnecessary. This verges on what could be termed the return to innocence. This is the bliss of ignorance. Whereas WHY ME is the pain of IGNORANCE, which really means the ‘I’ that I AM is being ignored. And that is the deepest cause of all suffering.
Question: Why do you think so few consciously explore themselves to see and understand who they really are?
Reflection: Sit quietly. Watch attentively. See clearly. Acknowledge silently. Gently allow all that arises in you to pass. And then be aware of what is left. Be aware of what does not pass.
Action: At the end of each day this week look back at the day and see if you can see what you mistakenly identified with throughout that day.
For those who see themselves as someone encountering frequent misfortune this question is a regular visitor to their consciousness. For others it seems that the backdrop to their entire life has always contained the nagging mystery of …me, here, now … why? As these somewhat esoteric questions gnaw away at our consciousness we might suppress them, ignore them or try to shut them down with the distraction of action. However there are some amongst us who earnestly pursue the answers, as if called by a deeper part of our ‘self’ that keeps reminding us that these are the most important questions, and that life will be incomplete without knowing. And there are those at the other end of the spectrum who would never give a second thought to questions that they regard as somewhat irrelevant. They simply get on with living their life. But it’s almost certain that at some moment, and it may only be ‘one’ moment, when even they will at least hesitate in their tracks with a self reflective enquiry into, “Why am I me?”.
Why me, here, now, are questions that point straight at the heart of almost all philosophical musings, the core of almost all spiritual understanding, the underlying wisdom of almost all of those considered to be wise, and to what is sometimes referred to as enlightenment. They are the classic starting points of the earnest seeker who is hunting truth. And they are both signposts and stepping stones as you embark on what is known as the ‘spiritual journey’, which is essentially a process of clarifying three things – identity, meaning and purpose.
Playing with, digging under, looking behind and silently contemplating each question is essential if you are to follow the signs and set out on the seeker’s trail. For example, WHY ME cannot be fully answered until you are clear about WHO IS ME. Why did most of the major philosophers through the ages finally decide there was really only one question worth exploring? Why did they say that when you get the answer to this question you will realise and know all you will ever need to know? That question of course is WHO AM I? Paradoxically it is the one question that can never be fully answered as it points to a place beyond language, beyond all philosophy, beyond all symbology. However, it is in the attempt to answer it that everything else becomes clear. In the context of the first question - WHY ME or WHO IS ME - there are three ways to proceed ‘towards clarity’ – elimination, realisation and re-memorisation. Ultimately the first leads to the second, which initiates the third.
Applying the process of elimination is similar to stripping off your many layers of clothing to reveal your naked physical form. By ‘seeing’ what you are not, what the ‘I’ is not, you gradually ‘uncloak’ the true self who is always present and naked at the centre. Instead of starting with WHO AM I, experiment with WHO or WHAT AM I NOT? Then identify all the things you identify with, and in the revealing light of your awareness, challenge each with the question IS THAT WHAT I AM? It will not be long before you start to see that you are not things like your nationality, your profession, your location, even your family! They are all either labels or ‘things’ quite separate from the ‘I’.
As you proceed you may catch a glimpse of the truth that you are not your race, gender and even your body as they are also not what the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’...is! Once again they are labels or in the case of the body just the piece of meat and bone that is closest to the ‘I’! If you stick with it, at an even subtler level, you will begin to eliminate all the things you momentarily believe are you, but are not! Things like your thoughts, feelings and even your beliefs and memories can also be a source of a false sense of identity. It becomes obvious that all of these ‘things’, like all other ‘things’, come and go, and yet the ‘I’, the ME, always remains.
So what is left after the process of elimination, after peeling away all the layers of false identity. Nothing is left. No thing. Only awareness. This can sound a bit scary in theory. It can sound like a complete loss of identity. In reality however, it is the restoration of ‘real identity’ because it was already lost in all those other ‘things’. This regaining of identity, of who I am, however, is not an idea or a theory, that would be to identify again with just another idea or theory. At the end of the process of elimination you are left with an awareness of your self as awareness, as the one who is aware of being aware, knowing your self as the one who knows they don’t know! While this sounds abstract (as it must in physical language) in practice and in reality (of consciousness), it is both freeing and energising. What falls away is all the fighting and defending of what were false identities, all the struggling and striving to survive the perceived threats to those identities and all the suffering and the stress that have their roots in misidentification.
Freeing the ME from all that has trapped it, releases a long suppressed enthusiasm for life and the joy of living. However until there is this ‘revealing of the self to the self’ many will resist and fight against this idea of being ‘no thing’ and say things like, “But I like to struggle... I need to fight...life and suffering go together…don’t they?” They are really saying they are a little addicted to the ‘pain of living’, a pain they probably have not yet realised they create themselves. For them WHY ME or who AM I really, is irrelevant…at the moment!
The second route to the awareness of the ‘I’ that says I AM is realisation. Just as science creates a theory and then conducts experiments to affirm the truth or the reality of the theory, so the self contemplates a theory of WHO I AM. The laboratory is consciousness, the method is meditation, the raw materials are thoughts, the measures of progress are feelings and insight, and the result of the internal experiment is ‘self realisation’.
.
First the theory, which is not new, and which goes something like this. The ‘I” is a conscious being, or a being of consciousness. Consciousness is energy but not an energy that you can see with physical eyes. This energy is indestructible and is often referred to as spirit, soul or the authentic self. It is not separate from the self. It is the ME that says I AM ME! It is the life force that animates the form. It is ‘I’. And the original and unchanging nature of the ‘I’ is peaceful and loving. That’s the theory. The experiment is conducted in the laboratory of consciousness and its aim, like all scientific experiments, is to validate or invalidate the theory. The methodology is meditation. As the self meditates upon the ideas/beliefs/concepts contained within the theory it focuses its entire attention inwards upon such thoughts. Gradually those thoughts penetrate the heart of consciousness while at the same time fading into silence. It’s as if they knock on the door of the heart, and as the heart of the self opens there is insight (sight in) into the heart, and the ‘realisation’ of ‘I am’ and that nothing need be added to ‘I am’. There is not even the thought ‘I am’, simply pure awareness. In that moment the self insperiences the highest reality, and it is silent and still, yet radiantly peaceful, and it is the power of ‘I’. The self realises the self as pure awareness. From that moment all other identities have no power over the self, and they dissolve into the background (well almost) as they are clearly seen to be the illusions that they are.
The maintenance of self realisation, or the ‘realised self’, then becomes the ‘inner work’ of day-to-day life. The insight (sight in) into who I am is sustained by re-memorisation. The lifetime habit of identifying with what you are not is so strong that there are inevitable moments through the day when you fall asleep to your ‘realisation of self’, and back into misidentification. So there is an ‘effort’ to remember, remind and restore your consciousness of your self as the ‘I’ that says I AM, as pure awareness and nothing more. This memorisation and re-memorisation over time weakens the habit of allowing those old false identities to re-invade your consciousness and thereby hijack your thoughts and feelings. And as the self stabilises its self, your true sense of your own pure being becomes clear and consistent.
A sure sign that self realisation is genuine is a change of perception. There is a perceptual shift from seeing others as the enemy, as dangerous or threatening, and seeing the world as a place of struggle and survival, to where one is able to accept and embrace all, metaphorically speaking, and to embrace and dance with all of life… metaphorically speaking!
The proof that the self has realised the self will be the disappearance of all questions that begin with WHY including WHY ME. It drops away. When the ‘I’ knows the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’ no reason is needed to…be. Being is enough. There IS no reason to be, no reason for being, other than to be. WHY ME only arises while there is ignorance of who am I. When WHY ME arises it is simply a sign that says you are not fully aware of your self, and not yet aware that to be, to live, to be alive, to be life, and to live life is enough. Reasons are unnecessary. This verges on what could be termed the return to innocence. This is the bliss of ignorance. Whereas WHY ME is the pain of IGNORANCE, which really means the ‘I’ that I AM is being ignored. And that is the deepest cause of all suffering.
Question: Why do you think so few consciously explore themselves to see and understand who they really are?
Reflection: Sit quietly. Watch attentively. See clearly. Acknowledge silently. Gently allow all that arises in you to pass. And then be aware of what is left. Be aware of what does not pass.
Action: At the end of each day this week look back at the day and see if you can see what you mistakenly identified with throughout that day.
What have you changed your mind about?
Prince Talleyrand was one of history’s greatest diplomats.
The lasting peace between traditional enemies, England and France, has continued for over 150 years as a result of his actions.
Talleyrand famously said: “Only fools never change their minds”.
What about you? WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?
When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?”
Problem solving
Solutions are never necessary because there are no problems, only our perception makes it seem so, and only our minds make our perceptions seem real.
If there is a problem it is our perception.
That is hard to see in a world that celebrates and rewards the finding and solving of ‘the problem’.
When you decide that you will no longer perceive the problem, you will see only the facts or a situation.
Facts are just facts and any and every situation can always be improved, unless it is in the past, then it’s just a memory, and memories are never a problem, are they?
If you can cancel from the patterns of your perceptions, the very idea of ‘problem’ then you will not only be a positive thinker and positive proactive actor, you will be a leader.
Die Alive!
To the unenlightened, death comes but once a lifetime.
To those who have chosen to become enlightened there are a thousand chosen deaths before it's time to leave the body and move on. This kind of death is the releasing off all our attachments, from false identity to opinions, from people to possessions.
Cutting the subtle threads of attachment frees the spirit from fear, and when the time comes to move on, it's like 'shooting the breeze'. Dying alive is simply letting go of all you hold fast to in your mind. It doesn't actually mean losing anything, simply changing your relationship with the things in your life today.
The greatest pleasure for every soul is the result of choosing the living death called detachment.
Why?
Because attachment is a form of slavery, and it all takes place in our own minds.
And the result of detachment?
Real freedom.
To those who have chosen to become enlightened there are a thousand chosen deaths before it's time to leave the body and move on. This kind of death is the releasing off all our attachments, from false identity to opinions, from people to possessions.
Cutting the subtle threads of attachment frees the spirit from fear, and when the time comes to move on, it's like 'shooting the breeze'. Dying alive is simply letting go of all you hold fast to in your mind. It doesn't actually mean losing anything, simply changing your relationship with the things in your life today.
The greatest pleasure for every soul is the result of choosing the living death called detachment.
Why?
Because attachment is a form of slavery, and it all takes place in our own minds.
And the result of detachment?
Real freedom.
Harmony
All things have their time.
All things have their answers.
All things have their right to be.
Accepting this reality, all things come into harmony.
Think Big
You may be pink. You may be purple. You may be small.
But you can still think big.
Rise above little things.
Be a big thinker.
You are what you think.
So just think big, believe big, act big, dream big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, image big, love big, live big.
Carry that list and you'll start feeling big.
Be a believer and you'll be an achiever.
But you can still think big.
Rise above little things.
Be a big thinker.
You are what you think.
So just think big, believe big, act big, dream big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, image big, love big, live big.
Carry that list and you'll start feeling big.
Be a believer and you'll be an achiever.
Are you unhappy?
British children are - well, at least 1.5 million of them are. Have a read of the articles, follow the links.
What makes YOU happy?
What makes people happy in your country?
Maybe people need happiness lessons.
How do YOU define happiness?
Look at how others define it...
Would you like a free life transformation kit?
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- Debbie, Canada
or...
Boyfriends are temporary but Economics is forever!
Look inwards
We all have three eyes.
Two for looking out and one for looking in.
Why would we want to look in when everything is happening 'out there'?
Because the treasure we seek is inside, not outside. What is treasure? Beauty, truth, peace, happiness.
You already have what you seek.
You already are stunningly beautiful.
You are already peaceful and loving.
How come you don't know this? Simple, you never look inwards, beyond superficial memories or recent experiences, so you never see your own riches. Take a moment to stop, look in and see.
Don't rush.
Don't search.
Just look.
And be aware.
Two for looking out and one for looking in.
Why would we want to look in when everything is happening 'out there'?
Because the treasure we seek is inside, not outside. What is treasure? Beauty, truth, peace, happiness.
You already have what you seek.
You already are stunningly beautiful.
You are already peaceful and loving.
How come you don't know this? Simple, you never look inwards, beyond superficial memories or recent experiences, so you never see your own riches. Take a moment to stop, look in and see.
Don't rush.
Don't search.
Just look.
And be aware.
Still-Point
There is a part of you that is perfect and pure. It is untouched by the less than perfect characteristics you've acquired by living in a less than perfect world. It is filled with divine qualities, so is in a constant state of resourcefulness and well-being. Its total absence of conflict and negativity of any sort makes this part of you a Still-Point...a deep, enriching experience of Silence. Make time to practice reaching this inner place of Silence. It will bring you untold benefit.
Which Path are YOU Walking? (pt II)
This is a world of many masters! There are webmasters, harbour masters and gang masters. And we all remember our Headmaster! You can spend years at University and become a master of your chosen subject, and graduate with your Masters Degree. You can serve an apprenticeship and become a Master Craftsman. And you can serve your ‘discipleship’ and eventually become known as a Spiritual Master. However if the Spiritual Master is a true master they would be unlikely to allow others to give them such a title. They would probably shun all titles as it easily becomes another false identity and therefore a contradiction to authentic spiritual teaching and practice, the core of which includes realising that a ‘title’ is not what you are!
Last week we explored the path that the majority of us find ourselves walking for large parts of our day, if not our life i.e. the path of the slave. In essence it means an absence of true inner freedom where freedom is lost when the ‘essential self’ attaches to something or someone and, as a consequence, becomes ‘emotionally affected’ when something happens to that something or someone. The result is always some form of emotional disturbance and therefore suffering. However, within the culture in which we are raised we learn that this is natural and OK, and we have an industry called marketing, dedicated to helping us create and sustain our attachments! Our life is filled with emotional ups and downs, highs and lows, and we come to believe that that is what life is about, and seldom enquire into whether that is true or not, or that perhaps there may be another way to ‘do life’.
At first glance it can seem that detachment and the absence of neediness must render us cold, uncaring and living a reclusive, dull, flat life. However if you do ask any spiritual master, if you do decide to explore almost all spiritual wisdom, they all affirm that the pathway to real human happiness, not the happiness that is often confused with excitement, can only be walked when there is non-attachment and therefore selflessness. Perhaps we give ourselves a small reminder of this when at least once a year we do much giving and only a little receiving. It is then that we refresh and affirm our awareness that the deepest satisfaction in life is in the giving and not the taking. This has, at its heart, the shift from ‘holding on’ (attachment) to ‘letting go’ (detachment).
Even our current so called economic and political ‘masters’ at this time are articulating the underlying reason for our current financial crisis and its ripple effects is a combination of acquisitiveness, greed and attachment. One of the most obvious signs that we are walking the highway of the slave is debt.
And so to the Path of the Master and the way back to true freedom, real happiness and what most of us seek… peace of mind. After a lifetime of slavery it’s not an easy path to see never mind walk. But then who said this grand adventure we call life was going to be easy? The path of the master, which really means the path of the ‘self master’, begins and ends with determination.
The master has realised their life is entirely DETERMINED by them, their internal destiny (state of consciousness) and external destiny (worldy circumstances) is in their own hands. They have realised the only real enemy in life is their own ego, and that the ego takes birth the moment the self forgets its real identity and identifies with what it is not i.e. things, titles, people, places, beliefs etc. So after a lifetime of creating the habit of ‘false identification’ the master practices DISIDENTIFICATION. In doing so they are able to remain DETACHED because they know that only then is their energy, their awareness and attention, their intellect, completely free to practice the inner skill of DISCERNMENT without distraction, because every day they have to make high quality DECISIONS that will determine the DIRECTION of their and perhaps others lives. And because they are not distracted by any attachments they are able to be consistently DETERMINED to follow through on every decision and… ‘make it so’!
DETERMINED
In many ways living a conscious life cannot begin until you fully realise that your destiny is in your hands. This sounds obvious but as long as there is the thought or feeling that you are a victim in any way, at any time, it means you have not fully realised and empowered your self to take full responsibility for your destiny. Most think of destiny as something that is external and to do with some location, a position and perhaps some achievement in the future. But this is secondary. Your primary destiny is to do with your state of consciousness, your state of being, the quality of your thoughts and feelings right here and right now. If they are negative in any way, and you are interested in being the master of your own creation, you will look for the cause of your uncomfortable thoughts/feelings and if you are prepared to look deeply enough you will always find the root cause is misidentification.
DISIDENTIFICATION
The most common mistake we all learn to make is to lose our sense of identity in something that we are not. It’s just that we don’t connect misidentification with our stress, our discomforts and our unhappiness, whatever form they may take. Our friends in marketing however, spend much of their lives encouraging us while making it as easy as possible for us to identify with something that we are not. This can be an object, a smell, a place or just a brand. But what happens then? Perhaps an easy example is in sport. Every weekend hundreds of thousands of mature adults will go and watch their team. When the other team scores they are sad i.e. unhappy, and when their team scores they become excited, believing they are happy. Why? Because their self identity is lost in the team. They are attached to and identified with their team. And the result is a swing in their emotions from sadness to excitement, where the excitement is confused with happiness. But it’s not real happiness, it’s excitement. And that is energy draining, not life enhancing. However we don’t realise the inner mechanisms at play and we come to believe all this is normal and natural. Therefore we become happy being unhappy, happy to be excited and drained, without being aware that we are creating an ‘emotional addiction’ within our self. It’s not long until we crave the next game or the next purchase! The emotions become our drugs and we can’t wait for our next hit. All because we attach to and identify with something we are not. This of course happens with many other things including people, places and positions. Misidentification is our deepest habit, and therefore a challenging habit to ‘interrupt’ and drop. One of the first signs that you are in the presence of a self-master is a total absence of any ‘emotional reaction’ and the presence of true love. For they know, not only what they are, but what they are not!
DETACHMENT
In stepping back and ceasing to identify with what we are not, we are essentially detached. This is often confused with a cold and uncaring approach to life. It is sometimes interpreted as a form of avoidance and a refusal to engage. But lets say a friend has had a ‘run in’ with their boss and they are angry at what their boss said. You are their friend so they come to you and it’s as if all their anger is in a little brown bag and they want you to look into the bag, because that’s what friends do…right! So you listen to their story and how they got so angry and of course you agree with them and become angry with them. Because that’s what friends are for …right? In fact you become even angrier than them, and feel you want to go and ‘sort out’ their boss. Because that’s what friends are for … right! This of course is like the fire engine arriving at the fire and instead of water coming out of the hose petrol comes out, and you both go up in the flames of anger together. So what do real friends do? They don’t add fire to fire, they don’t add to the suffering of the other, neither do they walk away and avoid listening. They remain detached but involved. This is an inner skill known as ‘detached involvement’. And it simply means you listen to your friend without adding to their story, without judging any of the characters in the story or becoming ‘emotionally’ involved in their story. And as you listen they calm down naturally and become centred again. And that is one of the practical applications of detachment. It is not an uncaring response but a moment when greater care can be created, offered and given. Whenever you practice detachment, or non-attachment or ‘standing back’ or letting go, you will notice the diminishment and eventual disappearance of your own emotion. And it’s only when there is no emotional disturbance (love is not an emotion) that your intellect (not your mind) is able to see clearly what is the most appropriate response in the situation. And there is the stability to deliver that response in reality.
DISCERNMENT
Like a third eye, it is your intellect that looks, sees and discerns what is the right way to be, the right thing to do, the right response to give in any given situation. But if the self is lost and misidentifying with what it is not, and therefore attached, there will be some kind of emotional upheaval. And that is like a ‘fog’ in front of the intellect. Like wearing glasses with frosted lenses, in the context of anger we sometimes call this frost the ‘red mist’. Why do you become angry? Because you have an image on your mind of how you would like someone to behave, and you have attached to and therefore identified with that image. And when they do something different you take it as a personal slight, and you generate anger towards them. But if you were not attached to and identified with that image, you would remain cool and able to connect with them with clarity, reason, care and wisdom. You would be able to respond more proactively. It’s an unfortunate fact that most of our intellects have been fogged over so often for so long by reactive emotions that there is almost a permanent frosting of our inner eye. After a while it’s too much like hard work to clear this fog so we let the intellect shut down. It becomes lazy or goes to sleep altogether, and we allow our emotions to shape our actions in the form of ‘reactions’, and no longer allow our inner wisdom and our values to inform the creation of our responses. The master sees this inner state of affairs and corrects the quality of their actions by eliminating emotional agitations from their inner repertoire. This is why the self-master spends time in silence, in meditation, and turns the gaps between their activities into quiet moments of contemplation. They do this because every day, perhaps hundreds of times a day they, like all of us, have to make decisions.
DECISIONS
The master has taken time and given attention to disentangling the previously assimilated beliefs of others from their own values and their own innate wisdom. In due course their ‘rational machinery’ gradually becomes redundant as they cease to need to think things through. Instead they are able to invoke and allow their deeper feelings, their intuitions, to emerge from their inner wisdom. Just as the hand of an experienced sailor on the tiller of a ship can ‘feel’ through the tiller the currents beneath, so the master, with an undistracted (detached) awareness on the tiller of their intuition can ‘feel’ the currents of their intuitions deep within themselves. And as they receive and contemplate those ‘intuitions’ they learn to trust their ability to shape their decisions based on those intuitions. The decision creating process is refined over time. Purified of its false beliefs (e.g. I am a victim…others are responsible for my happiness etc) and self centred intentions, decision making eventually becomes a natural function of intuition, a natural flow of wisdom, which crystallises into doing the right thing in the right place at the right moment.
DIRECTION
To the master the direction of their life ‘in the world’ is secondary to the direction of their energy, their attention and awareness, within themselves. They know that if their thoughts, attitudes and actions are aligned with the right intention and motivation, which in turn are aligned with the true nature of the self (love and truth) then every thing that ‘happens’, everything they may create in the world, will be of the highest quality. Where the path of the slave tends to be locked into ambition, achievement and acquisition for ones self in the world, all future focussed, the masters path is free of such tensions between worldly success and failure, between have and have not, between now the then. The master knows that real wealth is already present within them and is concerned only to ‘gift’ that wealth in whatever way is appropriate in the moment. Thus the master is free of the desire to acquire the best, and free to give of their best. And as they do their arises a faith that the outer direction of their life i.e. whatever comes to meet them on their path, will reflect the inner state of their consciousness i.e. the quality of the energy they give out.
As we walk the path of the slave we tend to blindly believe, and go along with the prevailing culture. Stepping onto the path of our self-mastery means we dig beneath to see and challenge the principles, values and beliefs of that culture. As you do what you discover is a self perpetuating system based on either believing you are something that you are not (misidentification) or aspiring to become something that you are not (ambition/desire that leads to misidentification). And while it ‘seems’ we have been living this way for as long as history can recall you will also notice it is the root of unhappiness, suffering, conflict and disease. And you may realise it is not a way of life but in many ways a way of non-living. Much depends on how deeply one looks and what one is ‘ready’ to see.
And yet, once seen, ‘the master’ sets out not to fix the system through resistance and revolution, for that only perpetuates it. The master understands that is futile, a distraction and ultimately unnecessary. Their intuition reminds them that all is as it is meant to be in all places at all times. They simply live their truth, they live authentically, within the system, within the prevailing culture, knowing that if the way they live is authentic, if it is aligned to the truth of what they are, then that alone will have an effect called ‘influence’ upon the system, upon the culture. And if there is still any fear that it may not have an ‘effect’ it is the presence of that fear that reminds them they are still stuck in a false sense of who they are. The master has not yet emerged from the slave.
Question: What sticks out most powerfully for you in all that you read above? And why do you think it struck you that way?
Reflection: Using that powerful idea/insight as a starting point, write it in the middle of a blank page and then jot down around it any related ideas/insights of your own that come to your mind in association. See where it leads you. See what realisations you can spark within your self for your self.
Action: What two things could you actually do (turn into behaviour) from the above?
Manners
A person of wisdom and spirituality has very beautiful manners that have grown from genuine respect and love for the whole of humanity. Manners in this sense have nothing to do with culture or education: it is simply a question of humility. When we are at the receiving end of such manners, we feel that some deeper part of us has been honoured. In fact, none of us deserves anything less.
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