#731 What is there to hang onto?

     It's fascinating to think of a newborn baby having an oceanic relationship with the external world - no sense of separation.
     Gradually, she gains a sense of being a separate individual, though still very much identified with her caretakers. 
     Later she comes to identify with & tries hard to "fit in" with her peers. 
     As a young adult, she will differentiate somewhat from her cluster of friends. 
     But in all probability, she will remain more-or-less unconsciously identified with her tribe (sex/gender, religion, nationality, race, ethnicity, etc). She may even intentionally join some cult, which demands conformity to their group-think. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2016/11/memberships-benefits-and-drawbacks.html

     Very, very few of us evolve past tribal consciousness. This requires a surprising amount of courage, as well as patient, intentional, disciplined practice of letting go of absolutely everything we assume our "self" to be - that's letting go of a lot. But ...

          If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
          If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
          And if you let go completely, you will have complete peace.                 Ajahn Chah

     Lots more on the ego: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=ego

#723 What Does It Take for Us to Realize?

      “The separate self that we have invested our whole identity in is being exposed in this investigation as being completely nonexistent. It’s not there. The self, the separate self around whom we have our lives, our thoughts, and feelings and activities and relationships have revolved for so many decades – when we look for it – it’s not there. 
     Now it takes courage and love and clarity to begin to look. And many of us, not all of us, but many of us have to suffer intensely before life pushes us to ask these fundamental questions. Others come to it through other ways. But for many of us it’s repeated failure and suffering that makes us say ‘Hang on. Just stop. How much longer am I going to go on thinking and feeling this way. Why don’t I look at the fundamental presumption.’ And that starts with ‘What am I?’ ‘Am I this image, this cluster of sensations?’ 
     And as soon as we start looking – we don’t have to look very deeply – it’s obvious that we’re not what we thought we were."

       above transcribed from the Youtube video:
       "Rupert Spira - 'The Seamless Intimacy Of Experience' - Interview by Renate McNay"
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAEwC4VjvyE

       The above non-dual inquiry method is very gentle compared to the challenges life hands out when we try - in vain - to cling to a fictional solid, fixed 'sense of self': http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=shipwrecks
    

 

#722 Suffering & our Sense of Self

     “The only thing suffering cannot stand is being seen clearly. The reason for that is, that at the root of suffering is an illusion. You can’t do anything to an illusion, because there’s nothing there. You can’t do anything to the water in a mirage. You can’t go and collect it, you can’t purify it, you can’t drink it. You can’t do anything to it because it’s not there. The very best you can do is go up to it and see that it’s not there. That seeing relieves the desire to manage it or collect it. It’s like that with suffering. 
     At the heart of suffering there is an illusion – a nonexistent self. You can’t do anything to a nonexistent self. There is nothing there to do anything to. Seeing, which means experiential understanding, clear seeing is the best you can do. And as a byproduct of that clear seeing, this suffering vanishes, dissolves in time. 
     Because in order to remain present, suffering needs the illusion of a separate self. It revolves around the illusion of a separate self. If that is truly seen to be nonexistent, the suffering simply cannot stand. There may be old habits in the body-mind that run for some time. But because they are no longer supported by the belief and feeling of a separate self, these old habits gradually dissipate. So suffering vanishes as a byproduct of this exploration, not as its goal. Suffering vanishes in the same way a headache vanishes. You wake up in the morning with a headache, you get to the evening and you realize ‘Oh, my headache’s gone. I don’t know when it went. I don’t know where I was when it went. I don’t know how when it went.’ You just notice it’s not there any more. That’s how suffering disappears. It’s a byproduct, not a goal. Its disappearance is a byproduct, not a goal. If you make it your goal, you perpetuate suffering. In fact this is one of the ways the separate self perpetuates itself, sometimes for decades, by trying to get rid of itself. 
     Suffering is to the mind what pain is to the body. You put your hand in the fire, you experience pain. The pain is not a mistake. It’s not something that’s wrong. The pain is there – it’s the intelligence of the body telling you ‘Take your hand out of the fire.’ So pain is working on behalf of your wellbeing. Suffering is exactly the same at the level of the mind. It is cooperating with your desire for happiness. It’s telling you ‘You’ve got your hand in the fire.’ In this case, it’s telling you ‘You’ve mistaken yourself for a separate, limited awareness. Take a look. Take a look.’ So suffering is to the mind what pain is to the body. It’s just a wake-up call. It’s saying ‘You’ve mistaken yourself for an object, for a limited self. Have another look.’ You’re taking a look in order to look at the separate self that you have mistaken yourself for. In that moment you are thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate self. So you are now looking at the separate self on whose behalf you are thinking, feeling and acting. 
     It’s like you spend your life preparing jars to collect the water in a mirage. Your suffering tells you ‘Go and have a look in the mirage. Go and have a look at this water you are spending your entire life organizing and planning around.’ What’s going to happen when you go up to the mirage and see the water isn’t there? What’s going to happen to your water jar business? You’re just going to lose interest in it. You’re just going to stop manufacturing. There’s no water to collect. You just forget it and move on. Suffering is saying ‘Go up to the mirage. See that there is no water there. Go into your experience. See that there is no separate self there.’ That seeing will take care of everything else. And then if you want, you can engage in these loving contemplations, which is a kind of cooperation with the dismantling of the water jar business. It’s post-going-up-to-the-mirage. It’s post-enlightenment sadhana. Enlightenment is seeing what we are. The dismantling of the water jar business is a post-enlightenment sadhana. It’s what we do after the recognition of our true nature and it’s just a gentle, loving cooperation at the level of the body, with what we have already understood. We’re just helping the body feel itself in a way that is consistent with our new understanding. … 
     Don’t worry if this extraordinary event called enlightenment doesn’t seem to have taken place. Remember that enlightenment is not 'an event'. It doesn’t 'take place'. The mind is not party to it. It’s not present when this non-event occurs. It knows nothing of it. So don’t worry about that. 
     Just keep exploring what you truly are. Am I a separate limited awareness? Or is the awareness I know myself to be, totally open, unlimited and ever-present? Because the belief and the feeling that what I am comes and goes, and is limited, and therefore lacking - that single belief and feeling, is at the heart of all your suffering. That’s the only thing in suffering that needs to be explored, not the whole paraphernalia of whatever it is that seems to be causing the suffering. Because if you explore each of the causes in turn, it’s just endless – money, work, relationships … it goes on forever. All these different colors, different facets of suffering, ... It all hinges on one thing: the belief that what I am, the ‘I’ that is knowing my thoughts, and hearing these words right now, the awareness I know myself to be shares the limits and the destiny of the body-mind. That’s it. With that belief, we seem to shrink into a separate self and all our suffering is dependent on that belief and feeling alone. So once that’s clear, you become naturally one-pointed. You see that all your suffering is just based on one thing. So all your disparate energies are now gathered together in that one direction. What am I truly? You even forget about suffering, because you’re dealing with what’s at the heart of it. You forget about the paraphernalia of suffering. Who is this one, this self that is suffering? Who is this one on whose behalf I spend my life thinking and feeling, acting and relating, I spend my life serving? This self – who is it? I’ve never seen it. Where are you? Come out. I want to make your acquaintance. Show me what you’re made of.
     The analogy is of a servant who’s been living in this big old house, serving an old man all his life. And the old man is extremely demanding and unreasonable. The servant is up at five o’clock every morning, cleaning his shoes, making his fire, doing his breakfast etc and he spends his whole life, morning till night serving this old man. He never actually sees the old man. The old man is a bit of a recluse and lives in his bedroom. The servant just has a routine. He just goes through his routine. He begins to get curious. He goes to the pub every now and then on a rare day off and his friends tell him ‘You know you should go and talk to the old man. You should go and see him if he’s so unreasonable.’ So eventually he plucks up his courage and knocks on the bedroom door to discuss his work with the old man. He doesn’t answer. The next day he plucks up courage again, he doesn’t answer, so he takes a peek through the door – can’t see him. The next day he has a bit more courage and opens the door a bit more, puts his head inside the door - he’s not there. So then he get’s a bit bolder and goes in, looks around – it’s funny, he’s not there. He looks in the bathroom – not there. He explores the whole room. And he realizes that this man I’ve been serving all my life, this tyrannical man on whose behalf I’ve been laboring, he’s not there! He was never there! 
     The separate self is like that. We spend our lives thinking, feeling, acting and relating on behalf of a self that is not there. So that’s what we do here. We explore all the bedrooms, then the bathroom, then the cupboards, then the drawers. We look everywhere. The more we look, the greater our confidence grows in knowing that he’s not there. Now it doesn’t necessarily happen at one moment – ‘OK now I’ve discovered that it’s not there’. There’s just a growing confidence day-by-day. It may come in one moment, but it usually doesn’t. It’s just this confidence, this conviction grows in you. He’s not there. And in proportion to that conviction, your thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships begin to change accordingly in direct proportion to your conviction that the old man is not there. You may never be able to say ‘At that moment I discovered he wasn’t there.’ It’s not necessary. Most people can’t say that.”                                Rupert Spira

Above transcribed from this video:

#701 Self-talk Drives Us Crazy YET We Cling to It - Why?

     When we first learn to meditate, many of us try desperately to "get rid of our thoughts." No wonder! Doesn't self-talk feel nightmarishly repetitive?
     Then why do we also compulsively entertain every thought that comes by? Because we seem to assume that self-talk IS our very self! 
     IF this internal chatter were "a direct readout on reality," emanating from our "self", then of course we should hang onto it. BUT doesn't internal chatter strike us as irritating, superfluous noise? AND when we have rare moments of mental stillness, peace & quiet, instead of dying, doesn't it feel wonderful? Don't we actually feel MORE vibrantly alive?

     With a bit of courage & lots of persistence, we gradually let go of clinging to ("entertaining") passing thoughts. As we do, we can progressively become healthier.
     Shunryu Suzuki, a highly regarded Zen teacher, advised:
               "When you sit,

               you leave the front door open,

               you leave the back door open,

               and you don't serve tea."

#680 Give & Take - More or Less?

     After a business transaction that didn't "go your way", or perhaps someone belittled you, you can actually feel diminished in some way - less than your normal sense of self. A surge of anger too often obliterates more subtle feelings. A swell of urgency to quickly repair perceived losses. We instinctively rush to top up life's vitality glass, which like our blood volume, definitely doesn't feel good enough at half-full.
     Conversely, you feel somehow bigger, expanded, "flush" when you unexpectedly or undeservedly come by some extra money, praise, or stuff. Doesn't it feel, if only momentarily, like you've transcended mere human limitations when you win something? Losing something has the opposite effect - makes you feel very vulnerable.

     So it seems that we have a rather solid, physical, materialistic, almost mechanical sense of ourselves, others & our world. Is an 8 foot tall person worth twice that of a 4 footer; a 350 lb person twice that of a 175 pounder? How about net worth, fame, attractiveness, earning potential, health, longevity, etc? Don't we rate everyone, including ourselves, based on a combination of such metrics?
     Isn't each of us far, far more than a handful of such useless measures? Doesn't it take a lifetime of meditation practice to catch ourselves judging - ourselves & others - much like an animal sizes up a potential mate or potential prey? Isn't this where our primitive judgmental attitudes originate? We're "little monkeys" aren't we? We really do need to slowly, patiently, evolve into our pre-frontal cortices, don't we?

Paint & Rust, Agricola Street, Halifax, NS

#657 You Can Count on Goodness

     "... consistently demonstrated in many domains of research: that daily human life is not characterized by violence, exploitation, or indifference. Far from it. The research ... reveals that we care deeply for one another, and that we would rather help our fellow beings than not. Even more, the science shows that refusing to help others can have debilitating, long-term mental and physical consequences for ourselves. Isolation hurts, physically; so does aggression. Every angry word we utter fries neurons and wears out our hearts.

      ... research currently suggests: If you want to find and foster the good in society, you need to start by searching for the goodness inside yourself."

       Jeremy Adam Smith, "You Can Count On Goodness" Shambhala Sun, May 2015     greatergood.berkeley.edu

#649 A Sudden Hunger, and then ...

     We often feel a tad over-extended; just outside our comfort zone; just short of coping - in a word, stressed. Nothing major needs to trigger this: our sleeve gets snagged, yanking us back when we're trying to "get ahead"; an inexplicable pain appears; even a brief period with nothing going on, so we're "bored". And sometimes it's not at all clear why we feel "off" or "out of sorts".
     Basically, when we sense that nothing's stoking our fire, we get scared! Will our fire go out? Yes, but please, not now! We start to see that our sense of self (ego) is like an idol that crumbles unless continuously propped-up with positive strokes. We foolishly depend on the solidity of this imaginary idol to feel relatively up, unafraid, oriented, peaceful.
     And how do we typically respond when the idol fails to be catered to by other people and circumstances? A visceral hunger arises - as if our energy were suddenly critically depleted. Annoyance / irritability / anger (born out of fear if we really look closely) may suddenly arise to energize us to bulldoze past life's speed bumps. Then we "get busy", with anything - any distraction will do - the most potent being addictions: junk food, caffeine, prescription meds, busy-work, smartphones, cigarettes, mindless fun, etc!

     Since life does NOT revolve around me (or you), it's actually normal for our individual egos to get random shares of positive, neutral & negative strokes. Though it's not at all personal, we often react as if it were.
     So for practical purposes ie sanity & quality of life, we need to work on letting go of such self-centeredness. If life does not in fact revolve around me, then I should learn to fully accept that, and not take anything personally. Sometimes the sun shines, sometimes the weather's ugly, & sometimes the climate is bland. There's nothing whatsoever personal, when we're getting soaked by rain, beautifully suntanned, or fried by a lightning bolt! 
     A wise meditation teacher once advised: "Only have no preferences!" Of course we usually do have preferences, but what if we hold these very lightly, in a huge container, and seamlessly accept the fact that things mostly turn out differently than we'd like, or even expect! Can we simply be curious, rather than desperately hope that "luck" is "on our side"? Whether we're "lucky" OR "unlucky" this time, does it say anything at all about next time? So perhaps we're not "special" regardless?

     The journey from egocentricity toward allocentricity is the ancient, well-travelled hero's journey towards wisdom and mature happiness.

#601 Individuation, Maturation towards Wholeness

     "Individuation can be seen as the positive consequence of individuality. Jung used the term individuation 'to denote a process of becoming a psychological "individual," that is, separate, indivisible unity or whole.' To individuate is to gradually actualize our innate capacity to live as a unique individual. It is the consequence of a process of awakening that releases our innate potential. As Jung put it, 'Individuation means becoming a single homogenous being, and, insofar as "individuality" embraces our innermost, last and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self. We could therefore translate individuation as "coming to selfhood" or "self-actualization."'
     In the same way that Michelangelo is said to have revealed David from the base stone, so too we gradually release our capacity for self-realization and wholeness. What may sometimes become confused is the distinction between the emergence of ego-identity and the process of self-realization. As Jung stated, 'Again and again I note that the individuation process is confused with the coming of the ego into consciousness and that the ego is in consequence identified with the Self ***, which naturally produces a hopeless conceptual muddle. Individuation is then nothing but ego-centeredness and narcissism. But the Self comprises infinitely more than mere ego ...'
     As we individuate we grow to recognize our individual relationship to a universal wisdom that has a unique expression because of our particular personality. To individuate is to expand the boundaries of individual identity and personality to be rooted in our inner sense of totality. It is our growing sense of, in Jung's terms, the Self as the root of meaning and the archetype of wholeness within each of us. This expression of individuation enables us to have a quality of inner authority, integrity, and knowledge of what is true for ourselves. It enables us to open to our unique responsibility in the task of our life for the welfare and good of all.
     Where individuation and individuality differ is that individuality leads to separation and a sense of self-preoccupation that isolates us from others, while, as Jung asserts, 'Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to one's self.' Individuation is the discovery of our own personal quality of wholeness that is intimately connected to our experience of the whole. We stand upon a threshold where the individual meets the universal yet retains a unique sense of self. This inner sense of wholeness is then open to the interdependence of ourselves with all others. I am reminded of the metaphor of there being one light though the lamps are many."

     *** Self - "Jungian term referring to the archetype of wholeness and meaning - the center of an individual's totality.

       Preece R. "The Wisdom of Imperfection. The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life." Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca NY, 2006.

Scurociaro   www.dpreview.com

#586 Who is Suffering when I Rest in Awareness?

      "... when I pay attention, it is impossible for me to feel like a self at all: The implied center of cognition and emotion simply falls away, and it is obvious that consciousness is never truly confined by what it knows. That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful. The moment I am lost in thought, however, I’m as confused as anyone else.

     The whole of Advaita ("non-dualism" in general) reduces to a series of very simple and testable assertions: 
          • Consciousness is the prior condition of every experience;
          • the self or ego is an illusory appearance within it;
          • look closely for what you are calling ‘I,’ and the feeling of being a separate self will disappear;
          • what remains, as a matter of experience, is a field of consciousness – free, undivided, and intrinsically uncontaminated by its ever-changing contents.”

       Sam Harris. "Waking Up. A Guide to Spirituality without Religion." Simon & Schuster, 2014.

     "Free Will"? - see: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/07/373-how-free-is-our-free-will.html 

Austin Beahm, National Geographic   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com

#570 What Remains When Self-talk is Released?

     In Mindfulness practice, as we gradually, gently learn to let go of identifying with incessant self-talk (“thought proliferation”), and become more engaged with the physical experience of the present moment ("just this"), we experience interesting shifts. 

     This (or any other) statement / concept, in itself as a thought, is merely equivalent to self-talk - "blah, blah, blah ...". 
     BUT how are you experiencing this? How does it impact your one, fleeting, precious life?

#325 Why Comfort, Pleasure and Happiness are Elusive

     We're becoming increasingly anxious to secure our own personal pleasure, comfort and security from external sources. And, it's not working!
     Wisdom traditions have consistently shown that self-centeredness causes only suffering, and that happiness is an inward journey. Western psychology and philosophy support these ageless truths.

     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=hypo-ego

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle WA