The Conscious Process

Self-Improvement Projects

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Bob OHearn

“Spiritual maturity is being ready to let go of everything.
Giving up is a first step, but real giving-up is the insight
that there’s nothing to be given up.”

~ Nisargadatta

When most of us embark on our idea of a “spiritual” path, we invariably tend to turn it into a kind of self-improvement project. We say, “Well, there is Buddha, Christ, Krishna, hovering in enlightened bliss, and then there’s this messed up little critter — me. I have a lot of work to do!”

Based on such typical assessments, the comparative mind projects a formidable chasm between the shining legendary characters on one end of the spectrum, and this miserable, endarkened ego on the other end, and consequently becomes attracted to hopeful strategies and promising formulae that would bridge that gap and propel us to a similar exalted status as those idealized figures in the holy stories that religion regularly offers us.

This project entails a classic struggle – an internal battle to transform oneself and become holy, free, happy, fulfilled, better. In identification with all that appears undesirable about our self, we feel weighed down by the burden of our “sins”, and come to believe that, if we could only rid ourselves of these faults through prescribed practices such as prayer, meditation, fasting, study, pilgrimage, celibacy, chant, and close proximity to “higher” beings, we could be happy, realized, saved, loved, liberated.

In reality, this scheme doesn’t work. The mind cannot be used to free itself from itself, despite monumental efforts. Sometimes those efforts may be necessary to realize the utter futility of any effort, but regardless, sooner or later it will become obvious that all the efforts will always fail to achieve the desired result.

There is, of course, a good reason that they do not work. When we try to pin it down, the very self that was believed in need of salvation, awakening, and enlightenment, cannot actually be found. Why raise your voice to try and stop an echo? All along, we’ve been trying to modify a phantom, a completely fictional character, composed of bundles of thoughts and memories, but with no inherent and enduring substance. Sri Nisargadatta sums this up succinctly:

“Think for a moment: who is thinking in terms of transformation, changing from one state to another; in terms of self-improvement? Surely, it is nothing other than an appearance in consciousness, a character in a movie, an individual in a dream — a dreamed pseudo-entity considering itself subject to the workings of Karma. How could such a dreamed character ‘perfect’ itself into anything other than its dreamed self? How could a shadow perfect itself into its substance? How could there be any ‘awakening’ from the dream, except for the dreamer to re-solve the true identity of the source of the dream, the manifestation?”

If we take up various “spiritual” techniques, methods, or remedial schemes based on the notion of improving this self (as me), we merely become more entangled in the narrative of the “me-story”. Any effort, mental or physical, only reinforces the illusion that this self can become enlightened. It can’t. It is a thought-complex arising and dissolving in the limitless ocean of Awareness.

That fictitious entity we believe ourselves to be when we assume the role of “aspirant” does not somehow perform certain practices successfully enough to finally arrive at Awareness. Nothing leads to Awareness. Since we are already Awareness, to what can we be led? Nothing needs to be changed or improved in Awareness, which is already and always perfect as it is.

As the great Thai Forest teacher, Ajahn Chah, suggests: “Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.”

In the course of turning our attention to its root, and simply being aware of being aware, rather than chasing after any mere modifications of consciousness, what may occur is a sudden flash of insight that has nothing to do with the conceptual mind or separate self-sense. Our true nature, the aware space in which all thoughts, emotions, memories, and self-images appear and disappear, suddenly “wakes up” to Itself.

What is critical to understand here is that the “me” does not suddenly have a realization. In fact, that conceptual designation is what disappears in the midst of true re-cognition. This revelatory flash of true identity is completely beyond the claims of “me and mine”. In such Awakening, all of the self-improvement projects are rendered utterly pointless, since the one we have taken ourselves to be — the “seeker” — drops away in that moment of Seeing.

When the implications of this Recognition finally sink in, the whole momentum of the struggle begins to collapse in on itself, and what we are left with is a kind of natural acceptance. When we are no longer committed to a war with it, we find that we can accept this life, just as it is, and in that forgiving acceptance, come to welcome whatever appears without compulsive grasping, clinging, or avoidance.

The contemporary American teacher Adyashanti spoke to the issue of futile self-improvement struggles when he wrote:

“All of your life you have been taught to do, to strive, to effort. You have been sold a self-improvement plan. You have been conditioned to believe that you are the body and the mind. All of this is a reflection of ignorance. It has been the blind leading the blind. The truth of your being is openness. It needs no practice, technique or manipulation to realize. Who you are is free, now! Who you are will not become free or liberated at some point in the future; who you are is liberated, now! Stop all doing and be still. Let the fire of stillness burn everything and reveal That which is openness.”

In such openness, we gradually notice that everyone and everything is included in this welcoming embrace — not based upon an ideal of love, but anchored in the very clear recognition that loving is the only possible response to life that truly satisfies the heart and returns us to the peace that is our natural and native condition, prior to the adventure of seeking.

We can surrender trying to be “knowers” (and the fear that not knowing once implied), without imagining ourselves to be some problem in need of a final solution, and without the guilt-filled need of purification, restoration, re-distribution, or transmigration to a superior metaphysical plane. In fact, despite our warts and bumps and goofs, we can be happy.

When we are happy, Buddha is happy, Christ is happy. Our happiness is no different than theirs. All the sacred scriptures, texts, and philosophies become superfluous — superfluous to our own prior happiness, our own immense heart, in which the whole world is lovingly reflected.

When we come to rest in the slipstream of total insecurity, complete not knowing, then we become a demonstration of that possibility in the midst of the haunted restlessness that humanity shares in common.

Such deep resting transmutes the inner conflict into creative life force – it was the struggle all along that merely distracted and complicated life’s natural flowing energy, dividing itself against itself in futile efforts to grasp itself, to hold on and not let go, even unto death.

The death of that struggle is the birth of Love, unconditional Love. Unconditional because it is not bound by destiny or contrived design, it is free, selfless real Love, submitted to this dying into life without reluctance or regret.

Yes, at last we can face our own death – the death of fixed belief, of idealistic hope, arrogant pride, the death of poisonous reactivity, the death of any identification, any self-image, any perceived or conceived limitation on our infinite nature, and all in order to demonstrate for each other the Principle that is not touched by death, not touched by impermanence.

This is the perfect service we can render to each other — just being what we are. That is enough. It has always been, and will always be, enough.

“Be just what you is, not what you is not.

Folks what do this is the happiest lot.”

~Mr. Wizard

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Self-Improvement, Spiritual Practice | 33 Comments

Taking Offense

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Bob OHearn

“Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it – what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

~Carlos Castaneda

Why are we so easily offended by others? When investigated, that particular form of our habitual reactivity appears to be at the root of most of our problems as humans interacting with each other in this world, at this time, and perhaps it has chronically been so.

It took me a long time, and some hard knocks, before I came to realize that my own provisional experience (and the conditioned interpretations thereof) did not necessarily apply to others, and thus I had no real reason to be upset by differing views on reality. This sounds like it would be obvious, but it was quite a revelation to me, and I see that the misconception I was under is a common one among humans, and leads to a lot of unwarranted judgmentalism and conflict.

For example, someone has a vision of Jesus, and so they become convinced that Christianity is the only way, and all other religious approaches are inferior and less true. Meanwhile, another believes they have received a message from Allah, and concludes that Islam is the right path, and based on their conventional filters, that all others are infidels. That’s a simplistic example, of course, but serves to illustrate the principle.

Once we come to recognize that the world we have been conditioned and programmed to perceive as an objective, solid reality is in fact utterly subjective — a projection of mind — then we can begin to be more tolerant and accepting of others’ experiences and insights that might appear to contradict our own (based on our own idiosyncratic interpretations on perception), and so attain to a more mature and authentic humility.

What we may begin to notice, within that humility, is that those who are grateful get more to be grateful for, whereas those who are quick to take offense, who complain and are never happy, get more to complain and never be happy about. Indeed, one of the biggest lessons we can learn during our time here is that gratitude is a powerful antidote to the emotional contraction at the heart which so many of us carry around inside us.

Furthermore, there is another aspect to the chronic sense of offense, insult, or even victimhood that we can investigate. That is, who or what is actually being targeted, who or what is fixated on the solidity of that self-sense which in turn is subject to being offended or insulted? When we begin to peel back the layers of attitudes that we were taught, inspecting the validity of the preconceptions about ourselves that were conditioned like software programs into our being, and really try to discover the one at the center or matrix of perception, we cannot find such a one.

There is nobody there. No victim, no offended one, no separate and enduring person whatsoever has ever existed – just a bundle of thoughts, memories, sensations, and perceptions with no center or landing place. What we have been doing all along is merely stringing them together on an imaginary clothesline called “I”, and pretending the result amounts to a “person”, a “me”, a (threatened) identity.

All along, we have been habituated to taking everything personally, imagining that we are the “target”, but once we have thoroughly examined our assumptions about identity, we begin to recognize that our very sense of self – the one who is supposedly offended – is in reality nothing but a compounded fantasy story which we have been telling ourselves.

Just so, when we stop and ask, “Is it true?” Our answer will have to be “No” — we have been playing the role of a fictional character constructed from bits of hearsay and imagination, and presuming it to be who we are, but when the spotlight of true inquiry is shone on it, it evaporates, just like the characters in last night’s dream. Poof!

Indeed, realizing directly the emptiness of the personal story can be critical in getting over our sense of offense, but what we need most to remember is that love is all that truly matters – not our presumptive knowledge, our opinions and beliefs, our accomplishments, or our conditional biases.

The only way we can make a genuine contribution to the human condition in this realm is by increasing unconditional love in our lives. If we are committed to raising the vibratory frequency in our relationships and environments, giving love unselfishly is the way, even when it appears that others might not notice or appreciate it.

What helps in actualizing this commitment is remaining open at the heart, refraining from judging others’ experiences and understandings, forgiving everybody everything forever, and recognizing that even the highest human concepts of wisdom are no more than bits of fluff blown about in the vast unknown.

Moreover, unless we as a collective are able to awaken from the illusion of our separateness and come to at least some basic recognition of our essential oneness — soon — we may well not survive as a civilization. The stakes are much higher now, and the reactivity which persists in divisiveness and all manner of being offended (rather religious, political, or social) either has or shortly will have at its disposal weapons of global destruction.

In any case, it starts in our own hearts, and from there it will radiate – either love or fear. Which will we choose?

“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.”

~Pema Chodron

Posted in Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 8 Comments

Beyond the Language of Seeking and Knowing

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Bob OHearn

M: Too much analysis leads you nowhere. There is in you the core of being which is beyond analysis, beyond the mind. You can know it in action only. Express it in daily life and its light will grow ever brighter. The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not. But if you want positive knowledge, you must go beyond the mind.

Q: In all the universe is there one single thing of value?

M: Yes, the power of love.

~from “I Am That”, Nisargadatta Maharaj

How many of us are busy striving to become knowers, to figure it all out? Perhaps to enhance, confirm, modify, or re-invent our personally vested sense of self? Alternately, perhaps we already imagine ourselves to be knowers in some significant way? Still, the process of embodying the fundamental truth of our being has never really been about knowing, but paradoxically quite the reverse. Nisargadatta Maharaj notes: “To know that you do not know, that is true knowledge.” Indeed, in our appetite for some special or ultimate knowledge, we may amass a vast library of information, but will our collection bring us any closer to real liberation from the fundamental afflictions that continue to insert themselves in the way we actually live and relate?

Just so, which practice or association best serves the quest for spiritual development? Or could it be, that there is actually no such thing as “spiritual development”? Our Spirit doesn’t need to develop, there is no progressive hierarchy of advancement — that is just a human concept that doesn’t apply in Reality. Spirit is Itself the changeless reality, our True Self, pure Love and Wisdom beyond our human comprehension. Spirit incarnates a portion of its Light Energy in this density to experience and enjoy the human possibility in whatever way it happens to manifest. The process is one of infinite expansion in supreme joy and radiance.

Of course, from the human point of view, this quicksilver life may not necessarily seem like joy and radiance. That’s because we do not see the bigger picture or soul-view while we are incarnating here (which is more of a frequency realm than a location). In terms of “why”, we will never be able to comprehend the reason as long as we are operating at this slower vibrational density, because in physical form we are typically not configured to access Universal Knowledge. It vibrates at a frequency we rarely if ever access while embodied in this density.That’s usually not what being here is about anyway, and why it is often mistakenly called an illusion or dream – it is just vibrating at a lower cycle per second. In reality, there is only equality. However, far from this being a drawback, that very circumstance is actually a big part of the attraction for us as immortal spiritual beings — being able to experience the Unknown, rather than having all the answers. In the Unknown, we do not know how the movie is going to play out, which creates a lot more interest than if we knew everything already.

Our mission then (if one can even call it that) is simply to be ourselves — it is no more complicated than that. Source wants to experience itself in every possible way, and each of us constitutes one of those ways, just as we are. It’s fine if we want to imagine that we are here for some special duty, but that is just the human ego-mind adding some importance to itself, in order to confirm its worth (dubious thrill that amounts to). We don’t have to do that, however, since we are already a perfect expression of Source Energy, just as we are. In fact, we will realize that we are being lived. Just letting that recognition seep in helps to release the chronic sense of mental complication. With that understanding, we can stop worrying and enjoy each moment that we are blessed with as the gift that it is, because if there is any reason to be here, that probably qualifies as the most essential — that, and discarding any conditions we have placed on love, so she may fully express herself through the prism of our clear and open vehicle.

Fortunately, life will continue to reflect us back to ourselves again and again until an inescapable arrow of truth pierces something deep within us. When the arrow reaches its mark at the heart, the ancient conflict that’s been festering there is shattered to pieces. The artificial contraction we’ve imposed on Love is loosened and eventually dissolves. It becomes obsolete when the dialectics of ephemeral self-images, vanity’s endless feed-back loop, runs out of steam, along with all the effort to keep it operational. The Unknown is no longer feared and avoided by resort to futile strategies of knowing, but welcomed as our true sanctuary and default position. The closed fist opens.

In the meantime, humans are social beings, wanting above all to love and be loved, and so communication will persist. However, is there a language of wonder, of astonishment, of love and selflessness, of curiosity and discovery, which does not merely resurrect and reinforce the seeker/knower dilemma? What songs are there to share that will express the natural state, the original communion of innocence and genuine compassion, prior to the absorbing adventure of consciousness dividing itself into pretenses of ignorance and knowledge, prior to the schemes of self-interest that produce and maintain the sense of estrangement, the games of rejection and separation so prevalent in our relationships?

For such a language to flourish in a relational environment, a mutuality of commitment to truth must be present, beyond self-based motives and facades of seeker/knower. Where there is a willingness to relentlessly question one’s own motivation and self-images, to sincerely investigate the wounded and contracted elements that obscure the spontaneous free expression of our true nature, then that language will reflect a genuine humility and integrity, and in such humble soulfulness reveal the heart of the truly divine relationship that is the inherent birthright of us all.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
is just to love, and be loved, in return.”

~Nature Boy

See also:

Joy of Unknowing

Posted in Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 18 Comments

School of Life, Play of Light

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Bob OHearn

light1

“We have come into this exquisite world

to experience ever and ever more deeply

our divine courage, freedom and light.”

~ Hafiz

Of all the more profound questions that humanity tends to ponder throughout the centuries (in between wars and similar conflicted pursuits), the “great matter” regarding the purpose of life ranks among the most investigated and argued over, and yet still remains the most puzzling for the vast majority. Why are we here?

There is a very popular meme floating around in online spiritual circles these days, quoting the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh to the effect that “We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness.” However, from the point of view of expanded consciousness, we find that people incarnate for all sorts of reasons. In fact, there are as many reasons as there are people! Some may be here to awaken from the illusion of separateness, and some may be here to enjoy the illusion of separateness.

Of course, one can hear all sorts of opinions about the reason for being here, but one fact is pretty obvious: we are here to be ourselves, in whatever form that might take. It does not have to be more complicated than that – we are here to be what we are, just as we are. Whatever more we add to that fundamental truth is just extra window dressing, although window dressing itself can be creative and fun.

As powerful and immortal spiritual beings, we have infinite choices for experience in the vast playground of the multiverse. Some of us may enter into human bodies and fuse with them for the lifespan of the bio-vehicle in order to experience human life and all its challenges, often as a way to test ourselves, but mostly as a way to gather experiences that we can then take back to our soul group, or family, and thus increase the “data base” of the whole.

Moreover, a good many of us are here just because it seemed like an interesting adventure, based on the testimonies of others who tried it and recommended the trip. Some are here as tourists in that respect, while others are here to finish some project started but uncompleted in a previous foray into the human game.

Each soul family, or group, has a particular character, or vocation, so to speak. For example, some groups are directed towards science, some towards healing, some towards political matters, and some towards arts and creative expression, just to name a few. There are innumerable groups – millions of them. Each one of us is like a cell in the body of our group, and each group in turn is like a cell in a larger spiritual body. These immense bodies are cells within an even vaster mystical body, and this goes on beyond the comprehension of the human mind in a perfection and harmonious pattern that is too marvelous for words!

Those that choose to incarnate in this realm may do so out of compassion, in order to accomplish some work for their soul group in association with the evolutionary development of humanity, or simply out of curiosity for the unique possibilities of experience available in this particular circumstance.

The more experienced among us might choose the most difficult sort of lives (knowing that they are not actually “real”) because we seek increasingly more demanding challenges. As the great Chan master Hsu Yun advised, “Welcome hardship more than you welcome ease. Hardship will present you with challenges, and it is in overcoming these obstacles, that you will develop character and skill. Challenges are our greatest teachers.”

To one degree or another, and with the assistance of our soul group guides, we all participate in the general design of our present lives while in-between incarnational adventures. However, a good deal is left open and unplanned, so that we will have an opportunity to experience the full impact of the Unknown. That is, we are fascinated to discover how we will react to all the various experiences that come with being human, in the same way that those who play video games enter into difficult situations in order to test their ability to take on various challenges and increase their gaming skills.

Another way to regard this adventure might be in terms of costume changes. We like to try on different costumes, different self-images, to see how they fit. Eventually, we find that none of them are permanent, so we resume our natural nakedness. It’s all fun, like playing dress-up. None of the costumes were “wrong”, it’s just that we tend to identify with them and forget that we are not the costume, no matter how appealing or interesting or glamorous or even raggedy it might appear. We came here to try on the human costume, which includes a lot of wardrobe changes in the process.

In any case, we are progressing into light and even more light. However, true “enlightenment” is far beyond our ken while we are temporarily immersed in the heavier densities of this human “amnesia”. The human vehicle itself could not bear the intensity. In this human form, we are greatly limited by the parameters of this realm, its frequency and vibration. This does not mean that the material realm is therefore somehow “lesser” than any other, but simply that physical existence provides very specific forms of energetic experiences, realizations, and creative potentials that are not necessarily available elsewhere.

For example, even in so-called phenomenal reality there is no actual physical substance (matter) — only levels, degrees, spectrums of light/waves, whose properties are hardly seen, and much less understood, by the human perception mechanism. The contemporary teacher A. H. Almaas described our true nature this way:

“If we experience ourselves in our true self-existing condition, we will see what we actually are. We are beings of light…. We are beings of light in the fluid state—completely frictionless, completely luminous, totally radiant and free. Now, everybody knows that because light has no mass and no weight, gravity does not affect it. So, in our True Nature, we have no heaviness, no thickness, no weight. We are substantial only in the sense that fluid light has a fullness, a body-ness to it. But that fullness, that substantiality, is completely light and smooth. That is the nature of awareness. And because it is light, it doesn’t help us see—it is what sees, it is what perceives. Thus light, awareness, consciousness, perception, sensitivity are all the same thing.”

It is all a play of light. Light is literally the essence and constituent matter of our being, and as we attune to the vibration of the higher adaptations, so too the substance of our being expands, becoming less dense and reflecting more light. We express our own light. The light dwells within all of us as who we are, and all of us are known by our light. Nisargadatta Maharaj said it well: “There is only light and the light is all. Everything else is but a picture made of light. The picture is in the light and the light is in the picture.”

The greater the selflessness and illumination of our own being-ness, and the more positive our response to the higher frequencies of vibration, the purer and brighter is the light transmitted by us. The purer and stronger the light from each member of the family, or soul group, the greater is the expansion of the group soul towards the ultimate recognition that we collectively are Source Itself, playing the role of being separate individuals.

As Nanci Danison (who experienced what has been termed a “transcendental nde”) explained: “Most of us never realize we are Source pretending to be separate beings until we merge back into Source. We characters within Source’s mind continue to believe we are separate individuals even in the afterlife – for as long as we desire and /or resist knowing that we are actually Source.”

Additionally, she writes: “Rather than losing our identity as an individual, we expand our awareness to include the knowledge that we are Source and have simply been narrowing our focus and experiences to one small part of ourselves.”

The process of incarnating into these human forms creates a uniquely challenging circumstance in which we are faced with living with a dual nature. Unifying and illuminating this dual nature is rare, because it requires absolute humility, which few seem capable of in these times, coupled with a penetrating insight into the nature of the “bigger picture”, which is not quite as rare, but still rare enough.

Some commentators have characterized this realm as a virtual school for a number of reasons, although others claim that the concept of coming here to learn “spiritual lessons” is more of a fantasy of the human persona, and is not an accurate description of the incarnation process. In any case, the roles we assume on this current stage may typically involve developing a rudimentary form of integrity, achieved by inspecting and seeing through all human motives based on greed, envy, hatred, ignorance, and pride, for starters. Learning how to treat others does seem to be a critical element in our expansive adventure in Self-Realization.

When we in our soul-human fusion are able to stabilize in some degree of conscious maturity, we likewise become increasingly capable of manifesting loving behaviors without conditions or self-interest. In Buddhism, such a level of awareness might correspond to the designation of “Anagami”, or “non-returner”, although no soul really needs to return to this realm. The concept of “karma” that most of us are familiar with is essentially a human contrivance, often accompanied by a flavor of punishment for sins committed, but such notions do not at all apply in the spirit world. After all, what retribution would we exact from actors in a screenplay, or characters in a dream? As the Guide Sparrow notes: “You will not have to reincarnate to pay back some karmic debt. Energy is resolved and realigned in the spirit world. For if it wasn’t you wouldn’t be able to vibrate at the necessary rate to reintegrate back into your original state prior to your physical life.”

In any case, the human possibility is indeed a challenge — more so than most potential incarnational circumstances — and so provides an excellent classroom for our continuing edification. It attracts us because it is so different than what we truly are, and so beckons as a fascinating opportunity to deepen our self-awareness by discovering, for example, how we will react in situations of conflict on a war-like planet like Earth.

It is an illuminating opportunity in that regard for our soul evolution, though as long as we allow our human hosts to choose unskillful behaviors, such as anger, hatred, and violence, we may continue to be confronted during the life experience by the contraction of unresolved desires and self-perpetuating traumas that result. In fact, such unresolved elements are often what draw us back into the human frequency, so that we can attain a sense of completion in terms of our original intent for embodiment.

Our immortal spirit, or light being state, is characterized by love and wisdom, which we temporarily set aside, so to speak, in order to fully participate in the human adventure. As Nisargadatta Maharaj noted: “Once you know yourself, it is immaterial what you do, but to realize your independence, you must test it by letting go all you were dependent on. The realized man lives on the level of the absolutes; his wisdom, love and courage are complete, there is nothing relative about him. Therefore he must prove himself by tests more stringent, undergo trials more demanding. The tester, the tested and the set up for testing are all within.”

Just as in a movie in which we might be fully identified, death may seem very real, but nobody actually dies. Nevertheless, we walk away affected by the drama we participated in, even though it was in reality just a play of light on a screen. In the process we might learn something important about “what we are made of”, and that’s what makes the adventure worthwhile.

At our current level of adaptation, many humans tend to behave as selfish, violent animals, driven by primitive emotions, predatory cunning, and uninspected motives. We use violence to protect ourselves from real and imagined threats to our ability to get what we want, to amass wealth in its many forms, and to manipulate and exercise dominance over others. Each of us, as light being/souls, can allow human emotions and instincts to characterize our human experience, or strive to bring love and wisdom into the human animal’s life and relations.

We have the innate power to remember what and who we really are, and then compassionately control our human host’s actions, which requires a discipline that does not come naturally to humans. As the Dalai Lama noted: “The purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in our daily lives.”

Consequently, as we re-awaken to our true nature as immortal light beings, we also learn increasingly skillful ways to embody that realization in our behavior and relationships, based first and foremost on the direct and living recognition that love is all that truly matters. Having demonstrated our adaptation to and stabilization in the capacity to freely give and receive love (even in the midst of any and all circumstances), we are able to expand our frequency of vibration to an ever-wider and more profound universal panorama of possibilities undreamed of in earth-like realms.

Q: But ultimately is there a world, or is there none?

Nisargadatta Maharaj: What you see is nothing but your self. Call it what you like, it does not change the fact. Through the film of destiny your own light depicts pictures on the screen. You are the viewer, the light, the picture and the screen. Even the film of destiny (prarabdha) is self-selected and self-imposed. The spirit is a sport and enjoys to overcome obstacles. The harder the task the deeper and wider his self-realisation.

See also:

In Search of Self and Beyond

The Game

Notes from the Other Side

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Near Death Experience, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Enlightenment, NDE, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 13 Comments

Self-Destructive Thoughts

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Bob OHearn

A student asked his teacher, “What is the Way?”
Master, “Living the meaning of ultimate meaninglessness.”
Student, “What is the meaning of ultimate meaninglessness?”
Master, “How can I help you?”

(Note: This essay is by no means intended as a therapeutic treatise, and does not attempt to serve as a means of diagnosis or treatment of cases of major clinical depression, particularly if they have a bio-chemical component requiring professional medical attention. Furthermore, it is not intended to address situations of intractable and unbearable physical pain. Certainly, if one is suffering from acute suicidal impulses, please seek appropriate professional care.)

As long as we are under the influence of the amnesia which accompanies human embodiment into the denser dimension of materiality that this life entails, we generally do not have access to the “bigger picture”. Consequently, we are not at all qualified to judge each other, and this essay certainly does not propose to do so. Nevertheless, the inner emotional turmoil that might spawn thoughts of self-destruction as a viable solution to one’s perceived predicament can be submitted to inquiry based on the conscious process of recognition and liberation, and it may be useful to do so, particularly in light of the rising rates of suicide in this culture. For example, from 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent. In fact, suicide is now responsible for twice the number of deaths as homicides in America.

The illusion of being in control is one of the last of our fantasies to go, and contemplating the possibility of putting an end to one’s own life might have an appeal for some of us in seemingly desperate and oppressive situations where there is no apparent hope of relief. It is often indulged as a final assertion of one’s personal will, of control over “my life”. When in conflict with any arising circumstance or condition, alternatives are commonly sought, even to the extreme point of self-annihilation. In fact, what are we always doing, in subtle or gross ways, but habitually looking for avenues around and out of the perceived discomfort, alienation, boredom, and confusion that weigh so heavily on our hearts and minds.

Regardless of how things may seem to be going in any given moment, the fact remains that there is stress, dissatisfaction, suffering, and hence the motive and motion to alleviate it. Everything is seeking. Birth and death are bookends to a chronic search for some tangible and even lasting happiness, or at the very least, some relief from the suffering that appears to be one’s fate by virtue of simply being born into this realm. Paradoxically, that relief is always projected just out of reach, and typically in the future — if only the right numbers come up, or the right mate, friends, house, job, investment opportunity, spiritual teacher, or geological location.

Seeking is all about the sense we have of being an independent and vulnerable individual, separated from true and lasting happiness. We imagine that we are somehow lacking or even deprived of the necessary ingredients that constitute real satisfaction, and may even perceive ourselves as victims of life, at the mercy of various external forces. In any case, it is this contracted thought energy which creates the endless loop of attraction and aversion that dominates consciousness and reinforces the story of “me” – an afflicted somebody searching for ways and means to endure the ordeal of existence itself.

Meaning-making is a subjective process, of course, and borrowed meanings never quite satisfy the longing for purpose, and yet the great Sages across the spiritual spectrum who have contributed to humanity’s wisdom legacy through the millennia have been fairly unanimous in pointing out the rare and precious opportunity this human birth offers as a vehicle for discovering what we are truly made of, and who we really are. They have also been pretty unanimous in discouraging physical suicide.

Self-destructive thoughts are typically a negative reaction to life in the form of extreme rejection, based on fixated identification with an oppressive sense of personal existence. However, this conflicted identification cannot be dispelled by destroying the body, because that act does not resolve the matter of personal identity, but merely changes venues, angles of vision. Just so, one cannot break the addiction of an alcoholic by breaking their bottles. They always seem to find ingenious ways to come up with more.

In that regard, it’s said that it takes a long time to get a human body. Buddhism uses the image of a turtle adrift at sea that only surfaces every 100 years. Now imagine there is a small ring in this vast sea. It is more likely for the turtle to accidentally poke its head through that ring than to be born a human being. That’s how uncommon it is, in all the multiverse, to get a human body, yet how many of us will use this rare and precious opportunity wisely, to discover who we are, and what we are really here for?

One main operational driver behind self-destructive thoughts seems to be a rejection or dissatisfaction with the way things are perceived to be, so much so that one would contemplate putting an end to one’s life experience rather than face more of the same dissatisfaction. However, that assessment is always a conditional response, filtered through one’s pain and unhappiness, and superimposed on the way things actually are. In other words, it is a fantasy of negative meaning (or lack of meaning), and can never amount to an accurate recognition of things as they actually are.

Things in themselves, the theatrical stage of “the world” and all its many props, are neither positive nor negative, good or bad, right or wrong. As Sri Nisargadatta notes: “Nothing you can see, feel, or think is so. Even sin and virtue, merit and demerit are not what they appear. Usually the bad and the good are matter of convention and custom and are shunned or welcomed, according to how the words are used.” It is our programmed mind which applies such judgments, and so the appropriate course to follow here would entail an investigation of our filters, our downloaded programs, which yield such judgments.

For example, if we are told early on that success is equated with the accumulation of monetary wealth, then we are likely to regard our life as a failure if we do not achieve a particular income bracket. In reality, true happiness has little to do with the attainment of financial prosperity, but if we have placed all of our happiness eggs in that flimsy basket, then we will likely be driven by that particular set of expectations, and reap the inherent disappointments that result from either not attaining our material goals, or even attaining them, only to realize that the anticipated happiness of doing so is fleeting at best, and that we are still dissatisfied at heart.

Such realization could drive one to despair, even to the extreme of contemplating suicide, or alternately could provide a moment of availability, in which one has the space to inquire into their programs about what truly constitutes happiness. Prior to the disappointment, one has little space for self-inspection, since the game is afoot and all the energy is committed to the goal. However, with the recognition that the program does not yield the promised benefit – happiness – then one has a window of opportunity to really investigate their motives.

To really come to a full and awakened appreciation of “things as they are”, all superimposed filters and emotional contraction must be seen through and released, and that is a lot of work. It truly is a daunting undertaking. Yes, it is difficult and challenging to clear away the accumulation of borrowed programs and second-hand beliefs about happiness, but if we are truly interested in seeing clearly, then there is no other option.

As mentioned earlier, I am not talking here about intractable physical pain situations, which are another matter, nor about suicide resulting from unmanageable clinical depression (which is a brain disorder by most accounts), but more about the emotional disturbance of an otherwise relatively healthy individual which might prompt self-destructive thoughts in reaction to the perceived unhappiness of one’s life. It is not my intent here (nor am I qualified) to address those in the throes of acute suicidal symptoms. Rather, I am speaking to that aspect within all of us, the sense of negative self-worth and its associated emotional turmoil and inner conflict. That emotional reactivity can be inspected, and through sincere and persistent investigation, and ideally in the company and with the compassionate support of true spiritual friends, the root contraction at the heart which spawns negative self-imagery and self-destructive thought energy can be revealed and subsequently transformed into a potent wisdom. That is, if we are both willing and able to do the necessary work.

For example, by investigating the restless waking dream we commonly take our life to be, we can come to recognize what a hopeless effort our clinging to the fiction of control truly is. In trying to maintain control – of life, of relationships, of environments, of the self-sense altogether — we suffer a chronic mood of separation and consequent dissatisfaction, even to the point of rejecting the gift and miracle of life altogether. Only when the strategy to maintain the illusion of control is revealed for the futile endeavor that it is, are we able to at last release the knot at the heart and allow our true nature, which is Love, to emerge from the background.

In that regard, if there is any activity that can lift us out of our chronic self-preoccupation, it is compassionate service to others. Indeed, yogis designate “Karma Yoga” (selfless service in action) as one of the chief means of liberation. Such love is a potent antidote to morbid self-absorption, but it must be genuine and true, otherwise it is merely going through motions, and will not have the power to resolve that compounded knot at the heart which generates negative self-fixation. It is out of love that we stay alive for each other, and that includes staying alive for the one we have yet to become. As the Existentialist writer Albert Camus said: “Life is worth living, this absurd strange thing should be witnessed and it’s vital that you have some respect for your future self, who is going to know things you don’t know.”

(Keep in mind that the above recommendation of service to others would be ineffective for those who are suffering from extremely debilitating mental disorders such as clinical depression, for which professional help should be sought).

To be human is to bear wounds. As Nisargadatta wisely noted: “We are the creators and creatures of each other, causing and bearing each other’s burden.” By submitting to a conscious process of recognition, a genuine compassion for each other may dawn, because we see that our wounds are not really different from others’. To realize our inherent oneness is actually the dawn of a truly healing love. Indeed, it is that very compassion, arising from having gone through the dark nights ourselves, that subsequently renders us receptive to others’ plight, others who may be beset by the same emotional turmoil of self-destructive thoughts. In the light of such sensitivity, we can serve as patient and understanding companions, capable of deep listening. Furthermore, we may even come to the recognition that there is no other – there is only one flesh to wound. At such a point, we become a true blessing in the world, even as we bear the world’s wounds within our humble, willing embrace.

See also:

The Futility of the Search for Meaning

Posted in Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice, Suicide | 23 Comments

The Journey

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Bob OHearn

“There are three parts to the journey:

the journey from God, the journey to God,

and the journey in God.”

~Sufi Proverb

The first part of the journey is the actualization of the sense of apparent separation from the Divine, which likewise forms the basis for the “Search”, the great pilgrimage of return. We are sent out like filaments of light from the source of all light to illumine the dark spaciousness of the vast unknown. In this way, we each become the avatars of Source, each playing a unique role in a grand choreography of light and shadow far beyond our human comprehension.

In effect, we set aside our prior and eternal realization of Oneness in order to explore the infinite realms of duality, just for the joy of eventually seeing through the temporary facades and discovering again our indivisibility from Source. It is a cosmic game of “Hide & Seek”, of Lover torn asunder from the Beloved and consequently immersed in seemingly endless realms of desire and fear, grasping and avoidance, that constitute the fruit of separation.

In the midst of the ceaseless modifications of consciousness that comprise the flashing worlds of experience, we also gather some fascinating stories and adventures along the way, and it is the cumulative experience of all Its avatars that serves the ongoing Divine evolution and revelation of Self-awareness of Source Itself. Nevertheless, although they are not two, on the first part of our journey, Nirvana is Nirvana and Samsara is Samsara. How will we unify them?

The second part of the journey entails the yearning and consequent search for the happiness of re-union. In reality, all our efforts to find our way back from the sense of apparent separation and merge again with our own Source are really only the effort of Love to recognize and remember Itself. It is the primordial template from which all of our individual stories of seeking are cast — Love’s play of forgetting and remembering.

This is the “journey to God”, which will eventually be seen and recognized as a dream journey, a virtual reality journey, since in truth there has never been any actual separation or division. Samsara and Nirvana have never been separate. Love has never been other than Itself, despite the myriad disguises It indulges to momentarily play a game of “lost and found” with Itself.

As the journey reveals its secrets, the persistent signs may hint that there is only God, of which we are each unique individualized expressions, and that God is Love Itself. Nevertheless, this remains to be directly experienced and then fully integrated, or embodied. In the meantime, we seekers mostly still continue in hot pursuit of ourselves like a determined dog chasing its tail. We label such effort as our “Spiritual Path”, “the Way”, the “Practice” — complete with all sorts of contrived and hopeful schemes and strategies to achieve our goal. However, when the fruit has ripened, it no longer depends on the tree.

The “journey in God”, on the contrary, is just spontaneously remembering and effortlessly living in and as our own natural, primordial state, embodying our original innocence in the way we relate and behave, and selflessly serving all. It is based on the letting go, or surrendering, of any sense of personal will. Love lives us, without resistance or complaint. All is well.

Moreover, it is not a personal attainment, the result of fortuitous circumstances, deftly borrowed formulas auspiciously applied, or even awesome effort. All unfolds automatically. The subconscious simply ceased projecting an independent entity. The “person” we took ourselves to be, our provisional self-image, is now seen through as a sort of fictional narrative or virtual reality, a make-believe character in an unfathomable dream that God (Source) is projecting like a complex hologram, and purely for the sake of Divine Enjoyment.

Life “in God” thus assumes an intensity that cannot be described to or by the mind still entranced by the fascination with “choice” or preference. There is an infinite spectrum of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, loss and gain, and it is all welcomed, it is all beautiful – even the “ugly”. The entire panorama, in whatever form it presents itself, is recognized even as it arises as nothing more than the quicksilver mask of the Beloved, our own True Nature and Identity.

The way now is all about “just being” – that is enough, it has always been enough. How wonderful, and yet how simple and ordinary! What’s complicated is clinging to the belief that we have ever been bound and must be freed, redeemed, saved, or even that we need to be re-united with what we already Are!

This is also when we can say: “I am you.” The “other” — the object of our search or of our avoidance — is perceived to be none other than oneself, and so selfless service arises naturally, spontaneously, joyfully. The Heart knows Itself, loves Itself, serves Itself.

As this journey in the heart-mind of God becomes more and more effortless, a certain inevitability takes over and starts pulling itself further into the core of itself. Paradoxically, this free and unburdened consciousness is also expanding infinitely in all directions, and thus discovering itself afresh in each moment of Now. Furthermore, both Samsara and Nirvana are automatically recognized as conceptual designations, obsolete mental fabrications, and Silence replaces the habit energy of compulsive thought.

Yes, it is all a dream, but even though there may be an awakening to that fact, the dream still goes on regardless – it’s just that now we are awake in the dream, and can recognize it as such, and embracing it all as our own lucid awake awareness, indivisible from any experience. Sometimes we may come across others who are also awake in this dream, and together we can really laugh!

True transcendence is not avoidance or disassociation – it is passionately present and fully embodied head to toe. It is not frightened nor threatened by the implications of human incarnation. It has nothing to win or lose. There is truly only Love recognizing Itself behind the masks, playing joyously and gratefully against the background of the aware space in which all appears, thrives for a while, and disappears.

There is no longer any tendency to fixate attention exclusively in or on any part of it. There is no clinging to or running away from any of it, no regret or expectation that any of it be anything other than what it is. God has woken up to God.

Rather than signaling some kind of conclusive finality, however, this is all still a matter of movement within a dream, or ripples on a pond. Even the notion of God is still a figment of the dream, and when the dream itself is recognized for what it is — a play of consciousness, or projection of mind — then God, journey, and dreaming dissolve in the plain and obvious realization.

Realization of what? Realization that no thing or event has ever happened, no body has gone anywhere. Everything is utterly perfect, just as it is, and so not even perfect — beyond perfection and its presumed lack, beyond all stories and conceits!

How amazing, yet how utterly empty and transparent are both self and phenomena! Beyond that, no human notion, language, or imagination can ever reach. There is only that timeless phrase that points that way: “Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the beyond! Hail to That!”

Posted in Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 7 Comments

The Myth of Enlightenment

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Bob OHearn

“There is no such thing as enlightenment.

The full appreciation of that fact is, itself, enlightenment.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

As was mentioned in my previous essay about Zen and the Emotional/Sexual Contraction here , there has been quite a bit of discussion around ongoing sex scandals involving various revered Zen Masters, Tibetan Lamas, Hindu Gurus and Swamis, and so forth here in the West. Many cannot fathom how supposedly “Enlightened Masters” can be involved in such shenanigans. I will briefly address that issue here, based on what I have learned in the course of my own life-long investigation.

That Enlightenment is some kind of state or condition which beings can attain while in human form is one of the first myths that need to be discarded, if we are actually going to wake up to what this birth is truly all about – enjoyment and appreciation of the experience of being human. Moreover, claims of such attainment are typically automatic disqualifiers, so caveat emptor! In the spiritually mature, there is no self being projected that could be enlightened or not. The thought doesn’t even arise.

Indeed, that which would gain some sort of spiritual achievement is actually the false sense of independent identity that obstructs any fundamental realization. The notion that enlightenment is going to result from some combination of practices or efforts is purely a human fantasy, and actually an impediment to the recognition of the primordial state which is not an attainment, but ever-present as the shine of reality itself.

The late Sage Ramana Maharshi pointed out that true realization is not an attainment when he noted: “The state of Self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been. The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything.”

Undoubtedly, there are those who enjoy experiences of blissful clear seeing, states of oneness and universal connectivity, or mystical transport and visionary phenomena. However, no human has ever “become enlightened”. This is not to say that there are no past or even current exemplary individuals who have awakened in an authentic sense to the two-fold emptiness of self and phenomena — their dream-like nature — and thus are relatively liberated from the various mechanics of suffering, as well as the accompanying afflictive states and conditions that characterize the usual human experience. Seeing everything as a dream — even the pursuit of enlightenment, as well as the one who would pursue it – is a sign of real wisdom. The Zen patriarch Dogen clarified the matter when he noted that “the truth of the Buddha’s and ancestors’ realization consists invariably of what a dream makes within a dream.”

Unfortunately, most of the legendary characters of spiritual lore who are held up as examples of profound realization have since become victims of fantasy stories and inflated hagiographies that air-brush away their humanity and replace it with an idealized mythology. That practice has actually done more harm than good — placing them on a pedestal and imbuing them with a “specialness” that effectively distances them from those who would emulate them.

Certainly, there are many individuals who may even have attained remarkable powers (siddhis) through the application of various yogic techniques. The human potential is indeed amazing, though to a large extent still relatively untapped, except in rare cases. As time proceeds, unlocking the energetic mysteries latent within the human bio-vehicle will prove to be a major boon and stimulus for the ongoing evolution of the species.

Nevertheless, the human construct itself, with all its ingenious neural circuitry, still does not have the capacity to handle the energetic vibrational frequency of real enlightenment. The physical container itself would be blasted apart in an instant! To illustrate by way of example, imagine attempting to pour a million watts through an electronic appliance with a load capacity of 10 watts (or even a capacity of 1000 watts, in the case of the aforementioned rare individuals – the same result would still prevail).

Once returned to our own natural state after the death of the material form body, it is not uncommon to recognize our previous human spiritual outlook — including our most profound conceptions of Enlightenment — as charmingly naive at best in the more expansive view of things (and there most certainly is a much vaster picture that we in human form cannot even begin to comprehend as long as we are confined to the denser vibrational frequencies that pertain in this dimension).

Indeed, once the dense meat suit is slipped off and we reintegrate with our “Whole Self” in the Spirit World, we will typically recognize the obvious. That is, whatever had passed for some degree of self-awareness during physical incarnation was mostly a kind of dull sleep-walk in comparison to our actual state. Amazingly, the trick of embodiment itself was like a magical illusion, a virtual reality. Even then, there are many levels of awareness far beyond our ken that still must be traversed before one can speak of true enlightenment. The luminous orb of our soul body itself is still a kind of temporary sheath that too must ultimately be discarded (but that’s skipping ahead a bit).

Furthermore, the vast majority of us are not really here, incarnating in this limited psycho-physical realm, to pursue some humanly-conceived “Enlightenment”. “The Spiritual Search” is more often than not an escape strategy that has kept us mostly misdirected down through the centuries, and indeed accounts for a good deal of the turmoil, confusion, delusion, and strife we put ourselves through here on this rock. At its core, it merely represents another mentally fabricated strategy to have things be other than they are, and to appear more wonderful and fascinating in our own mirror.

Even those states that are traditionally considered “advanced” or “complete” (such as Sahaj Samadhi) give nobody any true advantage, since they are still essentially just peculiar modes of being in this psycho-physical realm, which is after all nothing but a virtual reality itself. Our true nature is not diminished when we appear to be ordinary and even ignorant, nor is it elevated by some sort of peak experience or unusual state of metaphysical attainment.

As the great Adept Dilgo Khyentse so well phrased it: “The everyday practice . . . is just everyday life itself. Since the undeveloped state does not exist, there is no need to behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and beyond what you actually are. There should be no feeling of striving to reach some “amazing goal” or “advanced state”. To strive for such a state is a neurosis which only conditions us and serves to obstruct the free flow of Mind. We should also avoid thinking of ourselves as worthless persons – we are naturally free and unconditioned. We are intrinsically enlightened and lack nothing.”

Once the temporary human costume drops away (and with it, the theatrical drama of the human experience), what we eventually come to realize quite vividly is that the only part of our life’s efforts that actually amounted to anything was not the attainment of some lofty trance, awesome powers, or penetrating insight into emptiness. Rather, what we ultimately discover is that all that really mattered was how we treated each other – the love that we shared. Moreover, regardless of any honorific titles and trappings we may have come by or have bestowed on us, if our various “spiritual” practices failed to enhance our capacity for love, then they were wasted.

“Enlightenment” is truly our prior and timeless condition, which is set aside in order to enter into the denser planes of existence, such as this virtual reality game of being human. By choosing to come here, we also accept a kind of amnesia regarding our true condition, which is necessary in order to imbue the human experience with a quality of visceral reality. The illusion keeps things “interesting”, in that regard, as we confront the unknown. Likewise, all ensuing lessons, adventures, and interactions are rendered more impactful due to their freshness and immediacy. In that regard, it could be said that, by submitting to the amnesia, we lose ourselves to find ourselves.

In our process of self-discovery, we fuse with the human bio-vehicle, because we are interested in how we will react to certain compelling simulations specific to the human experience. Through trial and error, we find out how to “do the right thing” in every test challenge we dream up for ourselves (often in conjunction with our “soul group”).

As one near death experiencer (Duane S.) describes it: “As I was shown around, it was explained to me how most of our celestial, eternal knowledge is blanked-out during our chosen life spans on earth. We must temporarily forget most of what our higher-self already knows so we can immerse ourselves in the roles we have chosen to play. Furthermore, they said that it might take a while for all my knowledge and memories to return. To ease the transition back into this realm, I was told to think of my time on earth as an extended visit to the ultimate theme park. Consider it a place with thrilling rides and various adventures that I could choose to experience or not. I was also reminded that the reason we leave the celestial realm at all was for the excitement, variety, adventure, and entertainment that different incarnations offer. However, to take all our celestial knowledge with us on our various adventures would have ruined the very experience that we had chosen to live. Someone there said that I should think of our trips to other realms as choosing a new novel to read. I can choose a new book, depending on what I am in the mood for. Furthermore, if I knew every turn and twist of the story, line by line, prior to reading it, it would spoil the fun.”

We take on this human form because that potential circumstance is intriguing to us (and so different than what we really are), just as video gaming is fascinating to some, putting the player into challenging and provocative situations that they would not normally encounter. When asked why so many souls incarnate into bodies, the sage Nisargadatta replied: “To know itself the self must be faced with its opposite — the not-self. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge — liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death.”

We’re certainly not here to escape into some human notion of enlightenment, but more to experience “un-enlightenment”, and all the thrills and spills involved in that virtual scenario. We then have some stories (data) to take back with us and share with our “Group” or “Family” — the ones we’ve been traveling with for unaccountable eons. This new data in turn contributes to the ongoing evolution of that “cell”. I call it a cell because that is just what we are like, cells within a larger body, which in turn is a cell within an even larger body, and so on beyond any human comprehension.

There is no such thing as “right” or “wrong” data — it’s all fuel for the ongoing expansion of the larger Consciousness, the ongoing evolution of “God or “Source”, of which all of us are unique though temporary expressions in our various human, soul, and causal incarnations. None of those expressions or transient identities become “enlightened”, but only serve as costumes (like space suits) for immortal Spirit — the impersonal enlightened nature that is always already the reality.

Just so, as we deepen in our appreciation of our actual condition, we may even come to see through the creative fiction of “personhood” altogether. After all, if the person we take ourselves to be is simply a bundle of thoughts, memories, sensations, and perceptions, then what is it – who is it – that is going to attain enlightenment? In that regard, Shunryu Suzuki summed it up well: “Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.”

The founder of the Rinza Sect of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, Lin Chi, was even more direct when he told an assembly of monks: “I tell you, there’s no Buddha, no Dharma, no practice, no enlightenment. Yet you go off like this on side roads, trying to find something. Blind fools! Will you put another head on top of the one you have? What is it you lack?”

Likewise, the Sage who taught Nisargadatta Maharaj, Siddharameshwar, noted: “If there is a certain notion that you have direct ‘Realization,’ it is only the delusion of a confused mind. This confusion is only the enhancement of the Illusion that is already there. It is the spectacle, the festival of Illusion. Every so-called ‘Realization’ is Illusion.”

Upon sincere and thorough inspection, the sense of an independent and substantial personal self, or “me”, can be recognized as a compounded mental construct, an artificial fabrication. It has its purpose in terms of navigating the objective world, but is not at all our real identity. As consciousness takes human form, we tend to construe and then confirm such an enduring self, based on our identification with the transient, when in fact its very transience should be proof of its unreality. Fundamentally, it is empty of any solidity. Our true nature has never been confined to that empty conceptual self-sense. We simply employ it as a vehicle. With the benefit of expanded awareness, we come to recognize that our true “Self” is an infinite and all-encompassing mystery of love and awareness beyond the limited persona’s comprehension.

Nevertheless, to actually penetrate this “open secret” is no easy task. Mark Twain once noted, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Certainly, it’s implications are a threat to the religions that would keep us in the dark, in order to maintain the illusion that their dogmas and methods hold the key to redemption, salvation, liberation. Moreover, it definitely challenges the multitude of strategies and schemes dedicated to escaping this world into some conceptual enlightenment, but perhaps we are reaching a turning point in the evolution of our collective spirituality, in which the old myths are rendered obsolete. We shall see, as more and more aspirants wake up and do as Dogen Zenji suggested, “Abandon enlightenment and walk freely”.

The fact is, humans have all sorts of experiences, which they in turn filter through their perceptual apparatus. From there, they superimpose a conditioned and conditional fantasy of interpretation onto each experience. In the process, they fabricate various theories, myths, and stories about it all, and perhaps other humans listen and agree. In fact, this is how religious sects are spawned and perpetuated.

However, for those who have been graced with a more mature and penetrating vision, rare as that is, what is revealed is that no intellectual theory or transcendental experience could possibly encompass the vast subtleties of the universal manifestation and its functioning. Reality is prior to, and utterly beyond the reach of, the mind that would attempt to grasp it and conform it to some human system of doctrines and dogmas.

As the Dzogchen Kunje Gyalpo Tantra states: “Self-arising wisdom, the essence of Dharmakaya, is not realized through effort, but conversely, by just remaining in the natural condition. It transcends all the aims of the practices, for that which is called “aim” is only a name: in reality “enlightenment” itself is only a name. Using the definition of “enlightenment” is a characteristic of the provisional teachings and not of the definitive ones.”

Consequently, where we are left is in a state of profound “not knowing”, which just happens to be the essential nature of our original innocence. By resting in that state of transparent awake awareness, rather than trying to analyze or speculate, the need to have it figured out and filed in memory is superseded by the astonishment of contemplating and appreciating the Mystery to the point that one’s hair stands on end at the very appearance of anything at all.

Furthermore, there is no end to the unfolding revelation, since the very nature of our Spirit, and its utter enjoyment, is infinite expansion in all directions, and far beyond what even the most imaginative human belief systems regarding Enlightenment (or even Reality) might propose.

In that process, however, Spirit does not become more “Spiritual”. There is no such thing as ascension. That which is already perfect and complete lacks nothing, and certainly does not need to become something else – something better, bigger, or brighter — to confirm itself. Some wisdom begins to dawn with the realization that there is no remedy. It matures with the realization that the disease which the remedies are meant to address (and for which “Enlightenment” is reckoned as the cure) is itself a figment of imagination, with no inherent substance.

This is not to claim, by the way, that the various wisdom systems conceived and propagated in this realm cannot be of some value, especially if they inspire a life of integrity and compassion, guiding one to eschew the poisons of envy, greed, hatred, and arrogance, and towards the altruism of selfless service and humility. Moreover, followers can certainly have many experiences of transformative insights and life-changing realizations by applying various methods and practices, or even serendipitously.

That said, nobody in this human realm experiences anything like some ultimate realization, any more than a kindergarten student is going to grasp the intricacies of quantum physics, or a sleep walker is going to win the Boston Marathon. As stated above, that’s not even why most of us are here.

Moreover, and contrary to the propaganda of the usual preachers, there is very likely no end to our Spirit’s exploration of its own infinite nature. As the great Zen Master Hakuin noted: “Though your own personal study of the Five Ranks [levels of realization] comes to an end, the Buddha-way stretches endlessly and there are no tarrying places on it.”

Truly, our potential is limitless. As this becomes apparent, what then calls to us is simply the expanding recognition of the most loving possibility contained in each moment now, and it is that ongoing discovery and its actualization which fulfills our deepest yearning as beloved expressions of Source.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child. We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.” ~Corinthians 13

See also:

Time Is On My Side

In Search of Self and Beyond

The Sense of Lack and the Master Game

The Ten Thousand Idiots

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 42 Comments

Zen and the Emotional/Sexual Contraction

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Bob OHearn

On Thanksgiving Week of 2012, one of his former students revealed in an internet message that Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the venerable 105 year old founder and Zen Master of Rinzai-ji (a prominent Zen Buddhist Community in America), had been involved in extensive sexual misconduct with his female students. This particular Japanese monk has been most popularly known as the teacher of the famous singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. He arrived in California from Japan half a century ago, and proceeded to establish many Zen Buddhist practice centers across the country.

I was a student of Sasaki Roshi from 1971-1974, first at his Los Angeles center, and later at Mt. Baldy, where I lived as one of about a dozen permanent residents for over 2 years. About half were male and the other half female. I have written something about my experiences elsewhere in my blogs (for example here ).

When I arrived at Mt. Baldy, I realized that the monastic Abbess also served as Roshi’s mistress. Soon after my arrival, they apparently had a falling-out due to Roshi’s sexual exploits with another female student. I was to learn that Roshi was quite the horny old fellow, and that sanzen for many female students consisted of a lot of fondling and sex play. Moreover, several of the students were also sexually active with each other, so it came as no surprise that, when one person contracted a sexually transmitted disease, some of the other students eventually got it. It was even suggested that it had started with Roshi.

One time in sanzen (formal interview of teacher and student), Roshi took a good look at me and remarked, “Zen is not the way of the saint.” I guess he was seeing my rather eccentric upbringing — I was raised as a Catholic, and had spent 7 years in a Catholic Seminary studying to be a priest. In any case, he told me that I should read “dirty books”. He said he enjoyed them (pornography). I felt that was fine for him, but I was not attracted to that pursuit. He told me that I wanted to attach to the Absolute, but needed to first totally throw myself into the objective world, which included sexuality. I understood his point.

Most so-called spiritual practitioners don’t ever inspect, much less resolve, the emotional/sexual contraction at the core of their psychological make-up, and so tend as a rule to indulge the classic “spiritual by-pass”, which is a form of avoidance and even a strategic denial of a critical aspect of human development. Roshi told me that, when the monks were out on Takuhatsu (food begging) back at his Japanese monastery, they carried a stone under their robes with which they would hit their penises when they saw women and began to get aroused. So much for dealing with their sexuality.

Over the course of many decades since my time with Roshi, I have witnessed the same scenes played out ad nauseam in Dharma centers, ashrams, and temples across America, and yet rarely has anyone really addressed the core contraction. Rather, they either look the other way, or wring their hands and talk about oversight committees and so forth — all totally beside the point.

What’s clear and apparent is this: so-called “spiritual” practice itself, even most if not all religion itself (both esoteric and exoteric) as it is practiced today, can often become one big exercise in avoidance, misdirection, and chronic self-loathing. Sadly, establishing grounds for a classic internal conflict, or emotional/sexual contraction, has been and continues to be a feature of most human religions, mainly because of ignorance and fear of the true power of sexuality. This contraction forms the basis for countless manifestations of immature fixation, neurosis, and even full-blown pathology throughout history.

Hopefully, humans will someday make peace with their own bodies, and allow a natural developmental process to unfold, in which the physical embodiment vehicle is appreciated for what it is, and lovingly released when it is time to evolve beyond exclusive identification with it.

In any event, there is no enlightenment, no liberation, salvation, redemption, or transcendence outside of the way we behave right here, in the very midst of this life, which includes sexuality at the very core of who and what we are as human beings. Until that is really seen, understood, and integrated, then we will continue to encounter these apparent “scandals”, which are merely glaring symptoms of a fundamental flaw in the mature appreciation of the essential role of sexuality in human psychological development and social adaptation, and the consequent epidemic of chronic emotional/sexual contraction that plagues not only the spiritual aspirant, but just about every human walking the earth today who has been influenced by the corruption that most take to be their “religion”.

How many more “Sex Scandals” in the Buddhist community, for example, is it going to take before its adherents wake up and recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way their Religion is taught and practiced, all throughout the various sects? The Tibetan and Zen schools get the most attention of course, since they seem to dominate the spiritual landscape when it comes to Buddhism (and sexual peccadillos) here in the West, but Buddhism itself has never truly come to terms with the whole subject of sexuality, and so it is no wonder these sorts of issues will perpetually make the news. We’ve also come to learn that, for each reported sexual “misconduct” incident, there are typically a dozen or more that go unreported, so it is probably safe to say that we are talking about more than just a few errant fellows with over-active testosterone and unresolved power complexes.

Rather than really bothering to look beyond the symptoms and go to the root of the festering disease, each successive scandal usually ends up with a righteous mob ad hominem attack on the perpetrator du jour, followed by more talk about committees and regulations and so forth (not unlike the talk about handgun controls after each mass shooting that pops up almost weekly now in the new Wild West). Sure, what we need is more government!

Really, how many so-called Zen Masters and Rinpoches will need to be “outed” before it is recognized that the problem is with the institutional teaching of Buddhism itself (not unlike the fact that the problem with the Catholic Predator-Priest Scandals is overwhelmingly generated by the Catholic religion’s attitudes and teachings about sexuality in the first place)?

Let’s look at Zen Buddhist practice, since that seems to be where the action is these days on the scandal front. This so-called Zen School (whether Rinzai, Soto, or Korean) talks a lot about taming the mind and mastering the gut (or hara), but rarely if ever deals with the heart (except perhaps in some vague terms regarding “Bodhisattvic compassion” — an idealism based on a confused notion of “saving all beings”, even though their scriptures paradoxically note that there is not even a single being to save. See here ).

In any case, this practice, with few exceptions, attempts to bypass the heart, because it is confused by and even fearful of what lurks there (the emotional/sexual contraction), so instead it by-passes it, in pursuit of a conceptual ideal of enlightenment, where emotions themselves are commonly shrugged off as something akin to delusional poisons.

Ironically, for all its talk about no-self, the Zen that I have observed (over 4 decades) seems to be one of the more self-preoccupied and often down-right selfish practices currently being pursued in the so-called “spiritual” scene here in the West. It is no wonder that the implications of such selfishness would yield the non-stop onslaught of sexual scandals we witness (not to mention what goes publicly unreported). What all of that clearly demonstrates is an absence of any emphasis on awakening at the heart, and yet without such an awakening, all the rest is, to borrow a phrase, “clanging bells”.

The chronic emotional/sexual contraction that plagues just about every human being — the habitual twisting, suppression, and corruption of the primal motive to love and be loved — is spawned at the heart, and hence it will be only at the heart that it can be understood, seen through, healed, and released. Try as one might, there will be no true healing by (mis)directing attention away from it, to the head or gut — there is a whole midsection of the being that needs attention too, and often even more so than the head or gut. The heart will simply not be denied, and if you ignore that plain and obvious fact, Dear Roshi, you may find yourself in bed with disciples who are all too ready to pen their “tell-all” memoir as soon as the affair ends, (not to mention the many shattered victims that may be left in the wake of your failure to grow up and integrate your sexuality into a mature level of social and personal adaptation).

When the meditation aspirant emerges from their heady samadhi, they still must attend to the heart. When the samurai emerges from their sword play, they still must contend with their heart. However, because the heart is so little understood (and even threatening), they would just as soon avoid it (both the meditator and the martial artist), and hence we end up with both the big names (as well as plenty of little ones) in the Zen game here in the West periodically dragged through the same mud, along with their compatriots the Tibetan Rinpoches, the Neo-Advaitins, and the various Gurus and Swamis that regularly wander over from the East, ill-prepared as lambs to the slaughter for the sexual Disneyland of modern America awaiting here to test, bedazzle, and humble them. It is a failure of character, a failure of integrity, which in essence is a failure of heart.

Remember, one cannot transcend what one has never truly understood and resolved in their own direct life experience. This is precisely why we get brilliant (and sometimes not so brilliant) teachers and religious figures who are nevertheless brought down over and over again by their failure to inspect and heal the knot at their hearts, which in turn manifests in all sorts of pathological ways to the detriment of both themselves, their students, and the Dharma (teaching) they are attempting to transmit.

The American teacher Adyashanti made a pertinent observation when he wrote: “You can have a tremendously transformational experience, and it doesn’t immediately get rid of all of your contradictions and confusions. Sometimes your deepest shadow comes up after your deepest awakening. Often we have to begin by admitting what is still churning within us.”

As for a bit of advice to anyone contemplating getting involved with any teacher: take some time inspecting your motives for embarking on the spiritual path in the first place. Most of us do so based on uninspected motives, so that would be the first place to start. Upon careful and thorough investigation, we might even begin to question who and what we truly are — who is this character believed in need of spiritual instruction? If we manage to just stay with that inquiry to the point of gnosis, then our relationship with any subsequent intermediary will be a mature one, and not based on fantasy, projection, or potential victimization.

In closing, I would offer that humans are the least qualified to judge each other. However, having said that, I would add that there are no such entities as “Spiritual Masters”. We are each a unique expression of Source, and no expression is superior to another. There is only one, without a second. In fact, ultimately there is not even That, about which, nothing more can really be said. Just so, rather than putting our attention on the behavior of others, we need to carefully inspect our own. That is plenty of work in itself, and so focusing on others’ conduct is mostly just a distraction in that regard. If aspirants get involved with a character posing as a master, then it is because they have lessons to learn in that experience. This human life is really all about experiencing, and seeing through each experience to the emptiness inherent in it, as well as the Love that is the Source of all manifestation. It is only Love that really matters – all else is but preparation for that realization.

“There is only one book worth reading — the heart.”

~Ajahn Chan

Addendum:

A Word About Teachers

A good teacher is one who points the student back to themselves, their own original nature. However, that is usually the last place the student wants to go. Why? Because original nature is empty, and emptiness, when merely contemplated by the intellect, implies some sort of falling into a meaningless void, the collapse of all identity structures, the death of good times. That is a serious threat to the student’s idealism and enthusiasm for the undertaking. After all, they have heard that one becomes a Buddha upon enlightenment, and based on the statues, that prospect looks pretty cool — just sitting around, smiling like one has a special secret.

Consequently, the student typically projects all sorts of stuff onto the teacher, all of which turn out to be fantasies. If the student is wise, one clear pointing is enough to get started. Perhaps some polishing can come later, if they manage to awaken to some extent. The teacher does not do the awakening, nor do they pass along some transcendental mojo with a word, a glance, a twinkle of the eye, or swat of a stick. There is nothing new to be received which is not already the case. Original nature simply wakes up to itself, when enough of the obstructions are removed which have been concealing its shine.

The teacher cannot do the work for us. We must do it, by first discarding the false. What is false? Everything we believe we are, everything we have been told we are. We have confused ourselves with our own ideas, which we believed to be true. A truly qualified teacher simply points out how we have chronically fooled ourselves into fixated identification with the false, thereby creating an obstruction to clear seeing, or recognizing true nature.

In this culture (and it has probably always been the case to one degree or another), many teachers have ended up becoming part of the obstruction, typically because of character flaws that became distractions. However, for those who do not allow their attention to become distracted, but instead persevere with the original pointing instructions, revelations will inevitably follow. After all, it is not such a big deal to be oneself. The main problem all along has simply consisted of us trying to be otherwise, based on myths, superstitions, fantasies about awakening, our catalogue of self-images, and the plain reluctance to relinquish hope and fear.

Some Further Related Writings:

https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/mind-character-will/

https://theconsciousprocess.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/the-sense-of-lack-and-the-master-game/

Posted in Consciousness, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Nonduality, sex and spirit, Spiritual Practice | 39 Comments

Religion, Part 1

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Bob OHearn

“If you take the robe that a person is wearing to be the person’s true identity, then though endless aeons may pass, you will become proficient in robes only and will remain forever circling round in the threefold world, transmigrating in the realm of birth and death. There is only you, this person in front of my eyes now listening, who enters fire without being burned, enters water without drowning, enters the three realms of hell as though strolling in a garden, enters the realms of hungry ghosts and the animals but undergoes no punishment. How can one do all this?”

~Rinzai (Lin Chi)

Everyone is the totally unique version of their own religion, regardless of what tree we gather under, or to which nominal affiliation we might currently pledge some uninspected allegiance. Before religions were dreamed up by humans to account for ourselves in the midst of this mystery and wonder, however, there has only been one “Person”.

Regardless of who and what we take ourselves to be, everybody and everything is none other than an expression of this one “Person”. Everybody is one Person appearing as everybody and everything simultaneously. One unfathomable person lives all these seemingly disparate lives, thinks all these random and arbitrary thoughts, performs all this play, appears in every birth, vanishes in every death, and persists totally beyond any birth or death, which are only the various births and deaths that unfold in any dream — one Person’s dream.

Confounding beyond all human comprehension, this “Person” is not the parental deity figure which those stalled at an infantile level of emotional/spiritual development call on to save, redeem, or bless them in their efforts to acquire goods and smite their enemies. This Person can never be an object of perception, but rather is That which makes perception possible. This Person is actually no more of a person than we are persons. Employing the term “person” is just a conceptual designation without any inherent solidity, but for the purposes of communication, it is a reference to That which is also regarded as “Source” or “All That Is”.

In any case, here’s a good question: How can we hold onto a dream? Just so, we cannot know this person dreaming. We are what this person is dreaming. Can the dream know the dreamer? Can the perceived, perceive? We are infinite reflections – all reflecting one person, and yet no image is actually that person. We are all the religions of that person, fantasies of that person, dream characters dancing in the mind of that one of which there is no second.

Whatever appears is a projection of mind. Even if some person or Person were to seem to appear, the appearance itself must be in consciousness, and hence would initiate a fantasy of interpretation on perception based on the conditioned filters of the perceiver. In other words, whatever else any visionary phenomena might imply, it is first and foremost a hallucination – a hallucination which nevertheless might serve as the foundation for further deluded human institutions that claim to have the final truth, the keys to the kingdom, the one and only path, scheme, strategy, method, or prescription for redemption, salvation, ascension, illumination, or permanent happiness in a heaven of one’s fondest hopes and desires. Humans are funny that way.

However, when interpretation ends, religion also ends. This is because religion is never anything other than a conceptual designation itself, a mental fabrication, a limited and non-binding play of consciousness. When all such day-dreaming is rendered obsolete by resort to our primordial awake awareness, then what remains is just this vast and potent emptiness, birthing out dreamy universes as if there was nothing to it, but not identified with any of them, any more than the sky is identified with clouds.

Just so, there is nothing that we can do, except that all is being done already as and through us, and whatever that may be has no quality or attribute of desirable or undesirable, negative or positive, right or wrong, true or false, except as we imagine in our forgetfulness, and even this forgetfulness is not truly ours, since there is only one impersonal, beginningless Person remembering, forgetting, waking, sleeping, dreaming, breathing, and seemingly ceasing to breathe.

The great Indian Sage Ramana Maharshi referred to this Person when he said: “The Self alone exists; and the Self alone is real. Verily the Self alone is the world, the “I” and God. All that exists is but a manifestation of the Supreme Being.”

In Tibet, the Dzogchen Master Nubchen Sangye Yeshe wrote: “In fact, the Great Self (Dagnyid Chenpo) is the union and the source of all Victorious Ones. The Great Self is matchless . . . it has been affirmed that the Great Self is the source of everything. How is this so? All the appearances [mentally] conceived are adventitious appearances of good and bad thoughts. Since the Great Self has not been [mentally] conceived by anyone, it does not have a phenomenal existence. It is present because it has arisen before anything else; therefore, although all is born from it, it has no beginning.”

In the Kulayarāja Tantra (Tibetan: Kunjed Gyalpo), Samantabhadra Buddha discloses this ultimate Truth: “All that exists is My own being. The entirety of the animated and inanimated world is My own being. Outside of My own being, nothing is, therefore the root of all things consists in Me. Not one thing exists that does not consist in Me.”

In the Christian mystical tradition, Juliana of Norwich echoed a similar recognition when she wrote in her “Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love”, “And I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God; and yet mine understanding took that our Substance is in God: that is to say, that God is God, and our Substance is a creature in God… We are enclosed in the Father, and we are enclosed in the Son, and we are enclosed in the Holy Ghost. And the Father is enclosed in us, and the Son is enclosed in us, and the Holy Ghost is enclosed in us. . .”

In Reality, there is nothing and no one in need of redemption or salvation, and yet we still tend to cling to limiting beliefs of being bound by life and in need of some religion to liberate us. Such religion typically will appear in a conceptual form as a belief structure particular to the temporary host vehicle’s conditioned filtering apparatus. What then follows are names and forms in colors that will invariably clash, leading to hot debates, crusades, jihads, and behaviors that, in retrospect, we’d just as soon not want to be reminded of, once the dust has cleared.

In that regard, Nisargadatta Maharaj makes a good point: “Recorded religions are mere heaps of verbiage. Religions show their true face in action, in silent action. To know what man believes, watch how he acts. For most of the people service of their bodies and their minds is their religion. They may have religious ideas, but they do not act on them. They play with them, they are often very fond of them, but they will not act on them.”

So, what is this Person really up to? What are we always up to? What is the game about? Experience. Source has an apparently endless appetite for experience, and we are the vehicles for all this infinitely modifying game of experience, just so that this Person can revel in the multitude of dreamy aspects of Itself, and all for the joy and fun of discovery, playing a game of Hide & Seek in an infinite hall of mirrors.

Through the play of experience, which is a play of consciousness, this Person explores Itself, celebrates Itself, forgets and then remembers Itself. Really, all is just a magnificent Song of Love that this Person sings to Itself, though to any of Its temporary individualized thought expressions in the lyrical dream of Itself, it may seem like anything but their ideal of what Love is supposed to be and do.

Well then, what is the problem? In a nutshell, it is a chronic activity of the self-contraction, an internal state of conflict in which life and experience are artificially divided into the desirable and the fearful. It manifests as a perpetually alternating vicious cycle of grasping and avoidance, the disease of the mind of any particular person we might take ourselves to be.

As the Zen Patriarch Seng T’san noted in his famous verses on the Mind of Absolute Trust (Hsin Hsin Ming), “The Great Way is not difficult, just don’t pick and choose. If you cut off all likes or dislikes everything is clear like space. Make the slightest distinction and heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see the truth, don’t think for or against.”

Certainly one must be able to discern the skillful from the clumsy, the wholesome from the less than wholesome, and make such relative distinctions in the conventional objective world. Indeed, one of the purported functions of religion is to assist in arriving at such determinations. However, when our conditional preferences cross over into fixation, consciousness becomes stuck in one-sided views and dogmatic positions. In that event, the natural flow of life stagnates, which is why Dogen Zenji cautioned, “If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.”

Trying to hold on to what we like about consciousness and its contents, and avoiding what we dislike, is an exercise in futility, and a sure recipe for suffering. Moreover, on the macro level, it is invariably through clinging to polarized positions and views that religious wars are birthed and perpetuated. History is replete with such episodes, and yet we apparently still have not learned the lesson, judging by current world events.

The Vietnamese Buddhist Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, addresses this chronic obstruction: “When one becomes dogmatic, that person believes his or her doctrine is the only truth and that all other doctrines are heresy. Disputes and conflicts all arise from narrow views. They can extend endlessly, wasting precious time and sometimes even leading to war. Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path. Bound to narrow views, one becomes so entangled that it is no longer possible to let the door of truth open.”

Clinging to preferences or fixed positions in this sense mainly serves to confirm the solidity and inherent existence of the separate ego-mind. However, with some earnest inquiry and investigation, any fantasy of such an independently enduring person can sooner or later be recognized as a fictional character projected from the mind of the Dreamer. Just imagine, then, if that pretend person could be clearly recognized as an error of interpretation, a case of mistaken identity, and then surrendered, let go. Imagine being finally released from the confines of any provisional fabricated identity derived from grasping or aversion. Imagine letting go of our tight grasp on limited and limiting views of any kind – religious or secular. What then would pertain?

“Imagine — no religion too!” ~John Lennon

Posted in Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, Enlightenment, Nonduality, Religion, Spiritual Practice | 23 Comments

Survival and Personal Continuity

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Bob OHearn

“Once you realise that there is nothing in this world which you can call your own, you look at it from the outside as you look at a play on the stage, or a picture on the screen, admiring and enjoying, but really unmoved. As long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, actually existing in time and space, short-lived and vulnerable, naturally you will be anxious to survive and increase. But when you know yourself as beyond space and time — in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable — you will be afraid no longer. Know yourself as you are — against fear there is no other remedy.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

By thoroughly examining ourselves and our relationships, both collectively and individually, we can recognize a fundamental source of our chronic and habitual conflict: wanting things to be other than they are. That dominant desire for things to be otherwise coalesces most directly in the primal effort to survive as an independent entity, even in the face of inarguable impermanence.

So many wise voices through the years have weighed in on the subject that it would seem a bit redundant to proceed further here, but regardless — let’s set the scriptures, the consensus wisdom, and the prevailing hearsay aside for a moment and see what is true of us.

What is at the core of our motivation, in all our thoughts, impulses, behaviors, intent, striving? Is it not survival? We don’t know what we are, but whatever we are, we want it to survive, to endure. Even in the depths of any catastrophe, we want to keep on going. Beyond that, we want to thrive and expand. After all, we are not separate from life, and that seems to be the job of life – to endure and thrive, and expand to infinity.

We have many methods we use to survive. Some of us survive by grasping, and some by avoidance. Some survive by attempting to control the world around us, others by submitting to the controllers. Some of us survive by stockpiling whatever we believe we lack.

Paradoxically, however, whatever is used to survive inevitably becomes the basis of the very condition that limits us, and so inadvertently becomes another obstacle to the natural flow of life itself. Indeed, our chronic fixation on survival actually keeps the awareness of Life’s support and abundance at some distance from us.

Survival is all about the conditional. It is conditional on being stronger, smarter, and more specialized than any competition. Survival pits one living being against another and everything becomes justified, any action is condoned in the name of survival. In this system, there is no support, there is no chance for an all-win situation. All our energy goes into defense. We end up creating enemies where there were none. Whatever technique we use to survive will be the problem in our life.

Survival is based on an identification with fear, lack, and limitation. As such, it is a reaction to the felt experience of contraction, the knot at the core of the human experience that spawns the alternating cycles of desire and avoidance.

In that regard, the contemporary teacher Anam Thubten makes a good point when he writes: “There is a deep seated fear of life because of the unpredictable and wild nature of it. So we are always trying to control and master it, and, doing so, we kill it. That fear has to do with insecurity. We are insecure because we think we will not be able to survive unless we have firm control over life. This approach is truly unrealistic. And as long as we are caught up in this meaningless game, we will never know how to embrace and celebrate life, which is the only thing there is to do.”

Prior to the elaboration of all of that, of course, we can inquire: what is it that survives? Obviously, the physical body, even in the most optimum of circumstances, comes with an expiration code. Even if we were to extend our lifespan for thousands of years, whatever is born will eventually die. Trying to squeeze a few more years out of the biological vehicle can be acknowledged as an understandable but ultimately futile effort, at least in the scheme of eternity. Nevertheless, there are few of us who would not want just one more day, when faced with the prospect of their imminent physical death.

Beyond the three dimensional “earth body”, is there an invisible (to our eyes) portion of the being, usually called the “soul”, which lives on eternally and survives the death of the material self? Certainly, most religions seem to suggest so, as does the huge body of testimonies submitted by near-death experiencers throughout the ages. Although categorizing such a belief as an error of “eternalism”, upon his awakening, even Buddha himself reported remembering all of his past lives, which he claimed to be able to recount in exact detail.

More recently, there have been a number of credible experiencers who have provided fascinating reports, such as Nanci Danison, Anita Moorjani, Natalie Sudman, Eben Alexander, and Thomas Mellen Benedict. One can also visit the Near Death Experience Research Foundation website to review over 3500 documented cases, at http://www.nderf.org/. On the scientific side, researchers such as Dr. Michael Newton (here) have hypnotically regressed clients into reporting a plethora of experiences of life between lives. Also of note is the research of Julia Assante. All of that is very hopeful, of course, for the mind which fears its own extinction, and yet, is it really true, that there is some permanently independent and continuous “person” that survives?

What is being questioned here is the very presumption of personal continuity itself. After all, it is only memory that holds in place the image of some continuous being, and memory itself is a rather flimsy, arbitrary thing. For example, we have little memory of the person we took ourselves to be when we were children, or even when we were in deep sleep last night. The body itself replaces every cell on a regular basis, and even moment to moment, we are not the same person that we were previously, based on the ongoing process of conditioning by thought energies, relationship factors, and environmental variables.

identity-crisis1

In fact, the concept of our own existence is always arising and dissolving, spontaneously. When it appears, we take it to be real, but even when it is absent, the assumption of our enduring continuity is rarely questioned. Since everything about our self is in a constant state of flux, what is it that grants some sense of continuity, in turn prompting the effort to maintain and survive? Is it not the primal sense “I Am”? Indeed, one can observe that all subsequent notions regarding our enduring continuity spring from that original assumption.

One salient point which we can notice is that this sense of “I Am” arises in mind, and since it can be observed, the very act of observation implies that there is something prior to it. What is prior is Awareness, the silent background, but it is not personal. In fact, we are that which appears on the screen of awareness, and whatever appears, disappears. Only awareness remains. As Ajahn Maha Boowa noted: “This vanishes, that vanishes, but that which knows their vanishing doesn’t vanish. . . all that remains is simple awareness, utterly pure. “

It is awareness which makes the difference between reality and memory. Ramana Maharshi said: “You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you.” When we practice being aware of being aware, rather than identifying with the time-bound play of consciousness that passes on the screen, then we are closer to the real continuity, but keep in mind that awareness itself is not perceivable or graspable. It is what makes seeing possible, but is itself unseen. The observer is beyond observation, and so whatever is observed, perceived, is not who or what we truly are.

Another useful metaphor that can be employed here is the image of a glass sphere, or crystal ball, in which bubbles are appearing and dissolving. Awareness is like that crystal ball. All of our thoughts, feelings and sensations are the bubbles arising and disappearing spontaneously within the sphere. The crystal ball is unchanging, while these various appearances arise as transient events. There is a particular bubble that emerges, known as the sense of self or “me”. It has a complete story of identity made up of many thoughts and feelings linked with it, like a cluster of bubbles.

This “me” complex can become quite captivating and assert itself as “the main event”. It is the contracted energy of mind manifesting as the sense of being a solid and enduring person. This is the experience of limited body-mind-self in the psycho-physical realm we call “this world”. The thought-complex floating in this sphere is who and what we mistake ourselves to be. This dream-like entity dominates our entire field of consciousness. Nevertheless, at no time does this fleeting self-sense amount to a “real” person. It is just a persistent but temporary projection of mind, a dreamed self. It has a beginning and an end. Awareness alone remains.

However, any conceptual designations or intellectual inferences regarding awareness only reside at the most superficial level of recognition, and often end up impeding the vivid living realization of our own primordial nature. They do that by imprisoning us within an endless loop of contracted mental energy – the illusion of being a knower. Many a self-assured seeker falls into that trap, from which it is very difficult to extract oneself, due to the arrogant and misguided belief that there is nothing more to see.

The direct experience, on the contrary, is the liberating “open bowl head” of transparent free expansion into the vastness of an immense unknown. In the ecstasy of that spontaneous epiphany, the issue of survival is utterly moot – there is only this profound and joyous Presence without spatial boundary or temporal boundary. It is what we are, unborn and imperishable — an unspeakable Mystery beyond anything perceivable or conceivable.

It includes all of the quicksilver appearances of individual self and phenomenal world, but is never limited by them. Without beginning, it is beyond death, and thus beyond any struggle or quest for some form of invulnerability. All of our concepts about love, truth, happiness, liberation, and the very Divine are merely a pale reflection of That – our primal nature and identity – from whose perspective the whole totality of the universal manifestation is but a tiny shiny bauble in the hand of a care-free child!

“In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death. What was born must die. Only the unborn is deathless. Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of ‘I’. Relax and watch the ‘I am’. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or, rather, it will take you in.”

~Sri Nisargadatta

See also:

Mindstream

Notes from the Other Side

In Search of Self and Beyond

Posted in Consciousness, Near Death Experience, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | Tagged Consciousness, NDE, Nonduality, Spiritual Practice | 9 Comments

The Conscious Process

Self-Improvement Projects

Taking Offense

Beyond the Language of Seeking and Knowing

School of Life, Play of Light

Self-Destructive Thoughts

The Journey

The Myth of Enlightenment

Zen and the Emotional/Sexual Contraction

Religion, Part 1

Survival and Personal Continuity

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