All writings herein serve to open up the world towards knowledge that matters, to piece together the greatest philosophies of living, and to expound ways towards
the path of freedom, happiness & choice.
I have recently read a book by Paramhansa Yogananda called “Autobiography of a Yogi”.
He is a spiritual teacher from India who was truly famous at a time in America because of the message he brought over to connect both the East and West in the understanding of spirituality.
So in this book, Paramhansa Yogananda, hereto will be referred as Yogananda, writes about his life as a Yogi.
A Yogi is somewhat like an Indian monk, except that the requirements needed to fulfill the role isn’t complete renunciation but an acceptance for a way of life that is of highest good to one’s true nature.
Interestingly, some of the experiences Yogananda shared in his book also includes intriguing or miraculous feats of the Yogis. For example, there are stories in the book which tells of how some of their actions supersede the laws of conventional science, i.e.
A master knowing what happened to someone and giving an answer or solution to him/her even before the person brings up his/her question
The manifestation of an actual physical body by the master to deliver a message miles away to a person – while the original body is seen to be sitting still by another witness at another location
The healing of many seemingly impossible-to-cure physical ailments and much, much more.
Basically, the average person would just simply find many events in this book to be a disconnect from our ‘real world’ – the world that provides our lives with Guccis, Pradas and Louis Vuittons.
Yet, with every page I turn, the book didn’t repel my interest – yes, even though I’m an absolute stickler for truth.
Something in my gut tells me that what he’d expressed is genuine, and the many reasonable facts & supporting statements accompanying his message helps too.
Since this post was intended to be epic, I’m going to skip on the details for most of what I’ve read and talk about a scene in the book which I’d like to share with you the most instead.
In “Autobiography of a Yogi”, Yogananda’s recently passed-away master Sri Yukteswar eventually manifested himself before his student to share with the latter some teachings about life beyond death.
In their ecstatic conversation, Sri Yukteswar talked about three different worlds:
The physical cosmos
The astral cosmos
And the causal cosmos
You can accept or reject what follows – although I’m compelled to follow the first choice in this circumstance.
Sri Yukteswar describes our current world, the world that is filled with Guccis Pradas and LVs as the physical cosmos. In this world, our physical bodies greatly depend on food, drink and oxygen to survive. Our senses sight, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling serves their own individual purpose and is hard-connected to our bodies to maintain sustenance of our lives. In this world, the mental & emotional world thrives, guided by the impulse of an egoic self. We believe we are truly separate people, since our awareness seems to be bound to a particular individual since birth.
The second world is called the astral cosmos. According to Sri Yukteswar in this particular encounter with Yogananda, you could associate almost any out-of-conventional-science phenomenas and religious origins of our current life to this world, i.e. telepathic or psychic realizations, the mysteries of Karma & reincarnations, supernatural feats & etc. Ever heard of a parallel universe? The astral world is like a ‘higher dimension’ – although I don’t really like to use that word – to the physical cosmos. Whether you’d like to understand this through the lens of science or spiritual understanding is your choice. While our universe is considered immense, it exists only as a part of this existence. In the astral cosmos, lives are reborn in subtler ways. Beings are described to still have the same sense features such as eyes, nose, tongue, ears, and skin. However, physical limitations as we have now aren’t imposed on its beings. As mentioned in the book, souls are able to manifest themselves foods, waters, plants and even different appearances through subtle thought. They still maintain a physical existence, but in the astral cosmos, the world is just very subtle. Good and evil beings are limited to different astral planes. If you were to ask me to identify a name for this place, I’d liken it to my understanding of heaven in the bible, and a reincarnation source for our physical cosmos according to the Buddhist or Hindhu religions. Sri Yukteswar briefly described that here in this astral plane is also where beings work out their remaining karmas, some accomplishing that through the cosmos, while some having to clear themselves through the hardships of our physical world. My understanding of the astral plane according to New Age descriptions is that it’s a higher-dimension. Like how our world functions with certain laws i.e. gravity, reincarnation probably also works in the same way.
The causal cosmos is even subtler. This plane may be slightly harder to grasp if one has never ventured into the subject of science and spirituality deeply enough. Sometimes, YouTube helps. There are descriptions from quantum scientists about parallel universes and dimensions which touches upon this plane of existence. Sri Yukteswar describes the causal cosmos as one where a being has an existence that encompasses space & time, and where perception plays the greatest role. Every thing that has to do with the this plane is connected to the subtlety of perception. At a single thought planets are created, organisms are brought into beings, and distances are leapt. A being has almost no physical existence, and carries a similar nature to the universe. Of course, information like this can be a little hard to digest by some. Well, let time do its work. There are enough academic or scientific explanations out there that can help anyone visualize this existence. If that doesn’t work, perhaps you can try the spiritual way and meditate – do it deeply enough and you may grasp a feeling of this. After all, our bodies’ atoms appear out of this same field.
There are a lot more interlinking in Sri Yukteswar’s descriptions of these worlds with life.
One of the biggest expressions I appreciate from him is that as vivid and solid as it seems, life is God’s dream.
It talks about something like the physical cosmos actually appearing out of the astral & causal cosmos’ dream, and the astral/causal cosmos out of God’s dreams.
From what I understand, God in this sense represents an everlasting Nothingness that in our physical world, can be understood as an all-time exhilarating existence.
It could be described as the One Consciousness.
And the punch is, we are already That.
Except that our existence is God, dreaming.
Yet we are It.
So this is my epic post, about life.
At the end of the story, if you were to ask me if I think this is all absolutely true, I’ll most probably give you an out of the world answer.
Although my egoic self latches me closely to the individual I am in the physical body which I’m using to type these words now – making me feel as though this personable identity is ALL I am – a little deeper introspection into the whole spectrum of life and myself is all that’s actually needed to convince me of existences beyond the understanding of our limited conventional wisdom.
So, which makes the big fat joke?
The absoluteness of the physical life we’re living in, or the existences of cosmoses beyond this world?
90% of our body is made of bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi…. 100 trillions of them! And each of these “living entities” has a clear evolutionary agenda. New research prove that bacterias in our guts “can” control our thoughts…
“Your honor, it was not me… The bug made me do it!”…and we know that there is a parasite that can “convince” a rat to stop being afraid of cats so that he can reproduce itself…
We should start considering our body not as a separate, unified, entity but a living conglomerate of decision making creatures with, at times, contrasting evolutionary needs…
This video was inspired by an article written by Christopher Koch on the May 2011 issue of Scientific American.
Even the smallest of things in our body, supposedly separate from our original physical composition can cause us to think in different ways.
So really, how much of what we think is decided by our own minds, our individual consciousness, or our ‘free will’?
Although it sounds ridiculous, but if bacterias play a part in influencing our thought patterns, it just means that our whole lives are just formed of ridiculous interpretations of who we think we are.
I mean, who’d like to admit their actions were the work of bacterias floating within their guts?
Hm.
If we can make peace with that, perhaps we can push ourselves further to move in the direction of caring, loving and accepting others more.
After all, we aren’t that conscious as we think we are, and pushing ourselves towards that direction is something we can urge ourselves into doing to ensure greater happiness as a whole, can’t we?
My friend Neil makes an interesting point about happiness: those “peak” moments in life — the big achievements and big releases that we imagine to be exactly what happiness is made of — will never amount to more than a tiny proportion of a person’s life. They are infrequent and quickly give way to the ordinary again. We invest a lot of energy getting to those exceptional highs, but they are exactly that: exceptions to the normal course of life.
In between these “violin crescendo moments” life unfolds without much fanfare, in its familiar way. But within these ordinary stretches of life lie frequent, intensely gratifying moments that arise out of the most mundane activities: waiting in line, parking your car, watching a TV movie.
Even in the context of a really bad day, there are humble little details that seem to hit some kind of “smile” button in the brain, and for those moments, life is unfettered. It’s great. Life is great just knowing that each day will contain them no matter what else the cat drags in.
Other than Ben Franklin’s two dreadful certainties, nothing in life is guaranteed — except (if you’re paying attention) that there will be a steady stream of these humble little awesome things, regardless of your situation, as long as you live. This is a powerful thought and even throughout the worst days I’ve never been able to forget it for long because the reminders come along so frequently.
Ever since I included him a quick piece on three extraordinary blogs two years ago, Neil has been a friend of mine. I love his perspective on gratitude — it recognizes that the present moment really is the place to find everything you look for in life (and not just “in theory”), yet doesn’t stray into ego-dismantling, self-mortification or Stuart Smally-like affirmations. It takes playfulness, rather than determination.
I am not his only fan. Neil’s blog, 1000 Awesome Things hit its stride pretty quickly in 2008. He won the Webby Award the following year for Best Blog, leading to his first book The Book of Awesome, which became an international bestseller. Its sequel, The Book of (Even More) Awesome launched Tuesday.
There is something about couch cushion forts and the other side of the pillow that huge numbers of people seem to be able to identify with. I don’t recommend many (any?) products on this blog, but I’m all over this one. In terms of a practical, non-striving approach to cultivating quality of life, it’s hard to do better than to learn to celebrate these very things, just for what they are.
Recently I talked with Neil about the role of unhappiness in happiness, the role of “little thing” when it comes to quality of life, and cavemen. He’s a riot. Enjoy.
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How’s it going?
Good, good, I’m good. Thanks for asking, David.
You mentioned in your TED talk that when you began 1000 Awesome Things, things were particularly not awesome. The global outlook was looking grim, and you were in an especially difficult part of your life. What was going on and how did it lead to starting the blog?
Whew. Well, let’s see here. We all go through our own ups and downs and back when I started writing 1000 Awesome Things I was definitely in a cloud of doom and gloom.
I’d been married two years and my wife and I were slowly growing further and further apart. We always had respect, admiration, and trust with each other, but… something was missing. It came to a head one night after work when she summoned the courage, through tears, to tell me she didn’t love me any more. It was one of the toughest things I’d ever heard.
At around the same time one of my closest friends was quietly battling mental illness. Chris and I spoke three or four times a week and I knew all his pills, his doctors, his efforts towards overcoming the thoughts and feelings inside his head. But very sadly… he lost the battle. He ended up taking his own life.
As all of this was slowly happening I remember feeling like I needed a way to focus on the positive… somehow. 1000 Awesome Things became my outlet and my way to remind myself of one tiny, simple, awesome thing every night before I went to bed. I started writing about snow days, cold pillows, and all you can eat buffets, as a way to cheer myself up.
Good old Nietzsche said, “For happiness, how little suffices for happiness! … the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance – little maketh up the best happiness.” You’ve really nailed this reality in your work. Yet most of the pressures in society direct us to seek happiness in the big things: big events, big achievements, big payoffs. When it comes to happiness in general, did you always recognize the enormous role of the little thing?
First off, I just want to say that I really like the phrase “Good ol’ Nietzsche!” Like he’s this hilarious guy on the wobbly barstool across the room. Ha ha…
Anyway, hmmm — you ask good questions, David. I knew you would. Okay, when it comes to happiness in general, I definitely have no idea what makes what or what adds up to what. I just feel like, sure — we’ll all have high highs of wide eyes on graduation stages, father-daughter dances at weddings, and healthy baby screeches in the delivery room. But those big violin crescendo moments are maybe.. like, five days total in your life? I mean, I get to flip to the cold side of the pillow every single night if I can’t fall asleep and every single time it gives me a tiny fleeting rush of ice cold satisfaction on my cheek. The same is true for the crisping croissant aroma wafting out of the bakery I pass every day on my way home from work. Or the string of green lights I hit on Friday afternoons.
So I’m not sure if I knew much about little things. I guess like most of us I just see, feel, and touch them so much more often. They fill my days, weeks, and months. They are everywhere and there are millions of them. So I give them big props. No offense to father-daughter dances at weddings, but I’ll take pushing those little plastic buttons on the McDonald’s drink cup lid any day.
Maybe it’s a guy thing, but one of my favorite awesome things in the new book is “Doing anything that makes you feel like a caveman.” You’ve mentioned cavemen a couple of times on the blog. I find it’s helpful to my sanity to remember that I’m really just a caveman who’s learned to wear pants and do some other fancy things. I clamber up staircases on all fours from time to time when nobody’s watching. You’ve talked about the simple, primal joys of staring into a fire, letting your body hair run rampant for a while, or just breaking something. What is it about embodying the caveman mindset now and then that’s so gratifying?
Yeah, that’s funny. The Book of (Even More) Awesome also has stepping on those slightly frozen ice puddles and hearing them crack and finally peeing after holding it forever (which is a bit of an indictment on this flashy modern World of Pants we’ve chosen to live in). Plus, blowing your nose in the shower is in my back pocket if we get another go round.
I guess when it comes to cavemen it’s like — we are them. They’re not what we used to be. They are us. We’ve been walking around Earth with big brains and tall backs for what — like a couple hundred thousand years? And spandex shorts, reading glasses, and deodorant has been around for what — a couple hundred maybe? So maybe all our caveman impulses like eating a plate of just meat at the buffet, not shaving your legs during sweatpant season, or just doing nothing in a tent in the middle of nowhere scratches our brain stems just the right way.
I can’t pretend I know the answer. But I love the question and I’d love to know what you and your readers think as well.
There is a particular type of awesome thing that you’ve talked about that is undeniably awesome but I can’t figure out why: stomping dry crunchy leaves on the sidewalk or popping bubble wrap, for example. For the life of me I cannot explain why I like doing all those things, but I always do, and I know it’s not just that you and I happen to have the same weird fetishes. Appreciation for these things seems to be pretty universal among human beings, even though they don’t seem to aid our survival or have any “practical” value. Why do you think so many of us happen to derive some joy out of, say, the sound of the tiny rocks shooting up the vacuum hose or kicking those dark chunks of slush out of our wheel wells? [Well we Canadians do, anyway.]
Does stabbing a knife into the beautifully brown landscape of a fresh jar of peanut butter count too?
Maybe it’s a bit of a personality trait of maximizers or completists or something. Maybe it’s the same itch that gets scratched when you cross off the last item of a list, fold your last pair of socks (and they all match up!), or when you spatula out the final pudding molecules out of that plastic cup of butterscotch.
That’s what has probably been the most compelling part of your books and your blog: knowing that I am experiencing all these amazing little moments alongside other human beings. I always knew them as private little joys, not realizing that these are things I share with other people. There has been such an outpouring of appreciation for your awesome things — by this point you’ve reached millions of people. When you began, did you realize how powerfully people resonated with these things? Or has this widespread reception been a surprise?
When I started 1000 Awesome Things the only person who read it was my mom.
I like to tell people that the traffic doubled the day she forwarded it to my dad. My parents were definitely the first two of the thirty million or so folks that have clicked the page. And there was no way, no way at all, could have expected the blog to amount to anything more than a simple way to jot down one awesome thing a day. That’s really all I’ve ever wanted or expected it to be. The fact that The Book of Awesome has been number one on bestseller lists for a year straight, that I got to write The Book of (Even More) Awesome, or that I’m on The Today Show next week…. believe me, these things are way beyond my wildest dreams.
At the end of the day, I still work my cubicle job in the suburbs, eat frozen burritos for dinner, and need to go to the gym more. The bags under my eyes are a bit darker and my hunch is getting a little sharper. But I don’t mind because I absolutely love and enjoy and value every tiny second I get to be alive and get to notice, appreciate, and talk about all the awesome things we share.
Thank you so much for the chat, David. You know how much I absolutely love Raptitude.com and I will be first in line when your book comes out. (Do it!) You’re a fantastic writer who I’ve learned a lot from. All the best my friend and keep popping bubble wrap and taking illegal naps every chance you get. Take care and thanks sincerely to all your readers,
Neil
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The Book of (Even More) Awesome is available here and I think you should get it.
(Him: David from Raptitude.com sometimes publishes exceptional articles that can turn one’s day from a bad one to a bright one. Since he carries good logic & awareness, most of the contents he publish are simple to read and understand. If you’d like to learn more from him, please kindly visit: http://www.Raptitude.com. I only knew about Neil after reading this piece of interview that David had done with him. But one thing’s for sure, I know that appreciating the simple little things in life is what will make us happier in life. He has definitely inspired a lot of smiles in people from all over the world because of the work he’s done. To read more about Neil, you can visit his website at: http://www.1000awesomethings.com/)
The key to complete liberation in your lifetime boils down to one simple thing. Learning how to keep your mind’s attention on what you want, and keeping it off of what you don’t want. The longer you can hold your attention on the feeling of bliss, the more often bliss-filed experiences manifest into your world. Bliss is always found in the last place you’d think to look, and for that reason very few discover it. The greatest thing of all is that this awesome experience can be found within you now, and you don’t have to do anything or go anywhere else to find it.
The greatest bliss within you now is found in that place which has no boundaries, no rules, no fears, personal agendas or agreements with anyone. It simply appreciates everyone and everything exactly as it is. It unconditionally loves and accepts life as it is. It is always in a state of total appreciation. This bliss comes from a love that is always abundant, generous, giving of itself and effortlessly feeling the natural positivity of life. It is a selfless love that is not perpetually desiring this or that, but rather is perpetually giving itself away. With all that said, the intrinsic value you’ll receive through tasting even just a few seconds of bliss is soooo amazing, that it’s not something you can even put into words.
If the state of ecstatic bliss feels too intangible and other worldly to grasp because you have too many “real life” issues in the way such as paying off your debt, bills, health issues, car problems, childhood trauma, or just showing up on time for work, please do not be concerned. There are steps you can take to uncover this divinely magical energy inside you! Bliss is a state of mind that is instantly found when we’ve fully released what was once tight or heavy inside ourselves and shift into a constant state of expansion and joy.
The spiritual path is the path of lightness, where your main job is to welcome each experience of life, then go beyond every thought, desire, judgment, sensation and experience that passes through you. Believe it or not but you signed up to have major blissful feelings in this lifetime. You wouldn’t be reading this article if you weren’t ready for it either. It’s as if you’ve been in training, carrying a load of rocks in your backpack up a treacherous mountain, and now you get to unload them all and enjoy the journey back home. The heavy negative life experiences you’ve had in the past were JUST so that it could have the experience of letting them go and feel the pure lightness, weightlessness and joy that comes when they are gone.
Your inner bliss can be revealed in a matter of minutes if you’re willing to do some deep self-exploration and let go of everything that is weighing heavy on your mind. When you deeply let go of any lofty or lowly ideas about your life’s purpose or personal agenda, and have released that all too critical mindset about yourself, the mind instantly becomes lighter and more free. This expansive spacious mind is the only welcome mat that can handle this infinitely expanding happy loving feeling. When your mind is truly empty, the Universe takes this as a sign that you’re ready to receive this divine experience and graces you with bliss.
Below are the 5 secret steps that will empower you to find bliss wherever you are, no matter who you think you are, or what life situation you may be in.
Step #1 Accept Yourself As You Are. If you want to find the greatest divine bliss inside you tonight, the first and perhaps most important step is to start with accepting yourself and your life exactly the way it is right now. Don’t think about what you need to change, improve and get rid of to make you or your life better. Just start with accepting everything inside you exactly the way it is, and know that within this feeling of self acceptance is self-love, which is the greatest gift you can give YOU!
By deeply accepting yourself it becomes easy to slip into appreciating yourself, and you soon begin to see all your opportunities for growth (problems) as exciting adventures to explore! Flipping on the self-acceptance switch as often as you can will light the pathway to bliss as the love you let in will advance your soul “light years” on your inner world. Self acceptance is the first essential key to get your happy engines spinning and start blasting open the door to bliss inside.
Step #2 Release your Addiction to Suffering. Whether you want to admit it or not, on some unconscious level some part of you is addicted to suffering. Now addiction may be a strong word here, yet it is essential to see the repetitive patterns you’ve created within you that create perpetual struggle, strife and mental/emotional challenges on your inner world. The thoughts that your mind constantly thinks about and can never find peace with are your biggest addictions to suffering. Worries, fears, insecurities and judgments create a majority of the internal battles and self-sabotaging patterns that people can experience hourly. These suffering habits tend to be very sneaky, and are often the main reason why most people believe they cannot enter this ideal state of bliss. Once you’ve looked inside yourself, come to know yourself and identified what your hab it is, you can transcend it. The moment you do you’ll find yourself slipping down the slope of joy…and ohh what a ride it is!
Something you may find interesting is that 99% of our worries never come true, and the ones that did manifest were karmically unavoidable. They say worrying is praying for what you don’t want, and basically its just negative thinking about the future. The worrying habit is often the hardest habit to overcome, yet can be easily transcended once the mind stops believing that holding onto these vital concerns are key ingredients to maintaining a successful life. Once you are conscious in each moment that each one of your thoughts manifest into your life, you can only think positively about yourself, the future, and you start to feel like a living breathing success! As you realize how this habit is merely an unconscious addiction that keeps you powerless and irresponsible for your divine manifesting power within, you will completely release this pattern of suffering and try ou t something new.
Step #3 Release your Attachment to Being Happy. You may not realize how much suffering is created by being attached to having to always be happy, and doing things that make you happy. What would happen if no action, event, person, or thing in your outer world created happiness for you anymore? Where would you find happiness? The key to finding real joy is never in anything “out there”, especially all your ideas about how your life should unfold. The greatest secret to finding happiness is diving into your inner world and finding total peace with the real YOU! When you are no longer attached to anything or anyone in the outer world making you happy, you take the reigns back on your life and can find pure joy inside your soul wherever you are.
One key element to unleashing the immense joy inside you is learning how to relax your body deeply and completely while maintaining present moment awareness. This means your body is relaxed, yet your mind is vigilantly alert and watching what is showing up without getting identified. Simply take a few minutes to stop doing those things you think will one day make you happy, and just practice relaxing your body completely. Try it! Rest fully into the very center of your heart, letting go into the very center of your being, and you’ll find total equanimity in your mind.
It is a law of nature that you cannot live in worry, negativity or fear when your body is physically at peace. When every tiny muscle is relaxed and completely still, every concern, fear, worry and negative thought will have disappeared from your mind. The mind and body behave as one unit, and when your body is at peace, you’ll instantly drop any attachment you have to how your life should be, or how your friends, family, work, money, and all those things which are “responsible” for making you happy.
The more you can master the experience of living in a relaxed body 24 hours a day, the more impossible it becomes to getting attached to anything in the outer world for making you happy. When you start to abide in this divine infinite realm of loving energy inside you, you’ll wonder why were you ever searching for it out there. The day you discover this profound inner peace in the most stressful, boring or ordinary situations in your life, you’ll become a HUGE ball of peace, love, joy and bliss!
Step #4 Let Go of The Mind’s Perpetual Efforting. When you have completely stopped making any effort to resist negative thinking, and released that unending push towards positive thinking, that is the same day that bliss will find you. When you can sit back and watch the mind without being involved, eventually in time it will give up its perpetual struggle. By making the simple choice to back off from your inner “thinker” and step back, below or behind these thoughts, you become the overriding master of your mind.
It’s ironic, yet the bliss we are all seeking is first initiated through the mind’s imagination, yet is truly discovered when you let go of the mind completely. The lightest and highest feeling of bliss cannot be found through forming any one thought or belief with your mind. That would narrow and squeeze your mind’s experience of life even tighter (like caffeine does) and not allow these cosmic blissful sensations the room they need to enter. True bliss is only found through divine openness and receptivity. When you are 100% free from all the ridiculous efforting of the mind, having no attachments to any agenda it forms, no attachment to any desires or disposition, you will fall into a deeply relaxed and sweet heavenly trusting space with life and bliss will take over you.
There are moments in everyone’s life where we get a glimpse of this succulent, spacious, peaceful place inside our mind. Yet, you’ll notice that in this space the mind is no where to be found and you feel even more conscious, alive, aware, and awake. This is the experience of your very essence, your innermost nature… the soul that you are! The feeling is sooo pleasant that you don’t want to form any desire or agenda for that would create too much pain. This spacious place is where your real freedom abides. It allows you to be free of the mind moving backwards or forwards in time, because when you’re in bliss you have no fear, no worries or memories to deal with. When this grounded spaciousness finds you, you will be arriving in the beloved land of bliss. It is an experience that is meant for those who are ready and will ing to be touched by the Divine.
Step #5 Quiet your Mind and Completely Be Still. When you have fully emptied your inner container of plans, agendas, fears, worries, concerns, and positive thinking your brain may not know what to do with itself. It will most likely try to reform some random idea to hold onto to give it some stability. When your body is deeply relaxed and your mind is truly empty, make the golden pillar of your life total silence and stillness. When you reach the mountain peak of consciousness everything is divinely still. These profoundly quiet moments within instantly pave fresh new neuronal pathways in your brain for having many more blissed-out experiences of life.
To arrive at complete stillness, it takes outrageous courage. You must have vigilance with the mind, the strength to hold on to stillness when you cannot, and the trust to let go of the process all at the same time. By deeply trusting everything that shows up when you venture into the unknown empty zone of no-mind, this totally quiet and profound stillness will pour into you. The more time you spend in stillness, then bliss has to become your ordinary mode of operation. The first time it happens you may be able to handle it for a few minutes, yet with practice you’ll get better at it. When you can hang for a few hours in this cosmic space it will totally alter your life (and everybody else’s life that you know) forever in the most positive ways.
As you discover that your real work here on Earth is not “out there” yet finding the pathway to bliss within, all 5 of these steps will naturally unfold for you. The greatest experience of your lifetime is being filled with bliss all day and night long. Just open your mind to this possibility, follow the 5 steps above and you’ll soon find it start seeping in. .The experience of complete bliss is your soul’s destiny. Why make up some ridiculous reason that you don’t deserve it? You are a mixture of both human and divine, and so it is your divine right to own this joyous sensation. You’ll see, keep pondering over these 5 steps and you will disco ver total bliss sooner than later.
(Him: If you’d like to learn more from Mr. Ozwald, kindly visit his website at: www.enlightenedbeings.com. He has a series of free books, information and some good products for the average person to learn more from on the topic of happiness. Of course, I’d prefer to share all the best information I have for free whenever possible. Mr. Ozwald makes a living from his website, so naturally people would have to exchange money for some of the information he provides. Nonetheless, even though paying for it may not be most ideal, his information can make very good reminders on how we can live our lives better. Hope you’ll find them helpful.)
One moment you think you’re fine and feeling okay, the next moment something happens and all your mind & body’s energy is focused on it and you’re drained from morning to night trying to figure out how to do what’s right.
Anyone get what I’m talking about?
This is an article I’m writing to advise myself about what to do in the event the above happens. I hope as you read what will be written here, you’ll learn something valuable to benefit yourself too.
So recently, I’ve engaged myself with an insurance savings company.
As much as I’d like to think I’m free of attachments and can ease into the world comfortably, sometimes the world forces one to entertain its mirage of plays and makes one strive in order to achieve what he or she wants.
I realized that with all that we’ve learned in this world, we’ll still be bound to meet with the paradoxes of choice some time in our lives.
In my case, the paradox is whether to:
1.) Be a truly genuine & empathetic person even while going about doing sales, and
2.) Be an aggresive & goal-oriented salesman while going about doing sales.
Why can these two situations above cause a spear-shield situation (There’s a story about this man going about a marketplace. As he was coursing through the crowds, he saw a salesman holding a spear up high in the air exclaiming: “I have the best spear in the world, it can pierce through anything!” A moment later, he withdrawn a shield and proudly exclaimed: “I also have the best shield in the world, there’s nothing that can ever penetrate it!” Seeing this, the man walked over to the salesman and asked: “So if you use the spear that can pierce anything to strike the shield that nothing can penetrate through, what will happen?” That’s the spear-shield situation.)?
In #1, I can be who I am.
In #2, I should be who I should be.
I believe many people in the world today are facing with a similar problem.
The question is:
“What should we do in this kind of situation?”
I’m afraid I have no fully satisfactory answer to this question myself, other than these two words which have just arisen out of my mind, two words I’ve learned from the teachings of great philosophers & teachers which I believe can most closely gratify this situation today:
“Justbe.”
The above can be a very amazing reminder if we can fully appreciate its intended meaning through slow appreciation for each of its two words.
Their goal is to let one merge with the Process, instead of the events that either happened in the past or will happen in the future.
Their purpose is to allow you to be who you are, and be who you should be.
As many of the world’s most successful people have affirmed, their greatest feelings of success & achievements actually come from the process of their working through the highs and lows, after all.
In any given circumstance, sometimes we want to make choices that contribute towards the wellbeing of our lives.
Therefore, we may plan for the future, and base much of our plans to avoid possible pains or to pursue after satisfactory pleasure through our memories & experiences from the past.
However, most of the time a lot of different efforts are involved to execute our plans.
Some of those efforts involve doing things we don’t want to do, don’t like to do, or simply have no interest in doing, e.g. being pushy as a salesperson, asking for another’s money & etc.
So with these two words, we can remind ourselves to do what is most right when different situations arise, without letting the “Mind Chatter” in our brains drag us in the wrong way.
As we know, this “Mind Chatter” within our brains more often than not only causes us trouble & misfortune.
If we allow it to drag us with it, who knows what kinds of stupid things more of us will do.
The words “Just be” can bring our consciousness back from being wallowed in the shadow of thoughts and let one do more of the right things.
Whether your goal is to be genuine, to be fluent in the execution of an action or to be successful at accomplishing a goal, these two words can allow you to be fully versatile & moldable throughout every second of the minute to manifest your ideal more comfortably.
So with these lessons shared, it’s time to apply what we know in our daily lives.
After all, nothing happens unless we take that picture in our brain and paint it out on the outside world.
Below is an excerpt from Ezra Bayda’s new book, Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment:
The real question we need to ask ourselves is: why do we continue to follow behaviors that don’t bring us real happiness? The answer lies in the basic human condition: that is, we are born with the innate craving for safety, security, and control—this is an integral part of our survival mechanism. We are also born with an aversion to discomfort and a natural desire for comfort and pleasure. Given these basic human predispositions, it makes sense that our learned strategies of behavior are geared to ensure that our cravings and desires are met.
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with trying to be safe or comfortable. The problem begins when our survival mode takes over and becomes our main motivation. When that happens, our other natural urges—curiosity, appreciation, and living from our true openhearted nature—are pushed aside, and consequently, our lives become narrower and increasingly less satisfying. Paradoxically, we continue to believe that our survival-based control strategies will make us happy, so we keep on trying harder or seeking approval; yet these very behaviors often bring us the most dissatisfaction.
Opening our eyes to what we’re doing is not always easy. Our habits of behavior, like trying harder and seeking approval, can become so deeply conditioned that we can hardly see them. Even when our behaviors don’t make us happy, we often don’t notice because we so firmly believe that they will! One very effective way to cut through our usual blindness is to ask the following questions: “Am I truly happy right now?” and “What blocks happiness?” To reflect on these two questions only takes a few moments, and if you do it several times a day, over a period of time you will begin to observe, very specifically, all the behaviors that directly block genuine happiness.
Trying harder and seeking approval are two of the most widespread conditioned behaviors for achieving happiness.. Almost equally common are our many addictive behaviors, starting with our addictions to pleasure and diversions. In themselves, pleasure and diversions are fine, and they can certainly make us feel good. But whenever we have addictive behaviors—whether to food, alcohol, sex, or working out—we are driven by the compulsion to keep returning to whatever we’re addicted to, in the promise that it will continue to make us feel good.
Pursuing our addictive behaviors highlights the very essence of the human tendency to misunderstand happiness. We follow these seductive behaviors because they seem to promise us happiness. And to some degree, they fulfill their promise, in that we feel personally happy when we experience sensual pleasure or the hit of endorphins. But the fulfillment of that promise is always temporary, and it is always based on a temporarily benevolent external environment. As long as the environment doesn’t turn against us, we think our life is okay, and we don’t do anything to change the situation. Nor do we address the underlying unease out of which the addictive behaviors arise: why upset the applecart when things seem to be okay? Thus, we remain on the treadmill of personal happiness/unhappiness. When we don’t feel so good, we find a fix, and then we think we are happy again. The cycle goes on and on; meanwhile, genuine happiness eludes us.
We will continue to pursue the conditioned strategies of behavior that we hope will bring us happiness as long as we believe they are working. And because they sometimes do bring us some degree of personal happiness, these behaviors can get reinforced for a long time. That’s how people get caught on the treadmill of their attachments and routines for a lifetime without making any effort to change. Paradoxically, we’re actually fortunate if life occasionally serves us a big dose of disappointment, because it forces us to question whether our attachments and strategies really serve us. When we truly see that what we’ve been doing simply isn’t effective in bringing us genuine happiness, we may be motivated enough to take the next step.
Each of us has to examine where and how we get in our own way, observing all the ways we block fundamental happiness. Specifically, we need to look at all of our conditioned behaviors—our strategies of control and our addictive tendencies. We’ve spent our whole life believing these things would give us happiness, when in fact if we look deeply, they’ve done just the opposite. But until we see this clearly—until we’ve seen the many things we do to get in our own way—we won’t be motivated to go beyond our small measures of personal happiness, toward cultivating the roots of true contentment.
From ‘Consciousness and the Absolute’ by Nisargadatta Maharaj:
People identify me with their concepts and they do what their concepts tell them. It is consciousness which is manifest, nothing else. Who is talking, who is walking, who is sitting? These are the expressions of that chemical “I Am”. Are you that chemical? You talk about heaven and hell, this Mahatma or that one, but how about you? Who are you? In meditation, one sees a lot of visions. They are in the chemical, the realm of your consciousness, are they not? All these things are connected only to that birth-chemical. You are not this chemical “I Am”.
All these activities go on, but they are only entertainment. The waking and deep sleep states come and go spontaneously. Through the sense of “I”, you spontaneously feel like working. But find out if this sense of “I” is real or unreal, permanent or impermanent.
The Ultimate state in spirituality is that state where no needs are felt at any time, where nothing is useful for anything. That state is called Nirvana, Nirguna, that which is the Eternal and Ultimate Truth. The essence and sum total of this whole talk is called Sat-guru Parabrahman, that state in which there are no requirements.
Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go of everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the final step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. It is like deep sleep – you do not give up your bed when you fall asleep – you just forget it.
The essence of the body is the essence of the foodstuff, and this consciousness lies dormant in it from the very beginning. In that state of consciousness is the entire universe. Having seen this, whoever has understood is bound to be quiet, knowing that this is only a transient happening. An enormous structure of concepts being taught to us as knowledge is based on the simple appearance of consciousness.
Recite the sacred name, that is all right, but the important thing is to recognize and understand what is the presiding principle by which you know you are and by which you perceive everything else. You must look at yourself, get to know yourself. The riddle of spirituality cannot be solved by your intellect. At the most, your intellect can provide you with livelihood.
Any thought that you have reached or are going to reach that state is false. Whatever happens in consciousness is purely imaginary, an hallucination; therefore, keep in mind the knowledge that it is consciousness in which everything is happening. With that knowledge, be still, do not pursue any other thoughts which arise in consciousness. What is necessary is to understand with sure conviction is that all is temporary, and does not reflect your true state.
You are afraid because you have assumed something as ‘I am’, which actually you are not. Suppose you find a diamond ring on the road and you pocket it. Since it is not yours, a fear overcomes you. When you put on an identity that is not yours, you are afraid. When you are the pure ‘I amness’ only, there is no fear. Presently you are this ‘I am’, but this ‘I am’ is not the truth. Whatever you are prior to the appearance of ‘I am’, that is your real nature.
(Him: Here’s a reply I’ve given to someone who mentioned that after learning to be in the Now, the present moment, of being nondual, he finds it hard to get things done. As in, because he is so present, his mind isn’t focused when doing something like studying because he isn’t motivated by a future reason. He felt as if time has lost its meaning, so he isn’t making the best use of it. He then proceeded to ask whether there’s any way he can feel ‘separate’ from the now again, to have a body and mind and time. This is understandable, because famous books on the “Now” subject e.g. Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle sometimes indicate that these disappear when one is emerged fully in the present moment. Of course, no one is ever wrong in these kinds of circumstances. Because the one who’s really wrong is the context. Different contexts lead to different purposes and endings. And through my reply below, I try to answer his question as straight as my heart feels is right.)
Let go…
The fullest let go is nonduality isn’t it.
In that state you neither not do or do, but follow life.
For me, the only benefit of understanding nonduality in its fullest just lets me know that I’m supposed to embrace more of life.
This means, not avoiding truth, not ignoring truth, or not preventing ourselves from being happy and at peace.
When someone holds the thought “now, now, now” all the time, one’s being attached to something, as it is the same with being attached to fame, glory, money, etc.
Rather, we live genuinely, with heart, with care, to honor our parents, and to keep our family harmonious.
Note that family here, doesn’t just apply to our blood related bonds, or close friends.
But everyone out there.
To see a cleaner, and to smile at her. To thank a maid. To do what you’ve always thought is nice to do but was shy to do it.
Making nonduality another spiritual teaching is like subscribing to a new TV channel.
But life doesn’t just happen inside the TV.
It happens out and about it.
It happens all the time, everywhere.
As the Shaolin teaching goes, “Follow fate your whole life”.
This is without making fate another concept to grasp, but an advice to give yourself when you need to remind yourself of not attaching yourself to something, and instead choose to always let go and be forgiving in times of pleasure or disappointment.
As another Chinese saying goes, “When a family is harmonious, everything one does prospers.” You see, this quote doesn’t flower when it is just made to be an advice to heed, but when it is made a devotion, a devotion to honor our parents with utmost gratitude, and to treat others as though they’re part of the family – because when your family (your heart) isn’t harmonious, many things you do will usually fail. When the above is practiced well, one will realize that his/her own actions tend to give more happiness to him/herself.
And as strange as it seems, life will tend to get better as well – yes, even in the material sense of the word.
One’s life won’t necessarily prosper after studying nonduality. Rather, the main purpose of the teaching is to allow one to see life through a more real, more full, more genuine perception of the world. As a result of this seeing, one can then improve him or herself through practical reasons, and become better people.
Trying not to become a person may be another attachment.
For me, being in the now just means this, and this only -
Being appreciative.
When we can appreciate something to the fullest, anything we appreciate can be looked at as God, or the movement of God.
The funny thing is most of us in the world just don’t choose to appreciate everything, and so that amazing something/feeling subsides from everything.
Harmonious family, appreciation, being a good person.
I think putting our minds on those three things are better than grasping on an idea that leads nowhere – a direction it didn’t mean to point you to in the first place.
It is never our experience that witnessing awareness is not present. Therefore it is never our direct experience that witnessing awareness comes into existence based on a causal process. The process itself must appear in witnessing awareness, which was there “first.” Awareness is always and already.
There is no contradiction between nonduality and neuroscience. Neuroscience measures a subtle object. This subtle object is a kind of sentience, a local reactivity associated with a biological organism. This sentience is an arising in the witnessing awareness that is your true nature, your direct experience, infinite sweetness and unconditional love.
Nonduality and neuroscience – you can think of them as different songs.
This part on the brain is taken from a large section dealing with the body. The body is not often dealt with in nondual teachings, writings and gatherings. But it is just as much a part of experience as emotions, thoughts and feelings!
Actually, your direct experience can show you directly, in the here-and-now, that:
The “body” is not a physical object.
The “body” is not a separate object endowed with a separate sentience.
The “body” is not a container of awareness.
Rather, the body, like the world, is awareness itself.
That is, in direct experience you can discover that the “body” is actually the body of love and the world of light: pure clarity and unconditional openness. The body is actually the world – there is no difference to be found. It is the global world of experience in which there is no inside/outside, no here/there, no separation and no suffering.
But what about the brain? Many credible scientists say that awareness is a produce of brain chemistry. What about that??
…the pinkish gray meat between our ears produces the richness of experiential awareness. — Science and Nonduality Conference website
In college I dissected brains. As an undergrad student, I was a physiological psychology major. Many people, even folks attracted to nondualism, think that the brain is what gives rise to awareness. But is that our direct experience? –Greg
There is no contradiction between nonduality and neuroscience. Neuroscience measures a subtle object. This subtle object is a kind of sentience, a local reactivity associated with a biological organism. This sentience is an arising in the witnessing awareness that is your true nature, your direct experience, infinite sweetness and unconditional love. –Greg
The World
When looked at very closely, physical objects are not to be found. They melt directly into awareness. Your direct experience of a physical object is nothing more than colors, sounds, textures, sensations of hardness, softness, moistness or dryness. Each of these sensations is inseparable from its exclusive sensory modality. In other words,
colors are inseparable from vision,
sounds are inseparable from hearing
sensations of texture, hardness, softness, moisture or dryness are inseparable from touch
flavors are inseparable from taste
fragrances are inseparable from smell
Even in imagination, “sense objects” cannot appear apart from “sense faculties.” This is shocking if it is “grokked.” For example, if it is deeply understood how a color can never be experienced separately from seeing, then it simply makes no sense to believe that you can “see a color.” Colors aren’t objects hanging around outside awareness, waiting to be seen. Rather, the arising of color is what we mean by “seeing.” The way we ordinarily speak of seeing in the everyday sense, we allow that an object is present whether currently seen or not. In the everyday sense, if your cat runs out of the bedroom, you think of the cat as existing, but momentarily unseen. The cat can be seen, and it can be unseen. When it is unseen, it is simply “somewhere else.”
But of course in our direct experience of color, an unseen color is never experienced. The absence of a color is never experienced. If a color is not something experienced as absent, then it can’t be the kind of thing that is experienced to be present. A color, like any other “arising,” is not the kind of thing that can alternate between being present and absent. You can’t have a one-sided coin. If you can’t have one side of a pair of opposites, then you can’t have the other side either. So neither “present” nor “absent” applies to an arising.
This is our direct experience “of the world.” Neither present nor absent, but experienced as awareness itself.
[Below is an excerpt from the book "The Case of the Haunted Husband, A Perry Mason Mystery".]
By Earl Stanley Gardner
Mrs. Greeley, garbed in black and carrying a light suitcase, stood in the corridor.
“Come in,” Mason invited, reaching out and taking the suitcase; and when she had entered the office and he had closed the door, he went on, “Sit down, Mrs. Greely. I’m sorry we had to intrude on your dinner.”
“Oh, it’s all right. To be perfectly frank, Mr. Mason, I don’t suppose I should go out so soon, but I feel a lot better doing that than I would sitting home and doing nothing. It’s a frightfully all-gone feeling.”
“I understand.”
“I guess people never realize how much they take for granted in life,” she said with a little laugh. “Here it was only last week I was fussing because my husband had to work so much at night, and now… and now… Oh, well, I’ll get to feeling sorry for myself if I keep on. Wish I could get something to work on – something to sink my teeth into.
“Death is so horribly final, Mr. Mason. I – I’ve never been touched closely by death before. Somehow, it shakes my faith in… things… And no one’s been able to say anything that helps. Death is … it’s cruel, it’s terrible.”
“It’s no more terrible than birth,” Mason said. “We can’t understand it any more than we can understand life – or the sky at night. If we only had the vision to see the whole pattern of life, we’d see death as something benign.”
She stared up at him. “Please go on. If you can only say something practical and sensible. I’ve heard so much hypocritical ‘all-for-the-best’ business that I’m sick and tired of it. How can it be for the best? Bosh!”
Mason said, “Suppose you couldn’t remember anything from one day to the next. You’d get up in the morning without any recollection of yesterday. You’d feel full of energy. Dew would be on the grass. The sun would be shining bright and warm. Birds would be singing, and you’d feel that nature was a wonderful thing. Then the sun would rise higher in the heavens. You’d begin to get a little fatigued.
“Along about noon you’d be tired, then clouds would blot out the sun. There’d be a thunder squall, and the heavens which had once been so friendly would be menacing. You’d see water falling out of the sky, and would wonder if you were going to be totally submerged. You’d see spurts of lightning tearing the sky apart. You’d hear roaring thunder. You’d be in terror.
“Then the clouds would drift away. The sun woud come out again. The air would be pure and sparkling. You’d regain your confidence. Then you’d notice that the shadows were lenghthening. The sun would disappear. There’d be darkness. You’d huddle around a light waiting to see what would happen next. You’d feel weary, more than a little frightened. You’d think that nature, which had started out to be so beautiful, had betrayed you. You’d fight hard to keep your faith, and it would be a losing battle.
“The love ones who were sitting around the fire with you would show signs of fatigue. Their heads would nod forward. They’d lie down. Their eyes would close, and suddenly their personalities would be gone. Then you yourself would want to lie down, and yet you’d feel that as soon as you did, this awful unconsciousness would come over you…”
Mason broke off, smiled and said, “My words don’t carry conviction because you do know all of these symptoms as a part of life. You know that this unconsciousness is only sleep. You know that in the course of a few short hours, you’ll wake up completely refreshed, that the dawn will be breaking, that the sun will be coming up,the birds singing. You know that the awful visitation of noise and flashes was only a thunder shower, part of nature’s scheme to bring water from the ocean up into the mountains, to feed the streams and the rivers, to make the crops green. You’d realize that sleep is nature’s means of strengthening you for a new day, that it’s profitless to try to prolong the waking activities too far into the night, that nature is co-operating with you. But suppose you didn’t understand these things? Suppose you could see only from day to day?”
She nodded slowly. After a moment, she heaved a deep sigh.
Mason said, “Life is like that. We can only see from birth to death. The rest of it is cut off from our vision.”
Drake stared up at Mason. “I’ll be doggoned,” he said.
“What’s the matter, Paul?”
“I never knew you were a mystic.”
“I’m not a mystic,” Mason said, smiling. “It’s simply the applications of what you might call legal logic to the scheme of existence, and I don’t ordinarily talk that way. I’m doing it now because I think Mrs. Greeley needs it.”
Mrs. Greeley said with feeling, “Mr. Mason, I can’t begin to tell you how much better you have made me feel. Your words carry conviction. I… I guess I’m getting my faith back.”
Mason said, “I don’t think you’d ever lost it, Mrs. Greeley. Now this is going to be disagreeable. Do you want to get it over with as quickly as possible?”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I… Oh, Mr. Mason, I can’t tell you how much you’ve comforted me. After all, death is only a sleep. It has to be. I’m ashamed of myself, Mr. Mason. I was doubting the whole scheme of things. I was… Is this someone coming?”
“Should be Lieutenant Tragg,” Mason said. “You know him.”
(Him: Fiction books sometime carry with them some of the most philosophically or logically inspiring statements. And most of the time, they aren’t inspiring unless they somehow convey the truth. Earl Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Haunted Husband in this case, perhaps exhibited some of the Earl’s observations about life. Since it’s fiction, authors are also free to express words they usually can’t. If you’d to learn about another fiction with a similar nature and haven’t read this book called “Tuesdays with Morrie”, please do kindly get it on Amazon as well – I believe you’ll be pleased with it.)
The real search isn’t a search into tomorrow, or to anywhere other than now. It’s starting to look into the very nature of this moment. In order to do that, you have to “stand in your own two shoes,” as my teacher used to say. What she meant by “standing in your own two shoes” is you have to look clearly into your own experience. Stop trying to have someone else’s experience. Stop chasing freedom or happiness, or even spiritual enlightenment. Stand in your own shoes, and examine closely: What’s happening right here and right now? Is it possible to let go of trying to make anything happen? Even in this moment, there may be some suffering, there may be some unhappiness, but even if there is, is it possible to no longer push against it, to try to get rid of it, to try to get somewhere else?
I understand that our instinct is to move away from what’s not comfortable, to try to get somewhere better, but as my teacher used to say, “You need to take the backward step, not the forward step.” The forward step is always moving ahead, always trying to attain what you want, whether it’s a material possession or inner peace. The forward step is very familiar: seeking and more seeking, striving and more striving, always looking for peace, always looking for happiness, looking for love. To take the backward step means to just turn around, reverse the whole process of looking for satisfaction on the outside, and look at precisely the place where you are standing. See if what you are looking for isn’t already present in your experience.
So, again, to lay the groundwork for awakening, we must first let go of struggling. You let go by acknowledging that the end of struggle is actually present in your experience now. The end of struggle is peace. Even if your ego is struggling, even if you’re trying to figure this out and “do it right,” if you really look, you might just see that struggle is happening within a greater context of peace, within an inner stillness. But if you try to make stillness happen, you’ll miss it. If you try to make peace happen, you’ll miss it. This is more like a process of recognition, giving recognition to a stillness that is naturally present.
We’re not bringing struggle to an end. We’re not trying to not struggle anymore. We’re just noticing that there is a whole other dimension to consciousness that, in this very moment, isn’t struggling, isn’t resentful, isn’t trying to get somewhere. You can literally feel it in your body. You can’t think your way to not struggling. There isn’t a three-point plan of how not to struggle. It’s really a one-point plan: Notice that the peace, this end of struggling, is actually already present.
The process is therefore one of recognition. We recognize that there is peace now, even if your mind is confused. You may see that even when you touch upon peace now, the mind is so conditioned to move away from it that it will try to argue with the basic fact of peace’s existence within you: “I can’t be at peace yet because I have to do this, or that, or this question hasn’t been answered, or that question hasn’t been answered, or so-and-so hasn’t apologized to me.” There are all sorts of ways that the egoic mind can insist that something needs to happen, something needs to change, in order for you to be at peace. But this is part of the dream of the mind. We’re all taught that something needs to change for us to experience true peace and freedom.
Just imagine for a moment that this isn’t true. Even though you may believe that it’s true, just imagine for a moment: What would it be like if you didn’t need to struggle, if you didn’t need to make an effort to find peace and happiness? What would that feel like now? And just take a moment to be quiet and see if peace or stillness is with you in this moment.
- Adyashanti, from Falling Into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering
(Him: Recently, I’ve been more and more at peace with life. Strangely, I would say the same a year ago, and mean entirely different things. Today, it’s more like being able to be so present, that I can discern thoughts, feelings and emotions from a foundation of stillness and still let them play their roles as they need to.
On the other hand, as this article describes, I also constantly stand back instead of moving forward. On the material world, I am indeed moving forward. But all actions are done more from a presence that reminds itself of equality, what matters to me personally and philosophically, and what makes me at peace (it’s a subtle passion which runs the train from behind the scenes). And these reminders don’t happen in such a way that my mind is clogged with it. It’s an understanding, and this understanding just sweeps away things in the face of the really important things in life.
Pain gives us valuable lessons. The challenge is to understand what these lessons are, and heed them on a neutral basis. From there, we learn more and more. Today, I live to be humble and to serve. You see, there is no one particular way to live. There is only a present moment which asks us whether we’re up to serve what’s around us, to appreciate what’s around us, or to love whoever is around us. From there, just sometimes, maybe letting the mind play itself some dramatic or beautiful motion picture for a little while, is fine. It’s entertaining in its own right.)
“One day at a time – this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone: and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.” – Ida Scott Taylor, 1820-1915, Author.
I am wrong about everything when I am in my head. My head has been on so many trips it flies Medallion Class, but that’s another story. Once it got stranded at the Munich airport for three days and lived on head cheese, which luckily is available there. Another time I took a head trip to a famous guru who also lived in his head. He thought he was enlightened and so did his students. We all sat around and sang “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” but turns out he was lacking a heart as well. One by one the students caught on and became entangled in yet another head trip.
That leads me to yet another conclusion. We are all wrong about everything when we are in our heads. The head is no place to live; there’s just not enough room in there. We have all heard the phrase that some place had no head room; well, the head has no heart room, which is even worse. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” He thought he was A Head of His Time, but we all know better. It should read, “I think, therefore, I am wrong.” For head trips are extraneous; no one need make them.
It is healthy to be wrong; try it sometime. You don’t have to wait until you get a ticket for following too close, which happened to a zealous spiritual student I know. His guru slapped with him a ticket and made him stay ten feet behind him at all times. He said he didn’t have ten feet, so his guru reduced the sentence to two feet. (I am writing this, so I can take ridiculous liberty with the law. By the way, the Law of One states that there is no duality, so be advised. You can’t really stand on your own two feet, much less stay ten feet behind anyone.) Someone is writing this and someone is reading it, which already confuses the heck out of me. Who is my audience and why are they reading this drivel. One of us is clearly wrong. As the Everly Brothers sing, “Let It Be Me.”
I love being wrong; it makes no sense, which proves that I am out of my mind and therefore not in my head. (I am inventing theorems as I go along.) People that make sense are up to no good. The Talking Heads made a movie called Stop Making Sense. I may make Look Who’s Talking III, about how no one has it right. The love of being wrong should be taught in every womb before the fetus even emerges. That way, we could start our lives with one big cleansing apology. Our parents would forgive us. Our mothers for giving them stretch marks; our fathers for depleting their bank accounts.
I just have one more thing to say. Being wrong is the new right.
(Him: I fully endorse Vicki Woodyard’s teachings. Why? Because her life was surrounded by cancer, by enough pain. Her daughter died of cancer, and her husband as well. She had to endure countless pains in order to learn what she knows today. As I believe, “Pain enlightens one”. It makes people mature. It makes one wiser than the rest of the world when it comes to the subject of peace and happiness. If you’d like to learn more from Vicki, please kindly visit: http://www.nondualitynow.com. Thanks.)
Look around you; there is only one reality. The reason that you are here, wherever here is for you, is because it is the only place that you can be right now. But even though reality is right here, and even though there is quite literally nothing but reality, it is very possible for you to miss it altogether. By miss it I mean to imagine that reality is something or somewhere other than here. As strange as it may sound it is very possible, even probable, that even though you have eyes to see, you do not see. And even though you have ears to hear, you do not hear. What you see and hear is not exactly what is actually here, but what you imagine is here.
Our imagination is a very powerful force in determining what we perceive. If we imagine that the world is teeming with evil forces, we will surely perceive the world as evil. But if we imagine the world to be essentially good, we will perceive it as good. Either way it is the same world that we are looking at. But the world is neither good nor bad in and of itself; it is simply what it is. And if we see the world as either good or bad, we will not be able to see it as it actually is. We will only be able to see it as we imagine it to be.
Now take this idea and apply it to everything and everyone in your life. Try it for a moment, or an hour, or a day. And if you do, you may begin to notice that the world you imagine to exist does not exist at all. This may cause you some fear, or possibly the thrill of discovery, but either way the important thing is to get some distance from the habitual way the mind contorts and creates perception.
But even though our mind imagines the world and everything in it to be other than the way it actually is, the reality of existence remains eternally untouched by our misperception of it. This is both relatively good and bad. It is good in that existence is eternally what it is. We need not worry about reality becoming something other than reality. But it is bad in the sense that the world we imagine to exist is always colliding with the world as it actually is. This collision is the cause of immense human suffering and conflict.
So we are trapped within our illusions and misperceptions. And the greatest illusion of all is to believe that we are not trapped. But even when we realize that we are confined within a prison of our own making, we are trapped because all the ways we struggle to get out of our illusions are illusions themselves. So, yes, we are trapped, and helpless to boot.
But there is a very strange thing that can occur at exactly the point where you realize that there is no escaping the imaginary world of your illusions. You bare your heart open to illusion, surrender your eternal struggle against it, and admit to being bound by its cunning imagination. I don’t mean that you become despondent or resigned to your fate. I mean that you truly let go in the face of your utter defeat and stop struggling.
And when all the struggle ceases, we realize that the prison of our mind cannot hold us in anymore, because the prison was all along something we imagined into existence. And imagined things aren’t real, they don’t exist. But we could never really see this as long as we were fighting the phantoms of our minds. We needed the one thing that our imaginary minds could not bring about, could not fake or create: the genuine surrender of all struggle.
In the blink of an eye, we are no longer confined within illusion nor our attempt to avoid illusion. When all struggle ceases, there is nothing to bind us to a distorted perception of existence and we can finally see. What we see is that we do not simply exist within existence, but all of existence exists within us as well. And although everywhere we look we see the endless diversity of life, we also now see our own true face in everything under the sun.
- Adyashanti
(Him: Adyashanti has a strength, and that is he doesn’t hold back from saying what people may not want to hear. Because he’s willing to include the downsides in his teachings, people are able to embrace the truth and try to rise above it themselves. Of course, some people may not like what he said. But truth isn’t something that everyone likes to hear. For those who seeks truth however, it is every bit as valuable as diamond. To learn more from Adyashanti, you can visit: http://www.adyashanti.org)
Many of us who are attracted to nonduality messages can’t explain why we became interested in the first place. We may be fed up with certain aspects of life, or have a nagging realization that our models of reality are not valid and will never lead to peace and harmony. Some are introduced to nonduality after they have gone through a specific crisis that opened them up to new possibilities.
At the beginning of our exposure to nonduality, what we read and hear might sound like lunacy. So much of what we took to be real is now being questioned. As the investigation unfolds, our beliefs are being demolished, and we are thrown into “not knowing.” All of our apparent foundations are crumbling, making room for a new way of seeing.
The wild thing about nonduality is that amidst the chaos that arises initially, there is something in us that knows we are being introduced to the truth about ourselves. This doesn’t always happen until there is some openness to investigate our true nature. It seems possible to “bail out” of nonduality teachings if you are not open and willing to investigate. But once you even start to engage in an honest inquiry, you wind up being hooked.
Once hooked, there are signs along the way to keep our attention on the nonduality messages, and that allow us to continue even when confusion and discomfort arises.
For me, one of the most important early signs came from reading books by Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle. I was led somehow to pick up the book, Loving What Is (Three Rivers Press) by Byron Katie (often referred to as “Katie”). Katie, while in her mid-40s, was in a dark, deep depression and full of rage. She checked into a halfway house for women.
One morning, she had been sleeping on the floor and woke up without any concept of who she was. She said “there was no me.” All was well — depression gone, rage gone. Something else was looking through her eyes but it was all joy and peace.
In an instant, and through no effort on her part, the individual identity had spontaneously combusted. She no longer saw herself as a body/mind, but rather as the Awareness or Consciousness in which this body/mind Katie was appearing. She has remained with that peace and joy for more than 20 years, and shares her insights through books and by conducting workshops around the world.
Then I was drawn to re-read Eckart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now (New World Library). I read the book when it first came out about ten years ago, but it didn’t mean much to me. I did the usual underlining throughout, but I wasn’t ready to hear what he was saying.
About three years ago, when I picked up the book again, I was open to receive his message. In the Introduction, Tolle talks about a period in his life in his late 20s when he was suicidally depressed. One day he woke up early in the morning and felt intense dread and lost all desire to continue living.
He experienced intense fear and then it passed. He then found himself in a state of peace and bliss and the sense of personal identification had vanished. As he describes it, “what was left then was my true nature as the ever present I AM: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form.”
Another spontaneous combustion of the personal identity! And here again, the individual, having lost the sense of personal identity came to a realization that what he or she is….is the Consciousness or Awareness in which all objects are appearing.
This was my reaction: This is so preposterous it has to be true.
Nobody could make up a story like this. “I was just minding my own business (or suffering or whatever) and I woke up to the fact that what I am is not the personal body/mind — but rather an impersonal, intangible, field of Awareness which is peace and joy.”
This is so preposterous, I thought, that it has to be true.
What is even more startling is that Katie and Eckhart claim that they had no spiritual teachers and didn’t read spiritual books. It’s not that they had been reading and studying about nonduality, Zen or eastern religious traditions. There were no apparent reference points in their conditioning to explain this incredible, sudden shift in their perspective.
Who could make up a story like this? And now I had read TWO of them. Simply preposterous.
Now, I could see someone claiming to be the second coming of Jesus. In fact, I have seen several people claiming this on the streets of New York City. These deluded people have a reference point for such a story. They have read or know about the Bible and are familiar with some of the beliefs of Christianity. They have some tools from which to concoct their story.
But how does someone with no background in nonduality come up with a story where the personal ego vanishes and there is a realization of the true nature as Awareness itself? I know I’m repeating myself, but it is truly mind boggling.
It is so preposterous…..it has to be true.
After reading the accounts of Katie and Eckhart, I went on the internet and found several more accounts (including interviews) with people who had this same experience. One moment the personal identity was there — the next moment it had vanished. Most of the accounts I saw were from people who were not spiritual seekers and who had little or no exposure to anything resembling nonduality.
In most of these cases, the belief in the personal identity returned for some period of time. However, eventually, these people settled into a realization that their true nature is Awareness and not the personality or ego.
I also want to make it clear that those who have these realizations do not deny or run away from the personal identity. If you call these people by name, they will answer you. Their lives go on much like before; it’s just that they realize their true position or essence is not the body/mind but rather the Awareness in which this amazing play is unfolding.
Of course, most people who are drawn to nonduality don’t have a spontaneous combustion of the personal identity at the outset. The Katie and Eckhart instances are probably one in a billion, or close to that. I wouldn’t recommend waiting for a spontaneous combustion of your ego.
On the contrary, most people who find themselves exposed to nondual teachings go through what appears to be a process, with a roller coaster of openings and insights, mixed with lots of frustration and confusion along the way. In the relative play of existence, it often takes years for the nondual realization to mature.
When I first read the accounts of Katie and Eckhart, what they said sounded preposterous. Now what they said seems entirely natural and resonates as truth, even though I haven’t fully realized what they have come to see so clearly.
What now seems preposterous are the beliefs I held before about being a separate individual running around in a world of separate objects.
(To learn more about Jeff Keller, you can visit: http://www.welcometononduality.blogspot.com/)
Saturday, 27 November 2010 21:58 Written by Nirmala
Someone emailed me describing their long lasting struggle to come to terms with their suffering. They finally asked, “I want to let go. But how when all the how’s are useless?!!”
Here is my reply:
Suffering is simply the effort to change, fix or keep our experience. And this is suffering since it creates a gap between what is and what we are paying attention to. Our attention, or really our love, is flowing to an idea in our mind about what should be happening instead of what is happening. And this gap can be very uncomfortable. In fact it is the source of all of our discomfort and pain. Sensation by itself is not painful. It is only when we think about or tell a story about how we want to change, fix or keep the sensation that it becomes painful.
However, there is a great momentum to our thinking and story-telling so there is a great momentum to our suffering. It is the mother of all habits. And so even though it is so painful, the tendency to strive to change, fix or keep our experience can continue to arise in both obvious and subtle ways. This is simply the nature of habits, they tend to continue.
Now here is a dilemma: anything we do to change our suffering is just more suffering. It is one more attempt to change or fix our experience. The antidote to suffering is not more suffering. The antidote to suffering is to see the underlying truth of suffering. In this way the end of suffering is quite similar to the realization of our true nature. They are both simply a matter of seeing what is true more clearly and completely. They are never the result of something we do, they are simply the result of something we recognize.
Recognizing something is not something we really do. It is more like something that happens within us. When you look at a photo in the newspaper and suddenly recognize your friend in the picture, it is not something you do. You don’t decide to recognize the person in the picture and then go about making that happen. The recognition just happens within you. It is a potential you already have since you already know what your friend looks like, and that knowledge is simply triggered by the photograph.
So what is it we need to recognize about suffering? The thing we need to recognize about suffering is that there is no such thing! Suffering is just an idea or thought, and there is not really anything happening that this thought refers to. Suffering ends when we see that there is not any “thing” called suffering and there never has been.
All of our effort to change, fix or keep our experience has been an imaginary effort to change, fix or keep our experience. It has all been something we imagined doing. This is because it is always too late to actually change, fix or keep our experience. By the time we decide to change or fix our experience, it has already happened. And by the time we decide to keep our experience, it has already changed. So the only thing we can really do is think about how we would change, fix or keep our experience. We never really get around to changing the experience we are already having.
But wait a minute, what about all of the things you do that do appear to change, fix or keep your experience? Here is the thing: when we actually get up and do something to change what is happening, that becomes our experience. And so in that moment there really is no suffering in the doing. It is just what is happening. In fact, often when we actually get busy doing something our imaginary suffering subsides since we are not usually imagining trying to not do something when we are busy doing it.
So it turns out that there is no reason to stop doing anything you already are doing to improve or manage your life. The doing itself is not the problem. The problem is imagining that what you are doing is going to make things better. The problem is imagining that your doing is going to change, fix or keep your experience. Experience always is changing whether you are doing something or not.
Suffering does not come from our experience, and so a change in our experience never affects our suffering except temporarily. It only relieves our suffering until we imagine doing something else. The trick is in seeing this so clearly that it no longer matters whether you are doing or not doing. This place where it does not matter if you are doing something or not is free of suffering, since what is happening is simply….what is happening, and that always includes anything you are doing or not doing. And ultimately, it has never mattered to our experience of suffering what we do or what we do not do. That is all just the natural movement of life and Being.
Here is where it gets very strange: even our suffering has always just been the natural movement of life and Being. Imagination is just what minds do. When you see the true nature of suffering – that it is just imagination – then there is no reason to even change that. The deepest healing is when we see that there is nothing here that needs healing. Suffering is like that. There is nothing wrong with suffering because it has never been real. It only exists within our imagination, and there is nothing wrong with imagination.
And paradoxically, when it is profoundly recognized that there is no problem with suffering, the tendency to suffer can subside. This happens when we realize that suffering does not matter in the same way that we realize that a small cloud moving across the sky does not matter. Again it is not something we really do, it is simply a recognition of what is so. And yet we can know this truth in a way that is not purely intellectual, but in a way that has sunk into our very bones. You can know that suffering does not matter in the same way that you know that a hot flame can burn your hand. You do not have to think about it, you just know and pull your hand back.
When we know with this same degree of fundamental conviction that what we imagine does not matter, and how we suffer does not matter, then there is a natural tendency for the habit of suffering to fall away by itself. When we deeply recognize the nature of something, we naturally respond to it in the most appropriate way.
There is a story about a family who always cut the ends off of a ham before cooking it. One day the daughter asked her mother why they did that. The mother said, I don’t know, we just always did it that way. So they went and asked the grandmother, and she also said she did not know why but that was always the way they did it. Finally they asked the great grandmother and she explained that the oven she used for most of her life was very small and so to be able to fit the large hams that they got from the butcher in those days into her oven, she had to cut off the ends. After that no one in the family ever cut off the end of a ham before cooking it. Once you see that suffering does not matter, the habit can naturally fall away.
Suffering is like a mirage in the desert. When we actually get up close to it, we see that it does not really exist in the way we imagined. There is nothing we need to change about it or fix. And yet in seeing this, the tendency to spend a lot of time imagining ways to change, fix or keep our experience can simply fall away. It is not as interesting when you see it is purely imagination. After all, what good is an imaginary car? And what harm is an imaginary tiger? Imagination has such a limited reality, that there can simply be less interest in it after a while. Again, this is not something you do, it is just something that happens within you when you recognize the nature of your imagining.
What about right now? What is your imagination doing or not doing? How real is your suffering? Can you actually find it except in your mind? This mother of all habits is just a habit of thought. It can’t really harm you.
Hindu cosmology will be used in this article below, but no belief system is necessary to undertake the investigation.
This article discusses purpose and meaning, showing how identifying with our deeper level of pure awareness leads to enjoying life to the maximum.
In this article I shall discuss Hindu cosmology and its divine ‘plan’, although ‘play’ would be more appropriate. I shall then consider whether this makes life meaningful. I will attempt to show that when one engages totally in this ‘play’, life becomes so enjoyable and pleasurable that no other meaning or purpose is necessary. Finally, I shall consider some objections that could be raised for such a view and offer counters to them.
For me the most plausible divine plan/purpose rests in Hindu cosmology.
In this, Brahman (the totality of cosmic power, energy, consciousness or awareness) rests as a single point before the creation of the universe. Compare this to the ‘singularity’ which modern physics/astronomy posits existed before the ‘big bang’.
From Brahman is manifested the universe and he pervades it, or dwells in it as it. In the gospel of Ramakrishna we find: After the creation the primal power dwells in the universe itself.
In the Vedas creation is likened to the spider and its web. The spider brings the web out of itself and then remains in it. God is the container of the universe and also what is contained in it.
Brahman is considered to have two aspects, the male which is the witnessing/awareness aspect (consciousness at rest) and the female which is the aspect of creation, preservation and destruction (consciousness in motion).
This manifestation of the universe occurred, according to modern science, as the ‘big bang’. The universe ‘grows’ until it reaches a certain point and then recedes finally resting back in Brahman at a single point. Compare this to the expanding universe which, it is theorized, will eventually reach a limit and then start contracting until finally the ‘big crunch’ will reduce it back to a singularity.
This explains the cosmology, but what of plan or purpose?
According to the Hindus this is all the ‘play’ of Brahman in the female aspect called the ‘Divine Mother’.
The Divine Mother is always playful and sportive. The universe is her play. She wants to continue playing with her created beings. Her pleasure is in continuing the game.
Before we can consider whether this makes our lives as human beings meaningful, we have to consider what we really are. Are we just puppets who are being played with by some divine force, or manifestations of that force participating fully in the ‘play’? According to the Hindus Brahman is ‘the container of the universe and also what is contained in it’. Thus we are, in essence, also ‘That’ (Brahman) and able to participate fully in the ‘play’.
However, this is not possible whilst we consider ourselves as separate individual beings trying to make our way in an alien world. This is mainly because this stops us ‘being’ the present moment and engaging totally in the ‘play’. Consider the play of children who totally lose themselves in the game and thus participate fully with maximum enjoyment. As long as we consider ourselves to be a separate ego we are always trying to better ourselves, achieve more (knowledge, possessions, power, fame etc.), polish our self-image and generally build ourselves up. This tends to make us live in the future and stops us from living fully in the present moment. The other side of this coin is to live in regret as to what might have been, self-loathing, melancholy or yearning for the past. This also stops us from seeing ‘what is’ here and now, either by making us live in the past or by the mind spinning on our failures and lack of self-worth.
I realize that this goes against modern western thought which finds meaning in achievement/purpose rather than the sheer enjoyment of ‘what is’ at any given moment. Consider the following quotes from The Meaning of Life:
~ What counts is that one should be able to begin a new task, a new castle, a new bubble. (Richard Taylor)
~ In so far as I have carved out my being in the human world, I go on existing in the future. (Hazel Barnes)
I am not suggesting that having and achieving goals is not a source of great satisfaction, but it does not compare to the bliss evoked when one comes across a stunning sunset which is seen with a still mind, or when you are at a concert and you hear the music so deeply that you ‘become’ the music. This occurs when you totally ‘lose yourself’ in the manifestation.
The point here is that the world is a wonderful place when seen ‘as it is’ with a still mind and no reference to a separate individual seer. In other words when it is seen in its actual reality and not through the narrow filter of the minds’ likes/dislikes, judgements and opinions. I can offer no proof of this apart from the fact that it is my experience and has also been pointed to by many mystics, past and present. This can, in fact, only be known through experience and not through reason and the intellect.
Why should this be the case? Our deeper level of pure awareness, an aspect of Brahman, is who we ‘are’ at a deeper level than mind/body. Our mind/bodies are the instruments with which It (as we) senses and ‘plays in’ Its creation. Thus when you filter any sensation through the mind you are ‘colouring’ it with something less (the mind’s likes/dislikes, opinions and judgements) than the pure awareness in which it appears, and so masking its actual reality.
Finally, consider the problems that this view encounters. The first, and for the philosopher the main problem, is that it cannot be proved by argument and reason. In fact these are the tools which obscure it. It has to be experienced, but for this you have to know, existentially, that you are not separate from ‘That’, the totality of being. Unfortunately, this knowledge is impossible to obtain as long as you identify with the mind/body or as a separate individual.
This is because we are identifying with our rational mind and using it to judge every moment, rather than just ‘being’ with a still mind and experiencing the actual reality of existence.
The point is that pure ‘being’ can only be experienced when one is not ‘thinking of the future, establishing aims and having preferences’; the two states are mutually exclusive, the second preventing the first!
Summing up: when one lives moment to moment, identified with the ‘totality of being’, one is able to engage fully in the ‘Divine Play’. This makes life light, not heavy, and thoroughly enjoyable not requiring any extra meaning or purpose. It is only when identified as a separate individual, living in an alien world, that such meaning or purpose seems necessary.
(Colin Drake has written a book called “Beyond the Separate Self”. If you’d like to learn more about it, please visit: www.nonduality.com/btss.htm)
As I’m writing this right now, this short film has received 1,430,206 views.
Watching it, you may find yourself humored at how reality may appear to most people everyday, and also at how foolishly selfish we can be most of the time.
The video depicts a man’s commute to work, his mental comments towards the things that happen around him, and what happens after he’s given a special something which allowed him to see things he previously couldn’t:
This is the first in a series of three essays, written by a Stoic, about what it means to practice an ancient philosophy in the modern world.
I never intended to become a Stoic. Who, after all, were the Stoics? They were those grim, wooden figures of ancient Greece and Rome whose goal it was to stand mutely and take whatever the world could throw at them. Right?
About a decade ago, though, I began a research project on human desire. The goal of the project was to write a book on the subject, but I also had a hidden agenda in conducting my research: I was contemplating becoming a Zen Buddhist and wanted to learn more about it before taking the leap. But the more I learned about Zen, the less it attracted me.
Practicing Zen would require me to suppress my analytical abilities, something I found it quite difficult to do. Another off-putting aspect of Zen was that the moment of enlightenment it dangled before its practitioners was by no means guaranteed. Practice Zen for decades and you might achieve enlightenment — or you might not. It would be tragic, I thought, to spend the remaining decades of my life pursuing a moment of enlightenment that never came. Zen doubtless works for some people, but for me, the fit wasn’t good.
Then something quite unexpected happened. As part of my research, I investigated what ancient philosophers had to say about desire. Among them were the Stoic philosophers — people like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus — about whom I knew little. As I read them, I discovered that they were quite unlike I imagined they would be. Indeed, it soon became apparent that everything I “knew” about the Stoics was wrong. They were neither grim nor wooden. If anything, the adjective that I thought described them best was “buoyant” or maybe even “cheerful.” And without consciously intending to do so, I found myself experimenting with Stoic strategies for daily living.
Thus, when I found myself in a predicament — being stuck in traffic, for example — I followed the advice of Epictetus and asked myself what aspects of the situation I could and couldn’t control. I couldn’t control what the other cars did, so it was pointless — was in fact counterproductive — for me to get angry at them. My energy was much better spent focusing on things I could control, with the most important being how I responded to the situation. In particular, I could employ Stoic strategies to prevent the incident from spoiling my day.
I also started making use of the Stoic technique known as negative visualization: I would periodically contemplate the loss of the things and people that mean the most to me. Thus, when parting from a friend, I might make a mental note that this could conceivably be the last time I would see the friend in question. Friendships do end, after all, and people die suddenly. Doing this sort of thing may seem morbid, but the practice of negative visualization is a powerful antidote to a phenomenon that will otherwise deprive us of much of the happiness we could be enjoying: negative visualization prevents us from taking for granted the world around us and the people in it.
When they hear about negative visualization, people often get the wrong idea. They think the Stoics advocate that we spend our days dwelling on all the bad things that can happen to us. This, of course, would be a recipe for a miserable existence. What the Stoics in fact advocate is not that we dwell on bad things but that we contemplate them, a subtle but important difference. They also recommend that we engage in negative visualization not constantly but only a few times each day and for only a few seconds each time. Our negative visualizations, then, will take the form of fleeting thoughts.
Visualizing in this manner has the effect of resetting the baseline against which we measure our happiness, and it can have a profound and immediate effect on that happiness. As the result of negatively visualizing, we might find ourselves taking delight that we still possess the things that only moments before, we took for granted, including our job, our spouse, our health — indeed, our very existence.
One of my favorite visualization exercises involves the sky. When I see it, I periodically remind myself that the sky didn’t have to be blue. But on most days it is blue, and a gorgeous blue, the hue of which changes subtly from hour to hour. Then I reflect on how wonderful it is that we inhabit a universe that can, on a nearly daily basis, present us with such a spectacle. A simple exercise, to be sure, and some would say a silly one. But if you can learn to appreciate the sky — something most people take utterly for granted — there is a good chance that you can learn to appreciate your life as well and thereby enjoy a happier existence than would otherwise be the case.
I mentioned above that the benefits to be derived from practicing Zen are uncertain. Stoicism, by way of contrast, does not dangle before its adherents a moment — maybe — of life-transforming enlightenment. Instead, it provides a body of advice for them to follow and a set of strategies for them to employ in everyday life. The strategies in question are easy to use. (Indeed, I suspect that many of the readers of this essay have already, in the last few seconds, successfully attempted negative visualization.) That said, I should add that it takes rather longer to internalize Stoic advice and strategies so that one’s response to the events of daily living becomes reflexively Stoical, at which point one can truly claim to be a Stoic.
My experiments with Stoicism were sufficiently encouraging that I abandoned my plans to become a Zen Buddhist and decided instead to follow in the footsteps of Zeno of Citium, the Greek who formulated Stoicism in about 300 B.C. I decided, in other words, to become a walking, talking anachronism: I would attempt to transform myself into a twenty-first century Stoic. My goal in the essays in this series is to describe some aspects of this transformation.
Most people, of course, would think of Zen Buddhism and Stoicism as being polar opposites, philosophically speaking, but that is because people tend to be, as I was, woefully ignorant of what Stoicism is. One of the most surprising things that came out of my research was how much Zen and Stoicism have in common.
They both advocate taking what Buddha referred to as “the middle path.” Buddha lived a life of luxury in a palace but was not fulfilled by that life. He abandoned the palace to live a life of extreme asceticism but again did not find fulfillment. It was then that he experienced his moment of enlightenment. The wise person, Buddha concluded, will not shun pleasure; at the same time, he will keep firmly in mind how easy it is to become enslaved by it. He will therefore be guarded in his enjoyment of pleasure.
The Stoics likewise advocated taking the middle path. Zeno of Citium began his philosophical education by practicing Cynicism, the ancient philosophy that advocated an ascetic lifestyle. The ancient Cynics (including Diogenes of Sinope and Zeno’s teacher Crates) lived on the street and owned only the clothing that they wore. Zeno abandoned Cynicism in part because he rejected its asceticism. In the Stoic philosophy he formulated, we are told that there is nothing wrong with enjoying life’s pleasures, as long as we are careful not to allow ourselves to be enslaved by them and as long as, even while we are enjoying them, we take steps to prepare ourselves ultimately to be deprived of them.
Offer a Stoic a glass of fine champagne, and he probably won’t refuse it; as he drinks it, though, he might reflect on the possibility that this will be the last time he drinks champagne, a reflection, by the way, that will dramatically enhance his enjoyment of the moment. Then again, offer a Stoic a glass of water, and he might go through the same thought processes with the same result.
In having “last time” thoughts (which, by the way, are a form of negative visualization), a Stoic is behaving rather like a Buddhist. Both Stoics and Buddhists think it important, if we are to have a good life, that we recognize the transient nature of human existence, and both advise us periodically to contemplate impermanence. This is what Stoics are doing when they reflect on the fact that since we are mortal, there will be a last time for each of the things we do in life. Thus, there will be a last time you drink champagne — or water, for that matter. There will be a last time you touch the face of another human being. There will even be a last time you utter the word “forever.”
Along similar lines, both Zen Buddhists and Stoics think it important for us to strive to stay “in the moment.” People tend to spend their days and consequently their lives as well dwelling on things that happened in past moments and worrying about things that will happen in future moments. As a result, there is little time left for them to savor the moment they currently are living. If we are to have a good life, it is important, says Stoic Marcus Aurelius, for us to keep in mind that “man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant.”
For one last parallel between Buddhism and Stoicism, consider again the above-described blue-sky exercise. As a Stoic, I had practiced this exercise for years before I became aware of the work of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. It turns out that Buddhists, in their practice of mindfulness, employ a similar exercise.
On adopting Stoicism, I discovered how much the world has changed since the philosophy was first formulated. Back then, if you told someone you were a practicing Stoic, they would have understood what you meant. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was common for people in the upper classes to adopt a philosophy of life; indeed, parents sent their sons to schools of philosophy (prominent among which were the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Academic schools) in part to acquire such a philosophy.
Tell modern individuals that you are a practicing Stoic, though, and they are likely to be puzzled. “Is it some kind of religion?” they will ask.
My standard response: “No. Religions generally concern themselves with the afterlife; philosophies of life such as Stoicism concern themselves with daily life. They teach us what things in life are most valuable and how best to attain them.”
This response is likely to give rise to a new question: “And just what did the Stoics think was valuable?” My response: “Not what most people think is valuable — namely, fame and fortune. To the contrary, the Stoics (and in particular the Roman Stoics) valued tranquillity, and by tranquillity they had in mind not the kind of numbness that can be attained by downing a third martini, but instead the absence of negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, grief, and fear, from their life. They had nothing against positive emotions, though, including that most positive of emotions, joy. The Stoics were also confident that people who exchange their tranquillity for fame and fortune have made a foolish bargain.”
This, by the way, is yet another point of agreement between Zen and Stoicism: both philosophies of life point to tranquillity as the thing in life most worth attaining. But wait a minute, if Zen and Stoicism share the same goal in living, namely, the attainment of tranquillity, won’t they count as the same philosophy of life?
No, because although they share this goal, they offer different advice on how to attain it. Thus, a Zen Buddhist might advise those wishing to attain tranquillity to spend hours each day trying to empty their mind of all thought. And when they are not doing this, they should spend time trying to solve koans, those paradoxical questions, the most famous of which is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
The Stoics, by way of contrast, would recommend neither of these activities. Your time would be much better spent, they would suggest, analyzing what it is in your daily life that disrupts your tranquillity and thinking about what you can do to prevent such disruptions. And to aid you in your thinking, the Stoics would go on to suggest that you take a look at the writings of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. There you will find much advice on how to deal with insults, how to overcome grief, how to avoid getting angry, how to take delight in the world you inhabit, and so forth.
At this point, my introduction-to-Stoicism conversation sometimes turns ugly. The conversation can cause the other person to realize that he has never taken time to think about the “grand goal of living;” instead, his attention has been focused on the short-term goals of daily life, such as getting a promotion at work or acquiring an even-wider-screen television. Or, even worse, the conversation can put the person on the defensive. If he routinely spends his days exchanging his tranquillity for a (quite possibly unsuccessful) shot at the acquisition of fame and fortune, he will not take kindly to my “foolish bargain” comment.
In either case, he might resent what he will construe as an attempt by me to impose my values on him, and his resentment might be expressed indirectly, by ridiculing Stoicism. It is, to be sure, easy to avoid this ridicule: if you decide to give Stoicism a try as your philosophy of life, I suggest that you keep your plans to yourself and practice what I call stealth Stoicism. This is what I would have done had I not taken it on myself to become a twenty-first century Stoic teacher.
This, in a nutshell, is what Stoicism is and why I found myself drawn to it. I hope that if I have accomplished anything in this essay, I have persuaded readers that the ancient Stoics were not stoical in the modern sense of the word — they were not, as the dictionary puts it, “seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain.” Indeed, the phrase joyful Stoic is not the oxymoron it might seem to be.
SOCRATES: Hail to Thee, Aeschines! From where do you return to visit us now?
AESCHINES: I have just returned from my father’s kitchen where I was assisting him in making his famed spiced meat delicacies.
S. Yes! Charinus makes the finest sausages in all Athens, that is beyond dispute.
A. Thank you, Socrates. Next to my father, I love you dearly. I hope I shall never leave you. Strike me with your staff, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me away from you, so long as I think you’ve something to say.
S. Only the sausage-maker’s son knows how to honour me. I wish all my friends were as loyal as you, Aeschines. In some ways, your respected profession has often appealed to me as most enviable. You assist your Father whom you love, earn an honest livelihood, exercise great care and attention keeping the restless mind in check, and what is more, create delicacies for the citizens of Athens to enjoy with wine and fill their bellies, which when digested, turns to thought and hopefully beneficial actions.
A. Thou speakest truth as always, Socrates. I have toiled to excel at this work, selecting the choicest herbs, learning to pound the cooked rare meats into a paste and blend them, pack them in an edible skin and make them look as appetising as possible.
S. I am persuaded of your eminent skill, Aeschincs. I trust you will not refuse me a sample of your labours.
A. Here is one of Father’s latest concoctions, a mixture of lamb and rabbit flavoured with honey, thyme and black pepper.
S. Thank you. I shall relish it more after our conversation but now ask me whatever you will.
A. You said earlier that my food after being digested, stimulates thought which leads to action.
S. I recall having said that.
A. Does this mean I am indirectly responsible for my clients’ thoughts and deeds?
S. After a fashion, partially, but not completely. Thoughts need food stuff to make them happen.
A. But surely Socrates, man is responsible for his own thoughts and actions, and has the freedom to decide his acts?
S. Dear boy, I hope you will not be shocked when I tell you that man has no freedom of will, and is not responsible for his actions.
A. But surely Socrates, this goes against the ‘consensus gentium’ of educated people and their commonsense. I feel and I know that I am responsible for my acts. When I think to do something, I carry it out.
S. Are you so sure, my dear fellow? Let us examine this matter more closely. Sit down a while. You say you think; where does the thought that you have, come from, in the first instance? Where does it arise?
A. From me, of course.
S. From Me. Tell me, who is this Me? Can you find him inside? Now watch closely. Where do thoughts actually come from? Be very honest.
A. Well, surprisingly they seem to arrive from nowhere, out of the blue. From the Gods, perhaps.
S. Now you see that you did not create the initial thought. It arrives from you know not where. Then what happens?
A. It commences the faculty of reasoning.
S. Yes. It touches your mind, and either the thought is rejected as unworthy or accepted as useful, according to needs, standards of upbringing and so forth; and it starts a process called thinking.
A. But surely I start the process of reasoning.
S. Are you sure? Look closely now. See what actually happens. A thought arrives from nowhere, touches the mind which reacts according to its patterns of education and what it believes to be the right response, and some more thought weighs the matter up.
A. But surely in the weighing I choose from the alternatives offered by commonsense and reason?
S. I mistrust your commonsense and conventional opinion, the so-called reason of the masses. Only the philosophers understand the nature of choice, and not too many of them, I suspect.
A. Do you mean I didn’t choose?
S. What happens if you watch, dear sausage maker, is that the mind or thoughts present alternatives, and according to your disposition you choose what you consider to be the most practical, pleasurable and in the best interest for you. But there is no daemon inside to choose. The choice happens mechanically, like an abacus, and then the mind foolishly ascribes it to itself as “a free agent”, boasting arrogantly “I CHOOSE.”
A. Please continue, Socrates. This is most illuminating.
S. Truly the choice was inevitable. The so-called act of choosing was part of the structure of predetermination. The choice was inevitable, because it appealed to your hidden tendencies of pleasure, and what you believe to be appropriate. In fact there was never any freedom to choose anything other than that which was chosen.
A. But surely if a man does good deeds, they are his own, just as the man who does evil deeds?
S. Again, Aeschines, let us examine very closely. Watch how everything happens. A train of inevitable events leads one man to the good, another to the so-called evil.
A. How is that?
S. One man is born into a noble womb, with refined educated parents, another into an uncaring home of ignorance. Patterns of behaviour are laid down like a mosaic, by example and imitation. What you call good and bad habits are largely mimicry.
A. But surely, Socrates, there are innate tendencies of good and evil that men are born with?
S. Yes. Souls are transmigrated with these tendencies laid down.
A. So what determines this behaviour of these souls?
S. Examples from parents, family, teachers, people you meet, heroes, reading, and so forth. You are determined all the time, by each new event.
A. Is this the way the Gods control our destiny?
S. Broadly, yes.
A. I see. So when I choose, I imagine I’m choosing, but really it’s all predetermined.
S. Exactly. You are beginning to see the point.
A. Then tell me, Socrates, the idea that I can do anything of my own free will, is that falsely imagined?
S. Yes.
A. Then how do I live?
S. Choose as if you have choice, knowing you really have none. This is a step towards freedom and the Good. It will remove guilt, and stop you from blaming others for their so called bad deeds, and stop you from flattering others for their so called good deeds, according to society’s approval or disapproval.
A. If this was generally understood, what would our tragedians have to write about?
S. Very little. But about good and bad, the Nubian, Libyan and Egyptian have quite different standards to we Greeks, neither better nor worse except according to our opinion. Moreover, each tragedy illustrates a chief characteristic which prevents the hero from coming to Self knowledge. Such was the blindness of Oedipus.
A. But how will I live, knowing all this?
S. Enjoy yourself, my boy. Be happy. Love your work, and study philosophy, but don’t attribute your actions to an imaginary ME who doesn’t actually exist which is the real slavery.
A. Thank you Socrates. But…
S. There are always ‘buts’ – listen! This idea that men can act independently of the Gods is at the root of their bondage, and enslaves master and boy alike. To be free, a man must know this clearly. This is my point. I hammer it home continuously.
A. How do I see this clearly?
S. Some time, reflect on major events of your day and examine how much they really happened through your free will? This will undermine your vanity and your pride.
A. Thank you.
S. The tyrant is the imaginary ME who has usurped the Good which is our birthright of freedom. Sacrifice him to the Gods, and all will be well, I promise.
A. Thank you again, Socrates.
S. Come, my dear friend, let us enjoy your sausage with some Cypriot wine; Ah! I can see Alciabides approaching.
NOTES
(1) A Socratic Dialogue. Aeschines was a friend of Socrates who recorded many dialogues, but unlike Plato’s his have largely been lost to posterity. The translation is by Alan Adams Jacobs.
(2) This remark is confirmed in Chapter 7 of LIVES OF EMMINENT PHILOSOPHERS by Diogenes Laertius, along with details of Aeschines’ life.
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