BEYOND THE WORLD

The mind is continuous seeking. Seeking to entertain itself. Or seeking to escape boredom? Both are derived from the same center which is always in the now. It is because of immediate boredom that I seek out entertainment. One is in the past, the other in the future. What is it that I am not at peace now that I am seeking further gratifications?

I seek new friends, I seek new food, I seek new excitement, I seek for a new phone, I seek out new places, I seek for another new movie, I seek new toys, new gadgets, new information, new stuff -  just to keep me entertained. Have I not noticed – I keep chasing for something new, something thrilling just to satisfy my needs? It is rather strange I did not observe these before, or is it that I do not want to face? How long has these been going on? I am amused – I look around and found the same with everybody. Are we doing time of some sort, entertaining ourselves to escape from boredom, a boredom born out of an unseen prison of bondage? Are we creating toys to entertain ourselves?

People getting angry with each other – street protest, demonstration for peace, unhappy with a waitress, impatient with a traffic jam, upset with things around – they are just another way of the mind in entertaining itself, when it could not get what it wants.

Could it be because of boredom games are created? Games with rules to thrill. To make me stir. To make me glued to a set, as there are no other things that is exciting. What is going on that I am not aware off? Am I a walking zombie, killing time, as if, there is a deep frustration that I am not seeing. What is it that is bugging me that keeps me on this wheel of insatiable thirst of seeking?

The mind is creating new toys, new ways of entertaining itself ….

“… You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak to them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the  minds of those who play with them. But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes are their own.

“Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real. Yet can a dream attack? Or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child believe, because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. He thinks he needs them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real. And so he makes anything a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that he is but a part of it.

“There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need of them no more.”

As I type the above excerpt from A Course in Miracles, an extract taken from the book Your Immortal Reality, I could not help but to feel a deep surge of peace arising from knowing what is it like when the toys are been put away.

Stop seeking and you will find…

I was at the park for a morning walk yesterday and overheard a conversation between a child and his grandpa talking about old age. The grandpa ignored his grandchild’s repeated plea of wanting to know what old age is all about, and instead move ahead of him.

Later I shared the scene with my wife and she recalled another story about her little nephew asking his grandma why people need to die and the quick response she gave to her grandchild is that because people grow old. The child pondered for a moment and asked an unexpected question back to her grandma – you are old too, why is it that you are not dead yet? The question may have startled the grandma abit.

Life is full of mysteries and we never get around having those questions answered before death takes us over. Throughout the years I have been observing for quite awhile that people seldom ask questions about death, birth, why we are here, what’s next, etc. People are very much concerned about their physical wellbeing but seldom about their own mind. I knew of a healer friend, whom I would also considered as one of my teacher in this life, pointed out that he prefers working and sharing with his clients about the mind rather than healing them on the physical level of their dis-ease. But somehow from his personal experience he gathered that not many people are interested about healing except a quick fix solution to their problem. That makes a difference between curing and healing. Curing is about settling the manifested syndrome without addressing the deeper causes whereas healing is geared towards a holistic approach, the interconnectedness of mind and body and how they affect each other.

I also met a qigong master last week who lamented that his client tend to give up practicing qigong after having their illness cured and the tendency of the illness recurring is pretty high.

Is there any relationship between illness, death, birth and probably old age, with the mind? Yes, if we were to look at it as a linear process of our lives. But what if I invite you to consider with an open-mind that illness, death, birth and old age are actually mind processes rather than a body process? What would be your response? Consider the question whether the body is in the mind or the mind is in the body?

Can the body exist without the mind? Or it is because of the mind that the body exists? If the latter is true, would you not consider that the body is a subset of the mind rather than the mind is in the body? It is equivalent to saying the son is an offspring of the father rather than the father is a part of the son.

Could all illnesses springs from the mind? Could the entire existence or universe a mind-made thingy? There are no answers to these questions except our own direct experience. This is the greatest mystery where most famous teachers have unraveled in their own lifetime of awakening. Welcome to knowing yourself!

“According to some scientists, our bodies are something like 99.9% space. The actual physical matter that makes up our bodies Is only about 1/10 of 1%.

In fact, according to these estimates, if you took all the physical matter that makes up your body and put it in a pile, it would all fit on the tip of a pin. The rest of you is space.”

-  Tom Kenyon, Brain Scientist

Every experience arise in duality – in the form of opposite and contrast. To the uninitiated, each experience seems to stand out alone by itself, but in reality the opposite also arise simultaneously together with the experience at the same time. In fact they are not separable except by definition.

Take for instance, liking. When I like quietness, I am already defining myself that I don’t like noise. I can’t help liking something without disliking another thing at the same time. Like and dislike arises simultaneously. Only thing is that one is obvious and the other seemingly hidden in the background of the mind. When I love companionship, I am avoiding loneliness. When I prefer aloneness, I dislike companionship at that point of time. I may have preferences of liking companionship at some time and aloneness at another time – that is pretty normal as my mood changes all the time, but what I am not aware is that at each moment of like or dislike, the opposite too is occurring at the same time.

When I don’t like you, I am expressing the opposite of whom you should be – I like you to be that and not this. Whenever I give a meaning to the world, nature will return me with another meaning to balance itself. Nature is in constant check and balance. When I think you are controlling me, I am in fact trying to control you not to control me. When I think you are betraying me, I am betraying myself. When I lied to you, I am lying to myself. That’s the irony of duality, of life.

Why do opposites arise in unison? That is nature’s way of balancing itself. Like and dislike is not our true nature and for that it needs to be nullified through an equation. Whenever I give a meaning to an experience, that meaning will have its own opposite to nullified itself. But when I don’t see this truth, I would have identified with the focal experience, hence my suffering. Seeing the arising of both is the path of wisdom – seeing both develops detachment.

True nature is when I come to see things as they truly are without identifying with it. This is what I mentioned in the previous blog Genuine & Imitation Stuff in the Mind. Every act of doing is a deception I did for myself. Every act of meaning, of judgment is an act of self-betrayal, of delusional fabrication.

Nature corrects itself. When we create one extreme the other extreme arise automatically. To realize these extremes is where wisdom is. My peace is to see the interplay of these two, without identifying with them. That is the Middle Path. Thus if I have a meaning of selflessness, I also have selfishness in it and vice versa. If I truly see the interconnectedness of these duality, I would not judge them as good or bad but simply arising of meanings.

Both meanings are meaningless by nature except my meaning over it. It is this continuous meaning I give to the world that makes my life real. I can’t stop the meanings from arising except to see it as it is.

When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so the male will not be male and the female will not be female… then you will enter the Kingdom.

- Yeshua

Which sentences bring confidence in you - it is difficult, but I can do it, or, I can do it, but it is difficult? Though both sentences have the same meaning, somehow the way the sentence is phrase, brings about a different connotation and feeling. Each sentence has two ideas in it – difficulty, and my ability of doing it. The way I positioned those ideas matter to me as the consequence is dependent on that. The end result is always dependent on the final idea that exists in the mind.

Hence, if I were to request for a carpark at a certain destination and the subsequent idea is of confidence, the possibility of finding a car park space is pretty high. Whereas if the subsequent idea is of non-confidence, the potential of a car park awaiting me is practically nil, or it may take awhile for me to find it.

If I think money cannot come easy, and I have to work hard for it, that idea becomes my reality for me to experience. My truth is simply an idea. Each idea creates my reality. And that reality has no truth in it except my own. The way I see the world is my own perception.

The world is my reflection. What I have in mind will be shown in my experiences. The universe is in constant alignment with my intentions. What I create is what I get – it cannot be otherwise. If my idea is about working hard to have an income, the benevolent universe will make sure that happens – not that it is conspiring with you, but rather the universe is you. Even though I may change my thought about it but yet if the ingrained idea is still within me, the end result will reflect exactly what I am believing. My belief has took on a reality, so to speak. That is the law of causal relationship – what I sow is what I reap.

If I sow guilt, I have to reap punishment. If I sow hatred, I have to see others as enemy. If I sow love, everyone is loving to me. If I surrender, more things seems to come my way. Why is it so? Simply because my ideas are returning back to me. The universe is my echo. The Secret does not work for many simply because underlying their hearts are ideas that are in total opposite to what they seek for – that little persistent voice that is telling them who they are not.

So it will be wise to be mindful of what is running in my program – the ancient program that may no longer be useful to my present moment. That old program may have helped in protecting me in one particular past event but if I am not mindful, that program will continued on as a learned process, detrimental to my growth in another situation. The mind is simply a tool that follows what I intent. Repeated programming makes the mind runs conditionally without much wisdom in it. For that I may be trapped in my own unconscious doing.  Hence, the importance of awareness of the present moment.

We lie whenever we think we’re telling the truth. For there is no truth. There’s only the truth as we see it. I’m color-blind. I see something purple, you may see it green. Am I wrong? That’s how I see it. Are you wrong? That’s how you see it. Change the person and the truth is different. Change the system and the truth is different once again. All we can do at any given moment is respond to the person at the moment; the response will change depending on the person, the situation, the moment, and the system.

- Bernie Glassman, Bearing Witness – A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace

It is rather easy for me to mistaken an original product with the fake or imitation piece. It probably takes a skilled person in a particular trade to note the difference. With more and more sophisticated technology available in hand, the imitation product may no longer be as obvious as in the past.

Training and purifying the mind has the same issue – many a times when I thought I am already in the state of pure peace and bliss, that state turns out to be an imitation of the ego.  In term of “imitation” in mind states, it has the taints of like and dislike, obscured by ignorance itself.

A good example is the quality of acceptance. Acceptance in its truest sense is about acknowledging and facing what is without any intention or purpose of changing or fixing it. True spiritual acceptance requires an act of surrendering and allowing whatever is to take place without any reaction or interference to it. In reality whatever the mind reacts has little or no effect to what is except a fabricated perception of control. Not recognizing this reality is what creates our delusion.

In the imitation state of acceptance, there is always a desiring for what is to change – it may not be obvious in the foreground. One easy way to recognized it is to check whether there is a tolerating attitude going on at the background of the mind. Whenever I am tolerating, I am gritting my teeth in my mind, withholding myself back from bearing witness to what is, even though I may be facing it without much of a choice. Tolerance is an imitation of acceptance. On the other extreme, resignation is also an imitation of acceptance. When I finally see the futility of tolerance, I resign to the “fate” with animosity, giving up myself in a way that expresses my discontent and rejection. Both are extremes to acceptance. In true acceptance there is purely peace and impartiality.

In each true quality you may observed that there is always bound to have both extremes, on each end, mimicking the balance of its center. We can understand this logic as it take two ends to make a center. The Buddha’s teaching of gradual awakening is solely based on this understanding – coming into balance of both extremes – The Middle Path, the path that is founded by recognizing both extremes on each end – holding on and resistance, created by ignorance.

Holding on and resistance are both clinging or craving in nature. They manifest themselves as like and dislike, want and don’t want, desire and aversion. Both these nature springs from ignorance of what is – it is these nature that brought about the meaninglessness meaning of control. In reality, control is a freak, a lie – an unknowing fabrication that we took as a gospel truth in our day to day living. This lie proliferates practically in all our mental states, whenever there is no awareness and wisdom backing our actions. I may say all reactions are ignorance by nature.

The inward journey of finding myself is the continuous journey of recognizing imitations in the mind. All imitations have limitation by nature. I can’t change imitation as the word “change” already imply “I have the control to take charge”. Imitation releases me when I recognized it as untrue, as false.

Truth reveals when I recognize false as false.

Fear arises due to lack of understanding. When I am not grounded in understanding I find myself standing on uncertain ground. That uncertainty is my fear in action. As long as I am standing in unfamiliar ground, I am prone to vulnerability. To acknowledge and recognize this state propels me to inquire what I can be to maintain groundedness.

When I ignore this vulnerability and instead tries to overcome it through bringing in the opposites, say courage, I am in fact, not allowing myself to see the root of my fear. I may overcome it to a certain degree, but the root of fear will not be totally understood until I inquire within. That root of fear will re-manifest itself in other form. Fear is an indication for opportunity of wisdom to arise. Without fear, I would not have seen what is in me that I have ignored, that I have not understood.

Fear cannot be induced, it is a state that reminds me I am not that. If I am overwhelmed by fear, which I normally do, I will missed the opportunity for understanding to arise. If I were to remember to be in the presence of awareness and recognize fear is about non-understanding, I would have taken time to be with fear instead of fearing it. By staying with fear, fear releases me. I can’t release or run away from fear. Through faith and proper understanding, fear releases me.

I have fear of disapproval, fear of unworthiness, fear of insecurity, fear of lack – and many more unfounded fears. Those fears are real to me, yet, as the word “unfounded” implies – I have not found the reason of the fear. If I have understood the reason behind the fear, all my fears would have diminished. What caused my fear? What do I need to understand?

I look into the ideas that brought about fear. If I am afraid of disapproval, I inquire into my idea of seeking approval. Why is there a need to seek approval? Is it just an old idea I am believing that lacks intelligent questioning? Or is it just a perception of the past that is been brought into the present that may or may not be relevant to what is truly going on in the present process?

I can either recognize it as an old pattern that is no longer true or necessary, and allow openness to enter into my space. Or if I am already skilled in seeing it simply as ideas that are unprofitable, I can accelerate the healing journey by introducing a new profitable idea over it. This is by no means a covering method but rather a total replacement of what I know is no longer profitable to my well being. Neither is it a positive thinking. I can only replace what I understood or else it is just a cover up of what I am not willing to face.

In truth when I understood fully the causes of fear, replacement is no longer necessary as seeing the falseness of the idea reinstate me back to the truth. But so long as fear crops up as residual experiences, and I am able to see them as illusions of the mind, replacement technique can be an efficient tool. If I am experiencing fear of disapproval, I can turn it around by saying I am approved unconditionally. By doing that I am approving myself unconditionally irrelevant what conditioned is implied. I am simply undoing whatever idea that is conditioning me to have fear to another idea that is releasing me from the bondage of fear.

It may not work all the time but that too is alright as what is is indicating to me my lack of right understanding. For that I am encouraged to enter deeper into seeking what is blocking me from the truth. The journey is never ending until I come fully into love presence, the presence of infinite wisdom. Understanding or wisdom is the key factor that releases myself from my own self-imprisonment. And the bridge to it is self-inquiry.

My teacher reminded me once that in order to see the goodness in myself I have first to recognize the opposites within me. And that can be a very difficult thing to do in the beginning as the norm of the society that I have been brought up from is about looking good and not showing dirty linen in the public. I remembered years back when I was very young and just started my journey in getting to know myself better, I used to share the incompetency and shortcomings of myself to friends. My only thought at that time was that if I don’t initiate this conversation, everyone will not start the ball rolling. It is an open secret, as Rumi puts it, that we are all the same and we keep thinking that we are the only one in the world that is abnormal and thus what is within is to be kept a secret.

Amazingly the more I shared about stuff I wish to understand, the more people open themselves up to me. Suddenly I saw a huge pandora box awaiting to be embraced and loved – the wounds, hurts and pains that all of us are carrying that we are told not to face.  Caroline Myss, the author of the best seller, Anatomy of the Spirit, coined the word woundology as language of understanding our dis-eases.

I was reading The Sunday Star, probably two weeks ago, about an article written by a columnist Asohan, who mentioned about the analogy of a dog being hit by a passing car. The first observation we got is the reaction from the dog writhing in pain and agony other than the shock it has never experienced before in its life. And sooner than we can expect, the dog run away from the scene, oblivious to what has happened. But something serious within it has already started to grow.

Our inner wounds are the same too. In our younger days we are subjected to new negative emotions coming our ways. We are never thought how to face them objectively, and instead being admonished and told not to repeat it again. I am sure those first time emotions experience in this life, in the beginning, can be a total shocked to my system, though it may not be something new to me, from the continuous observation I may have as a baby. Pretty soon, I am like the dog, left that scene hurriedly, without giving myself time to understand deeply why I need to react and caused hurt to myself. Over the years, those experiences are repeatedly reinforced in me again. I am sure this is familiar to you too.

In motivation courses, we are told how to handle and manage those emotions rather than to understand their causes. We are never encouraged to faced them. What are motivational courses and positive thinking all about other than to subdue and ignore what is within all of us that is infesting and growing. We never take time to study our emotions carefully, and instead, like the dog, left that scene hurriedly, as if there are more better things to do in life.

But what is life except the stuffs that we are carrying in each and everyone of us, the demon within that we have not understood and subdued, but instead fed? The responses and reactions to life, moment after moment is the stuffs that we are giving out, day in and day out without fail. Our way of communications, our way of interactions, our way of viewing lives are all and only those stuffs, unless wisdom has come into our lives. No more, no less. Our emotions determine the idea we have about the world and ourselves.

Without facing my own emotions, I will never understand why I see the world as unfair, painful and ugly. I may have moments of beauty, but paled in comparison to the consistent bombardment of negative emotions triggered in me, year after year, month after month, day after day, minute after minute, second after second. Authentically, if you start to be aware of yourself you will know what I mean. That is what pursuit of happiness is all about – we rarely have happiness and for that we have to pursuit – it tells alot about our beingness.

To come back to peace, I have to make peace with myself, loving each and every part of me that I have totally ignored.

Because of looking, seeing is unnoticed.
Because of things, space is unseen.
Because of listening, hearing is unknown.
Because of sound, silence is unheard.

Because of focus, openness is lost
Because of doing, being is missed
Because of control, surrender is unrealized
Because of  heedlessness, reality is hidden.

Because of form, essense is overlooked.
Because of ignorance, wisdom is unfound.
Because of falseness, truth is unrevealed.
Because of conditioned, unconditioned is unrealized.

When pettiness is given up, spaciousness comes into being.
When craving is surrendered, freedom is found.
When one is lost, oneness is achieved.
When cycle is ended, Is is.