Pain an Indicator of Error

It is indeed paradoxical the way ignorance works – when we held on to a certain pleasant experience expecting it to stay on a little longer we are to mean that without it, we are back to experiencing what is unpleasant – as if unpleasantness is awaiting us on the other end. Yet we need not wait too long for unpleasantness to appear as the expectation for it to stay on is unpleasant itself. Have you not notice each time when you have the feeling “how I wish it will stay on forever” that feeling is sadness? And isn’t that unpleasant?

Thus it is interesting to note when the Buddha said pain arises in two ways – from wanting and yet not getting what we want, and from not wanting yet getting what we don’t want. Thus our expectation is the cause of our woes and pain as wanting and not wanting are unreasonable. Unreasonable in the sense that ignorance does not see that whether we are in the position of want or not want – both are attachments to the idea that it must be a certain way – reality of what is has already happened and gone! It is only seemingly still perpetuating in our experience is because of our holding on to it.

Thus, when my friend tries to let go of her holding on, knowing that it is the holding on that is causing her pain, what she is not aware is that her wanting to let go of it is causing her further pain. You see, the nature of ignorance is strange – it does not acknowledge what is already here occuring and instead tries to create what is not here. Her mind’s holding on to a situation is what she is experiencing, but when she does not want to acknowledge this fact, she is only in her dishonesty tries to move away from it of something that she can’t move away from – its all in the head! To say she is dishonest is to a certain extent incorrect as that is not what she is able to realize yet. Instead, she tries to create another experience that is not presently here. More than that, she is creating an opposing experience other than what she is not willing to experience. So long as she is opposing it, unknowingly she is holding it back from being release – for to oppose something, you have to think of it.

The simple truth is this – what we resist will persist. Hence when we no longer put any energy to it as right or wrong but simply as happening happened – in full acknowledgment without giving further meaning – that acceptance releases the meaning of “it should not have happened”. In that instant moment, we are free. Do you see the paradox of freedom? To push away is to make it stay. To acknowledge is to set it free. Hence, freedom is not something one can do by trying to let it go as that doesn’t work at all. Freedom is a result of having right understanding of reality exactly as it is. Thus, pain – opposite of freedom – is actually a good marker or indicator informing us that there is an error happening in our space that is not in align with reality. Pain equates a mistaken view – opposing what reality is.

With this in mind, we will see pain not as wrong anymore but rather a teacher to help bring us back to sanity of what once was an insane view.

“Why it should happened? It’s because it happened! Why it should not happened? It’s because it has yet to happened.”

Happen-ing

there was only happening
there is only happening
there will forever be only happening

yet of them all
there is only happening
as past or future is happening here now
as present thoughts
mangled in imagination

what is more to say
except happening
happening
happening
and still, and yet
another happening
to each moment?

happening is experience
and experience is what you are
and what you are
is simply…
“happening”
not “your” happening
or “my” happening
but simply “happening”
arising, passing on
happening [again]

yet is there “again”?
or simply new, fresh… gone
anew …
from nowhere to nowhere

to be exact…

now here … now here

Oblivious Brought to Realization

Probably you have not noticed (else you would have loved) that “the person that you can’t forgive” is in your mind? Not really “your” mind since it does not belong to you, but the mind is simply “an arising” for experience to be experienced. You see, the mind is simply “happening” to mean, it is just an arising of different experiences occurring moment to moment, albeit seamless and endless. The mind is not “something”, “somewhere”, nor is it  “somebody”. It is simply a kind of nature that has the ability of experience to be experienced.

Have you not noticed that each moment of your so-called life is made out of experience; and that “experience” is the mind? That experience, whether it comes from any of your senses, is constantly accompanied with the meaning of “I” – “I am experiencing this or that”. The “I” cannot be removed, nor can it be annihilated as that is impossible since the “I” is merely a projection of the function of “knowing” – so long as “you” exist, then “you are knowing”. “You” and “knowing” is inseparable, indispensable, for existence to exist.

So when it comes to unforgiving, what occurs within the mind of the beholder is the idea that “it should not have happened” – this meaning is conjured within the mind and has never left the mind, so to speak. Somehow, when one does not notice that this thought is simply within the mind and has never “came out of the mind” this obvious experience becomes an imagination of sort that there is “someone” out there that one cannot forgive. The truth is that you can neither forgive or not to forgive another since it is impossible to do so as all the “talking of forgiveness” has never left the mind of the beholder. It is a game one continuously play with himself or herself.

In fact, what one seemingly can’t forgive outside – is not the person, or the body, or something, but a certain character traits that is inherent in that specific event that triggers the irritation. That trigger is clearly an indication of what has been an ancient idea, lodged latent in the mind that has pain meaning in it that has yet to be released or undone. In other words, the mind has been carrying this pain for a long time and each event that brings up that pain is actually a call for inner forgiveness to be initiated so that “where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you.” (A Course in Miracles).

So, forgiveness, in all its due, is not to let go of anybody from your wrath of resentment, but to free the mind’s illusion that is within your experience of a once misperceived idea that has not been undone. Forgiveness has always been for you – fortunately! To forgive another is missing the mark. When perception is not directed correctly, its result will be a misperception of event, thus arising the “I am holier than thou” attitude, which is not just meaningless, but non-existential. This perpetuates further the already ignorant state.