Month: February 2010

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