Month: February 2010

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.

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.