Category: General

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.