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New Year Resolution – who cares?

I asked a friend two days ago what will be her resolution for next year and she replied exactly as what I have heard before from anyone else, including my own inner chattering – it never last and it happened the same each year and thus there is no reason to do it anymore.

That sentence (though I have heard it umpteen times before as every new year approach) at that moment brought a new understanding to why everyone, including myself, failed in resolutions.

When we make resolution we wish for an experience that we do not have. Experience is an effect of causes we nurtured for it to happened. Many causes create one experience, like the germination of a seed is dependent on light, water, soil etc. When we fail to give those causes attention, but instead keep trying to create the effect, which in truth is futile, we are only creating something without any foundation, awaiting to collapse.

It is wise to be reminded that I don’t get what I want. What I immediately get from want is dis-ease, though it may not be obvious to me at that point of time while engrossing myself in my pursuit of want. Whatever I get or whatever I have in life is not derived from want. Accurately speaking, what I have is derived from causes that lead to the effect of what is for me. It is not my want that brought me to have but the nurturing of causes that resulted it.

My failure in seeing this truth fails me further when I don’t see result in my resolution. Instead of seeing this truth, I am blinded to think that I am a failure in keeping resolution and this wrong thought kept me away from making other resolutions, depriving me further from improving myself.

I have missed the mark all the while. I have bark on the wrong tree. How could I possibly achieve what I resolved if what I begin is not in total alignment with Nature, with Truth? I give importance to what is inessential, oblivious to what is essentially important for the manifestation of my resolution. It is not that I am weak in keeping resolution but rather I do not understand how the mind works. Everything comes into fruition when there is right understanding.

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Dream and Awake – are both the same?

Many Masters equate life as a dream, an illusion, as maya. Is it just an analogy to convey their understanding of life or is it truly their first hand experience in seeing life as unreal? If it is truly an experience, how does it feels? What is it like to be brought face to face with the stark reality of the unrealness of life – a vast contradiction to what one unquestionably took for granted as real and tangible?

Many years ago I remembered waking up from bed one early morning, with my dream still going on in my head. In normal situation, as in anybody else, the dream will end when one wakes up from it but it did not happened in this case. Both the dream and the so-called reality of that moment occurred hand-in-hand simultaneously, in real time, so to speak. It is as if I was neither in the dream or in the reality but standing between both the experiences, allowing me observe and realized that the dream is like the reality and the reality is like the dream. I can’t differentiate which is real or unreal, but yet I knew for certain at that time what I call real is not truly real. It is like a mirage.

It is not possible for you to imagine what is it like if you have not experience it before. In normal case, the dream will be totally replaced by the reality of our wakefulness, defined by our awareness of the bedroom and the objects around it, including the walls and the floor, and we have an inkling that a dream has just occurred. But consider that just a few moments ago, prior to your waking up, the surrounding reality of that moment is real – everything – without you having or needing to question its validity. Do you call that moment a dream or only when you got out of it? What is dream then? Is it real – as real as you reading the blog now?

We call an experience a dream when 1) it disappeared from the seemingly reality of the present, and 2) the contrast of the present makes what just occurred unreal. When an event have both these criteria, the mind automatically interpretes the experience as a dream. You may have in your lives experience a certain passing event like a dream, as unreal, though you really knew it did occur. Why? Because the mind recognizes the two criteria and thus the meaning of dream came popping up in your head.

Why don’t the mind labels any immediate passed experience, a dream? It is because it does not give an impression of disappearance. On the contrary, it seems to continue into the present, making no contrast to what has just happened. Since both criteria is not met, the only meaning the mind could register is – real, as opposite to unreal, or dream. There are no grey shades except white or black in the eyes of the mind. The mind sees either good or bad, right or wrong, but never in between. It sees only one at a time, not simultaneously. When it sees right, at that moment it can’t sees wrong. Do you observe that?

In other words the mind cannot experience contrast at one given moment – opposites cannot come together at one time. The mind cannot be experiencing anger and non-anger at the same time. Neither can it experience joy and non- joy at the same moment.

Yet, wisdom has the capacity of doing so. When wisdom arise, it allows introspection on the immediate experience, together with its contrast or opposite, simultaneously, delivering a complete picture to what is occurring in the present moment, thus enabling deeper understanding to arise. This occurrence always arise in the now. It is introspective and never retrospective or prospective.

The ability to experience simultaneous dreaming and so-called awake state is the working of wisdom, allowing me to see the contrast of both which naturally encourages deep understanding to arise – to see them as real and also unreal, depending on which perspective understanding is coming from.

When you are with sound, are you with silence?

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You ALWAYS Give Your Best

Do you realize that in any given situation, irrelevant whether you are sure or unsure, wise or ignorant – the decision you take or make, is always, to you the best? When I say the best, I take it to mean that it is exactly what you think is best for you at that point of time, irrespective whether it is beneficial or detrimental to your well-being or not. It is only after that situation that you ponder that you should have done it better. What you think later and what you did is entirely different matter all together.

Now we think it is good to exercise and each morning when we decide to do it (or not), the choice that we finally made is always the best – it is best to go back to sleep,  it is best to wake up, it is best to give it a shot another day – whatever it is, that’s exactly what is best for you.

If you truly see this truth that is constantly occurring in your daily activities, you will choose not to beat yourself up for what has happened is what you know best for that moment of time. It may be an event of a quarrel, or a big sweep number you choose not to buy but later came out as the winning stake, or a decision that brought about anguish and pain, or a job application, or to defense or to attack. Or when you wish to be sexually intimate with your spouse and the reply is a “no” and whether your reaction is resignation, bitterness or probably take steps to understand him or her, or even scolding him or her in your head – whatever…. you are doing your best! Whether you call it decisive or indecisive reaction or respond, all the choices you made is your very best as you know no other better ways of doing it at that point of time.

As such there is no such a thing as mistakes. Mistake is a sentence or judgment made on what has happened and it nails you to the past of guilt, shame and pain. The last thing you want is sentencing yourself to doom but that is exactly what you always do – nailing a coffin and keeping yourself imprison in your own created walls. You can only learn something through wise retrospection, but not by judging or condemning it. Bitterness only makes you stop repeating the action which you perceived as wrong but it surely does not stop you from the same kind of attitude that, in the first place, causes you to choose. All your actions are merely effect of the cause of your mental attitude, which in reality is the thing that you need to address.

There are always a constant stream of shoulds in our head and observe that the shoulds are the cause of our stresses and upsets. Shoulds are ridiculous and violent by nature, as it is simply wishful thinking, expecting what is done can be undone. We wanted it to be undone because we thought it was not the best choice we have made. That’s totally untrue as we always choose what is best for ourselves after much scheming from the data bank of our memories.

Recognize that each choice you make at any one point of time comes either from your defilement or wisdom (ego or holy spirit) and that determines your regret or rejoice. And also recognize that you can’t simply call up wisdom (holy spirit) when at that point of time what you are going through is indecisiveness. In the space of dilemma, stop choosing. Even if you finally need to decide, recognize that you are choosing from the best you could only know at the very moment and let nature takes its course. All effects, whatever they are, are always a learning point for us, only if we wish to learn from it:)