Illusion to Reality

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

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.