Posted by Trey Carland on January 31, 2010 at 12:23pm
Over the past few years (since around 2006 or so), I have been in an off and on state of mentally describing my discoveries on the topic of enlightenment, or awakening, or self-realization, or whatever word turns you on the most. I have found that as I begin to see through the illusory nature of the world, I begin to mentally talk about it. The mental movement comes from the idea or feeling that “This must be shared,” which is something I’m sure I’ve shared with you before.
This compulsion to share can be frustrating if looked as a mental distraction that perpetuates the ego, or it can be seen as a gift in disguise. Something has been driving me, to share these things with everyone I know. Mental notes to describe insights happen anyway, so why not just accept it and share them? They obviously want to be shared.
On some level, this sharing has been my life’s purpose for some time now. However, I’m not really the one doing the sharing and they’re not really my words. I am a pawn in the game of life being used to help other pawns realize their true nature. But that’s easy to loose sight of when you are still grappling with ego, and so the story of being the doer continues.
Recently it occurred to me that my desire to share insights with others might actually be a veiled form of resistence, or a desire for things to be different from the way they are. My desire would be for “my” words to intensify “your” desire to awaken. “I” desire for “you” to be different from the way “you” are (i.e. more enlightened). However, by doing The Work on this idea it becomes obvious that it’s actually “me” that I want to be different. After all, “you” are a mirror of what’s going on in “me” and are reflecting my own non-acceptance of who I am.
From that perspective there seems to be two movements going on – there is the desire for you/me to be different, as well as a compulsion to share things that might make a difference. Which comes first? Is it possible that the compulsion is always happening and that I am imposing the idea that it might be happening out of a desire for change? Or, do I want change so badly that I am driven to pass on pertinent information in hopes of bringing about that change? Are they really separate? Does it matter? Either way Life is living me and this mental dialogue is another way in which the mind likes to do what it does best – analyze the hell out of things.
I can spend my time trying to find answers, or I can spend my time trying to find the truth. The truth is that which has no answers. The truth is that which can’t be put into words. It’s the desireless state of full acceptance of what is. It’s unconditional love. What’s going on in our lives is exactly what needs to be going on in our lives. The life situation is an ongoing invitation for us to wake up out of the dream of being trapped inside a body with all of the problems that go with being trapped inside a body. Acceptance, not analysis, is key to self-realization.
With the idea in mind that everything happens a reason, there is a natural tendency to look at things that happen and search for specifics as to what it is life is actually trying to tell me. The situation can be looked at under a microscope for traces of answers that will satisfy the mind, or simply accepted as part of the play of life. So, why ask why, when you can ask who am I?
Peace,
Trey
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Tuesday January 12, 2010St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin IslandsThe sun has recently set,the sky shifting to a steely blue-black,lots of stars now visible straight overhead.Silvery white clouds seemly harvestingthe last glimmering rays of the sun,bringing a friendly Casper-the-ghost blanket effectto the rugged mountains below.I am laying on my back, looking straight up.There are vertical structures,these tall, skinny, limbless spires,straight and symmetrical,so smooth their putty colored enameled surfaces.Everywhere around my limited horizon,these vertical structures pierce the sky.the one closest, as it heads upwards,makes increasing smaller Tstill it ends fifty or more feet above me.There are silvery straight angular lineseach running to the very top of the structures.I am resident on my new home,this thirty-eight foot sailboatin the harbor of the Independent Boat Marina,outside the small town of Red Hook, St. Thomas USVI..It is seven thirty now and the temperature is about seventy-two.Getting off the US Air flight earlier this afternoonIt was eighty-fiveand I immediately headed into the shade.The occasional motorized dinghy glides byimperceptibly breaking the water’s surface.The sky is now completely black.The occasional street light lights up homes up in the hills,Reflecting a zig-zag line of lantern lights seemingly glowingFrom up from some submerged source within the water. .The ever-so-slight ripples on the otherwise glassy surface,Imbue the lantern’s light with a slow motion undulating effect.It is a bit mesmerizing, not unlike the gentle flicker of candle light.I began reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charleyon the flight to St. Thomas today.Steinbeck was fifty-eight when he and his dog (Charley)soloed across America in the truck-camper insert.I purchased my camper insert just after my fifty-eighth birthday.Just before leaving Asheville this November,My friend Eddie recommended I purchase this Steinbeck novel.I am now clearly intuiting some of the resonancesfrom over fifty years ago.This gypsy journey is now going on two months.As I read about Steinbeck’s stops along his route,I am sensing another wave of traveling wanderlust.Perhaps I may retrace some portions of his trip.I’ve wanted to see Nova Scotiaand stop back into see friends outside Montreal.I am believing it is time to make a few refinementsTo my traveling home.Next on the list are some saddle pocketsThat will hang under the sides of the camper.These pockets would store a twelve foot canvas lawn tentI place where I could setup office and have my feet on the ground.By the way,my truck-camper traveling home I christened the other day.She is now called by the name, “Rocinante”.This was the Name Steinbeck gave his truck-camper home.I too whimsically borrow this name,the lineage going all the way back to Don Quixote’s noble steed.
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We are talking about a deeper gratitude. There are more superficial forms of gratitude, and that is not what we are talking about. By that I mean, to be grateful that someone else is worse off than you are… sometimes that is a source of gratitude. People say “Oh I really should be grateful, because look at this person – they are worse off than I am, so I should be grateful.” That’s not the true gratitude, that’s the gratitude that is arrived at through thinking, where you compare yourself to others.
The deeper gratitude is not arrived at through some conceptual process, where you explain to yourself why you should be grateful. That’s a superficial form of gratitude, that’s not really what it is, that’s ultimately to do with ego.
More fundamental than the true form of gratitude is the deep sense of appreciation. It’s not to do with what you are telling yourself in your head, it’s something that you sense in the present moment, it’s an appreciation of the “is-ness” of this moment.
We are using words as pointers. When I say “appreciation”, some people might ask “What do you mean by appreciation?” It’s to feel that the world around you is alive, and you share in the aliveness of the world that surrounds you. There’s the outer aliveness, in other human beings, even in your surroundings – whether it’s nature, or even in a room, you sense the aliveness of what’s around you at this moment, through your own aliveness. And with that comes the feeling, “it’s good to be alive”. You appreciate the many forms of life that are arising at this moment. You don’t impose judgment on the form that life takes at this moment, because the form that life takes changes continuously around you – one moment you’re here, the next moment you’re somewhere else.
It’s a deep sense of Being-ness, or aliveness, and through that you appreciate what is, in your life. And by saying “in your life”, it always means in the present moment, because apart from the present moment, there is no such thing as “your life”. If there’s something else there that’s not the present moment that you call “your life”, it’s a mental construct.
You have formed an image of “me” and “my life”, it’s a story, and you mistake that for your life. Fundamentally your life is whatever form this moment takes. Your life is always what is now. That’s your life. Not some story you’re telling yourself in your head.
Through that appreciation, you are sensing a sense of Oneness with what’s outside and what’s inside. There is no longer a separation that is created by excessive conceptual thinking between other people and the self, the separation is created by judgment. There is a sense of allowing the present moment to be as it is. All these are fundamental aspects of gratitude. It’s that openness to the ‘is-ness’ of this moment. With that openness, comes an appreciation for the “is-ness” of this moment. There is no longer a denial or a rejection of what is, because you have some story in your mind that clashes with what is around you at this moment. And that’s how many people live, so they go through life continuously, there’s a clash between their ideas of what should be now, and what is ‘now’.
The greatest form of suffering and frustration and non-fulfillment is the clash between the mental story of what “should” be and what is. That’s really the root of the madness. There cannot be gratitude when that operates in your life.
When something seemingly negative happens, people may find it very hard to say “Okay, I should be grateful, even for this”. I’m not saying you should do that, because even that is an idea in your head. It’s better to forget about trying to be grateful when something seemingly negative happens, and simply let go of the mental judgment of it, and say “This is what is, this is what happened, and this is the situation now”. If you can be free of mental judgment and denial or projection, complaining, and so on… just allow what is, and then something deeper emerges, even in a seemingly negative situation.
By coming into this place of acceptance, of the inevitable ‘is-ness’ of now, your inner state is no longer ultimately dependant on what is happening or not happening outside. That is a vital transformation of consciousness, where the external world no longer determines your state of consciousness.
So when something seemingly bad happens, say “this is”. Whether it is a small thing or a large thing, be open to that. If you’re open to the ‘is-ness’ of what is, something within you which we could call “peace” arises. Sometimes it’s very subtle, and you can’t notice it at first.
You’re not grateful for the seemingly bad thing, but you’re grateful that you can still be at peace, even in this situation. Internally you feel that by accepting, peace arises. Even in seemingly bad circumstances. And what is that peace? It’s an inner sense of aliveness, being-ness, presence. It’s the source of all gratitude.
There can be gratitude even when something bad happens. Not for the bad, but for the fact that even in the face of something seemingly negative, there is still peace in the background. But you won’t find that until you first accept what is.
Gratitude is very important. It transforms your whole life, if you can remember the importance of being grateful for life. As you go through your day, every day, you can even have little reminders – of the importance of being appreciative of life.
Every person has to verify for themselves, what can I be grateful for at this moment?
Sense the being that you are – not just the physical, but the sense of your own presence. That’s a great source of joy, to feel your own presence, it cannot really be defined. That’s the ultimate gratitude.
“Our ordinary sense of practical reality…is a construct of socialized conditioning and repression, a system of selective inattention whereby we are taught to screen out aspects and relations within nature which do not accord with the rules of the game of civilized life.” - Alan Watts – from This is ItWhile meditation is commonly understood to be a practice of calming the mind with certain techniques, and entering into a self observant, relaxed yet very alert awareness, in India and Tibet, the concept is more complicated, based in the root meaning of the word as concentration and familiarization of mind. Concentration is the foundation of meditation, but the issue is always: concentration on what? Aren’t we often concentrating, if what that means is training our minds upon something? Of course, yes, and what is recognized in the East is that we mostly concentrate our minds on what we have previously concentrated our minds on, that which we have grown familiar with, been directed to attend to, and what seems to be important to our particular sense of self-in-the-world.Importantly, this can even include our focus restlessly shifting, flitting from thing to thing, thought to thought, emotion to emotion, because this is what is familiar to our minds. We are focused on using our minds in the manner we are personally accustomed to and upon what has been socially conditioned into and out of us. We are living within set habits of mind. It is important to realize that after a fashion we are meditating, that is, concentrating, all the time, it’s just that the meditation we mostly practice is the one of holding together our personal/cultural world-view and personality with its particular habits of mind. This can be called the meditation on self, and is another way of defining ego. It is the story of “me”. We are generating the thought stream of our self-in-the-world with its past and projecting it into the future, attempting to make the story of me turn out the way we want it to, fearful that it will turn out in ways that we do not want. This meditation, or relationship to mind, is recognized in the East as what creates all the difficulties of the human condition.We fail to experience the full potential of the moment, not within the circumstances, the environment, nor ourselves. We think we are present and fully aware of the potential of what is occurring, but how can we be when we are projecting our preconditioned expectations onto the moment? The moment is experienced primarily as a means to an end, some imagined future. It is not realized as the only place that we ever have to actualize our lives. We fail to live deeply, skillfully and perceptively in the present. Obviously, when the present moment is only a blur getting from our past to our future, we guarantee that our lives will be experienced without much depth or sense of placement in life. Our experience is one of obsessive, sometimes scattered, mental activity in a story in time always colored by fears of not being enough. It is a very limited and limiting way to live..What we more commonly know as meditation, however, emerging out of the Asiatic cultures, is the concentrating of the mind and familiarizing it with deeper, calmer and expanded dimensions of mind that are the antidotes to these human difficulties. Meditation training in the Buddhist, Hindu and other mystical traditions teaches us to awaken out of this trance-like state of ego-story-myopia through specific practices, meditations, meant to familiarize the mind with that which is larger than the confines of our personal story, our ego, which after all, is only the contents of the mind, not the mind. These contents have as their source, other people and society. How can this be our essence, who we are at our truest and deepest level?These traditions teach and guide a person to access a deeper dimension of stillness and silence within the mind that is the realm of pure awareness, free of the conflicts of the restless and noisy surface dimension of egoic mind. This dimension of pure awareness and the regions of consciousness that become activated with the experience of unsullied awareness is the realm that religious practices recognize as where God can be realized directly, and what Buddhism refers to as our true or original Self. Recognizing this, these meditation practices both fulfill and then transcend mere religious practice. They become powerful tools for psychological healing as awareness of mind activity and what lies beneath the mind activity awakens an intelligence that is free of conditioning and is able to intuit the true source of self as this witnessing awareness.In all these forms of meditation, a deep calm and capacity for insight often develops as the mind trains itself away from the restlessness and insecurity of ego into an experience of certainty about placement within life. All need for self-justification or to measure up to socially imposed standards relaxes. We are free to be in society, pursuing occupations, maintaining relationships and families, but we are no longer the prisoner of social anxieties. In this way, meditation traditions originating in spiritual contexts can have profound psychological benefit.In Buddhism, albeit practiced by millions as a religion, we find what is fundamentally the most psychological tradition of meditation. Having emerged from the Hindu cultural context that teaches that the Divine (Brahman) is to be found within the human soul (Atman) as well as all of life, Buddhism teaches that the divine source is Nature, the Universe, needing no naming or deification. Nature penetrates all existence, including, of course, humans. Buddhist meditation is meant to awaken the realization that the perfection of Nature unfolds within as well as around what is experienced as self. It realizes that beneath the small self, within the realm of inner silence, there exists a greater Self uncorrupted by socialization into dualistic thinking of inside and outside. Self is then a function of the Universe unfolding through localized awareness in the form of a person. At first glance, this can seem an obscure, esoteric concept, but in reality is immensely practical and liberating.In Buddhist meditation, the mind is trained to “awaken” beyond the confines of the small egoic socially conditioned self, into where there is only Life, and the mind that can comprehend this directly is an awakened mind, untainted by social/cultural training into dualism. The mystery of the Universe unfolds everywhere, including within and as human consciousness. Buddhist practice is specifically intended to bring a person in touch with their own nature and source, free of the confusion and delusion of egoic constructs. Thus, it functions non-dualistically as a psychology that is also a theology, a cosmology, a way of life. One need not be a religious Buddhist to benefit deeply on all these dimensions from its practices. The practice can even deepen spiritual experience that is not Buddhist in doctrine, as Catholic priest Thomas Merton famously discovered.Moment to moment, what we know to be true is that the mind is concentrating on something. The purpose of Buddhist meditative training is to thoroughly familiarize the practitioner with what the mind is concentrating on, what it is familiarizing itself with, what habits of mind are active, and to see how limited and limiting our socially conditioned mind is, literally living within a conceptual prison. Then the practice and philosophy leads a person into deeper and deeper insights as to the true dimensionality of mind. It deliberately retrains the mind into expanded and deeper awareness, able to encompass non-dualistic experience and ultimately awakening into Enlightenment, mind’s true and original nature, completely breaking free of the trance of the meditation on self and social/cultural conditioning, while still free to live a completely engaged and productive life.But don’t let ego entice you into Enlightenment as a goal. In a twist on that old saying from Maine, “You can’t get there from here,” likewise, you can’t get here from there. Just stay with here. Be free of habit, meaning you can use or not use habitual patterns of thought and action, for habits have their uses, but they can also be what trap us. Let your new habit be to hold your habits in clear awareness, seeing them for what they are. Enlightenment is the freedom to see and act clearly, your meditation concentrating on the truth of the moment, the universe unfolding through your experience. You can change the habits of mind. Most importantly, you can change the habit of mind from imprisonment within ego and conditioning into freedom and harmony with life unfolding. This liberation is Buddhism’s “awakening.”` *
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(c) 2010 Howard McQueenThe distilled wisdom of the agesis accessible,as are the teachers,ready to guide you -- to transform this YOUas deeplyas isyour passion.to let goof everythingyou know,about yourselfand the worldas you once knew it.It is more than a bit disorienting.Best to get re-oriented soon.Come step into the flow.We are all in this together.There are many ready to serve as guidesin Evolution's acceleration....
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(C) 2010 Howard McQueenThere is this vital, life sustaining energetic riverflowing through each of us.It cannot be known by our ego, or our mental effortings.It is not born of a science describe-able by the words or mind of manYou as healer intuitively catch glimpses,these fish from the riverthat you bring back and use to heal others.It is time that you learned the art of fishing these watersfor your own healing.Dedicated to my friend and healer, SG and to the many healers I am meeting on my journey.I am reminded by a wisdom from my teacher (to paraphrase) "We have no idea where the medicine will come from, as it could come from anyone, at any time, in almost any shape or form".
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(C) 2010 Howard McQueenCharisma, attraction, desire ...Being drawn toward someoneand their words, beliefs, andlets be frank: personality and showmanship.Breathe deeply.Take a sip from your own well.We all benefit from the vision and pointers from others.Lets remember that we always have to:- breathe for ourselves- feel for ourselves- discern and do our own work of transformationAllowing someone else to carry or transport uswith their charismatic "magic carpet ride"always leaves us stranded and dryin the desert of desolation,outside of the radius of our own heartfelt experience.Bring in all external experienceand re-forge these appealing energetic signatures.Some may end up being forgeries,impurities that burn away in the inner smelting process.Those that reveal precious ore,are the raw materials for a newOasis that your imagination will resolve.What an additional treat it isto meet another someonein this newly envisioned,now shared Oasis space!In this Oasis space, we can both sip the fine tea and smell the exotic fragrancesand admire the fine weaving and fabric of these one-of-a-kind, loomed by our hands - carpets, feeling into these with our trembling, set free, naked feet.We rest in the swell of infinite possibilities. We acknowledge we are not in any hurry here to stoke the embers of desire, as so many of the old desires we have chased after are born of passion and so very fleeting. Perhaps we should begin by anointing our naked feet with a fine oil, over by the warming fire. Then perhaps we can recite the poetry of Rumi, then pick up our own pens and write our ongoing story of two incarnating spirits invoking the beauty radiating from a deeper, beyond the personal Love, that is awakening, and consciously being born through honor and integrity.I welcome you to this space, I first dreamed in 2009. The name that finally resolved into a label is HEART CENTERED OASIS. Lets find a time to share and enjoy our company, in this sacred space, or a space of your own choosing, in 2010!
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