What is Life?

Then and now: top Eknath Easwaran, bottom Anandamayi Ma. They both died a long time ago.

I walk past the old photo albums and am tempted to look at one from 35 years ago, from when we were young and married for 3 years. I’m alone in the silence of 6:00AM, in the kitchen drinking tea and watching the past.

Seeing what we did, and who we were, and comparing it to what we do and who we are “here and now“, a question comes to me: what is life? I see that 35 years ago we already had everything: a good job, good salaries, a small but clean, elegant and cozy house, perfect health, perfect skin, and the young and bright look that suggests an energy behind it. We had a great time traveling by motorbike, doing tourism, trekking and hiking. We were alive. We were life.

I find it funny that oft-repeated mantra, “live in the here and now”, those who say it must have a here and now of well-being, but when you get out of bed and everything hurts, you would prefer to be somewhere else and at another time past, because the future looks even worse. I understand what they mean, but its practical application is very limited.

Now we don’t travel anymore. At most we spend a weekend in a hotel no more than 100km from home. We don’t trek. We don’t have the knees to do it. We don’t ride motorbikes. Our gaze has lost energy, and our skin has wrinkled. My partner suffers from chronic illnesses, and I am on my way to having them as well. We are alive, but less alive than before. And death is coming slowly.

So life is not like an “all or nothing” switch, we are alive or we are dead. Rather it is like a variable state. And it has to do with the available life energy. As children we still don’t have it all, potentially we do, but it still has to develop. As young people we are at 100% vital energy, therefore fully alive. And as the years go by we lose life until we lose it altogether.

Level of Life Energy

It is often objected that in old age we can be very lucid, even very active even with the physical limitations of age. But that lucidity depends on the good functioning of the brain, and this in turn depends on health. Sleeping little and badly, having a reduced ability to breathe, having a weak heart, and many other causes associated with old age cause a deterioration of brain activity and a loss of cognitive abilities, not to mention the terrible disease of Alzheimer’s, of which I watched my mother-in-law die slowly.

And what can we say about consciousness? In my sixties I recognize that I am more aware than at 20. In what sense? At 20 I was fully identified with my mind, with my thoughts. Not now. I am now aware of a depth of Being independent of thoughts. In a sense I am more aware of life now than before. Is life perhaps consciousness? Or maybe Being is primordial life, and vital energy is biological life, a manifestation of Being? Then death would not exist, only life and its manifestations would exist.

But it is difficult to fully identify with that consciousness of Being Life. The ailments are there bothering you, telling you in your ear “you are getting old, you are deteriorating more with each passing day, and you are going to end up badly.” And what I take worst is seeing this progressive, unstoppable deterioration in loved ones. My wife has it worse than me because her lucidity is far from what she was. Not to mention other grandparents, parents, in-laws, uncles, all already deceased, some with a lot of suffering.

I now fully understand the Buddha’s shock when he first witnessed old age, decay, illness and death, a shock that led him to abandon everything to find liberation. I also aspire to liberation from progressive death, to be Life. I better hurry before I lose my lucidity too and can no longer make it in this life.

Letter to that young couple

Hello George and Ann, I am George in his sixties, I am addressing you who are twenty-five years old and recently married.

I remember you with affection and nostalgia, full of positive energy, optimism and the will to live; you both work hard but you also enjoy the weekends, sometimes going on a trip to the mountains that you both love, sometimes visiting your parents, your Jordi or your Anna, you share and get along well with everyone. You also have a good relationship with each other’s siblings, you meet sometimes and have a good time. You bought yourself a fantastic bike, a 750cc BMW that you ride on.

You live in a good neighborhood in a city as beautiful as the Barcelona of the 80s. George, you really enjoy running even though you’ve never had the conditions, Ann, you’re a “crack” (a common word now in the 21st century, it means you are very good at something) at work, worth two or three! And don’t think about children for now, you’re fine like this.And you are satisfied with your small one-room apartment, with a scant 40m². You don’t need more. But you both have aspirations, you like big houses, tastefully decorated, located in nice places. And one day you are sure you will have it.

Nothing remains of all that from where I am writing to you, in a place in your future.

Here your parents died a long time ago victims of serious illnesses, your father, George, suffered a lot but only for a few weeks, on the other hand Ann’s parents suffered from Alzheimer’s and the last few years they don’t even know you, it was hard.

In this present you live in a big apartment too crammed with things that you haven’t thrown away because of that grasping feeling you’ve always had, there are so many things that it’s impossible to keep order and even clean well. Piles of clothes you don’t use in wardrobes and bags, piles of old books you’ll never read again, piles of memories in drawers, boxes and shelves gathering dust. As much as you loved beautiful houses with modern and elegant decor, you had to settle for simple and worn furniture, which you can’t renovate because you’re tight on money.

Yes George, you have not achieved financial comfort after so many years of work, on the contrary, you have been doing well for many years, and now that retirement is approaching, you are seeing them come even thinner. Well, the area where you live is not bad, but it is not in your beloved and longed for Barcelona, you had to emigrate to the South for work reasons and could not return. You often say you want to come back one day to walk around Barcelona, but you’ve been saying that for years.

George, you have had to stop running due to injuries and joint pain, but you can still go for walks, although not on the mountain as you liked because your knees do not tolerate it well. Your health was perfect but now you have several chronic conditions: you can’t see well up close, you can’t feel well, your bowels need frequent laxatives, everything hurts when you get out of bed, you’ve lost a tooth due to decay and you’re left over of weight which has caused you to have fatty liver with cysts but you are throwing up.

But you Ann have had worse luck with your health. Perhaps due to the stress of the mental ferment of your parents, both at the same time, your health deteriorated further. First you developed high blood pressure, then psoriasis, which started only at the level of the epidermis but then deepened at the joint level, with the danger of going deeper into vital organs. And finally the cancer came, and at the worst time. George and Ann, around 2020 the world suffered a virus pandemic that threatened all of humanity; much of it had to be confined at home to avoid contagion. Yes couple, like in dystopian science fiction movies. During the confinement, medical consultations were drastically reduced, doctors were also confined and emergency rooms were overflowing with the infected. And it was just then that you had abnormal vaginal discharge, in full climacteric. When the pandemic passed and everything returned to normal, you were diagnosed with a very aggressive carcinoma that was already metastasizing. It’s been three years and you’re still alive, but with two rescue operations, two rounds of chemotherapy and one of radiotherapy, which have left you very damaged. That’s why you don’t go for walks in Barcelona, in fact you rarely leave the house. And you’re not out of danger yet. You stopped working a long time ago, and that’s why you’re very tight on money; in addition you will not be entitled to any retirement pension and you will have an even fairer old age. You will also not be entitled to any help because George will have a pension and the state considers this to be sufficient.

Right now Ann and George I am writing to you on a Sunday at 11:00. The house is quiet because you, Ann, always sleep very badly at night and in the mornings you often end up sleeping until 2:00 p.m., so I am alone and quiet all morning so as not to disturb you. A while ago I was sorting through a pile of cooking recipes accumulated over twenty years by you Ann, you had loose sheets on a chair, not stapled or put in folders, I took it upon myself to punch them and sort them into a folder of rings You will probably never look at them but at least now they will be classified, and so I do something.

Ah, important! You had one child Ann and George, an only child. You George wanted two, but Ann refused a second pregnancy. He is now thirty years old and still lives with you, and he has no intention of leaving! He had two emotional disappointments and no longer wants to try his luck again. In fact he has become a misogynist. He is also not very hardworking, and this living independently as it is expensive he does not want to do it, we must have taken care of Ann too well and now this is happening. I feel sorry for him but no matter how much I try to get him to change his attitude, he doesn’t listen to me. He will end up being a forty man living with two elderly people, which is a sad scenario. You are alone with him, because you haven’t spoken to your siblings in years, another thing that has been lost along the way, like the friendships of your youth, which you did not nurture and maintain. You only have neighbors in the community, good people, but nothing to do with a good friend and a loving family.

In short, Ann and George, life has not been as you imagined it would be, and as you deserved. Not at all.

But you still hold the most valuable thing of all that you have: your love for each other, which has varied over time but remains strong. You have had strong disagreements, strong arguments, you were even separated for a short space of time because you George were weak and flirted with others, when Ann most needed you to be strong. But you got back together. And you have been there for almost forty years. You got it right, you were made for each other. George, I recommend that you take advantage of every moment with Ann, I don’t know if the George who is writing to you has much more time left to do it.

Kissing couple

Realization of Being: reliving the full consciousness of past moments is also be present here and now

Nowadays we often hear advice like “live in the here and now“, “the past does not exist, only the present, the eternal now“. The truth is that something inside me told me that yes, they are good advice to transcend the automatic mode of operation of the mind, the one that is always worried about the future or remembering past events and meanwhile the present escapes him, but something was missing, something important I felt was not taken care of if I followed the advice completely.

Feeling it like this, my reflective mind whispered in my ear “you must be wrong to doubt the advice of renowned mindfulness teachers, and you’re on the wrong path if you keep doubting“, but if there’s anything I’ve learned in my years of meditation practice respect to topics of spirituality is: you have to pay a lot of attention to experiences and intuitions and leave the reflective mind in silence, because actually meditating is that: experiencing, intuiting, contemplating, in mental silence. So I forgot the fears in my mind and kept asking myself: what is missing there, what is incomplete, is that attitude of considering the past as non-existent, as not worthy of attention?

The answer came in the form of experiential “flashes”, at first some momentary, from time to time while meditating. Then they became more frequent. I didn’t grasp its meaning immediately, I just sensed that it was important, and that it had to do with my doubts. What were the experiences about? Well, it was reliving past moments with full consciousness, sometimes very distant, almost forgotten, even from my early childhood. Short, simple moments, but that he had lived very awake, very aware. They came to my mind, spontaneously, without me making any voluntary effort to remember.

Like the moment of waking up with the rooster crowing, in my bed, when I was very young, maybe three or four years old, I only remembered that moment, nothing after, but it wasn’t a remembering like when you want to remember, it was a feeling of the experience of that moment, a full awareness that at that moment it was of the moment, of the here-and-now. And just like this, dozens of other moments: my hand in the sun-warmed sand as I lay face down on the beach, the feeling of riding a motorcycle down a tree-lined road with my girlfriend sweetly hugging me, and so many other countless moments of full and joyful experience.

They were pleasant and vivid flashes, and as they had appeared in my meditation, I wondered at their meaning, which I sensed was connected with my doubts. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were confirmation that our real, inner Self does indeed manifest itself when we are in the here-and-now state of full consciousness, but at the same time this state will have happened spontaneously in numerous occasions in the past. Therefore, when we work full awareness of the moment does not have to be only that of the present, it can be that of any past moment. In fact, in some ineffable way, I feel that “I”, my deep identity, was and is the same in all those moments. When it is said that the Being is beyond time it does not mean that the Being only lives in the temporal present as we understand it, it means that everything is present time for the Self! All moments lived with full awareness of Being are One! It cannot be understood from the intellect, but the experience is what it is, and it is wonderful, because all those moments were joy, which is another facet of Being: unconditional joy.

So when you meditate for the realization of your higher identity you don’t need to belittle the past as non-existent, on the contrary, your whole life in block is a single moment for the Being, and by meditating on the past moments of full consciousness you access a dimension timeless and full of joy that are undoubtedly of great use to advance in the realization of Being.

Forces and energies of Life

I present here, briefly, a particular vision of reality that lately has been very useful to me to broaden my understanding of what is happening around us and also within us.

Conflicts in life are opposing forces

Why are there so many conflicts in life? Why so much evil? Why do diseases exist? Why do people die in senseless accidents? Life is apparently chaos, a sequence of good and bad events, which often hits us hard.

We can use the following conceptual framework: life unfolds at various levels, from the physical level, through the biological, up to the higher mental, social and spiritual levels. Everything in existence works due to forces that act at these levels.At the basic physical level we have the forces of Nature such as gravity or electricity, at the biological level there are other forces of a biochemical nature but there are also forces that tend to evolve. and to conserve species, and this conservation includes the forces that lead to the struggle for survival, to kill to feed, to die to make way for new, more evolved generations.

At these basic levels there is no conflict because there is no mind that interprets it this way, the forces simply operate each at their own level doing what they have to do to keep their own scenario working. Thus, an electrical storm, which is actually a return to the electrical balance of the atmosphere that had been unbalanced, forming large amounts of electrical charge in a limited region, causes a natural fire in a forest, killing thousands of animals and plants; there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it, what happens is some forces, the physical ones, act against others, the biological ones.

This is a constant: in Reality a multitude of forces operate, and they inevitably collide with each other often, each force operating at its own level. Whenever the forces of reality collide, there is destruction of something, there is a force that temporarily gives way.

At higher levels the same thing happens, and also suffering appears, which is the awareness of being undergoing destructive forces. On the mental level the mind strives to create safe environments for the individual, with partial success, for it is impossible for it to avoid all conflicts between forces at various levels. The mind thus creates homes, creates comforts, creates sources of food to escape famines, creates medicines to alleviate diseases that are nothing more than conflicts between biological forces, but at the same time that mind suffers fear of not achieving security, and creates new conflicts with other minds for ideological reasons, that is, mental forces also collide with each other on their own level. Shocks at the mental level can have serious consequences, even generating wars that completely destroy the security that the mind craved (!).

At the social level, there are forces tending to organize the collective welfare. In this sense, forces arise that see violence, normal on the biological plane and even on the basic mental level as a means of defense, as something undesirable. Organized justice, solidarity, the welfare society arises. Of course, there are still conflicts because the concrete forms of organization, that is, the political ones, can collide with each other and collide with each other, and not always generate constructive debates, often these political currents seek hegemony and absolute power, thus seeking to weaken or destroy the rest of the options.

Thus, the individual finds himself living in a reality made up of very different forces, operating at different levels, which often collide with each other causing some type of destruction, which is experienced as bad, generating suffering to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how much destruction it generates for the individual and their immediate environment.

Spirituality amb Energy Level

We are left with the highest level of Reality, the spiritual, in which consciousness transcends the mental level, non-duality is experienced, union with everything manifested, equanimous understanding of the reality that unfolds moment by moment around us, and one is aware of a deeper, more consistent individuality than that represented by the psychological personality. In the conceptual framework that we are presenting there is a fundamental difference between this level and the rest: on the spiritual level we consider that forces do not operate but energies.

Energy is a potential force, not manifested. Forces emerge from energies, which are its cause. In other words, the spiritual level can put us in contact with the causes, transcending the effects of those causes. At the physical level it is a known fact: the force that moves a railway locotomora, for example, comes from an electrical energy that is circulating through the electrical network but that does not produce any effect if the means are not given to make it manifest. As the lightning that arises from between the clouds comes from an electrostatic energy, potential, that was there in space, until it manifests as a visible discharge … and dangerous. On a spiritual level, life is a power that “pushes” the lower levels to manifest themselves through the multiple forces that make up life.

Love is another spiritual energy that manifests itself in multiple forms of forces: desire, affection, friendship, but also attachment to ideas, opinions and ideologies. The forces of love like all forces can conflict with each other and with other forces, the desire to love another can imprison, bind that someone, the love of an ideology can create conflicts with others in love with other ideologies, etc. But Love as a primordial energy does not conflict with anything. We can also say that energies simply ARE, while forces do things. The BEING is also, it does nothing, it is an energy of unmanifest individuality. The personality with its biological, mental and social forces is a manifestation of the Self.

When we become aware of that level of primordial, spiritual energies, everything makes sense, we no longer see existence as a chaos of meaningless forces, on the contrary, we understand that these forces build reality and that it is inevitable that they collide often. We are aware of the energies of Life, Love and Being, which are the source of everything manifested, and we realize that in that deep vision of reality that unfolds moment by moment, everything is correct, everything is well, and there is no place for suffering.

Non dual time experience

It’s been a long time since my last article; when i thought about writing a new one, I reviewed the old articles, and I always found that I had already written about it, maybe I had already told everything I could tell … but in the last year I have been experiencing a state that I think I have never spoken about. By the way by this time ten years have passed since I decided to meditate daily. It is usually considered that this period of time indicates that you are an “advanced meditator”, at least from a neurological point of view, since your brain has developed new neural connections that have become permanent after so many hours and so much perseverance. It is a bit like playing the piano, which is also considered necessary about ten years of practice.

What is that new experienced state? Let’s try to explain it in words, not an easy job really. But I think it can be motivating so it’s worth a try. The reader will surely have heard the concept, and the recommendation, “be here and now” mentioned numerous times. It is really useful to stop the incessant movement of the mind, always remembering past events and imagining future events. “The past no longer exists” is the slogan. Useful as it is, and true in a sense, there was something wrong with that statement for me over years of practice. I thought that perhaps I was reluctant to accept it, because in that past that had left there were very dear people who no longer exist in the present, and the only thing that remained of them were the memories. Not remembering them was condemning them to non-existence, to oblivion, to nothingness, and that hurt. So for a long time I believed that I had some kind of internal resistance that with practice would disappear.

But as I was saying in this last year of meditative practice, I have been experiencing a state of consciousness that seems to be the answer to my doubts about being constantly here and now, and regarding considering the past as non-existent. Let me try to explain it.

It began with experiencing a pleasant memory, like a flash a distant moment of fleeting happiness came to my memory; temporary because, as we know, the mind is restless, and happiness is usually temporary, since the mind is unable to reside in it, it prefers to move. But today my mind is no longer restless, on the contrary, it is capable of remaining calm, contemplative, at will. As a result, that memory brought back a vivid feeling of happiness that, this time, was not so short-lived, as I left my mind calm, and my consciousness focused on the remembered feeling of happiness. This experience was never sought at will, it just happened spontaneously, from time to time. After a while those flashes occurred even when she was not meditating. For example, it is my custom to lie down and relax, without falling asleep, ten minutes after eating and before going back to work, to regain energy; Well, in that rest I often come back to such memories of past moments of happiness. They tend to be memories of brief moments: a landscape that I contemplated for a few seconds while walking up the mountain, the bright blue sky, being in good company, the feeling of vitality that being young provides, small moments of life, already far away.

I have realized that in that past I was little aware of that happiness; he was there, but I hardly noticed it, being almost absorbed in my mind. That is why they were brief flashes; of everything that went through my head in those times, my incessant thoughts, my worries, practically nothing remains, they have left no trace. On the other hand, the brief moments of felt happiness return to my consciousness with total reality, in fact, more intense than then, because now I am fully aware of them.

As such prolonged moments of remembered happiness happened, a new sensation appeared: I experienced the sensation of being timeless, that is, the one who experienced those distant moments was exactly the same as the one who recovered them in the present; that is the timelessness of being, its time-invariance. The mind was not the same at all, neither the body, nor the environment, but I clearly lived the sensation of being beyond mind, body and environment. Over time the notion of non-duality of time arose in me. In a similar way to the non-duality of space, which tells us that despite the fact that our mind distinguishes a fragmented reality into numerous objects separated by a space, Reality is one and indivisible, the temporal non-duality experienced indicates that the mind separates time in past, present and future, but the Reality remains one and indivisible also in the temporal aspect. Focusing the mind on the present is correct, but considering that the past does not exist is not so, it is strongly dual, and reality is non-dual. Time is seen as a continuous landscape, in which we are physically at a specific point, which we call present, but our being, timeless, is not in any specific place, it simply is.

I don’t know if I have managed to convey something of the experience using words. In any case, I will add that currently the experience of reviving the past consciousness of happiness with the current full consciousness is even too intense: I often have to let go of it after a few seconds because it gives me the impression of being able to rise to a state of ecstasy. .And then you have to go back to work! Also add that it is a happiness-love, there is a latent love that enjoys existence in its simplest aspects, as right now I simply enjoy looking around me, in my study, in the silence of the morning, without a specific reason, simply feel my being enjoy the total Being around me, and in me.

Inner Discovery Travel

Almost ten years ago, I have to start a inner travel, an exploration of my self.

“Have” to start, because it was a need, not a desire, being my mind a mess of chaotic, negative thoughts, blended with negative emotions, as usual in human being.

At first, a bit of mental control was the first station, a bit of inner calm, even while the outer environment was still dark; some months of daily trascendental meditation  was the job, at least to some degree. Being the outer still bad, but feeling some inner peace, my motivation for explore my inner landscape increased, so a new phase started: what happens inside the mind? and why happens?

Then, my strong desires was “observed with magnifying glass“, the power of the mind focused, paying full attention, to that inner process, the arising of desires, and the construction of a inner frame made of a mess of thoughts and desires. And driving the focus, the will of discovery the inner mechanism of all. Was a careful exploration of the forces that make us want things and situations: reflective meditation. As a result, one day, suddenly, the desires that made me suffer through grieve and craving was full discovered, realized; as a result my mind was liberated from any desire. At first was not a good experience: living without desires was similar to live without vital energy, without fuel, but I learned to live in that way; I realized I still can enjoy of the little things of life: a hot cup of chocolate, the wind in my face, contemplate a beautiful landscape … things that still was a pleasure, so life was still a pleasure even without desires!

Calm settled in me, I can feel it clearly as a physical feeling in my chest. Sometimes desires still arise, for example seeing a nice car in the street (I was a fan of sportive cars in the past) but the desire vanished  in seconds, unable to hold on to my mind, like the water is unable to wet a duck’s waterproof feathers. But the inner travel was not finished, next station: the mind itself.

Next years my mind was focused on my own mind, some part of them watching carefully to the rest. Old habits, thoughts, ideologies, opinions … all was observed with full attention, looking for the origin and mechanisms inside all. As a result, a state similar too the one achieved with desires: thoughts arises, but they have nothing for hold, sliding, arising and quickly disappearing on the scenery of my inner consciousness. Only will can produce perdurable thoughts, any “automatic” thought can’t endure more than a few seconds in the consciousness. At the same time a new “I” emerges, and “I” that is independent of any thought, an inner presence beyond thoughts and desires, stable, unalterable. That is the next station, the full realization of the Self.

Illumination: opening our space of consciousness

Illumination? What is? And why we could wish it?

“Illumination“: the action of illuminating or state of being illuminated: such as spiritual or intellectual enlightenment. Is a state characterized by making less thoughts, almost no one, less reactivity, almost nothing, free of desires, and at the same time a sense of deep peace and also be very awake, very connected with all. There are many ways for achieve such state, but first of all, is a desirable state? Why we could wish it?

Donald Trump, a mind oriented to power and personal welfare

There are people that have a well balanced life; their minds are highly structured, oriented to personal wellness. Since they were young, they look for stability, surrounding by “appropriate, correct people”  and moving away from “inappropriate people“, they looking for the appropriate sentimental partner, also for a good job, etc. Are people that don’t worry for the problems of other unlucky people, is not their problem. Is a pragmatic position, even an intelligent  attitude. Death of relatives and friends is pragmatically accepted without ask themselves questions about the meaning of life. For such people, talking about illumination is merely a nonsense, a sort of escapism from the reality, without any utility nor interest. They are not illuminated at all, and also don’t wish it at all.

From a higher point of view, a broader perspective, such attitude is merely a mental construction, a mental framework: a set of thoughts, desires, points of view, that the person takes as the reality, their reality, ignoring all the other point of views that don’t coincide. Any mental framework for life is necessarily an enclosure for the person, that includes some points of view and excludes others. Are strong frameworks, and people identifies with them, they are their mental framework.

Richard Feynman: a mind oriented to science and personal welfare

Of course not all the people trying to have a life well correlated with their mental framework are successful; many people fail, having bad jobs, bad marriages, suffering a lot with the death of loved persons, having children that are not as expected, having chronic diseases, etc etc. Such unlucky people suffer a lot since the very moment life don’t coincide with their ideal mental framework. They are candidates for illumination, that can bring them peace and welfare even in their bad circumstances.

There are another people that, even living quite well, have an intellectual restlessness, an impulse to understand life with their ups and downs, not simply accept it, but understand. Other people feel compassion, a sense of unity with all the mankind, is not possible for them simply ignore the suffering of the people, they experience the will of help people without any reward. They are compassionate people. Both people with intellectual restlessness and compassionate are also candidates for illumination.

Consciousness beyond thoughts

Opening our consciousness

As we said before any mental framework for life is necessarily an enclosure for the person, is impossible understand life while we are enclosed in a mental frame (by the way the name of this blog, The Closed Room, referees to this concept of closed mental framework). Illumination requires break any closed mental framework, maybe not at all, but at least we need open a door or a window for let the light enter the room and enlighten it. Such room is our space of consciousness, habitually full of our thoughts.

When we let the space free of thoughts, other visions of reality can enter into. In the moment that visions enter in our awareness, it may happen that our mind closes back to them because such visions are not correlated with our mental framework, even they can be incompatibles with our old framework. We need an enhanced awareness for realize such resistance it the very moment that appears, then relax the mind, and accept the vision as it is: acceptance is the key word here.

So, for be able to open a door in our closed mental framework, we need

1. first of all the will for it, the base motivation for work
2. working for develop the abilities of perceive on the fly the emergence of mental resistances,
3. relax it,
4. working for develop the acceptance of whatever appears in our consciousness.

When we work in this way, we see how a consciousness free of thoughts, opened, relaxed, wide, peaceful, very awake, appears in our lives. There are many methods for work in this line, is not the aim of this short post to talk of them. This opened consciousness is the very start of the illuminated state, we only opened a door for fresh air, but is the first step, the necessary one.

Returning to innocence, but this time, with wisdom

The mind of any adult is usually full of thoughts, coming and going and coming … without end.

Do you remember what was your mental state in your childhood? What thoughts filled your mind?

Crowling (source: http://baby-loki.deviantart.com/art/)

Probably they were simple impulses, desires, direct perceptions … now and then no thoughts, only be there.

As more you going further back in your childhood, less thoughts you find; such state of mind is named innocence. And is a nice, happy, clear state.

Nowadays meditation is a trending topic in West, and one of their aims is to reduce the number of involuntary thoughts.

 

Meditate is like a return to such peaceful state of mind similar to our childhood: simply be here and now, awake, observing, perceiving.

But is not the same old state: a child reacts to perceptions, acts driven by desires, is moved by his emotions as a drifting boat is moved by the wind and waves; instead, an experimented meditator not reacts automatically, and is not driven by desires nor emotions, his mind is stable, even-tempered, and in the deep center of such mind an observer contemplates all the scene, the world running and spinning.

From such deep center the observer is not affected itself by nothing. He always acts, never reacts. Such state of mind is named wisdom, is a state of wide vision, free of prejudices, but possessing knowledge, life experience, that he can use if necessary.

So through meditation we can return to the nice innocence, but this time with knowledge, with wisdom. Have knowledge not means to be thinking continuously, on the contrary, thoughts are reduced to the minimum, involuntary thoughts are no longer there.

We progressively become an innocent wise subject.

Eknath Easwaran, an old meditation teacher, good example of healthy, peaceful, innocent but wise mind

The very source of suffering

The Buddha, 2500 years ago, after long years of meditation, saw that the source of suffer was desire, but not any desire, only unhealthy desire produces suffering; for example, the desire of liberation of suffering is a healthy one, while any craving, addiction, produces lack of freedom, also can easily turn into frustration and anger: suffering.

Buddhism also describes aspiration: “soft” desire that has an openness to a possibility that we see as good, but without a need for anything to happen, so without any expectation nor grasping. Also, Buddhism relates unhealthy desires to the discursive world of planning, thinking, and fantasy, while aspiration is related with inner stillness, with mental calm; that’s why meditation is needed for first calm the mind, and then calm the unhealthy desires.

Here, 2500 years after Buddha, we are going try to show a deeper vision of the very origin of suffering, thanks to our modern knowledge. First, let us define suffer in a very simply, wide way:

 Suffer is the tension produced by opposed forces.

Any object subject to opposed forces experiences tension; if tension is enough strong, eventually break such object. Let us give some examples:

1. I want to have a nice family, but I have not; disputes, anger, lack of kindness are instead the habitual. What are the forces here? One force is: want to have a nice family, that is directly derived from survival instinct expressed as want to live in a cozy environment, to feel being protected; note we don’t label it as desire or aspiration is only a natural force, and is good of course. On the other side there are personal conflicts between individuals, with causes that are usually diverse: different opinions, old unresolved quarrels, etc etc; such conflicts are the visible results of the same force,  survival instinct, manifested as negative emotions and behaviors, a reacting against things that are seen as ‘bad’. So the first force is constructive, and the second one is destructive, and their confluence causes suffering. Indeed, both forces are in fact one and the same: survival, protection of the individual against the environment, but it expresses in opposed forms.

2. Think now about a person getting old; she is trying to overcome the degeneration of her body, taking care of her health, trying to stay active, etc but as we know time does not stop, it is irreversible, so the degeneration and the chronic diseases also don’t stop; there are pain, and such person needs a very healthy mind for don’t fall in suffering. Again, there are two opposed natural forces acting:  survival of the individual and destructing of the individual for renewal of life on earth.

As Buddhism says us, when the person mindfully accepts the situation suffering vanishes; but the forces are still there one against the other, what happens? Suffering is produced by the mind, because all our actions and reactions are made by the mind; when we fully accept the situation, the mind are not reacting, she let things happen, let the natural forces acts one against other and observe the scenery wisely, recognizing the forces that act there, she knows that in a deep sense that forces are intrinsically positive, even externally, from a personal, partial point of view, seems negative. 

What about desire in our framework?

Desire is an automatic, so unconscious, mental reaction driven by the force of survival.

Our personal mind, complex, multifaceted, express the force of survival, of welfare, in a multiple ways, from desire to simply eat or have sex up to desire for luxury. We need a clear awareness of what is happen moment by moment, what forces are acting within us and out there, this awareness is beyond thinking, and also beyond  automatic unconscious desires. Indeed, we are saying the same that Buddhism: mindfulness meditation show us how  the mind is constantly under the sway of craving, chasing after its own thoughts; but we introduce the new element “forces of Nature” as the very source of desires and suffering. We think take into account such forces enrich our knowledge, making easier achieve and stabilize a mindful state of mind: we know what is the source and also why is there, and is good, because such forces are the ones that make everything exist. Such forces are the forces of the creation.

Realizing our true “I” through constant meditation

What is meditation? Yes, we know it, the action or practice of meditating, so what is meditate?

Focus one’s mind for a period of time for religious or spiritual purposes or as a method of relaxation. Think deeply about (something). Also: contemplate, think about, reflect, engage in contemplation, be in a thoughtful state, debate with oneself, …

Meditate for spiritual purposes (concerned with the soul, with the creation as a whole, etc, beyond material or physical things) is more related with contemplate, deep reflection, than simply think about, but thinking is not excluded of meditation. What’s the problem with thinking? Thinking produces thoughts, ideas, mental frames, judgements … but the reality is beyond all mental frame, so thinking too much can close us to spiritual reality. Though we need thinking as a kind of crutches for come closer and closer to reality, we need ask us questions, remain opened to answers beyond the scope of our previous mental frames, opened to intuition, and when it comes, try to integrate it with our mental frame, try to understand. We need be able to drop the crutches when the time comes.

Who we are? Complicated question, isn’t it? Well, is complicated when we try to answer from our rational mind, who depends on concepts, thoughts, logic, and also emotions and other unconscious stuff. When we relax our grasping to all this stuff, then the answer comes, but in a subtle intuitive form, non-rational, so difficult to integrate with our mental schemes. Time is required, dedication, patient, for integrate the answer, for understand it. While we identify with our conscious mind, we are ignoring our subconscious, but he are not ignoring us, on the contrary, the subconscious handles much of our doing in the world. How can it be? We are ignoring something that are so important for us? Again, our identification with our thoughts close our understanding, our vision, to the whole reality of who we are.

What are I? Many spiritual traditions say us, and years of daily meditation drive us to realize it, that “I” is a sense of be somebody beyond any concept, word, or description. Our true nature is beyond mind, but we need the mind for realize it, because the world exists thanks to the Mind; we now talk about the Universal Mind, some posts have been written in this site about it, for example, a mind inside a Mind.  With patient work, meditating, reflecting, our conscious mind slowly accept the strange idea: a) our mind, the one with whom we identified, is only a process controlled by the Mind, like the unconscious mind also is, and  b) emerges another deep sense of “I” beyond any concept, and we learn to identify ourselves with him.

Unlimited being, is the new sense that comes. When we are not any thought, we are not limited by any mental framework, because any thought is an approximation to reality, a partial view, not complete. Only when we are not grasped with any personal interpretation is when we are free for perceive the totality as it is. We still can use the mind for planning, thinking, etc but without grasping: we are able for stop judgement and simply be full aware. Is impossible to describe such high state of being, only is possible point to it with words, like peace of mind, mindfulness, equanimity, perfect empathy, etc etc but as we said before any word is only a crutch to help us move forward in understanding, but also an obstacle to walking freely. There are only one way for really understand what we are: practice meditation daily, constantly, asking ourselves the right questions, with a clear will for obtain the right answers; with such constant work, the answers always comes, sooner or later.