A Universe Out of Nothing

We currently live in the "Big Bang" age; the era in which the Big Bang theory is the predominant scientific model for how our Universe was created. There are still a number of people who doubt this theory of the Universe, however, and these are often people who believe in a more Creationist approach based on religious faith - on a Genesis of some kind. 

Each party ridicules the other for their notions. Scientists who base their reasoning on logic, mathematical theory and material evidence find the theory of some divine intelligence creating the Universe absolutely ludicrous. Those of faith on the other hand find it hard to accept that the entire Universe and its contents simply "popped" out of absolutely nowhere and so despite all the hard evidence they remain unconvinced.   

The fact is, while the evidence that suggests that the Universe we live in expanded and evolved from a single point of space, is impossible to ignore, there are still certain incomplete aspects to this theory that even scientists admit they have absolutely no idea of how to explain. For example, according to the big bang theory the entire Universe began from a single compressed point of matter of immense density that suddenly exploded. The theory holds well as we trace back history from now all the way till the point when that dot of matter exploded. But ask any scientist where that point of matter originated from? No one can tell you. Why did it suddenly explode and create a Universe? Nobody knows. There are a lot of theories and conjecture of course but none that have any consensus or evidence to support them. The fact is according to Science everything originated from Nothing. But science has no practical means of defining what Nothing is. The only way science defines Nothing is as the 'absence of something'. But how can everything emerge from nothing? This is a paradox that even scientists cannot answer.

The Factor of Consciousness

The truth is that science, through all its advancements, failed to recognize that there is a fundamental factor operating in the Universe that has been ignored over and over again in every formula, every theory and every principle. This factor is Consciousness.

Consciousness is not just some theory or idea but rather it is the most empirically verifiable aspect of reality. You know you are conscious. You have absolutely no doubt about this. I know I am conscious; I have no doubt about this. Consciousness is evident everywhere in different expressions. The trees in the city park are conscious, your pet poodle is conscious, your insufferable boss is conscious, the E.Coli bacteria in your intestines are conscious. Consciousness is everywhere and is operating through everything, yet it is missing from any law of physics in existence. A theory of the Universe governed only by the laws of physics implies that there cannot possibly be Freedom of Will, because to have Will means to have the choice to operate in a spontaneous and unpredictable manner. The very physicists who develop and support these theories are inadvertently admitting that they have no Will of their own.

And so here is the dichotomy that we as a society find ourselves plunged into. On one hand, we are intellectually adapted to believe that science is a water-tight approach to reality, yet on the other hand our intuition cannot but feel that there is some important piece of this whole puzzle missing. Yeah, the Earth revolves around the Sun and there are a gazillion galaxies receding from each other and Pluto is no longer a planet, but how does this have any personal relevance for me? This Universe I live in doesn't even factor in my own existence into it. It’s a valid question.

The Quantum Problem

Up until a few decades ago this was a question that science always found some ingenious way to sidestep. But with the advent of quantum mechanics this changed. Just like a family may organize an intervention to confront Tommy with his drug addiction issues, Quantum mechanics confronted scientists in a way that avoidance was no longer an option. The discovery was simple - an electron when observed by an observer (the scientist) behaves differently than when it is not observed. This was arguably the biggest WTF moment in the history of science. When the scientist directly observed the electron it behaved as a particle, but when the electron wasn't being observed it behaved as a wave.

Here are the two implications of this experiment:

The first one is something that is now being whispered and gossiped about in the scientific community. It is that human Consciousness can impact the material Universe without any form of direct interaction. Simply looking at an electron i.e. becoming conscious of it, can alter its state. So if just looking at an electron can alter its behaviour what does that say about the rest of the known Universe? After all, aren't electrons the 'building blocks" of the Universe? Are you not, in this moment, 'looking at' trillions of electrons every nanosecond, even though that may not be how you tend to perceive it? And as you are looking at the trillions upon trillions of electrons that make up your t-shirt sleeve, the send button on your blackberry, the tip of your kitchen knife, are you not altering their behaviour? Isn’t your chair only becoming a chair (the electrons in it becoming particles) exactly because you are aware of it? Up until then it only exists as the possibility of a chair (the electrons as waves of potentiality.) There is a reason why this is being spoken about so cautiously in the scientific community because the implications of it will flip our entire worldview upside down.

The second implication is far more profound. I haven't heard of anyone in the scientific community yet who has gone this far with the implication. To illustrate let me give you a scenario:

It is 6:00 am and you are in a subway car. It’s early and at this moment, you are the only person on the car. You are relaxed, your gut is hanging out ever so slightly, and you are slouched and unconcerned about what you look like. "Ping!" the doors open and someone walks in and sits opposite you. Suddenly you are aware of the presence of another human being. Your gut retracts ever so slightly, your posture stiffens and you become a little more wary. You are still relaxed and the change although extremely subtle, has nevertheless occurred. You can't help it. What has really happened? Your consciousness has interacted with the consciousness of another person and that dynamic has caused a change. The other person, upon seeing you, has responded with their own change. The other person's presence makes you "self-conscious". When you are by yourself, you may go through long periods of time when you aren't even aware of yourself, but in the company of others you naturally become aware. Consciousness induces consciousness.

When the scientist observes the electron, it is not simply a matter of the scientist's human consciousness altering the material state of the electron. Rather, the scientist's Consciousness induces the Consciousness of the Electron. The electron, becomes Conscious of the scientist observing it and reacts by altering its state. The electron becomes "self conscious".

The Nothing before the Something

In developing a theory of the origination of the Universe, science has reached the boundary wall of logic and now is beating its head against it. It has reduced everything into One thing. But it can’t penetrate any further, because the only thing that is prior to the One thing is the No-thing. But what is this Nothing? Let’s take a certain analogy.

Think of yourself lying on a mad scientist's table. The mad scientist says,
"You are nothing more than a collection of bone, muscle, organ and tissue that emerged from one single cell!" And you respond defiantly,
"No! I am so much more. I am a human being." (Cue emotional background music). To this the scientist responds by amputating your arms, and laughing maniacally says, "See I have made you only 70% of who you are!" And you respond courageously like William Wallace,
"NO! I am still me and will always be!" At this point he chops off your legs and says,
"And now? Aren't you only half the person you were?" Upon which you respond,
"No! I am still the same!"
He now proceeds to remove all your organs one by one substituting them for mechanical ones that he attaches instead just to keep you alive (for the sake of this analogy). There is nothing left of you but your brain, which he begins to chip away at keeping you conscious all the time.
No matter how much of your 'material self' is removed or destroyed your consciousness, your sense of being, of existing, remains unaltered.  Now the reality is that the moment he destroys your brain completely your consciousness will no longer be able to 'exist' in the material sense. But has the Consciousness really been destroyed or has it simply retreated from that particular expression of a person? After all without the brain, human consciousness cannot find expression in the physical Universe. It is the single portal of expression for human consciousness. Using this analogy, let’s extend it to the big bang concept.

The Nothing that exists prior to the bang is Consciousness. Consciousness is really nothing from a material perspective.  It is a big fat zero as far as science is concerned. Yet, it is the big fat zero within every formula in physics that doesn't impact the formula from a mathematical (material) perspective, just like adding zero to any number doesn't change the number. Yet this Nothing is that Something that you feel yourself to be even as the mad-scientist chops you up piece by piece. It is the Nothing that is not affected when you are 70% of your material self (body), 30% of your material self or just a tiny fraction holding on by a thread. It is the Nothing that is always whole and undividable.

Similarly, that Nothing prior to the Big Bang is pure Consciousness and that single point of infinitely dense matter that appears is that single portal of expression of Consciousness. The entire Universe is one giant brain.


An Act of Free Will

In fact, physicists nowadays are developing all kinds of theories of Multiverses. Theories which propound that our own Universe is not the only one of its kind and that, in fact, there are infinite Universes coming into existence with similar big bangs every moment, all emerging from this single Nothing. There are many Brains that emerge from Consciousness.

And here is where the two seemingly paradoxical trajectories of science and religion intersect. Because religion posits that there is some divine, superior, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient power that created the entire Universe. Science says that everything in existence emerged from the same Nothing. Call it Divine, call it God, call it Nothing, call it Susan. They all point to the same reality. That Consciousness is the landscape in which Space, Time and your Grandmother's garden are all allowed to exist.

If an electron has consciousness, then atoms, molecules, microbes, cells, elements, rocks, dirt, plants, animals, humans, bacteria, planets, oceans, solar systems, societies all exist, subsist and evolve as a result of Consciousness. Even the natural laws and the laws of physics are given life and existence to by Consciousness. 

The infinite nature of the material Universe is born from the absolute Nothingness of Consciousness. All of Life as we know it is a single act of Free Will.

Demystifying Karma

'Karma' is a word that has been around for a long time. For Hindus and Buddhist it is a heavy word, weighted with centuries of meaning and interpretation. It has a gravity similar to the kind that the Judeo-Christian word "Sin" has attached to it. In fact, if you compare the two concepts together they are remarkably similar in their philosophy and approach. The only significant difference being that Sin and Redemption is seen as this linear process with an end that precipitates in some kind of final judgment by a higher power, whereas karma is a cyclical process where judgment is built and automated into the fabric of the process itself and doesn't need a God to perpetuate it. Regardless, both approaches strongly suggest that there is a Right Way and there is a Wrong Way and you kind of want to follow the Right Way if you know what’s good for you.

This sort of paradigm may have been appropriate for the ancients but in 2013 it is atrociously out of synch with a more sophisticated and nuanced experience of life. And so here is an attempt to present karma in a more accessible language:

Karma, quite simply put, is Universal Law of Equilibrium. It is the balancing principle of Reality that always seeking to restore balance where there is imbalance, to restore harmony where there is disharmony.

Karma is the energetic component of Consciousness which generates phenomena in the Universe. In the Universe it is experienced as Natural Laws. Within Consciousness it is precipitated by the Movement of Will.

Everything in the known Universe is subject to the karmic principle of balance. Electrons are subject to karma, atoms are subject to karma, cells are subject to karma, humans and animals are subject to karma, organizations are subject to karma, nations are subject to karma, planets are subject to karma, solar systems are subject to karma, galaxies are subject to karma - from the microscopic to the macroscopic, karma operates on each and every level manifesting as Natural Laws in the Universe which originate from Movements of Will within Consciousness.

In your own life, each one of you experience the balancing principle (Karma) in a variety of flavors some that are unique to you and some that are collective:

As an individual, you experience certain imbalances within your own psychological makeup which eventually translate into your material reality. These imbalances reveal themselves in the form of negative thought patterns, anxiety, depression, over aggressiveness, anger issues, depression, listlessness, lack of fulfilment, lack of trust, over zealousness, fanaticism, fear, greed, jealousy, envy, neediness, low self-esteem, showmanship, dominance, over competitiveness just to name a few. These are the disharmonies which, through expression and interaction, generate an inducing effect on your Life and your circumstances. Your own inner psychological experience influences and induces your physical circumstances and vice versa. You will attract circumstances whose eventual goal is to restore balance to that area of experience of your psyche and similarly imbalances in your life circumstances can be smoothed and balanced by cultivating an inner psychological balance. This is essentially the "Law of Attraction" that many self-help gurus and books like 'The Secret' advertise in a dumbed down and narrowed perspective.

This is not just limited to the realm of action but goes all the way down to to the root of intention itself. Your inner and outer realities are not two disconnected Universes brought together simply by action. A negative thought impacts your outside reality well before it ever gets translated into an action. We tend to have a very simplistic sense of responsibility that only extends as far as our actions, yet responsibility goes all the way down into the roots of our inner experience, our thoughts, emotions and intentions. But whether we realize the magnitude and impact of our inner experience or not, the Balancing Principle (karma) operates regardless. Imbalances experienced within your inner experience will attract outer experiences that eventually balance them out.

Trying to predict outcomes based on how this Balancing Principle works is beyond the scope of the human intellect. If the "what goes around, comes around" concept were true, there would be a very uniform experience of Life for each individual. However, what circumstances you attract in your life is based on the very specific requirements of your own psychological blueprint. If you and your friend are equally greedy, yet you never seem to have enough money and he just won the lottery, it seems completely inconsistent because the same psychological principle should, in theory, attract the same circumstances to balance them out. You may scream and curse the heavens for being unfair but it is you who has missed the point. It is not that simple.

A negative internal imbalance such as greed may for one person attract more poverty in order to temper that person's perspective on material wealth and therefore result in a more balanced perspective. The same greed in another person may attract a winning lottery ticket in order to highlight the experience of the greed and magnifying its uncomfortable side effects. It is impossible to judge what a person "should" be experiencing beforehand. And to suggest that any person deserves a fate other than what they are currently experiencing is to see things from a very narrow viewpoint of experience. In the larger scheme of things everything happens and operates according to the Balancing Principle.  There is no "should", there is only what is.

In addition, to your own individual karma dynamics, you are simultaneously subject to endless layers of karmic principles that operate on every level of existence from the microscopic to the macroscopic. In addition to a person you are also a universe of electrons that are subject ot the karmic principle through quantum laws, the atoms in your body experience karma as do the molecules, the cells, the microbes and bacteria. You experience their collective karmas as an effect of their individual karmas. Every electron that reaches an excited level must return to a steady state, each cell that turns hostile needs to be neutralized, each bacteria that emits removes toxins is allowed to expand. There is an entire universe of birth and death, triumph and tragedy, sin and redemption, imbalance and balance happening within a single square millimetre of you index finger. It impacts you.

On a collective level, you exist as part of a family that has its own unique familial karma, a school/organization/group which has its own institutional karma, a faith/religion/spiritual circle which has its own spiritual karma, a nation which has its own national karma, a species which has its own specific karma, a planet which has its own planetary karma. When a tsunami wipes out an entire chunk of a population it is the law of balancing which is happening on a macroscopic level which trumps the karmic implications of the individual human being. Just like when you scratch your head, your desire to restore the balance of comfort to your scalp trumps the individual karma of a skin follicle on your scalp.

The balancing is continuous and never personal. Even and especially on the individual level, it is never personal. Your poverty is not the result of the neglect of some divine being in the sky, but an automatic prescription offered to you by your circumstances that address the symptoms of your psychological condition. Your psychological response to this prescription then lays the scaffolding to how the next circumstance will unfold. It is a truly organic process. You and your Life are not two separate entities, rather you form a symbiotic partnership where one follows the other and responds. Everything is guided whether consciously or unconsciously by the Principle of Balance.       

The State of Conscious Acceptance

Conscious Acceptance is a powerful way of life. It is a path that is fresh, spontaneous and centered in the present moment. It is the choice to align with reality, with the nature of things and with circumstances as they unfold. Ultimately, Conscious Acceptance is the result of being rooted in the present moment. It is the attitude which emerges in relationship with your life when your mind's need to control your reality relaxes.   Conscious Acceptance is not a thought, it is not a mental process, it is not a state produced by your mind but rather it is a state in which your mind exists.

Living in a Mind-made Reality

Your Mind is a processing tool that is powered by Consciousness. This Consciousness is not personal to you; it is not your property nor is it something that is unique to you. It is the one Consciousness that powers all of Life, all Minds - cellular, microbe, plant, animal and human; just like electricity powers a vast world of technology each one with different aptitudes and processing capabilities. The electricity is no one appliance's property but is utilized and shared by all technology equally and indiscriminately, regardless of the function of the appliance, regardless of any benefits or harm that may result. Similarly, your mind is powered by Consciousness and outputs versions of reality that are a result of Consciousness interacting with the Mind's mechanisms and controls. 

You are accustomed to living a story. It is the story of your life as related to you by your mind.  And this story relies on the history of a past and the promise of a future as its basis. Without a past and future, there is only this moment which does not offer enough yarn for your mind to weave its complex storylines. Without a past and future it is impossible to develop a plot line. Without a past and future, this protagonist that you are is hardly worth mention. There are no circumstances transcended, no tragedies endured, no joys experienced, no defeats or triumphs, no foes vanquished, no victims nor oppressors, no lessons learned, no self-realization, no transcendence. Without a past to compare with and a future to project against, this present moment becomes utterly meaningless to your mind. And so its interest with the present moment is only in context to the past and the future. As a result, the reality that you  live in is a state that is produced entirely by your mind, based on its abstractions.

This is in stark contrast to the true nature of reality. Because in reality, the present moment is all that exists. The past and future have no real existence of their own, rather they derive their relative existence from the present moment. The past only exists as memories and records, which in turn only exist now. You cannot experience the past; you can only experience a remnant of it in the form of some symbol of its existence. Yet even that symbol (whether it be a bullet hole in a wall, a fossil, a page of a history book or a memory in your mind) exists only in this moment. If it ceased to exist, the past it linked to would be simultaneously lost. Similarly, the future is a derived reality that only exists in connection with its symbols, in the form of your projections and predictions that in turn exist only now.

Your Mind can only produce and work within derived realities. It has no context to the present. Even when it refers to the present what it is really referring to is an image or a mentally constructed abstraction of the present. Just like a camera can capture only a 2 dimensional image of a 3 dimensional reality, similarly the mind is limited by design to create a static image of a dynamic reality. As long as your awareness is limited to the reality produced by the mind, you remain convinced that it is the only reality that exists. Even if you were to speculate that there exists some larger reality outside of it, this would only be another image generated by your mind which is just another extension of your current reality.

Awakening to Pure Consciousness

However, it can sometimes happen that as a result of certain catalysts such as severe psychological trauma, prolonged periods of depression or anxiety, intensely tragic circumstances and intensive meditative inquiry, the mind becomes temporarily debilitated. This may last for a period ranging from a few seconds to a few years. This 'event' that some traditions term as Awakening or Satori, is an experience of a profound and empty flow. It is the experience of Pure Consciousness. While some of the more rudimentary mental processes that allow you to interact with your environment in a basic way still continue operate, most of the thought processes that usually dominate and influence your experience of Life become temporarily disabled. This Awakening then becomes a life-changing experience for you because it is the first glimpse into the true Nature of Reality, unfiltered and undifferentiated by your Mind. Even when your Mind recovers and resumes its normal functioning, that experience of the Pure Consciousness lingers and becomes the driver that propels you on the quest for Self-Realization. 

This Awakening while powerful is usually insufficient in creating a permanent shift in your experience of reality. This is because there is a significant amount of mental conditioning that is still very dominant and which easily clouds your judgment. Your Mind continues to produce realities that are distorted because there are certain dysfunctions that are inherent within its own unique makeup. A faulty camera will continue to produce faulty images, regardless of the expertise of the photographer.

The purpose of Awakening is not to create some permanent state of effortless existence. Rather it has the potential to create a shift in the way in which you perceive your own mind and as a result changes the way in which you relate to it. Until Awakening you took your own mind's word as the law, but that single momentary experience of Pure Consciousness, exposes a whole new truth. This truth once known can never be unknown.

Your experience of Life now becomes one of constant inquiry and reflection. Even as you feel compelled to act in accordance with your past conditioning, you become simultaneously aware that this is only a means of perceiving reality and that ultimately everything you see, feel and experience is a choice you are making to comply with the story your mind is telling you. A rift now begins to appear between you and your mind whereas previously none existed. Previously you and your mind were one and the same and to suggest otherwise was ludicrous. But now, you realize that what you are always experiencing is some version of yourself and not your real Self and you begin to feel an internal rebellion brewing.

Becoming The Witness Self

Your experience of your own hypocrisy begins to generate great amounts of anxiety and suffering. In periods of deep meditation or contemplation you are able to connect with that state of Pure Consciousness you perceived in your moment of Awakening, yet this contact is often shaky and short-lived and leaves you hankering for more. Even as you realize that you cannot attempt to grasp for it, you grasp for it. You can't help it; you are compelled by a driving sense of lack and desperation. You begin to perceive yourself as two Selves - the one who operates beyond the Mind ie the Witness Self and the one that exists as an image of the mind ie the Ego.

Tired of being used as a pawn, you begin battling, denying and rejecting your mind and its thoughts, dismissing them, chastising them, suppressing them. Your Ego (the person that you are under the influence of your thoughts) becomes your sworn enemy and on the quest for Self Realization you convince yourself that the ultimate challenge is for you to slay this Ego. There is now a clear line of demarcation drawn between you and your mind. You have set yourself up as the 3rd party Witness to the phenomena of your life. You begin to regard everything from a distance, observing all the events, relationships and activities of your life as different derivations of your mind, which you clearly want to avoid. You begin to value the moments in which your mind's activity subsides and are wary, even afraid of moments where your mind gathers momentum. You being to develop more and more sophisticated strategies for avoiding your own mind. These may take the form of certain philosophical perspectives, self-help strategies or spiritual outlooks. You manage to achieve an uneasy status quo where you develop a sort of cold and aloof relationship with your own mind and its processes, a kind of cold war. Every thought that occurs is met with criticism and harsh scrutiny and emotions begin to be regarded as weaknesses.

Yet, despite having achieved this distance there is a sense that this detached state of existence is not the liberation you were craving. Even though this detachment from a mind that previously dominated, even tormented your experience, was initially perceived to be liberating, after a while the experience becomes arid, fruitless and unfulfilling. The realization then dawns that true liberation is not an experience outside the Mind but can only happen within and through it. The true purpose of that initial Awakening moment is now seen. It is to bring awareness to the many ways in which the mind malfunctions and is constricted and to heal those constrictions to allow a steadier and more unobstructed flow of Pure Consciousness. 

Reintegrating with the Mind

At one point you see that this Witness Self that is observing the Ego at work and is keeping it at an arm's length is just another version of the Ego.

The real experience of Pure Consciousness is really one of effortless flow and of non-separation. It is the experience of  No-Self - a Self that cannot be identified, referred to or localized. It is not a Self in the ways the Mind perceives a Self to be. It is not a person. Rather anything and everything experienced is felt as the Self.

However, when the mind reflects upon this experience of Pure Consciousness in hindsight it generates an image of an enlightened Witness Self that experienced that state and is somehow separate and other than the Ego. This is enlightened Witness Self is then accredited with being that experience of Pure Consciousness but really what it is, is an imposter created and perpetuated by the mind in  a kind of mental espionage. When you see that what this Witness Self is actually an alter ego you created in order to cope with the onslaught of your Mind, you are faced with a strange paradox. It is that you exist in two simultaneous realities in every moment. One is that of Pure Consciousness, of pure potentiality that encompasses everything. And the other is that of the Mind as an Ego and an entity that is in interaction with the world and the environment. The one lays the foundation for the other and the two are in fact inseparable. Without Pure Consciousness the Mind cannot exist and without the Mind Pure Consciousness would have no means of being aware of its own existence. They both work in tandem.

What remains then is to develop and enhance the flow of Pure Consciousness by smoothing and refining the mechanism of the Mind. This is achieved by a process of Conscious Acceptance. The Self that you are in any given moment is constantly shifting and changing depending on your experience of the moment. When the Mind subsides, you are the No-Self of Pure Consciousness. When the Mind is at work, you are the Ego with its personality and viewpoints. Who you are is the image of whatever your experience reflects to you in the moment. You true identity is the Awareness that precedes it all.

Developing an Attitude of Acceptance

Working with rather than against the Mind, your attitude becomes one of surrendering to the experience of the moment in whatever form it takes. You are able to see that resisting or chastising your Mind for its dysfunctions or constrictions only creates another dysfunction or constriction. You no longer buy into the stories the mind creates nor do you resist them. Instead, you see these stories as relevant clues to unearthing yet another dysfunction that needs healing, another constriction than needs relaxing. Only by accepting its existence can you allow the wound to heal. Your journey becomes one of discovery and your attitude one of compassion.

You are not afraid to experience emotions that are difficult because you can see that difficult emotions are like compressed gases that build in pressure until they explode. To gently release the emotion each time it arises without denying it nor identifying with it, is the means to depressurizing its negative effects. Ultimately, all emotions, even those perceived as negative ones are beneficial. It is only when an emotion is suppressed or incited that it begins to pressurize.

Your thoughts are passing phenomena that have only a relative reality and relevance. Any thought that persists is indicative of a direction in which you may need to focus your attention. Excess negative thoughts are indicative of an aspect of yourself that needs healing, while excessive positive thoughts are indicative of aspects of yourself that have inflated beyond proportions and may need to be deflated as they also have negative repercussions. Each thought process, each emotion has its own flavor and points to another direction that you can further relax and open to the flow of Pure Consciousness.

This attitude of Consciously Accepting your thoughts, emotions, mental positions as well as perceptions of the world around you can only happen because you are simultaneously aware of yourself as being rooted as in the Present Moment. The present moment is no different than the experience of Pure Consciousness and the recognition of No-Self. They are all different perspectives on the same one undifferentiated reality. With one foot firmly anchored in the Present you step into the reality of the Mind.   

Conscious Acceptance develops a more and more balanced view and expression of Life. As more constrictions are released and more dysfunctions healed, what emerges is an ordinary yet deeply stable sense of existence and a Life that is experienced as effortless flow. While the experience of the Ego is one that is constantly refining and deepening, this refining and deepening is allowed to happen from the deeper perspective of Pure Consciousness that is always already whole and never lacking. The moment of Awakening that you once experienced as a profound moment of clarity has gradually become your normal experience of Life.

You clearly see that you are both the Creator and the creation, the Author of your story and the protagonist of your novel; you are the audience to the drama that you yourself have directed.



 

The Key to Finding Balance

A friend asked me to speak about the importance of finding balance in one's own life. We often tend to respond to life as a "balancing act", which in my mind conjures up the image of a street performer on a unicycle balancing a sword on the tip of his nose while juggling a bunch of flaming bowling pins. We often speak about balancing responsibilities, balancing needs, balancing goals, balancing this and balancing that. And when you take the infinite numbers of factors, influences and motives that present themselves in our everyday lives, pretty soon that picture of the juggler on the unicycle begins to pale in comparison to the reality we find ourselves faced with. The reason it seems so overwhelming to us is because we have yet to address the very fundamental basis of what balance is really about. What is the purpose of balance? Why is it so important? What is the root point at which balance actually begins? Without investigating this first, attempting to balance our complex lives and activities is like asking an infant, who has yet to walk, to navigate a double black diamond run on a snowboard.

Balance is first and foremost a state of mind that then has the ability to influence the perspectives and events that are happening in your external reality. Without first understanding the need for and bringing about an inner stabilization, attempting to create a balance in your external circumstances is an effort in futility. You might be able to do it for a brief moment, but before long the you own internal shifting will throw you off course. However, before we get into the issue of how to bring about balance, it is important to inquire into what it is that we are attempting to balance in the first place. 

The Dual Nature of Reality

Everything that exists in reality is dual in nature i.e. there are two aspects to every object, every event and every experience. These two aspects are inseparable from each other like the heads and tails of a coin, the crest and trough of a wave and the peak and valley of a mountain. These aspects are the Yang (light) nature and the Yin (dark) nature of experience.

The Yang nature refers to that aspect of experience which is seen as an expansion. This is the sense of upward movement, of abundance, of fulfilment, of sharing. It evokes the emotions of joy, camaraderie, laughter and high spirits. It is visibly expressed in events such as birth and marriage that signal new beginnings. Its fruits are experienced as gain, success and victory. In other words, the Yang nature is that aspect of experience that we find ourselves drawn towards, that we experience as pleasurable, that we feel that we want to experience in our lives. It is the summer of experience.

The other face is Yin nature. It is the aspect that is seen as contraction, as a downward movement, as lack, as emptiness, as solitariness. It evokes such emotions as grief, solitude, melancholy and low spirits. It is visibly expressed in events such as death and divorce that signal the end of things. Its fruits are experienced as loss, failure and defeat. The Yin nature of experience is the aspect that we feel repelled by, fearful of. We experience it as painful and wish it away or deny its existence. It is the winter of experience.

None of this has anything to do with good or evil, positive or negative. I have deliberately avoided these qualitative judgments because what I define as positive and negative is something very different, which we will arrive at in due course. For now, this is only an investigation into the dual nature of experience.

Nothing exists that does not contain these two aspects because they form the very basis of existence. Life is an expression of the interaction between the Yang nature and the Yin nature. Just like the current of a battery can only flow if there is a plus and a minus pole. It is the attraction and the relationship between these two that gives life to every person, event and experience in the Universe. In fact the one creates the other. Without the Yang nature there can be no Yin nature, without the Yin there can be no Yang. (I use the terms Yin and Yang because most of you are familiar with them as symbols yet the words do not carry the baggage that other words such as 'dark' and 'light', 'black' and 'white' do for some people.)

The ancient symbol of the yin-yang is a symbol of the nature of reality. It is the movement of Life, of expansion and contraction, birth and death, inhale and exhale. They flow into each other in a continuous dance over and over and over again. But what is perhaps the most vital aspect of this symbol is the spot of white within the black half of the symbol and the spot of black within the white half. What this represents is that the Yin movement contains the seed of the Yang and the Yang movement contains the seed of the Yin. The reason one cannot live without the other is that the one gives birth to the other. They are eternally linked in this relationship.

Every experience has a Yang and a Yin aspect. In the quest to find balance, the first step is to acknowledge this most basic fact. It may seem obvious to you when worded this way, but when it comes to living our lives and our approach to things we have a curious ability to ignore this very fact. All experiences, no matter what flavor they come in has an expansive aspect and a contracting aspect.

Those coveted experiences like fame, wealth and longevity are generally seen as positive by most people. However ask any person who has experienced these and they will tell you about the dark aspects (yin) of these. For fame, the yin aspects may be the loss of privacy, the constant scrutiny by media, lack of trust in social interactions. For wealth, they may be stress of obligations, the greed of others, the lack of meaningful relationships. For longevity it may be watching all your friends and loved ones die before you, being vibrant yet unable to work, being viewed as a liability by other members of society.

On the flip side, all those experiences we tend to avoid or are fearful of, like divorce, death, unemployment, have an inherently built yang aspect to it. Divorce provides an opportunity for reflection, time and space to dedicate to your own personal drives and inspirations, the freedom to act of your own accord. Death is an experience that brings people together, family and friends that were once estranged are sometimes made closer in its wake, it provides perspective on the importance of the present moment, it is a symbol of the completion of yet another one of Life's many expressions. Unemployment is a chance to strike out in a new direction, to reconnect with the creative spark and to redefine your expression. 

Balance of the Two Natures

The first step to balance, is to acknowledge the two natures in every experience. The next step is to embrace the two. This is not something we are taught or encouraged to do. In fact, as a society we seem excessively obsessed with a model of constant expansion and unconditional positivity. This is evident in the social and economic structures we have created around us. Our value systems are inadvertently skewed towards the positive. We perceive youth, happiness, longevity and abundance as positive and worthy. We view old age, melancholy, disease and poverty as evil and worthless. And so in this constant chase for purely the Yang nature and discarding or dismissing the Yin nature of experience it is no wonder we feel ourselves constantly stumbling, both individually and collectively, through this experience called life. When learning how to walk can is it possible to use only one leg?

There is no such thing as good and evil, right or wrong in any absolute sense. These qualitative judgments serve no purpose outside the specific context of the circumstance. To use them in an absolute way is where we make our most fundamental error. To illustrate this lets use the example of a person climbing a mountain:

Now climbing a mountain is an arduous task. It is a painful experience and except for a master mountaineer, few people would view such an endeavour as desirable or pleasurable. Imagine you are climbing mountain. The downward pull of gravity is the contracting force you experience, it is the Yin nature in effect. It is limiting you, tiring you, slowing your progress. Yet with every step you take upwards you grow in confidence. Even as your legs begin to tire, your muscles tighten, harden, grow in power. Even as your mind begins to fatigue, your resolve and determination begin to increase. With every step that tells you 'No', your mind responds with a 'Yes'. This is the seed of Yang within the Yin experience. You finally make the summit and resolve you will never do it again. And yet a few months later you are back on the mountain doing it again and again. You have discovered the Yang nature of the experience - the desire to transcend your own reality.

Where does 'balance' fit into all this? Competing against the Yin nature of gravity, the pain and the anguish of the experience is the Yang nature represented by the power of your body, mind and resolve. If, as you are climbing, you focus excessively on the Yin of the experience, you will feel overwhelmed, defeated and eventually unable to continue. Your progress has been halted. You have become imbalanced towards the Yin. If on the other hand, you focus excessively on the Yang of the experience, you will become overzealous and hyper, you will rush ahead exerting yourself excessively, believing you are indestructible and will like fatigue or injure yourself well before you summit. You have become imbalanced towards the Yang. So the balance here lies in being equally aware and equally respectful of both the aspects and finding the right response in the moment to what is being required. This is the second step to Balance.

Now take that same scenario in reverse. You have reached the summit and now are coming down the mountain. The same mountain has now transformed from a foe to a friend. Taking the easy path down, gravity has now become your friend. It is the Yang nature driving you forward, encouraging you on. if you were to give into it you would move faster and faster and lose control. So now your legs are the yin nature, they are slowing you down and tempering your progress. Your mind which in the first instant wanted the end to come sooner now wants the opposite, it wants you to slow down, to postpone the base of the mountain. Here the Yang nature of effortless movement and speed contains the seed of restraint which is Yin. You see that giving into gravity and hurtling down would be foolhardy even though it would be effortless. Restraint and the desire to temper the experience is the Yin nature.

Do you see how depending on which perspective you look at the example what is 'good' and 'bad', 'desirable' and 'undesirable' is completely flipped on its head? Which is why to form any absolute view on 'good' and 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' is misleading and ultimately produces an unstable effect.

Positivity and Negativity

Which brings me to the issue of positivity and negativity. Positive (positivity, being positive) is an imbalance towards Yang Nature. Negative (negativity, being negative) is an imbalance towards Yin nature. They are both imbalances.   The need to be positive and to experience positive circumstances only, is inadvertently a refusal to accept the Yin Nature of experience and to be skewed towards the Yang. Oppositely, the feeling of being negative and experiencing life as a series of negative circumstances is a skew towards the Yin nature without a healthy perspective into the Yang Nature of experience.

A telling aspect of our fundamental value system is in the way in which we tend to view others. We see people who have achieved success, wealth, health, good fortune, who have a enthusiastic demeanour, a cheerful go-getting attitude as more worthy than those who have failed, are poor,  experience misfortune, have an introverted demeanour and a somber, solitary attitude. Or simply we view "positive people" as better than "negative people". And yet they are both imbalanced. One might argue that if one is to be imbalanced that it’s better to be positively imbalanced than negatively imbalanced which is like saying it’s better to limp with the right leg than with the left. 

The way in which we view others also translates into the way we regard ourselves. Seeing our confidence, our enthusiasm, zest, friendships and strong attributes as good and desirable and worthy of recognition. Whereas we condemn our own doubt, our depression, our loneliness and flaws as unworthy and keep it hidden in the dark corners of our minds hoping no one else will notice them. When we are unable to view ourselves with a balanced perspective how can we ever hope in manifesting balance in our actions?

An act of balance is like a dance. Your life, (which is the sum of your relationships, perspectives and circumstances) is your dance partner. When Life takes the lead, you must have the wisdom to follow. When Life looks to you, you must have the wisdom to lead. To attempt to take the lead in first scenario leads to aggravation and stress. To stay passive in the second case leads to idleness and lethargy. You need to be able to tune in to the needs of your dance partner and to feel their movements intuitively, without expectation or judgment. 

We outlined the first two fundamental postulates of discovering balance: the first is to acknowledge the Yin and Yang Natures of every experience, the second is to embrace the two aspects in your experience by valuing and respecting them equally and feeling for the balance point through intuition.

The final and most important postulate is the one that is least mentioned but is nevertheless the core of the whole study of balance. 

The Core of Being

What we have been speaking about so far is Human Nature. That is the nature of the human aspect of who you are. Yet what you are has a deeper reality and that is the reality of Being. In reality you are a Being having a human experience - a human being. In religion or spirituality, this being nature is sometimes referred to as Divine nature or God nature. I would rather steer away from those words because of the weight of history and interpretation they carry. 

Recognition of one's own Being Nature is each person's greatest realization. Because this Being Nature exists prior to and unaffected by the human experience, but is simultaneously the source of all human experience. A human without the being is a corpse. It is the Being that is the Life force itself, that finds its expression in through the human form, the animal form, the plant form. And this Being is always Whole, Unfragmentable and Indestructible.    

To glimpse into your own Being is to glimpse into your own divinity. The truth of who you really are, the unborn and undying eternal source of Life. This glimpsing into your own divinity has been referred to as satori, Awakening, Self Realization by different traditions. Yet avoiding the esoteric jargon, it is simply the experience of your pure nature when you are fully present in this moment without the mind creating an abstract version of who you are through thought. That pure You, before you have a name, before you have a gender, before you have a sense of being a human, before any thought you can have about what you are - that pure innocent You is the Being. 

The more and more you become aware of this deeper dimension of your own reality, the more you will find yourself moving towards it, glimpsing into it, becoming it. When your own sense of identity begins to shift from the Human that is being to the Being that is human, the more you will begin to identify with those qualities and aspects of yourself that are Whole, Unfragmentable and Indestructible. The more you align with your Being, the more you begin to perceive these very qualities in the world around you. In other words, as you transform and shift in identity, the world you live in simultaneously begins to transform and shift in identity. This is when the statement "you create the reality you live in" transforms from an idea to an actual experience.

Then balance becomes more and more effortless, because from the place of Being it is your natural expression.  

The Nature of Compromise

The issue of compromise is a touchy topic for some people. And it is on this topic that lines tend to get drawn between the older and younger generations, between conservative and liberal folk, between those who believe that the needs of others should be at the center of one's focus vs. those who believe that one’s own needs must take first and foremost priority. It is on the issue of compromise that we become polarized about the most fundamental values by which we live our lives.

There are some who believe that compromise is inevitable. That in reality, compromises must be made and that the fulfilment of your own desires and passions will always come at the cost of others. And vice versa, that being of service to others and fulfilling their desires implies that your own desires must be curtailed. This point of view has an underlying guilt mechanism built into it and its something you may witness operating in your own life and of those close to you. 

The opposite viewpoint is that compromise is a cop out. It’s a "settling for" or "giving up" on yourself and what truly moves you, inspires you and floats your boat. It’s the kind of thing people who have lost their sense of individuality and adventure do because they no know other way of living. From this viewpoint, compromise is seen as some sort of shackles, a limitation on your freedom to be who you want to be. In other words, to compromise is to give in to the pressures of society and expectations rather than staying true to your own identity.

Both these views, though in seemingly strong opposition to each other, are ironically similar when you begin to investigate a little deeper. To the first group, compromise is one of those unfortunate inevitabilities of life. It’s the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" mentality. And while they seem to have developed a tolerance for it, compromise is nevertheless seen as a negative attribute. It’s the woman who says, "I could have done great things in my life, but I sacrificed that in order to raise a wonderful family." It’s the man that says, "I always wanted to write a novel but I had to work two jobs to pay the mortgage." There is this distinct sense of a lack of fulfilment in this sort of perspective, even though these same people may rationalize that they were at least fulfilled in other ways.

The second group takes the attitude of denying the necessity of compromise and refusing to submit to it. "You can have your cake and eat it too and why the hell shouldn't you?" To this group as well, compromise is a negative trait. Only their reaction is to deny it or defeat it instead of surrendering to it. It’s the man who says, "I could never dream of getting married. I need the freedom to live my life the way I please." It’s the woman who says, "I could never imagine raising kids and having to give up a career that is everything to me." From this viewpoint, living for others is seen as something that curbs individual freedom and is thus limiting and undesirable.

Both these perspectives have certain things in common. Both see compromise as a negative attribute of life, both see it as a limitation on personal freedom, both see it as a hardship to endure and both regard it from a place of fear. The only difference is in the way each reacts to it.

And yet to perceive compromise in this way is to misunderstand it. Because the nature of compromise is something quite simple, necessary and even beautiful.

Here is one way to define what compromise is as we begin our investigation. Compromise is the weight of the distance felt between the reality we experience vs. the reality we envision. If the reality you are experiencing right now is one where you find yourself lacking and unfulfilled, and you desire a reality in which you might have greater freedom and abundance, then the compromise is the void between the two that you carry with you and experience continuously. If the reality you are experiencing is one in which you perceive yourself to be fulfilling or on the path to fulfilling your own needs without having to sacrifice them for another, and you fear a reality in which you are restricted by the needs of others, then the compromise is the void between the two that you carry with you and experience continuously. 

Notice, that whether or not you "feel you are compromising", the compromise is still felt from both perspectives. This is because the distance between the experienced and envisioned realities are what are at the basis of your experience. In the first case, you crave another reality and so through hankering and craving an abstract reality you believe you can never have drains you of the inspiration, creativity and vitality that are always available to you right now. In the second case, you are dismissing or denying circumstances in your life that require a shift in focus from your own needs to those of others. And so avoiding and keeping those opportunities at bay similarly drains you of the flexibility, openness and depth of experience that are available to you in this moment.

In both cases, what you really have compromised on is the potential of what this moment has to offer. You have compromised on yourself.

Compromise is built into the laws of nature. It is the point at which the two universal movements of expansion and contraction meet. Flowers compromise their nectar in order to reproduce, bears compromise their hunger in order to survive winter, rivers compromise their sediment in order to make the sea, and a car compromises its speed for greater control and safety. In fact, if you glance around you, pretty much everything that is happening in this moment moves in an eternal ballet of compromise, of expansion sacrificing itself for contraction, of contraction sacrificing itself for the sake of expansion. In martial arts, the art of "yielding" to your opponent’s energy, allowing it instead of opposing it directly, reveals a great wisdom. It is a philosophy of compromise that sees it not as a negative but a positive, not as a weakness but strength.

Everything expands and everything contracts. Each opportunity to grow in one direction limits the ability to grow in another. To see expansion as positive and contraction as negative is to live a one-sided life in which suffering is inevitable. Rather a more balanced perspective is to see that both are necessary and in fact entwined. The more you expand the more opportunities there will be for contraction. The more you contract the more reasons there will be to expand. Expansion and Contraction are like the in-breath and the out breath. Exhale unconditionally and you will suffocate. Inhale unconditionally and your lungs will explode.  The art of Compromise is the art of breathing, it is the art of knowing when to expand and when to contract, when to give and when to take, when to follow your needs and when to be aware of the needs of others.

To truly live a life of freedom of "No Compromise” is to be able compromise effortlessly. It is an experience in which the weight of the distance felt between the reality desired and the one envisioned is minimal. This does not mean that you no longer have any desires. Desires are the catalysts that inspire us to expand and to express our own unique individuality. When you are grounded in the reality of this moment, you no longer experience these desires as a fear, an addiction, as guilt, a craving or an escape. The distance is not experienced as negative but rather a space of infinite potential and possibility. It does not burden you but rather it makes you more buoyant.

To compromise effortlessly is to flow and to adapt. Regardless, of what life has to offer. Regardless of what your present version of reality is. When you are able to tune into the current of Life, you no longer have the need to hold onto your perspectives and mental positions. You grow, evolve and compromise even these as the realities around you shift. You recognize that your own nature and the Nature of reality are one. The problem of compromise itself becomes moot.


   

The Totality of Your Being

Experience is all there is. There is no version of your Self that is separate from experience. In fact, experience is the only means you have of being aware that you even exist. You are revealed to yourself, from moment to moment in relationship with the present in all the forms in which it appears. And the relationship you have with this present moment is what is defined as experience.

Each experience reveals to you another facet of yourself. And in that sense every experience is of equally significant value. Whether what you are experiencing right now is joy, anger, boredom, restlessness, anxiety, humor, hardship, creativity, heartbreak, victory - each of these moments reveals a different version of you. And each of these versions of you has a different lesson to learn, a different journey to take, a different depth to plumb. We tend to think of ourselves as one static entity moving in a dynamic universe, when what we really are is a universe of dynamic entities transforming into one another from one moment to the next. Who you are when you are angry is very different from the person you are when you are ecstatic. The way you see the world, your demeanour towards others, your willingness to be of service, your compassion towards yourself and everything else is completely different based on the experience of the moment.

You, and your experience, are not two separate things. They are inextricably linked. And each is responsible for creating the other. Consider this analogy: imagine that you are standing in front of your bathroom mirror, up very, very close so that your nose is almost touching the surface of the mirror. Your field of vision is limited so that at any given point of time you are only able to see one small cross section of your face. You can move your head around to different angles but for now you are unable to step back from the mirror. This mirror is the present moment; the portion of the image you are witnessing is your particular experience in this moment. As you move your head about, you will find there are certain angles of your face which please you and there are certain angles that don’t. Maybe you have a great profile, but when you tilt your head this way the light makes your nose look hideous. Maybe you have stunning eyes but a slight movement reveals a less than desirable chin. Every angle pleasant or unpleasant is an image of the same face, your face, seen from a different perspective. They are all you, and yet they are each unique and different.

When you deny one experience in favor of another, what you are doing is laying restrictions on the ways in which you can orient your head as you gaze into the mirror. Your fear or dislike of certain experiences and strong preference for others translates into movements that minimize or try to altogether suppress the harsh angles and maximize the beautiful ones. The result is a very rigid, unnatural and jerking experience of Life and ultimately one which creates an internal division and conflict in your being. You embrace and esteem only those aspects of yourself that you deem worthy, noble and beautiful and deny, despise and neglect those aspects of yourself that you deem worthless, base and ugly. But they are all the same face, seen form a different perspective.

When you are willing to see that each experience of your life is only a reflection of some aspect of yourself and is not something separate from you, you are making the choice to see yourself in totality. This is your decision to take a step back from the mirror to see the larger image - the one experience that contains all experiences, the one image that contains all the angles. This is what it means to be present - to be in tune with the totality of your being.

The Willingness to Experience

Whatever the experience of this moment, allow it to exist. If your experience is one of ease, joy and comfort this may not seem like a challenging proposition. If your experience right now is one of stress, struggle, disappointment, anxiety or heartbreak, this may be easier said than done. But regardless of what you are experiencing, your willingness to allow it to exist and to experience it in a pure, unaltered and unadulterated state is the first step towards developing an understanding of the nature of experience.

This "willingness to experience" is a powerful choice because it implies a number of things. The first is that you are not afraid. This implies courage. No matter how painful or how unpleasant the experience, your willingness to allow it to be there, without avoiding it, turning away from it, denying it or rationalizing it away, is a courageous choice. This does not in any way imply that as a result of your allowing the experience it will suddenly be any less painful. But this is exactly why it is such a courageous choice, because you know that the next time around it will be just as painful and still you do not shy away.

The willingness to experience implies Self Awareness. When you choose to align with the experience of this moment, you are no longer a victim of that experience or circumstance. You have made a subtle shift in perception from the "one stuff is happening to" to the "one who is aware of the stuff that is happening". It may not seem like much of a difference at first glance, but reflect on it, because the difference though subtle is monumental. With this slight shift in perception, your eyes become open to a whole different dimension of Life that you previously may not have been privy to. Prior to this you were nothing more than one person on a planet of 7 billion, struggling to stake your claim on one small finite portion of experience that you could call "your life". Now, you are able to recognize that even that "person that I am" is just one experience within your awareness. Sometimes you are aware of yourself and sometimes not. The world, other people, activities, circumstances, even you drift in and out of the focus of your awareness several times during the day. It is only the mind that somehow strings these disconnected and largely incongruent moments together into some seemingly continuous reality. Even though, the content of awareness is in constant flux, the one constant through all this is the awareness itself. As you begin to allow this moment and the experience of it to exist without attempting to manipulate it in anyway, your own sense of self identity naturally shifts from the notion of the person that you think you are to the Awareness which is prior to that notion.

The willingness to experience implies Openness. What we find most appealing about children and childhood in general, is the simple and natural openness with which all of Life's experiences are approached. This is an ability that we lose as we grow older simply because we are taught to rely excessively on our own mental processes (most of which are flawed and incomplete) to filter our experience. This compulsive filtering happens so unconconsciously that after a while we become unaware that it could be any other way. When you allow the experience of this moment in its totality, you open to Life in a way that is spontaneous and innocent. It is spontaneous because you cannot plan to be open, you can only do it now. It is innocent because this allowing does not presume to know or to judge the experience. The moment is experienced for no other reason but simply because that is what is happening in this instant. There is no why, how come, should or shouldn't about it. That is how the mind would approach it - with evaluations, agendas, analysis and rationalizations - dissecting it and trying to absorb the good parts and discard the bad. With openness the mind fades into the background.   

The willingness to experience implies simplicity. Even the most dramatic circumstances and seemingly complex scenarios in Life when witnessed and accepted without resistance or wanting to modify them in any way, are not experienced as being problematic. They become relatively simple in comparison to the way the mind approaches them, which is with the baggage of a past history and future expectation. Then the challenge you are facing is ALL you are facing. The history of the thousands of times you faced it in the past and the thousands more you may face in the future have no bearing on you. Nor do all your ideas of failure, ineptitude, unworthiness or woe. The challenge is reduced to its lowest common denominator. You have made a molehill out of a mountain.    

       

Understanding Your Ego

Your ego is your sense of self identity. It is your unique identifier. It is the mechanism using which you are able to differentiate and navigate your environment. Your ego is your gamertag - your online persona, as you enter this reality matrix that you call 'the world'.

The ego receives a bad rap, as something undesirable, something that needs to be subdued, subjugated and altogether done away with. But what many don't realize is that it is a vital mecahnism without which you would have no means of functioning within this particular reality. According to the specific design parameters of this Universe's reality, each human being MUST have an ego - it is a requirement. Without the ability to perceive yourself as a separate organism independent in your environement you would have no means of recognizing the need to create, survive and evolve as an individual organism. The ego is that very impulse to create and preserve the individual's reality. 

All this is just a technicality. What most people actually find objectionable is not the ego per se, but rather the ego's tendency to enhance pain and suffering. And this is where a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play is necessary.

The ego itself is nothing more than an identifier. It is not an entity with any intelligence or personal will of its own. It is more a 'something' than a 'someone'. So to feel angry or negatively towards an ego is much like being pissed off at a chair. It’s a dead piece of furniture at best.

Think of an ego as a large balloon with your name on it. You can think of it as a complex balloon with a number of chambers inside, each of which can be inflated independently of each other.

Each chamber in this balloon that is the ego is a particular aspect of the ego-self. One aspect may be your family ego (the person you tend to be around family members), another may be your work-ego (who you are at work), your social ego (who you are in society and among friends), your private ego (who you are when no one is around), your sexual ego, your spiritual ego, your national ego, your religious ego, your political ego, your child ego, your parent ego and the list goes on and on. There are an infinite number of subtle variations that would each constitute an aspect of your ego - the balloon has many chambers.

The balloon itself is flaccid by nature and has no real will or volition of its own. But when air is pumped into one or more of its chambers, it begins to inflate and move. As the chambers inflate more and more, the little 'you' that is holding the balloon by its string begins to have a harder and harder time controlling it. Before you know it the balloon starts to slowly lift you off the ground and off you go sailing in every which direction according to its whims and fancies, according to whichever way the wind decides to blow. Flying out of control, you crash into trees, into buildings, into other people flying out of control with their balloons - and this is when you begin to suffer.

But how are these chambers inflating in the first place and why? Thought is the valve that releases the gas, emotion is the gas that fills and expands the chamber. Each time you have a thought, that thought has the potential to create an emotional response within your system. If the thought is something completely arbitrary such as "i need to pick up a dozen eggs today", this is not something that is a self-reflecting thought and so does not generate much of an emotional response. However, if the thought is something like "I’m getting fat" then the emotional response is a significant one because this is a self-reflecting thought. Or if it’s a thought about another person such as "that pregnant woman is smoking" it is still a self-reflecting thought because what you are potentially saying is "that woman is doing something I believe is harmful" if that is in fact what you believe.

Every thought you have whether it is an arbitrary one or a personal one loosens the valve on the gas tank, it’s just a question of degrees. A thought such as "this chair is comfortable" is likely to budge the valve only by a hair whereas the thought "my parents never loved me" is likely to send the whole damn thing spinning.

The clue to understanding the ego is not to try and control it, to fight it, to subdue it or ignore it. Because everything you "do" only turns the valve on and inflates it. The clue is in seeing that you actually have the choice and the ability to disconnect that balloon from the gas tank from time to time, whenever you please.

The next time you have a self-referential thought especially if it a negative one, notice the immediate emotional response that rises within your system. You can observe the physiological symptoms that arise - the increased heart rate, the rise in body temperature, the clenching sensation in your gut and others. And watch how this emotional response causes your awareness to immediately contract. Your mind suddenly hyper focuses on the thought and develops something like a tunnel consciousness (like tunnel vision).

This hyper focus then attracts the next thought that magnifies the emotional response and heightens the physiological symptoms which attract even more thoughts and soon it begins to spiral. This is like a hand spinning and opening the valve faster and faster and faster. As the gas releases it inflates the chambers in the balloon and off you go to the races. 

At the moment the thought arises see if you can be watchful and alert. Allow the thought and the emotional response that come up with it almost as an outside observer or witness. At this point this is not "your thought" or "your emotion". You have yet to lay any claims of ownership. The moment you think of it as "yours", you have made the connection. The ego-balloon is now firmly fixed to the gas tank and the inflation has begun.

But instead of labeling the thought/emotion, just allow it to be there - as this alien entity that is separate from you. And experience it. Let the emotion, with its entire energy and essence, surge through your system. Then watch it dissipate and disappear. With nowhere to go it has no choice but to dissipate. Just as gas released from a gas tank dissipates if left open to the air.

What you have essentially done is make the choice not to feed the ego. You have demonstrated to yourself that you have the freedom in every moment to regulate your own self-identity and suffering. And most fundamentally you have demonstrated that your true identity is not derived from the ego, your emotions, your thoughts, your name, the roles you play in this world or any ideas you may have about yourself. Your true identity is always prior to and more fresh and spontaneous than all of that. It only exists in the present moment.

With practice the more you see that the mechanisms that feed your ego and similarly the egos of other people, of organizations, of institutions, of nations and religious tribes are all essentially one and the same mechanism, then you can make the choice not to participate in the ego game anymore. You may choose to inflate your ego every once in a while, but you are now in charge. A healthy ego is a pleasure to have and it is a fascinating tool to experience life with.

No longer do you need to be at the mercy of an out of control balloon tossing you around ruthlessly. Rather your experience is of the hot-air balloon pilot who uses his skill and wisdom to gently release and balance each chamber, ever watchful and mindful. Then your experience of life can become one of true journey and adventure. One, where your balloon is your vehicle which carries you away to explore this vast and myriad universe that is Life.  

The Unknowable You

You can never know yourself directly. Every means you have of perceiving yourself is always in contrast to a past version of yourself. In other words, you can only think of yourself in retrospect, in hindsight.

The person you are reflecting upon no longer exists. They may look like you, feel like you, think and talk like you but that person is gone. The ‘you’ that is here right now in this very moment is beyond the grasp of your mind and intellect. Similarly, the version of the world and of other people you hold in your mind has already expired. To see into the present is to see without any knowledge of what it is you are witnessing. It is a perspective devoid of any conceptions or abstractions. This perspective is fresh, innocent and vibrantly alive.

The mind can only deal with dead and static images. It uses the limited tools of language and imagery to comprehend the vastness of reality. The English language contains approximately 230,000 words, of which the average person's vocabulary register less than 10%. And yet words, are what we use to define ourselves, other people, our world.

That voice in your head, that thought stream, that incessantly playing background monologue that is the foundation of your entire self-concept - is nothing more than a limited, rudimentary and clumsy combination of a few meaningless words. What you are, is so much vaster, so much more complex, subtle and infinitely more profound than anything language can aspire to. And yet you believe in the words you tell yourself. Yet, you place value upon opinions as if a bunch of sentences could actually capture even a microscopic fragment of your reality.

If a child asked you to construct a model of the entire Universe from 230,000 Lego pieces could you do it? And if you could would you feel satisfied that what you have created adequately represents the reality of what the Universe is for that child? What about if you had to construct a human being out of 230,000 Lego pieces? Would you believe that this would give the child a realistic sense of what it means to be human?

Words are no more than symbols. They represent reality but are not reality. A word is as much reality as a pink ribbon is cancer and as a flag is a nation. Your mind is nothing more than a processor of information. It's only function is to create abstractions which only serve to disconnect you from what is actually happening. The only way to reconnect is to let go of your reliance on your thoughts. Use your mind but don't be used by it. Re-establish yourself as master of the house.

What you truly are is only available to you in this instant. You cannot see it or know it. You can only be it.

Wake Up to Uncertainty

Uncertainty is the most honest way in which you can experience this moment. It is the sobering reality that robs you of each and every way in which you cling to control. It is the great equalizer. It reduces all beings young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick, powerful or weak to the same one common denominator.

To truly see this is to face your own mortality. It is to see that all forms of Life are equally frail, equally fleeting. It is to see that no matter how you have lived your life, we all die the same.

Uncertainty is the only reality there is. And since reality is uncertain, there is no way in which to "know" this reality. There is no way to be "certain" about anything.

Becoming aware of this is a great tool for self reflection and self discovery. When you reflect on all the things you are certain about what you really see are all the ways in which you are holding on to delusion, all the ways in which you are denying the reality of what actually is.

Much of what you believe about yourself or about the world is no more than conjecture. It is one potential possibility in a universe of infinite possibilities. Certainty presupposes a reality which is static. Yet the true nature of reality is one of constant flux, in which every moment is but a drop in an endless ocean of potential moments.

To really see this is to glimpse into the magnitude of the mystery that is Life. There is no history of a past behind you, there is no image of a future in front of you. There never has been. There is only a vast abyss of potentiality surrounding you in every direction - and there is you, right here, right now.

Let go.

The Myth of Self Improvement

You can never lose yourself and therefore you cannot find yourself. You can never become any more or less, any better or worse, any more worthy or unworthy than what you already are.

You are not incomplete. At this moment you are not half yourself, 70 percent yourself or even 99.9 per cent yourself. You are and have always been wholly yourself and it cannot have been any other way.

Who you are does not and cannot change. Your body will change, your mind will change, your circumstances, opinions and ideas will change. In short, all the catalysts that feed and evolve your image of yourself, i.e. your self-concept, will change. But you, that self that you are, is the constant that never changes.   

The desire to create a better self is really the desire to create a more acceptable self-image. After all, you are what you are and have never, even for a moment, been what you are not. But what you “think” you are, is essentially what the whole notion of self improvement is about. When talking about improving or bettering yourself, what you are really referring to is creating and adopting a more acceptable self-image that your mind will be satisfied with.

And yet the mind is never satisfied. This is because the very reason the mind creates a self-image in the first place is to perpetuate this sense that something is incomplete and so needs to achieve completion. It is a sense of lack that drives the quest for self improvement. And even though, the goal of such a quest seems to be to reach a state of self perfection, all it really achieves is to perpetuate the sense of lack, of not being or having enough.

Reflect on every decision or choice you make in your life to change, to manipulate, to improve your circumstances or yourself. Look beneath all the reasons and rationalizations that your mind can come up with: the pros vs cons evaluations, the shoulds vs the shouldn’ts, the analysis and projections in the future. Look beneath all that to the root of what is motivating you in all this decision making and in your choices. If you go deep enough, you will find that more often than not the motivation is fear that rises from an assumption of lack. Our minds are always operating on an in-built assumption that there is not enough and the programmed emotional response to this assumption is fear. The problem is we have become so accustomed to operating in this way that we have a hard time even recognizing that this is the mechanism at work.

Recognize that you are already whole and complete. There is no better, more improved, happier version of you out there. There is no reality to your self-image. What your mind says you are has no connection to the truth of who you really are. It is only a distorted shadow. Your shadow changes from moment to moment at times appearing pleasant and at others appearing terrible. But it is only a shadow. Perpetually repositioning yourself in order to adjust your shadow achieves very little of value. Turn your attention instead to the one that is casting the shadow and rest easy in the knowledge that all is well.

Reality's Reflection

The root of all dissatisfaction results from the denial of a certain inescapable truth : that this moment, right here right now is as good as it gets. In whatever form it appears, no matter how joyful or painful, extraordinary or mundane - this moment is already whole, complete and lacking nothing.

The lack, the dissatisfaction, the anxiety you feel is not an evaluation of reality but rather is a reflection of your own internal discord. It is an indication of how out-of-synch you are with reality. Reality is the flawless mirror which reflects you back to yourself. If you get angry with the mirror,the mirror remains unaffected, it is only your reflection that scowls back at you.

There is nothing dramatic or extraordinary about life. The drama and the extraordinariness is the overlay we ascribe to it. Success, failure, triumph, tragedy, war, peace, oppression, revolt, violence, justice, birth, death are as ordinary an occurence as  the first snow of winter, a bird nesting in its tree, smoke rising from a cigarette and the whistle of an approaching train.

To Life, the mirror, these are all phenomena of equal relevance and profound ordinariness. In recognizing how profoundly ordinary everything is, no matter how small or vast in scope, no matter how mundane or sensational, we come closer and closer to a sense of harmony with reality and a deeper sense of reverence for all that is.