Consciousness lies at the foundation of the material Universe. It is the basis of every form in existence, living and inanimate. It is the single animating factor and guiding principle without which the entire Universe would have no existence.
Everything is conscious. From a blade of grass to a cat in a tree to a mound of sand to the human mind. Every one of these entities is an instrument of consciousness. In fact, to say "we are conscious" is not quite as accurate as to say "we are consciousness itself". Because an instrument's potential is only made manifest by the player without whom it is only an inanimate object.
Think of consciousness as being like electricity. While the universe of electronics is vast and varied in attribute and function they are nevertheless united in one single truth - that without electricity they have no means of manifesting their realities. Whether the object is a simple appliance like a toaster which serves no other purpose than to toast 2 pieces of bread or the object is a complex super-computer that is able to calculate and process vast amounts of information intelligently, both are nonetheless rendered identically obsolete in the absence of electricity.
If you have ever had someone close to you die, and if you have ever witnessed their body laying in the casket, there is something rather striking that you will have the opportunity to observe. You may have a sense that somehow the person lying in front of you is not exactly the person you feel has left you. To the mind the image of the person, the hair, the eyes, the expression matches perfectly. Memory reaffirms that this is indeed the very same person. But beneath the grief, if you are able to reflect deeply enough in silence, it may dawn on you that what lies before you is merely an image, a mirage - a vessel that has fulfilled its purpose even if that purpose is obscured from your understanding. What is and has always been of the greatest essence about that person - the light, the animation, the compassion and the pain - in short, their humanity has vanished into thin air. The body and the brain that lie evidently in front of you are the obvious imposters. Never more than at the moment of death is it more obvious as to what the true identity of a person really is.
Consciousness is what animates every being. And this consciousness is universal and impersonal. It in itself has no material reality. It's only contact point in the material world is through form which it lives through for a while until the form has served its purpose and then it retracts, just like electricity animates the instrument until the instrument no longer is able to function. And even though the death of a person is a loss of the particular expression of consciousness, what we love the most about the other is what we love most about ourselves. Consciousness is the single animating energy that is common to us all.
Self-realization is the shift in identification from seeing one's Self as the instrument of consciousness to seeing one's Self as the root of consciousness itself. This "I" or this sense of being is the one constant and continuous aspect of our experience. Everything else changes: our thoughts, our emotions, our minds, our bodies, our relationships, our circumstances, everything is flux. Only this undefinable and unjustifiable sense of "I am" of "I exist" persists regardless and independent of the conditions in which it persists. That deep rooted sense of being prior to thought, prior to recognition, prior even to the perception of it, is not separate from consciousness. It is consciousness itself prior to it becoming anything, prior to consciousness manifesting as a thought or emotion or perception or recognition. In a state of open awareness pure consciousness can be experienced. And yet language necessarily implies a duality/separation where no duality exists. This is the state of pure being. Of pure awareness. And it is the foundation of each and every individual existence.
Each and every person, when allowed to fall quiet in meditation has the opportunity to contact that very same impersonal awareness. This state which has been given many names such as Brahman by the Hindus, no-mind (mu-shin) or Big mind by Zen buddhists, the Holy Spirit by Christianity, Fanaa by the Sufi muslims is none other than that vast impersonal consciousness as yet unmanifested. If a quantum theorist were to use their own jargon to coin a term for it, it would be something like the 'field of quantum potentiality'.
This consciousness is at the heart of existence. It is that sense of "I exist". It is infinite and unreachable by the mind because it is prior to the mind. The mind can only reflect on it through thought which is only the overlay of an image. The mind cannot experience it. And yet the mind functions because of it. It is the very ground of our experience.Whatever consciousness touches comes to life, whatever consciousness retracts from dies. Yet consciousness itself has no limitation nor does it have a beginning or end. It gives a seeming reality to all that it illuminates just like the sun creates mirages in the desert heat.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Mind Games (part 2)
(...continued from part 1)
This word Self-awareness gets tossed around a lot. We humans are considered a self-aware species. Most other creatures are not. But what does that mean - to be self-aware? Can the self be aware of the self? Can this "I" be aware of the "I"?
We live in a dualistic universe. A universe in which for perception to occur there needs to be a subject and an object linked together by the act of perception, the perceiving. The subject perceives the object, the object is perceived by the subject. The act of perceiving is the only thing that gives any reality to this subject-object relationship.
Now the question is can "I" be both the subject and the object of my own perception? In other words, can perception link an entity back to itself. So lets further analyze this. What are the different ways in which we tend to perceive ourselves:
1. we can perceive our bodies visually through a reflection in the mirror
2. we can perceive our bodies sensually through the 5 senses
3. we can perceive our self-image mentally through thought and emotion
4. we can perceive our bodies and minds through relation and reaction with our environments including people, places and objects
If you look closely enough, in all of these processes the subject that is perceiving and the object being perceived are in fact not identical at all.
In case 1, much like in the photograph example from part1 the object is an image in the mirror which actually is nothing but photons of light reacting with the silver lining behind the glass generating a virtual representation of a body.
In case 2, what we perceive as sensual experience - taste, smell, vision, hearing and feeling is nothing but electrical impulses firing between neurons in the brain that confirm a sense of ownership over the experience. If you were to lose your vision or hearing or taste you wouldn't feel any less you. There may be a sense of loss of ability but not of identity. In a sensory deprivation chamber your sense of self continues to operate.
In case 3, as discussed in part1, every thought/emotion is a mental response mechanism. Thoughts/emotions are reactions, they are triggered: by people, environmental events, by other thoughts and emotions. A thought/emotion is not a thing - it is an event. These thought/emotion events are occuring constantly within our minds triggering at split-second intervals. This continuous series of thought/emotion forms a thoughtstream: a seemingly continuous and real entity. Because most of our brains are going a mile-a-minute, thinking/emoting feels like the natural/resting state of the mind but it isn't. Just like you only notice that the air conditioning in the room was on when it suddenly turns off and you're hit by a period of dead silence. Similarly, the natural resting state of the mind is one of silence.
The issue is that thinking/emoting is a sort of chain reaction. If thoughts and emotions were only triggered by external events there would be a lot less stimulus to contend with. But in actuality, thoughts and emotions only trigger more thoughts and emotions leading to a sort of mental effervescing effect also know as stress. Extreme stress can lead to more serious mental and behavioural issues. Which is why meditation as a practice is so highly valued by many eastern cultures as a means of bringing the mind periodically back to its natural resting state. One where awareness is open and not preoccupied with mental content which has its own place and purpose. In fact, zazen which is the zen buddhist form of meditation literally means "just sitting". Its not an esoteric la-dee-da spiritual practice rather its a highly specialized and precise exercise. To 'just sit' means to allow the mind to rest in its natural awareness.
Just like the body when worked too hard breaks down under physical stress so does the brain under mental stress. The brain is after all only a machine and every machine breaks down when improperly maintained. While deep sleep is nature's way of guaranteeing a daily forced rest period for the mind, Meditation and simple awareness allows the mind a chance to recover and recuperate insight, perspective and most importantly creativity.
But to bring it back to point, very few of us have even experienced what it feels like for the mind to be free of thought/emotion for more than a second. Our brains have become so charged with mental momentum that it literally is a runaway train. We have very little control over what we think and when we think. The thinking happens, constantly, obsessively and we have no ability to stop it. Which is why we literally need to run to the furthest corners of the world to some remote tropical beach for a week to soothe our minds, such little control do we have over it.
But what is the energy or impetus that gives our minds this momentum. What is the juice fueling this runaway train on? This brings us back to the question of self-awareness. It is because the "I" perceives this mindstream as being itself. The "I" mistakes the image for its own identity.
Lets look at the story with Bart Simpson and the label gun again. We are currently attempting to investigate what this "I", this sense of being a self, a somebody, really is? Through a process of elimination we are seeing how the body, the mind, thoughts and emotions are all the various kinds of images that we create of ourselves. And so what looks like the Self perceiving itself is really only the Self perceiving an image of itself and not really itself. So why does the Self make the mistake of assuming that it is the image it perceives?
Think of the Self as Bart's label gun. Every act of perception is a new label triggered by the gun. And whatever the label sticks to is the object of the Self's perception. So here is the gun, firing continuously like a semi-automatic rifle at anything and everything it points to. And out go the labels with the letters M,E on them attacing themselves to all the furniture, the walls, the appliances and even the family dog. This is in a nutshell how self-identification works. The sense of Self projects itself outwardly through perception launching and attacing its labels. If it attaches to its mindstream, it identifies with the mindstream - "these thoughts are me, these emotions are me." If it attaches itself to the body - "this body is me." The more adhesive the label the more strongly indentified the Self is with its own images. The less adhesive the labels the more easily the Self is able to drop its preoccupations with its image.
In fact, by following this analogy it is possible to see how 99.9% of who we think we are is a complete figment of our imaginations...
(to be continued...)
This word Self-awareness gets tossed around a lot. We humans are considered a self-aware species. Most other creatures are not. But what does that mean - to be self-aware? Can the self be aware of the self? Can this "I" be aware of the "I"?
We live in a dualistic universe. A universe in which for perception to occur there needs to be a subject and an object linked together by the act of perception, the perceiving. The subject perceives the object, the object is perceived by the subject. The act of perceiving is the only thing that gives any reality to this subject-object relationship.
Now the question is can "I" be both the subject and the object of my own perception? In other words, can perception link an entity back to itself. So lets further analyze this. What are the different ways in which we tend to perceive ourselves:
1. we can perceive our bodies visually through a reflection in the mirror
2. we can perceive our bodies sensually through the 5 senses
3. we can perceive our self-image mentally through thought and emotion
4. we can perceive our bodies and minds through relation and reaction with our environments including people, places and objects
If you look closely enough, in all of these processes the subject that is perceiving and the object being perceived are in fact not identical at all.
In case 1, much like in the photograph example from part1 the object is an image in the mirror which actually is nothing but photons of light reacting with the silver lining behind the glass generating a virtual representation of a body.
In case 2, what we perceive as sensual experience - taste, smell, vision, hearing and feeling is nothing but electrical impulses firing between neurons in the brain that confirm a sense of ownership over the experience. If you were to lose your vision or hearing or taste you wouldn't feel any less you. There may be a sense of loss of ability but not of identity. In a sensory deprivation chamber your sense of self continues to operate.
In case 3, as discussed in part1, every thought/emotion is a mental response mechanism. Thoughts/emotions are reactions, they are triggered: by people, environmental events, by other thoughts and emotions. A thought/emotion is not a thing - it is an event. These thought/emotion events are occuring constantly within our minds triggering at split-second intervals. This continuous series of thought/emotion forms a thoughtstream: a seemingly continuous and real entity. Because most of our brains are going a mile-a-minute, thinking/emoting feels like the natural/resting state of the mind but it isn't. Just like you only notice that the air conditioning in the room was on when it suddenly turns off and you're hit by a period of dead silence. Similarly, the natural resting state of the mind is one of silence.
The issue is that thinking/emoting is a sort of chain reaction. If thoughts and emotions were only triggered by external events there would be a lot less stimulus to contend with. But in actuality, thoughts and emotions only trigger more thoughts and emotions leading to a sort of mental effervescing effect also know as stress. Extreme stress can lead to more serious mental and behavioural issues. Which is why meditation as a practice is so highly valued by many eastern cultures as a means of bringing the mind periodically back to its natural resting state. One where awareness is open and not preoccupied with mental content which has its own place and purpose. In fact, zazen which is the zen buddhist form of meditation literally means "just sitting". Its not an esoteric la-dee-da spiritual practice rather its a highly specialized and precise exercise. To 'just sit' means to allow the mind to rest in its natural awareness.
Just like the body when worked too hard breaks down under physical stress so does the brain under mental stress. The brain is after all only a machine and every machine breaks down when improperly maintained. While deep sleep is nature's way of guaranteeing a daily forced rest period for the mind, Meditation and simple awareness allows the mind a chance to recover and recuperate insight, perspective and most importantly creativity.
But to bring it back to point, very few of us have even experienced what it feels like for the mind to be free of thought/emotion for more than a second. Our brains have become so charged with mental momentum that it literally is a runaway train. We have very little control over what we think and when we think. The thinking happens, constantly, obsessively and we have no ability to stop it. Which is why we literally need to run to the furthest corners of the world to some remote tropical beach for a week to soothe our minds, such little control do we have over it.
But what is the energy or impetus that gives our minds this momentum. What is the juice fueling this runaway train on? This brings us back to the question of self-awareness. It is because the "I" perceives this mindstream as being itself. The "I" mistakes the image for its own identity.
Lets look at the story with Bart Simpson and the label gun again. We are currently attempting to investigate what this "I", this sense of being a self, a somebody, really is? Through a process of elimination we are seeing how the body, the mind, thoughts and emotions are all the various kinds of images that we create of ourselves. And so what looks like the Self perceiving itself is really only the Self perceiving an image of itself and not really itself. So why does the Self make the mistake of assuming that it is the image it perceives?
Think of the Self as Bart's label gun. Every act of perception is a new label triggered by the gun. And whatever the label sticks to is the object of the Self's perception. So here is the gun, firing continuously like a semi-automatic rifle at anything and everything it points to. And out go the labels with the letters M,E on them attacing themselves to all the furniture, the walls, the appliances and even the family dog. This is in a nutshell how self-identification works. The sense of Self projects itself outwardly through perception launching and attacing its labels. If it attaches to its mindstream, it identifies with the mindstream - "these thoughts are me, these emotions are me." If it attaches itself to the body - "this body is me." The more adhesive the label the more strongly indentified the Self is with its own images. The less adhesive the labels the more easily the Self is able to drop its preoccupations with its image.
In fact, by following this analogy it is possible to see how 99.9% of who we think we are is a complete figment of our imaginations...
(to be continued...)
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Mind Games (part 1)
The human brain is a complex machine - a multifaceted network of several highly specialized mechanisms working in relationship, interpreting and navigating reality. It is the command center of the body, simultaneously coordinating cognition, logic, emotion, motor skills, vital organ function, cellular growth etc. It is a computer with a complexity we are only beginning to understand. And yet, for all the breakthroughs in neuroscience the question of self-awareness - this entity of "I" continues to elude us.
There was a time when the brain was thought to be a useless mass of jelly with no particular function, similar to the appendix. The heart, was then misconstrued to be the center of self-awareness and intelligence. With the development of modern medicine and anatomy we were able to witness first hand the different processes that occur in the brain and how it responds to reality. But even more fascinatingly, science is now beginning to discover how reality is shaped by the brain.
We all live in relative worlds. And even though the general consensus is that there is this one objective world out the that we are all a part of, closer inspection reveals quite the opposite. And this is quite simply illustrated by the following example. When you look at a chair, photons of light reflecting off the chair's surface enter your retinas and are transmitted in the form of electrical impules (information) through your optic nerves into your brain. The brain then interprets this information by generating a visual image in the mind of the chair. Other parts of the brain then refer to this mental image of a chair to further analyze/dissect as is necessary. Now, chances are a chair is not going to inspire so much sensational mind activity although test it out the next time you take a trip down to ikea. Regardless, at all points of time all you ever have access to is the image of the chair and not the chair itself. In fact, there is no way to verify that the "chair" even exists other than by making the assumption that our image corresponds to an identical reality.
In fact, quantumn theory insists that there is no such thing as a 'reality' out there. There is only potentiality. Everything exists in waves of potentiality which, once observed, collapse into an object or event. The question is does the collapse happen 'out there' or 'in here' (in our heads)?
What is a photograph? Now I'm talking about the old school photos, the ones you had to diligently develop in a dark room. A photograph is nothing more than a chemical reaction. Light enters the lens of the camera causing a sort of patterned imprint on the film called a negative. This negative when developed through a chemical process then produces a "positive" image of the scene witnessed. Now imagine you go to Banff and take a picture of Lake Louise and show it to your friends and families once back. They begin to oooh and aaah about how beautiful it looks. Why are they ooh-ing and aah-ing? Are they that inspired by a mundane chemical reaction on a piece of paper? No, its because they don't see a chemical reaction they experience the image of it in their minds which is identical to the image you have in your mind except yours was derived from a completely different source.
Now one may argue that trying to compare actually being in Banff versus seeing a photo of it is ridiculous and you would be right from that perspective. But the only reason they don't compare is because the scope of the two experiences don't match up. After all a photograph is a tiny 2 dimensional object compared to hundreds of square miles of rugged wilderness. However, my point still stands. If you were to somehow increase the scope of the "photograph" to say a 3D hologram in a super IMAX environment with all the smells, sounds and other visual inputs necessary to mimic the banff experience you would have come remarkably close to forming an exact replica of the image in the brain. Or approach it the other way around. Imagine a friend blindfolds you in toronto and takes you on a plane to Alberta, puts you in a car and drives you to a specific vista point above Lake Louise. Then he places a black box over your head with a rectangular cutout roughly the size of a standard photograph. Then plugging your nose and ears, he removes the blindfold from only one eye, for exactly one minute and allows you ro see Lake Louise without allowing you to move your head within the limits of the box. If that is the extent of your experience of Lake Louise, the image generated in your brain would be nearly identical to a photograph of the exact same scene. Now these are 2 obviously different realities, one physical, the other chemical, generating identical images in our brain. As a result the memory of Lake Louise would be no different. In fact, the conclusion scientists are coming to these days is that the reality we take to be objective is really virtual or simulated.
True reality if it even looks like anything would be indecipherable - waves of potentiality collapsing into electrons - even time and space are only relative having no real existence within potentiality. The human brain is a mechanism with a capacity far beyond anything we can imagine. Not only does it interpret reality, it actually creates it.
Each brain creates an image of the world based on sensory input which it then constantly references as reality. Since each brain is separate for the next it follows that each person's image of the world is completely self contained and separate from the others. We literally live in separate worlds. This all sounds kind of interesting in theory but it paints a pretty bleak picture. Because if we are actually that separate and disconnected what does it say about human relationship?
Thats where I come in. No, not me Shiv, but the "I" the sense of Self : of self identity. This new paradigm of reality affords an opportunity to revisit the whole idea of how we approach ourselves and our identities. Because its this "I", the elusive scoundrel, that has been giving philosophers and scientists a run for their money for centuries. According to scientists, there is a function of the brain dubbed as the "Interpreter" (image of Nicole Kidman comes to mind) that is the storyteller of the mind. He's like that old uncle or senile grandfather who told the same stories to everyone as they tried desperately not to nod off, fabricating it a little bit each time until not only was he the one who poisoned Hitler but he also bought baby jesus a PSP for his first birthday. Its ludicrous I know, but the Interpreter is the "fabricator" of reality: making 'sense' of nonsense, using causality to link events and objects and filling in the gaps in between to form a seamless continuity: a story of ME. In fact, this sense of I is so discontinuous and full of holes it doesn't take a whole lot to expose it.
Most of what we believe ourselves to be is derived from perception and memory. We've already talked about how unreliable perception is, but memory is even faultier. Not only does memory use perception as its very foundation but all it really is the perception of a perception. If the very mechanism of perception is subjective then each iteration exponentially increases the likelihood of error. Try a simple activity - think about your day yesterday. Plain and simple - start at the beginning, from the moment you woke up and now try and recount exactly what you did, felt and thought on a minute by minute basis for the entire day. How accurately can you recount your day? A hundred per cent accuracy would mean your story of how your day went would take nearly exactly as long to recount as your actual day went. Most of us would be lucky if the story would take even 5 minutes, some of you particularly attentive ones may get up to 20 mins. But in a 16 hour day recollecting 5 mins means that you are able to effectively recall only 0.5% of your day. 99.5% of it falls into a black hole. Your memory is so unreliable and full of loopholes it would make the government of India look like one of the most honest and efficient institutions on the planet. And yet we believe in the relaibility of our own minds. We believe in its reality. Would you ever buy a piece of swiss cheese that is 99% hole and 1% cheese?
So then why do we believe the story? Why do we believe these realities our minds conjure up. If we are living in the Matrix, why then like brave but emotionally challenged protagonist Neo are we not able to break the spell of illusion?
There is a particular episode of the Simpsons where Bart is given a label-gun for his Birthday. What clever Bart does is he walks around the house labelling each and every item he sees with the words "Bart Simpson" including all the furniture, the refrigerator and even the dog. When questioned by Lisa who is far too wise for his nonsense as to why he claims ownership of all these items his response is because it says so on the label.
That is exactly what the sense of 'I' is. It is not a thing per say, not an object suspended in space. If you were asked to point to yourself you would most likely point to your body but soon you would realize that the body is an instrument that belongs to you and serves you but isn't "you" per se. So then you may point to your brain, the command center. With a little more introspection you would see that the command center is once more a complex mechanism but where is the commander? Interestingly, studies in Neuroscience have revealed that the command center functions quite autonomously and there is no such 'commander' to be found. There's no one in control, no one in charge. Its a phantom, a hoax. This so-called 'I' can't be found. And yet if there is one thing that each and everyone of us would defend to our dying breaths is "I know that I exist!" The world would be united in their chagrin, men and women, liberals and fundamentalists, protestors and corporate fatcats, oil companies and green peace activists alike would show their solidarity on this one issue. Because to undermine the existence of the "I" is to pull out the rug from beneath everyone's feet equally and unanimously.
(to be continued...)
There was a time when the brain was thought to be a useless mass of jelly with no particular function, similar to the appendix. The heart, was then misconstrued to be the center of self-awareness and intelligence. With the development of modern medicine and anatomy we were able to witness first hand the different processes that occur in the brain and how it responds to reality. But even more fascinatingly, science is now beginning to discover how reality is shaped by the brain.
We all live in relative worlds. And even though the general consensus is that there is this one objective world out the that we are all a part of, closer inspection reveals quite the opposite. And this is quite simply illustrated by the following example. When you look at a chair, photons of light reflecting off the chair's surface enter your retinas and are transmitted in the form of electrical impules (information) through your optic nerves into your brain. The brain then interprets this information by generating a visual image in the mind of the chair. Other parts of the brain then refer to this mental image of a chair to further analyze/dissect as is necessary. Now, chances are a chair is not going to inspire so much sensational mind activity although test it out the next time you take a trip down to ikea. Regardless, at all points of time all you ever have access to is the image of the chair and not the chair itself. In fact, there is no way to verify that the "chair" even exists other than by making the assumption that our image corresponds to an identical reality.
In fact, quantumn theory insists that there is no such thing as a 'reality' out there. There is only potentiality. Everything exists in waves of potentiality which, once observed, collapse into an object or event. The question is does the collapse happen 'out there' or 'in here' (in our heads)?
What is a photograph? Now I'm talking about the old school photos, the ones you had to diligently develop in a dark room. A photograph is nothing more than a chemical reaction. Light enters the lens of the camera causing a sort of patterned imprint on the film called a negative. This negative when developed through a chemical process then produces a "positive" image of the scene witnessed. Now imagine you go to Banff and take a picture of Lake Louise and show it to your friends and families once back. They begin to oooh and aaah about how beautiful it looks. Why are they ooh-ing and aah-ing? Are they that inspired by a mundane chemical reaction on a piece of paper? No, its because they don't see a chemical reaction they experience the image of it in their minds which is identical to the image you have in your mind except yours was derived from a completely different source.
Now one may argue that trying to compare actually being in Banff versus seeing a photo of it is ridiculous and you would be right from that perspective. But the only reason they don't compare is because the scope of the two experiences don't match up. After all a photograph is a tiny 2 dimensional object compared to hundreds of square miles of rugged wilderness. However, my point still stands. If you were to somehow increase the scope of the "photograph" to say a 3D hologram in a super IMAX environment with all the smells, sounds and other visual inputs necessary to mimic the banff experience you would have come remarkably close to forming an exact replica of the image in the brain. Or approach it the other way around. Imagine a friend blindfolds you in toronto and takes you on a plane to Alberta, puts you in a car and drives you to a specific vista point above Lake Louise. Then he places a black box over your head with a rectangular cutout roughly the size of a standard photograph. Then plugging your nose and ears, he removes the blindfold from only one eye, for exactly one minute and allows you ro see Lake Louise without allowing you to move your head within the limits of the box. If that is the extent of your experience of Lake Louise, the image generated in your brain would be nearly identical to a photograph of the exact same scene. Now these are 2 obviously different realities, one physical, the other chemical, generating identical images in our brain. As a result the memory of Lake Louise would be no different. In fact, the conclusion scientists are coming to these days is that the reality we take to be objective is really virtual or simulated.
True reality if it even looks like anything would be indecipherable - waves of potentiality collapsing into electrons - even time and space are only relative having no real existence within potentiality. The human brain is a mechanism with a capacity far beyond anything we can imagine. Not only does it interpret reality, it actually creates it.
Each brain creates an image of the world based on sensory input which it then constantly references as reality. Since each brain is separate for the next it follows that each person's image of the world is completely self contained and separate from the others. We literally live in separate worlds. This all sounds kind of interesting in theory but it paints a pretty bleak picture. Because if we are actually that separate and disconnected what does it say about human relationship?
Thats where I come in. No, not me Shiv, but the "I" the sense of Self : of self identity. This new paradigm of reality affords an opportunity to revisit the whole idea of how we approach ourselves and our identities. Because its this "I", the elusive scoundrel, that has been giving philosophers and scientists a run for their money for centuries. According to scientists, there is a function of the brain dubbed as the "Interpreter" (image of Nicole Kidman comes to mind) that is the storyteller of the mind. He's like that old uncle or senile grandfather who told the same stories to everyone as they tried desperately not to nod off, fabricating it a little bit each time until not only was he the one who poisoned Hitler but he also bought baby jesus a PSP for his first birthday. Its ludicrous I know, but the Interpreter is the "fabricator" of reality: making 'sense' of nonsense, using causality to link events and objects and filling in the gaps in between to form a seamless continuity: a story of ME. In fact, this sense of I is so discontinuous and full of holes it doesn't take a whole lot to expose it.
Most of what we believe ourselves to be is derived from perception and memory. We've already talked about how unreliable perception is, but memory is even faultier. Not only does memory use perception as its very foundation but all it really is the perception of a perception. If the very mechanism of perception is subjective then each iteration exponentially increases the likelihood of error. Try a simple activity - think about your day yesterday. Plain and simple - start at the beginning, from the moment you woke up and now try and recount exactly what you did, felt and thought on a minute by minute basis for the entire day. How accurately can you recount your day? A hundred per cent accuracy would mean your story of how your day went would take nearly exactly as long to recount as your actual day went. Most of us would be lucky if the story would take even 5 minutes, some of you particularly attentive ones may get up to 20 mins. But in a 16 hour day recollecting 5 mins means that you are able to effectively recall only 0.5% of your day. 99.5% of it falls into a black hole. Your memory is so unreliable and full of loopholes it would make the government of India look like one of the most honest and efficient institutions on the planet. And yet we believe in the relaibility of our own minds. We believe in its reality. Would you ever buy a piece of swiss cheese that is 99% hole and 1% cheese?
So then why do we believe the story? Why do we believe these realities our minds conjure up. If we are living in the Matrix, why then like brave but emotionally challenged protagonist Neo are we not able to break the spell of illusion?
There is a particular episode of the Simpsons where Bart is given a label-gun for his Birthday. What clever Bart does is he walks around the house labelling each and every item he sees with the words "Bart Simpson" including all the furniture, the refrigerator and even the dog. When questioned by Lisa who is far too wise for his nonsense as to why he claims ownership of all these items his response is because it says so on the label.
That is exactly what the sense of 'I' is. It is not a thing per say, not an object suspended in space. If you were asked to point to yourself you would most likely point to your body but soon you would realize that the body is an instrument that belongs to you and serves you but isn't "you" per se. So then you may point to your brain, the command center. With a little more introspection you would see that the command center is once more a complex mechanism but where is the commander? Interestingly, studies in Neuroscience have revealed that the command center functions quite autonomously and there is no such 'commander' to be found. There's no one in control, no one in charge. Its a phantom, a hoax. This so-called 'I' can't be found. And yet if there is one thing that each and everyone of us would defend to our dying breaths is "I know that I exist!" The world would be united in their chagrin, men and women, liberals and fundamentalists, protestors and corporate fatcats, oil companies and green peace activists alike would show their solidarity on this one issue. Because to undermine the existence of the "I" is to pull out the rug from beneath everyone's feet equally and unanimously.
(to be continued...)
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
The Gauntlet
The "I" is nothing more than an image frozen in time. The person is a series of snapshots taken in quick succession by the mind. a discontinuous and distorted album of pictures, a glorified flip book.
Each morning the pages of the flipbook are flipped, the images are strung together by some rudimentary mental processes until from the flurry some hazy, shifting image of a 'person' emerges.
In deep sleep are you aware? Are you still the same person with your trials and tribulations? Without your thoughts and memories constantly reminding you that you are suffering, are you suffering? Without your thoughts and memories constantly reminding you that you are "YOU" are you "YOU"? Can you even reference a person independant of the image in your mind? Without your image do you even exist?
Every idea, opinion or belief you have ever had or held true is linked to the primary image of the person you think yourself to be. If that very image is false than what do you truly know?
Are you ready to abandon the crutch that is the mind and immerse yourself in true introspection? Only Silence can reveal Reality. In order to see the light of truth one must first step out of the shadow of the mind.
Each morning the pages of the flipbook are flipped, the images are strung together by some rudimentary mental processes until from the flurry some hazy, shifting image of a 'person' emerges.
In deep sleep are you aware? Are you still the same person with your trials and tribulations? Without your thoughts and memories constantly reminding you that you are suffering, are you suffering? Without your thoughts and memories constantly reminding you that you are "YOU" are you "YOU"? Can you even reference a person independant of the image in your mind? Without your image do you even exist?
Every idea, opinion or belief you have ever had or held true is linked to the primary image of the person you think yourself to be. If that very image is false than what do you truly know?
Are you ready to abandon the crutch that is the mind and immerse yourself in true introspection? Only Silence can reveal Reality. In order to see the light of truth one must first step out of the shadow of the mind.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
The Dream of a Person
What is that which compels me to write? It is an unknown motivation in the deepest sense. It masquerades from time to time as a "need for recognition" or "artistic expression" yet these are only the ways in which my mind interprets that which is beyong its capacity to fathom.
The only way for me to approach it is by intuition rather than intellect. Any attempts to grasp it intellectually only serves to overlay it with another conceptual projection and in doing so only adds a layer of separation. So I approach it intuitively, blindly, groping and feeling my way towards it much like a man navigating his way through darkness. I have left my knowledge at the door. I proceed unprepared, uncertain.
What is that which compels me to attempt to grasp this? Strangely enough it feels no different. What compels me to write, what compels me to understand why I write. Feeling, groping, hesitant and faltering I have no choice but to focus entirely on this landscape as it reveals itself to me moment by moment. I am aware of moving, aware of being, aware that i am aware. Yet, what is it that compels me to be aware?
Every breath in my body, every step I take forward, every thought shooting across my mind, every emotion flooding my senses is compelled. My constant recognition of my self and my own existence is compelled. What is it that compels me?
This person is no more than a passenger. It is his paranoia that givs him his sense of control. Sitting in the passenger seat, steering an imaginary wheel, pressing an imaginary accelerator, stamping an imaginary brake, he congratulates himself when the vehicle responds his way and chastises himself when it doesn't. He is a fool who has created a world based upon fear and control. And yet he doesn't know from where he came form or where he will go. In fact, he has only just appeared, but don't tell him that because he doesn't want to hear it.
How long can you trace a wave with your eyes before it disappears forever? Love is all there is. It compels and is compelled. In this moment time cannot exist. Without memory, the person is the place where sound meets silence.
The person cannot experience reality. The person can only remember it in hinsight. He is gone the moment he appears. Birth and death are instantaneous. All else is the stuff of dreams.
Relax and enjoy the ride.
The only way for me to approach it is by intuition rather than intellect. Any attempts to grasp it intellectually only serves to overlay it with another conceptual projection and in doing so only adds a layer of separation. So I approach it intuitively, blindly, groping and feeling my way towards it much like a man navigating his way through darkness. I have left my knowledge at the door. I proceed unprepared, uncertain.
What is that which compels me to attempt to grasp this? Strangely enough it feels no different. What compels me to write, what compels me to understand why I write. Feeling, groping, hesitant and faltering I have no choice but to focus entirely on this landscape as it reveals itself to me moment by moment. I am aware of moving, aware of being, aware that i am aware. Yet, what is it that compels me to be aware?
Every breath in my body, every step I take forward, every thought shooting across my mind, every emotion flooding my senses is compelled. My constant recognition of my self and my own existence is compelled. What is it that compels me?
This person is no more than a passenger. It is his paranoia that givs him his sense of control. Sitting in the passenger seat, steering an imaginary wheel, pressing an imaginary accelerator, stamping an imaginary brake, he congratulates himself when the vehicle responds his way and chastises himself when it doesn't. He is a fool who has created a world based upon fear and control. And yet he doesn't know from where he came form or where he will go. In fact, he has only just appeared, but don't tell him that because he doesn't want to hear it.
How long can you trace a wave with your eyes before it disappears forever? Love is all there is. It compels and is compelled. In this moment time cannot exist. Without memory, the person is the place where sound meets silence.
The person cannot experience reality. The person can only remember it in hinsight. He is gone the moment he appears. Birth and death are instantaneous. All else is the stuff of dreams.
Relax and enjoy the ride.
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Deep Peace of Not Knowing
The uncertainty principle as stated by the physicisit Werner Heisenberg goes something like this: "it is impossible to simultaneously determine the position and momentum of a particle with absolute certainty." Another way to understand this, according to Heisenberg, is : the act of measuring one magnitude of the particle, whether it be the mass, velocity or momentum of the particle, immediately blurs the other two magnitudes and makes them 'uncertain'. So, for example, if you measure the particle's mass precisely it is fundamentally impossible to accurately measure its velocity and momentum and vice cersa. This has nothing to do with our techniques or technology which are advanced enough. Quantum physicists have long recognized that Uncertainty is a fundamental property of the Universe.
From the very sub-atomic level, Uncertainty is the thread that weaves our Reality. Time, space, matter and energy are all subject to the same Uncertainty. It blew the world away when Einstein talked about the relativity of space-time. Today, physicists at the cutting edge of quantum research would be hard pressed to admit whether even the most basic things we believe to be true about ourselves and our realities are actually true. Instead, they would more likely use terms like "high probability" or "low probability" because they have long since realized that Reality itself is not a static state but more akin to a field of potentiality. Try to imagine a world in which everything that happened, is happening and will happen only "probably happens". Thats it. Its hard for our minds to grasp this on anything but a theoretical level.
On a practical level it seems to have no relevance. And so we'd rather leave it up to those brainy, awkward physicists to worry about. How does one even use language to describe anything anymore? Bob goes: "So what are you doing?" And I answer: "I'm probably sitting at my desk, probably drinking a coffee." Or if I want to get really technical: "This person that I probably think I probably am is probably sitting at a probable desk probably drinking what is probably a coffee." You could take it even further but that would just get annoying. And so while there are a few people who ponder these issues on a philosophical level, engaging in debate and feeling all the more intellectual for it, when it comes time to go home and do the dishes none of the philosophizing really has any relevance anymore.
But you don't have to delve deeply into quantum physics and ponder the nature of Reality in order to sense the truth of the Uncertainty principle. In fact, if you just take a look at your own life you'll find that it is something that you experience 24 hours a day. If you bring some awareness into your own thought processes, the feelings, the stimuli and the emotions in your system you'll find that everything stems from that sense of Uncertainty. Its there underlying every motivation, every idea, every goal, every desire, every fear. We are in constant relationship with Uncertainty. And more often than not its a relationship that is far from harmonious.
When you wake up in the morning you most likely have an idea of how you're day is going to go or at the very least how you'd like it to go. Your mind has already forecasted a blueprint of events which evolves as your day moves along. At every step along your day your mind will be evaluating the Reality of what is actually happening against what it forecasted to happen. In fact, you may not even be very concious of this but its happening and the proof of this is in your reactions to events...
The subway train you were supposed to be on was full and the people cramming the doorway didn't even have the courtesy to make room for you. As a result you walked in late to work and even though your manager didn't say a word you just know he/she's judging you. You feel agitated, rushed and hot. This is a reaction to events that did not happen as they were forecasted or "supposed to". Embedded within this reaction are all the thoughts and feelings that rise in our minds and bodies: our judgments of others, our judgments of the situation, our judgments of ourselves. Our entire experience of "who we are" is perpetually suspended in the purgatory that lies somewhere in between Reality and our expectations.
The entire human condition can be summed up in one phrase: "The Human relationship with Reality." As long as we continue to believe, against all wisdom and intuition, that we can control Life and events, in other words, that we can achieve certianty in our lives, we are denying the most fundamental property on which Nature is built and as a result missing the entire point of Life. Even if you are successful in really nailing down your career, maybe your personal life suffers. You nail down your personal life, your health suffers. You achieve excellent health, your kids cant stand you. We're constantly juggling all these aspects of our lives trying desperately to keep all the balls in the air. And it all stems from one place - a denial of Uncertainty.
When you go to sleep tonight, will you wake up tomorrow? Even if you do, will the sun rise tomorrow? Even if it does will the people you love still be there tomorrow? Even if they are, will your job still be there tomorrow? Even if it is, will you still make it to work tomorrow? If we all look at this honestly, the only true answer we could offer is "probably". There is absolutely no certainty that any of these will happen. In fact, all there ever is is Uncertainty. All we can hope for is a high probability. And even that is something not within our control. You do not make the decision to wake up in the morning, it just happens. It just as well could not happen. You don't decide for the sun to rise, it happens. It just as well may not. You don't decide for the people you love to be around you, because they just as well may not.
Our relationship with Uncertainty manifests itself in all our daily relationships: our relationships with work, with family, friends, our significant others, ourselves. We are all desperately seeking security : emotional, physical, financial, spiritual. Security is just another word for certainty. We are an inherently insecure species. We are uncomfortable with uncertainty and so we create the delusion of certainty, we put it on a pedestal and we chase after it for the rest of our lives like a carrot on a stick.
Its not easy to perceive any other way of living because our society and the very principles it upholds keep us fixated on this delusion. Our governments and financial institutions are always promising us greater certainty. In our jobs we desperately struggle to hold on to securtiy. For most, marriage is a means of "sealing the deal" providing a sense of certainty about your partner's presence in your life. The promise of "forever" is an unfortunate lie that both members commit to unwittingly. The intentions may be true but sadly the very basis of commitment is the insecurity or fear that the opposite may happen. The only authentic way to approach any relationship whether it may be with work, with your family, with your spouse or yourself is one in which you can exist in harmony with Uncertainty.
The reality is that we don't know. The reality is that we can never know. This kind of statement is almost blasphemous in our present culture. We are a very "certain" species. We are "certain" of ourselves, "certain" of our faiths, "certain" of our political affiliations, "certain" of our stances on current issues, "certain" of what we want from life, "certain" of what we need from our relationships, "certain" of what we deserve, "certain" of what others deserve. But lets return to something that we stated earlier. Uncertainty, not certainty, is a fundamental property of Reality. And so when we are "certain" we are essentially in a state of resistance with Reality. We hold our perceptions and presumptions in higher regard that that which exists. Its our way of convincing ourselves that we are in control.
In reality, certainty is the other face of doubt. Notice how extremely fundamental people also seem like the most certain. In fact, its a common experience for many of us that the most stubborn, ignorant and insecure members of our societies are often the most certain about what they believe. Whereas the more flexible, knowledgeable and free thinking are often more allowing of room to grow and expand their positions. Its that indirect admission that we "may not know" that opens our minds a little. To quote a famous zen story: "a student goes to a Zen Master and asks him to give him the teaching. The Master invites him in for a cup of tea. As the Master pours him some tea, the cup fills and then begins to overflow onto the table. The student exclaims," Stop Master! No more will go in" The Master responds, "Your mind too, like this cup is full. How can I give you the teaching when no more will go in? First you must empty your cup."
This isn't just a feel good parable. Its extremely relevant and extremely practical. Our notions of reality blur our view of Reality. Life is a spontaneous and unknowable landscape. But in our minds it appears as something quite different. Until we are willing to purge ourselves of all our certainties and come face to face with Uncertainty, that demon that we have always been attempting to escape, we will never see it for what it truly is. Embedded in every moment is the essence of Uncertainty. To truly experience a moment in all its spontaneity is to be in complete harmony with this Uncertainty.
Not knowing is a choice as courageous as it is humbling. Not knowing is a willingness to see into the true Nature of Reality and our Selves. Through reflection or by some series of circumstance, often harsh life events, we will be exposed to this lack of certainty in our own lives. Some of us will respond by renewing or doubling our efforts to regain that certainty, but some of us, embattled and exhausted will be forced to face our new reality - that we are not in control and that we cannot really know. From here, some of us may live in a kind of hesitating, unsure relationship with Life not denying but not really trusting the Uncertainty. But some of us may have seen deeply enough through our experience, that Uncertainy is actually all that really exists. In fact, when we glance back at our lives, we find that through every stage and every event, it was our one true and constant companion.
We all come into this world not knowing. Infants are by nature harmonious. They have the ability to put people at ease and make them smile even in the midst of a hot and crowded bus. Its not as if they intend to have this effect, they just naturally emanate ease. We were all born that way. It is our essential nature to be in harmony with Uncertainty, to be comfortable with not knowing. However, we were educated out of our own natures by our parents, by our society. And we will do the same with our children. We will teach them to be cautious and fearful. We will teach them to be mistrusting and uneasy. We will teach them that certainty of thought, emotion and circumstance is the highest principles to strive for. In other words we will teach them how not to be natural. And our children, like us, will fall from grace and spend their lives, unbeknownst to them, struggling to regain some remnant of the peace they once felt a long long time ago. Not realizing that the very thing they believe will take them there is the very thing that is denying them.
When one is ready to surrender to Life, one surrenders everything. Embracing the Uncertainty means letting go of all the ways we hold on to some shred of control. With this letting go comes a recognition of a much deeper Intelligence operating through all of us and all of Reality. Scientists have long maintained that in a Universe as diverse and chaotic as ours, the odds that events lined up so serendipitously, that this Earth that we live on just "happened" to be the right size, the right distance from the Sun, have the right atmosphere and the right amount of water necessary, the right impulse to create life and the right confluence of coincidences since that have been sustaining Life eon after eon - all this is nothing short of a miracle. In fact, that humanity can even exist in this moment is so low on the probablity index that its like hitting the New York lottery minute after minute in a row for millenia. And yet we believe in certainty.
When you truly embrace Uncertainty, you have the opportunity to see that your own will is only an illusion. It is Nature that is moving through you, moving you, guiding you. It is the Intelligence of the Universe, the same one that makes the cherry blossoms bloom in spring, the one that keeps the Earth revolving around the Sun, the one that makes your cat purr and keeps your heart beating; that has been guiding you every step of the way on your journey. The person you thought yourself to be and the control you thought you had over your own reality was nothing but a dream. Its the illusion you reaffirmed to yourself in order to hide from Reality.
When you embrace Uncertainty, there is a sense of true humility. This is the humility that recognizes that we do not and cannot really know. And with this willingness to not know comes a deep and lasting peace.
From the very sub-atomic level, Uncertainty is the thread that weaves our Reality. Time, space, matter and energy are all subject to the same Uncertainty. It blew the world away when Einstein talked about the relativity of space-time. Today, physicists at the cutting edge of quantum research would be hard pressed to admit whether even the most basic things we believe to be true about ourselves and our realities are actually true. Instead, they would more likely use terms like "high probability" or "low probability" because they have long since realized that Reality itself is not a static state but more akin to a field of potentiality. Try to imagine a world in which everything that happened, is happening and will happen only "probably happens". Thats it. Its hard for our minds to grasp this on anything but a theoretical level.
On a practical level it seems to have no relevance. And so we'd rather leave it up to those brainy, awkward physicists to worry about. How does one even use language to describe anything anymore? Bob goes: "So what are you doing?" And I answer: "I'm probably sitting at my desk, probably drinking a coffee." Or if I want to get really technical: "This person that I probably think I probably am is probably sitting at a probable desk probably drinking what is probably a coffee." You could take it even further but that would just get annoying. And so while there are a few people who ponder these issues on a philosophical level, engaging in debate and feeling all the more intellectual for it, when it comes time to go home and do the dishes none of the philosophizing really has any relevance anymore.
But you don't have to delve deeply into quantum physics and ponder the nature of Reality in order to sense the truth of the Uncertainty principle. In fact, if you just take a look at your own life you'll find that it is something that you experience 24 hours a day. If you bring some awareness into your own thought processes, the feelings, the stimuli and the emotions in your system you'll find that everything stems from that sense of Uncertainty. Its there underlying every motivation, every idea, every goal, every desire, every fear. We are in constant relationship with Uncertainty. And more often than not its a relationship that is far from harmonious.
When you wake up in the morning you most likely have an idea of how you're day is going to go or at the very least how you'd like it to go. Your mind has already forecasted a blueprint of events which evolves as your day moves along. At every step along your day your mind will be evaluating the Reality of what is actually happening against what it forecasted to happen. In fact, you may not even be very concious of this but its happening and the proof of this is in your reactions to events...
The subway train you were supposed to be on was full and the people cramming the doorway didn't even have the courtesy to make room for you. As a result you walked in late to work and even though your manager didn't say a word you just know he/she's judging you. You feel agitated, rushed and hot. This is a reaction to events that did not happen as they were forecasted or "supposed to". Embedded within this reaction are all the thoughts and feelings that rise in our minds and bodies: our judgments of others, our judgments of the situation, our judgments of ourselves. Our entire experience of "who we are" is perpetually suspended in the purgatory that lies somewhere in between Reality and our expectations.
The entire human condition can be summed up in one phrase: "The Human relationship with Reality." As long as we continue to believe, against all wisdom and intuition, that we can control Life and events, in other words, that we can achieve certianty in our lives, we are denying the most fundamental property on which Nature is built and as a result missing the entire point of Life. Even if you are successful in really nailing down your career, maybe your personal life suffers. You nail down your personal life, your health suffers. You achieve excellent health, your kids cant stand you. We're constantly juggling all these aspects of our lives trying desperately to keep all the balls in the air. And it all stems from one place - a denial of Uncertainty.
When you go to sleep tonight, will you wake up tomorrow? Even if you do, will the sun rise tomorrow? Even if it does will the people you love still be there tomorrow? Even if they are, will your job still be there tomorrow? Even if it is, will you still make it to work tomorrow? If we all look at this honestly, the only true answer we could offer is "probably". There is absolutely no certainty that any of these will happen. In fact, all there ever is is Uncertainty. All we can hope for is a high probability. And even that is something not within our control. You do not make the decision to wake up in the morning, it just happens. It just as well could not happen. You don't decide for the sun to rise, it happens. It just as well may not. You don't decide for the people you love to be around you, because they just as well may not.
Our relationship with Uncertainty manifests itself in all our daily relationships: our relationships with work, with family, friends, our significant others, ourselves. We are all desperately seeking security : emotional, physical, financial, spiritual. Security is just another word for certainty. We are an inherently insecure species. We are uncomfortable with uncertainty and so we create the delusion of certainty, we put it on a pedestal and we chase after it for the rest of our lives like a carrot on a stick.
Its not easy to perceive any other way of living because our society and the very principles it upholds keep us fixated on this delusion. Our governments and financial institutions are always promising us greater certainty. In our jobs we desperately struggle to hold on to securtiy. For most, marriage is a means of "sealing the deal" providing a sense of certainty about your partner's presence in your life. The promise of "forever" is an unfortunate lie that both members commit to unwittingly. The intentions may be true but sadly the very basis of commitment is the insecurity or fear that the opposite may happen. The only authentic way to approach any relationship whether it may be with work, with your family, with your spouse or yourself is one in which you can exist in harmony with Uncertainty.
The reality is that we don't know. The reality is that we can never know. This kind of statement is almost blasphemous in our present culture. We are a very "certain" species. We are "certain" of ourselves, "certain" of our faiths, "certain" of our political affiliations, "certain" of our stances on current issues, "certain" of what we want from life, "certain" of what we need from our relationships, "certain" of what we deserve, "certain" of what others deserve. But lets return to something that we stated earlier. Uncertainty, not certainty, is a fundamental property of Reality. And so when we are "certain" we are essentially in a state of resistance with Reality. We hold our perceptions and presumptions in higher regard that that which exists. Its our way of convincing ourselves that we are in control.
In reality, certainty is the other face of doubt. Notice how extremely fundamental people also seem like the most certain. In fact, its a common experience for many of us that the most stubborn, ignorant and insecure members of our societies are often the most certain about what they believe. Whereas the more flexible, knowledgeable and free thinking are often more allowing of room to grow and expand their positions. Its that indirect admission that we "may not know" that opens our minds a little. To quote a famous zen story: "a student goes to a Zen Master and asks him to give him the teaching. The Master invites him in for a cup of tea. As the Master pours him some tea, the cup fills and then begins to overflow onto the table. The student exclaims," Stop Master! No more will go in" The Master responds, "Your mind too, like this cup is full. How can I give you the teaching when no more will go in? First you must empty your cup."
This isn't just a feel good parable. Its extremely relevant and extremely practical. Our notions of reality blur our view of Reality. Life is a spontaneous and unknowable landscape. But in our minds it appears as something quite different. Until we are willing to purge ourselves of all our certainties and come face to face with Uncertainty, that demon that we have always been attempting to escape, we will never see it for what it truly is. Embedded in every moment is the essence of Uncertainty. To truly experience a moment in all its spontaneity is to be in complete harmony with this Uncertainty.
Not knowing is a choice as courageous as it is humbling. Not knowing is a willingness to see into the true Nature of Reality and our Selves. Through reflection or by some series of circumstance, often harsh life events, we will be exposed to this lack of certainty in our own lives. Some of us will respond by renewing or doubling our efforts to regain that certainty, but some of us, embattled and exhausted will be forced to face our new reality - that we are not in control and that we cannot really know. From here, some of us may live in a kind of hesitating, unsure relationship with Life not denying but not really trusting the Uncertainty. But some of us may have seen deeply enough through our experience, that Uncertainy is actually all that really exists. In fact, when we glance back at our lives, we find that through every stage and every event, it was our one true and constant companion.
We all come into this world not knowing. Infants are by nature harmonious. They have the ability to put people at ease and make them smile even in the midst of a hot and crowded bus. Its not as if they intend to have this effect, they just naturally emanate ease. We were all born that way. It is our essential nature to be in harmony with Uncertainty, to be comfortable with not knowing. However, we were educated out of our own natures by our parents, by our society. And we will do the same with our children. We will teach them to be cautious and fearful. We will teach them to be mistrusting and uneasy. We will teach them that certainty of thought, emotion and circumstance is the highest principles to strive for. In other words we will teach them how not to be natural. And our children, like us, will fall from grace and spend their lives, unbeknownst to them, struggling to regain some remnant of the peace they once felt a long long time ago. Not realizing that the very thing they believe will take them there is the very thing that is denying them.
When one is ready to surrender to Life, one surrenders everything. Embracing the Uncertainty means letting go of all the ways we hold on to some shred of control. With this letting go comes a recognition of a much deeper Intelligence operating through all of us and all of Reality. Scientists have long maintained that in a Universe as diverse and chaotic as ours, the odds that events lined up so serendipitously, that this Earth that we live on just "happened" to be the right size, the right distance from the Sun, have the right atmosphere and the right amount of water necessary, the right impulse to create life and the right confluence of coincidences since that have been sustaining Life eon after eon - all this is nothing short of a miracle. In fact, that humanity can even exist in this moment is so low on the probablity index that its like hitting the New York lottery minute after minute in a row for millenia. And yet we believe in certainty.
When you truly embrace Uncertainty, you have the opportunity to see that your own will is only an illusion. It is Nature that is moving through you, moving you, guiding you. It is the Intelligence of the Universe, the same one that makes the cherry blossoms bloom in spring, the one that keeps the Earth revolving around the Sun, the one that makes your cat purr and keeps your heart beating; that has been guiding you every step of the way on your journey. The person you thought yourself to be and the control you thought you had over your own reality was nothing but a dream. Its the illusion you reaffirmed to yourself in order to hide from Reality.
When you embrace Uncertainty, there is a sense of true humility. This is the humility that recognizes that we do not and cannot really know. And with this willingness to not know comes a deep and lasting peace.
Monday, May 7, 2012
The One Percent
"Life is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." I remember hearing this over and over again while growing up. My parents said it, my relatives said it, my teachers said it - its what the world around me reiterated. And it was a particularly hard pill to swallow, you see, because I was a dreamer. I lived in a world of vision and fantasy. I was an inspiration junkie. I could be incredibly passionate about an idea or a cause as long as I felt inspired to be. But as soon as the inspiration waned, so would the passion. I became a master of starting projects and leaving them unfinished. It became my trademark. Everyone knew that about me. This became particularly problematic as I grew older and some of life's "important" choices had to be made: what program to major in in university, what career to pursue etc. I chugged along my life's path, starting and stopping, sputtering and wheezing like an old jalopy. And each way I turned I searched desperately for a glimpse of inspiration, a few desperate drops of it would suffice. And when I couldn't find it, I would try and contrive it.
But I always failed and as a result ended up feeling miserable and utterly uninspired. And so I would try and convince myself that there was something wrong with me. That it was unrealistic to want to be inspired ALL the time. That hard work and effort was what was really required. That Life is by nature difficult, challenging and hostile. And that to be truly successful one had to "rise above one's own self and circumstances" and "take Life by the horns" and beat it into submission. And the more I tried to convince myself of this and conform myself to this reality the more miserable I became and the more helpless I felt. Because even in the thickest fog of depression the voice of intuition still continued to whisper to me that I was missing the mark. That I was compromising what I knew to be true. That inspiration is the key...
It wasn't until I began to really delve into the question: "What is inspiration?" that I began to see how I'd been missing the mark.
What is inspiration and where does it come from? We tend to use the words "inspiration" and "motivation" interchangeably believing that they mean almost the same thing whereas in reality they are entirely different. We are all motivated by a number of different factors on a daily basis. By our environment, by stimuli, by our own desires, ideas and opinions, by our social and cultural conditioning, by our genetics, by each other. From the moment we arise to the moment we sleep we are constantly reacting to agendas: personal and impersonal. When we eat we are motivated by hunger on a basic level but also by more complex psychological processes like addiction, body image, self esteem, health and fitness beliefs, medical factors, guilt, fear, lack, compulsion. A simple act such as eating a bowl of cereal can be motivated by a confluence of any permutation or combination of these factors just to name a few. A bowl of cereal can be reflective of our entire belief system and psychological makeup.
Motivations exist in our psyches in various forms and in complex relationship. Motivations also cause significant inner conflict in most of us. Inner conflict is essentially the experience of being motivated to think, act or feel in contradictory directions. An addict in recovery is a great example of this kind of conflict made manifest for all to see. Yet, we are all addicted to our own minds and even though we may not exhibit it as obviously, we are in a perpetual cycle of recovery and relapse.
But most essentially, every motivation can be traced back through its roots to two primary and fundamental motivations: power and fear. Power is the impulse to grow, to evolve, to dominate, to triumph, to prevail, to become more, to become whole. Fear is the sense of the opposite: of decay, of regression, of submission, of surrender, of dissolution, diminishment and fragmentation. Power seems to enhance our sense of self and self esteem, whereas fear diminishes it. We seek power in different forms everyday and turn away in fear from the all the things that deny us. Returning to the analogy of the bowl of cereal, that simple act is a complex interaction of power and fear stimuli operating within us through our thoughts, sensations and emotions. Observe it in yourself - the next time you go to the gym, the next time you send in a report to your manager, the next time you're sitting in traffic - observe how every single move you make is in some form a sum result of all these motivations operating within you.
Its possible to take this one step further. Where does this desire for Power come from? Where does this impulse to be and want more come from? It comes from a feeling of lack, of insufficiency, of an inherent dissatisfaction with the present reality. There can only be a desire to be more if there is a sense of not enough. There can only be a desire to be whole if there is a sense of being fragmented. There can only be a desire to triumph if there is a sense of being oppressed. And this sense of insufficiency, fragmentation and oppression is fear. Essentially power and fear are two faces of the same coin. One feeds the other and neither can survive without the other. In order to understand what power and fear essentially are and how they exist in relationship, lets consider Nature and her laws.
Creation and destruction, expansion and contraction, birth and death, evolution and dissolution - these are the tides of reality. What goes up must come down. Once you inhale you must exhale. One cannot inhale indefinitely. Every expansion must be followed by contraction. Every creation must be annihilated. There is no good or bad, right or wrong in any of this. This is the way reality works. One is an outward motion, the other is a return motion. The Universe expands and the Universe contracts.
Power is the desire for constant expansion accompanied by a corresponding fear of contraction. This is evident in our lives and societies. Its an unrealistic paradigm we have all adopted for ourselves. Corporations are built on a model of constant growth and profit. Economies are setup to constantly expand. Our population is growing at an exponential rate and this is viewed as a favorable outcome. We are as a culture obsessed with youth and vitality. We admire people who retain their youthful features, who live energetically and vibrantly even at an older age. We believe that it is better to have more than to have less. We are fearful of disease and old age. We view death as an enemy rather than a natural eventuality and we are, as a species, obsessed with avoiding it. You see, we want to prevail, we want to grow, we want to expand and we want to triumph. No matter the price. And the price we have paid for this misconception is becoming glaringly evident.
Power and fear are two sides of the same one coin that is Control. They are the drive to control Life and the events and the circumstances that surround it. Power and fear promote the illusion of separation. We have come to believe that we are separate and disconnected entities that have control over how we can interact with each other and our environments. We see the world and the Universe as a "dead space", an inanimate landscape in which we are beings of intelligence with the power to control and shape the events in our Universe. But this sort of thinking lacks any substance. From the most subatomic level, to the cellular level to the Universal level: Life is a constantly moving and transforming flux of energies of which we as a species are only an infinitisemal part. Human life on planet earth represents such a tiny and almost insignificant energy force when compared to the whole that for us to think we are somehow in control is laughable. It would be like saying a single drop of water can act independantly of the Ocean, or that a single cell in the human body can act independantly of the body.
One might argue that it is possible for a cell to turn against the body and become cancerous, for example, acting seemingly "of its own will" rather than that of the body. Yet, cancers are also a part of the natural order and serve Nature's agenda like any other cell. In fact, the analogy of a cancer has been used many times to represent humanity's relationship with its host oraganism - the Earth. Ours has been a parasitic relationship in which we have turned hostile towards the larger organism of which we are only a functional aspect. One might consider our illusions of control and the behaviours resulting as 'cancerous'. And yet from Nature's perspective its all part of the big picture.
Control is an illusion. One that we buy into hook, line and sinker. When things go our way, we feel in control. When they don't, we feel like we've lost control. We're under the impression that we're making it happen. And when it doesn't work, we've failed to make it happen. We struggle to find moments in which we feel empowered, happy, fulfilled and in control. We dread moments in which we feel helpless, miserable, unfulfilled and lacking control. The pusuit of happiness is high on our agendas. We all believe that there exists such a static state of unconditional growth, fulfilment and expansion. We just have to find the secret...
Its all an illusion. When Life goes our way it just so happens that Life is in an outward movement, an expansion. Its the High tide and it makes us so happy because we believe that we have reaped the rewards of our labor. And when Life doesn't go our way, it just so happens that it is in an inward movement, a contraction. Its the Low tide and it makes us miserable and we feel that we have been unfairly and unjustly treated. But its all in our heads and its all our imagination. Life just moves naturally. High tide - Low tide, expand - contract, inhale - exhale, wellness - illness, fortune - misfortune, growth - retreat, victory - surrender, creation - destruction, birth - death. Its just the Tides of the Ocean of Life, of which you are a single wave with no will that is separate from the will of the Whole, no volition that is different from that of Nature and absolutely no shred of control other than the fantasy that exists in your mind.
So if control is an illusion, motivated by Power and Fear: What is inspiration?
Inspiration comes to us from a very different place and is a wholly different experience for what I have described thus far. Inspiration can best be described as a moment of spontaneous clarity. Inspiration rarely comes when we want it to and takes on many forms and seldom the same one. Inspiration and insight go hand in hand. The former is experienced more as a feeling whereas the other is experienced more as a thought. Yet they both result from that single moment of spontaneous clarity.
Most essentially however, inspiration is an experience of momentary trasendence. When we are inspired, we are, for that one moment, completely surrendered to the experience of the moment in whatever form it appears. There appears to be no boundary between ourselves and what we are experiencing, rather it is all experienced as one seamless reality. This feeling of felt Oneness is very different from how we are accustomed to viewing Life. In this one moment, "we" as we know ourselves, cease to exist and there is only "this", the experience.
If we think of all the moments we usually refer to as inspirational ones, we can see that this is true. Watching the sunrise from the summit of a peak, watching an infant in the arms of a mother, watching an old couple walking hand in hand, watching a cherry blossom in bloom, listening to a rousing symphony or the crashing or waves upon the shore - the images are infinite. And yet no matter how we interpret these images and no matter what stories we create in our minds to make them fit within our own paradigms - that first moment when the inspiration hits us, spontaneously, arbitrarily, unexpectedly - it is a moment in which we are transported out of ourselves and we see with the Eyes of the Universe, from the perspective of the One reality. And we are left feeling small, fragile, insignificant and humbled. To be truly inspired is to be in awe, to be humbled, to realize our utter utter insignificance. The only true response to a moment of inspiration is that of reverance - a deep reverance and devotion to the beauty, the magnificence and the wisdom of Life.
Inspiration is an opportunity to see that all is beautiful and all is necessary. The expansion and the contraction are equally vital. Triumph and surrender are equally rewarding. Wellness and disease are equally harmonious. Birth and death are equally natural. And we as essential aspects of the same Reality will experience all of it. There is no constant state of health, peace and happiness except in our imaginations. We will grow, we will decay, we will rejoice and we will suffer. Each and everyone of us will experience this no matter how we convince ourselves otherwise. There is no need to strive for one and reject the other. It all happens in spite of what we want or don't.
Inspiration sees that there is no such thing as control. That we are not separate entitities suffering our own existences. Instead we are indistinguishable aspects of the whole, much like individual waves are to an Ocean. And yet, Inspiration also reveals that just like every wave is already in harmony with the oacean, we are already in harmony with Life. In fact, disharmony is the illusion. One can only be disharmonious if one is separate. The illusion that I am somehow separate from the Whole gives rise to the illusion that I am not in harmony with the Whole which then gives rise to the illusion that I can do something about it (control).
To be inspired is to live in alignment with Life and with every moment as it unfolds. To live in spontaneous relationship with Reality. To be free of the need for control and so to be free of power and fear. To live with humility, reverance and simplicity. To know nothing more about Life than how it appears at the moment. To live gracefully and die gracefully. To eat cereal simply because you are hungry.
A famous zen story goes: A student once asked a Zen Master, "What is Enlightenment?" The Master responded: "When I'm hungry I eat, when I'm tired I sleep."
If I could travel back in time and talk to that young boy who tried to believe, against all intuition, that Life is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" I would say only one thing to him:
"Life is 100% inspiration."
But I always failed and as a result ended up feeling miserable and utterly uninspired. And so I would try and convince myself that there was something wrong with me. That it was unrealistic to want to be inspired ALL the time. That hard work and effort was what was really required. That Life is by nature difficult, challenging and hostile. And that to be truly successful one had to "rise above one's own self and circumstances" and "take Life by the horns" and beat it into submission. And the more I tried to convince myself of this and conform myself to this reality the more miserable I became and the more helpless I felt. Because even in the thickest fog of depression the voice of intuition still continued to whisper to me that I was missing the mark. That I was compromising what I knew to be true. That inspiration is the key...
It wasn't until I began to really delve into the question: "What is inspiration?" that I began to see how I'd been missing the mark.
What is inspiration and where does it come from? We tend to use the words "inspiration" and "motivation" interchangeably believing that they mean almost the same thing whereas in reality they are entirely different. We are all motivated by a number of different factors on a daily basis. By our environment, by stimuli, by our own desires, ideas and opinions, by our social and cultural conditioning, by our genetics, by each other. From the moment we arise to the moment we sleep we are constantly reacting to agendas: personal and impersonal. When we eat we are motivated by hunger on a basic level but also by more complex psychological processes like addiction, body image, self esteem, health and fitness beliefs, medical factors, guilt, fear, lack, compulsion. A simple act such as eating a bowl of cereal can be motivated by a confluence of any permutation or combination of these factors just to name a few. A bowl of cereal can be reflective of our entire belief system and psychological makeup.
Motivations exist in our psyches in various forms and in complex relationship. Motivations also cause significant inner conflict in most of us. Inner conflict is essentially the experience of being motivated to think, act or feel in contradictory directions. An addict in recovery is a great example of this kind of conflict made manifest for all to see. Yet, we are all addicted to our own minds and even though we may not exhibit it as obviously, we are in a perpetual cycle of recovery and relapse.
But most essentially, every motivation can be traced back through its roots to two primary and fundamental motivations: power and fear. Power is the impulse to grow, to evolve, to dominate, to triumph, to prevail, to become more, to become whole. Fear is the sense of the opposite: of decay, of regression, of submission, of surrender, of dissolution, diminishment and fragmentation. Power seems to enhance our sense of self and self esteem, whereas fear diminishes it. We seek power in different forms everyday and turn away in fear from the all the things that deny us. Returning to the analogy of the bowl of cereal, that simple act is a complex interaction of power and fear stimuli operating within us through our thoughts, sensations and emotions. Observe it in yourself - the next time you go to the gym, the next time you send in a report to your manager, the next time you're sitting in traffic - observe how every single move you make is in some form a sum result of all these motivations operating within you.
Its possible to take this one step further. Where does this desire for Power come from? Where does this impulse to be and want more come from? It comes from a feeling of lack, of insufficiency, of an inherent dissatisfaction with the present reality. There can only be a desire to be more if there is a sense of not enough. There can only be a desire to be whole if there is a sense of being fragmented. There can only be a desire to triumph if there is a sense of being oppressed. And this sense of insufficiency, fragmentation and oppression is fear. Essentially power and fear are two faces of the same coin. One feeds the other and neither can survive without the other. In order to understand what power and fear essentially are and how they exist in relationship, lets consider Nature and her laws.
Creation and destruction, expansion and contraction, birth and death, evolution and dissolution - these are the tides of reality. What goes up must come down. Once you inhale you must exhale. One cannot inhale indefinitely. Every expansion must be followed by contraction. Every creation must be annihilated. There is no good or bad, right or wrong in any of this. This is the way reality works. One is an outward motion, the other is a return motion. The Universe expands and the Universe contracts.
Power is the desire for constant expansion accompanied by a corresponding fear of contraction. This is evident in our lives and societies. Its an unrealistic paradigm we have all adopted for ourselves. Corporations are built on a model of constant growth and profit. Economies are setup to constantly expand. Our population is growing at an exponential rate and this is viewed as a favorable outcome. We are as a culture obsessed with youth and vitality. We admire people who retain their youthful features, who live energetically and vibrantly even at an older age. We believe that it is better to have more than to have less. We are fearful of disease and old age. We view death as an enemy rather than a natural eventuality and we are, as a species, obsessed with avoiding it. You see, we want to prevail, we want to grow, we want to expand and we want to triumph. No matter the price. And the price we have paid for this misconception is becoming glaringly evident.
Power and fear are two sides of the same one coin that is Control. They are the drive to control Life and the events and the circumstances that surround it. Power and fear promote the illusion of separation. We have come to believe that we are separate and disconnected entities that have control over how we can interact with each other and our environments. We see the world and the Universe as a "dead space", an inanimate landscape in which we are beings of intelligence with the power to control and shape the events in our Universe. But this sort of thinking lacks any substance. From the most subatomic level, to the cellular level to the Universal level: Life is a constantly moving and transforming flux of energies of which we as a species are only an infinitisemal part. Human life on planet earth represents such a tiny and almost insignificant energy force when compared to the whole that for us to think we are somehow in control is laughable. It would be like saying a single drop of water can act independantly of the Ocean, or that a single cell in the human body can act independantly of the body.
One might argue that it is possible for a cell to turn against the body and become cancerous, for example, acting seemingly "of its own will" rather than that of the body. Yet, cancers are also a part of the natural order and serve Nature's agenda like any other cell. In fact, the analogy of a cancer has been used many times to represent humanity's relationship with its host oraganism - the Earth. Ours has been a parasitic relationship in which we have turned hostile towards the larger organism of which we are only a functional aspect. One might consider our illusions of control and the behaviours resulting as 'cancerous'. And yet from Nature's perspective its all part of the big picture.
Control is an illusion. One that we buy into hook, line and sinker. When things go our way, we feel in control. When they don't, we feel like we've lost control. We're under the impression that we're making it happen. And when it doesn't work, we've failed to make it happen. We struggle to find moments in which we feel empowered, happy, fulfilled and in control. We dread moments in which we feel helpless, miserable, unfulfilled and lacking control. The pusuit of happiness is high on our agendas. We all believe that there exists such a static state of unconditional growth, fulfilment and expansion. We just have to find the secret...
Its all an illusion. When Life goes our way it just so happens that Life is in an outward movement, an expansion. Its the High tide and it makes us so happy because we believe that we have reaped the rewards of our labor. And when Life doesn't go our way, it just so happens that it is in an inward movement, a contraction. Its the Low tide and it makes us miserable and we feel that we have been unfairly and unjustly treated. But its all in our heads and its all our imagination. Life just moves naturally. High tide - Low tide, expand - contract, inhale - exhale, wellness - illness, fortune - misfortune, growth - retreat, victory - surrender, creation - destruction, birth - death. Its just the Tides of the Ocean of Life, of which you are a single wave with no will that is separate from the will of the Whole, no volition that is different from that of Nature and absolutely no shred of control other than the fantasy that exists in your mind.
So if control is an illusion, motivated by Power and Fear: What is inspiration?
Inspiration comes to us from a very different place and is a wholly different experience for what I have described thus far. Inspiration can best be described as a moment of spontaneous clarity. Inspiration rarely comes when we want it to and takes on many forms and seldom the same one. Inspiration and insight go hand in hand. The former is experienced more as a feeling whereas the other is experienced more as a thought. Yet they both result from that single moment of spontaneous clarity.
Most essentially however, inspiration is an experience of momentary trasendence. When we are inspired, we are, for that one moment, completely surrendered to the experience of the moment in whatever form it appears. There appears to be no boundary between ourselves and what we are experiencing, rather it is all experienced as one seamless reality. This feeling of felt Oneness is very different from how we are accustomed to viewing Life. In this one moment, "we" as we know ourselves, cease to exist and there is only "this", the experience.
If we think of all the moments we usually refer to as inspirational ones, we can see that this is true. Watching the sunrise from the summit of a peak, watching an infant in the arms of a mother, watching an old couple walking hand in hand, watching a cherry blossom in bloom, listening to a rousing symphony or the crashing or waves upon the shore - the images are infinite. And yet no matter how we interpret these images and no matter what stories we create in our minds to make them fit within our own paradigms - that first moment when the inspiration hits us, spontaneously, arbitrarily, unexpectedly - it is a moment in which we are transported out of ourselves and we see with the Eyes of the Universe, from the perspective of the One reality. And we are left feeling small, fragile, insignificant and humbled. To be truly inspired is to be in awe, to be humbled, to realize our utter utter insignificance. The only true response to a moment of inspiration is that of reverance - a deep reverance and devotion to the beauty, the magnificence and the wisdom of Life.
Inspiration is an opportunity to see that all is beautiful and all is necessary. The expansion and the contraction are equally vital. Triumph and surrender are equally rewarding. Wellness and disease are equally harmonious. Birth and death are equally natural. And we as essential aspects of the same Reality will experience all of it. There is no constant state of health, peace and happiness except in our imaginations. We will grow, we will decay, we will rejoice and we will suffer. Each and everyone of us will experience this no matter how we convince ourselves otherwise. There is no need to strive for one and reject the other. It all happens in spite of what we want or don't.
Inspiration sees that there is no such thing as control. That we are not separate entitities suffering our own existences. Instead we are indistinguishable aspects of the whole, much like individual waves are to an Ocean. And yet, Inspiration also reveals that just like every wave is already in harmony with the oacean, we are already in harmony with Life. In fact, disharmony is the illusion. One can only be disharmonious if one is separate. The illusion that I am somehow separate from the Whole gives rise to the illusion that I am not in harmony with the Whole which then gives rise to the illusion that I can do something about it (control).
To be inspired is to live in alignment with Life and with every moment as it unfolds. To live in spontaneous relationship with Reality. To be free of the need for control and so to be free of power and fear. To live with humility, reverance and simplicity. To know nothing more about Life than how it appears at the moment. To live gracefully and die gracefully. To eat cereal simply because you are hungry.
A famous zen story goes: A student once asked a Zen Master, "What is Enlightenment?" The Master responded: "When I'm hungry I eat, when I'm tired I sleep."
If I could travel back in time and talk to that young boy who tried to believe, against all intuition, that Life is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" I would say only one thing to him:
"Life is 100% inspiration."
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