Question
QUESTION: I have been meditating for over two decades- gone through the up and down associating w/ meditation in general. Good thing to say though that I am a much better person now, through the changes over the years.
I practice mainly the awareness type meditation. Three years ago, I started noticing the intense awareness of surrounding through my eyes. I could look and see the beauty of things in the daily live. This experience happened before but it didn't last, and I had to put an effort trying to reach it.
Anyway, now I start noticing the awareness moving up to my forehead. The awareness of things around me is much faster than at the eyes, or physical level. Thought? No thought!- just the awareness of what is going on. I know one thing is that the mind can only concentrate at one thing a time. So, either awareness or thought. It doesn't take much effort to be aware of myself, the things I was doing and surrounding. I can sit w/ my eyes closed- meditating or standing up w/ eyes opened, and the awareness is there. Again, no thought- OK thought is there, then it's gone. I can sit for a moment or hours if I want to- w/ no concern of pain/ numbness (although it is there still). When I face w/ difficulty as everyone else, I look for ways to handle it using whatever is available at the time. I don't look for excuse or ask why it happened that way- just look for an answer. I deal w/ the issues at the personal level- basically decision made reflecting the person I am here and now- not how it should be or could be. I am trying to bring this awareness more to the daily live, yet still exploring even further spiritually. What can I look forward to? How can I strengthen my spiritual self even further. There was a time long ago I was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. But, then I realized that even a monk has to work and face things just like normal people. Hmm.... what should I do next? Any insights will be appreciated.
Thanks very much for your time, I am sure your kindness will be returned in favor one way or another.
J. Greyz
ANSWER: Hi.
Let's look at this together right now. You ask "What's next? What should I do to strenghten my spiritual self even further?"
What is it that asks this question? Sitting here at the computer, the warm air on the skin, sounds of fans and furnace clicking, the brain can ask what's next, what will happen in the future, what should I do. These questions are part of history, part of the story of me. They are built into memory, remembering what I have done and evaluating where I think I am now and trying to project what should be done next. This is all the activity of memory. When this quiets down, this quiet room with its sounds and feelings is revealed more clearly, along with the silence and spaciousness in which it exists. When the memory is active, there is confusion and anxiety in the mind and body about what to do next. When memory is quiet, there is stillness, there is what is here and there is a doing of something if it is needed now, without anxiety or worry. Memory active - confusion. Memory quiet - natural response as needed.
I am only really alive when memory is not turned on and there is presence. As you say, no thought, just awareness. Why bother with what I think I've done in the past to get to this point? Whatever I remember about what I have done, it is not what I have really done. It is only a very limited recording of certain events. Most of what I did and what really influenced me in the past is not only not remembered but it is not rememberable, not knowable.
Where have I arrived at through all my hard work over the years? How do I push it further? This thought also comes from memory, doesn't it? The memory of having struggled, having suffered, having gotten something in return. The projection in imagination into the future of how I have to keep going in a good direction. But looking right Here, what have I gotten? In reality much has actually been dropped, been given away. What is left has been here all the time.
Looking carefully at this moment of awareness, is there anything at all missing? If there is a sense of something missing, then is it possible to come in touch with that sense, to keep looking, keep awaring each moment until you can discover if there really is something missing right here. If there is something missing, it must be Here. So look Here more deeply, look more carefully, listen and feel more carefully, more subtly. Become very subtly and carefully and accurately aware of the listener, the awarer. What is it? The listener and that which is listened to both fully in awareness at the same time, in the same space, nothing left out.
Let's look at the question again, What did I do in the past to get here, to a place of maybe some openness and equanimity?
Is it not true that nearly all of what we did in the past, most of us, is to think, to imagine what we are, to try to figure out what to do about it, to react to events and people around us in habitual and inappropriate ways and to try to find or build new patterns that might protect us from the suffering that is created from living this way continually?
Occassionally this self absorption of thought stopped for us in the past and there was a moment of beauty and simplicity and completeness. Just briefly and then thought took over again and perhaps made a story about it. What did you do to get to a moment of no thought? The question doesn't apply. The moment of no thought happens when "me" is not operating. "Me" didn't do it. Thought, memory, patterns of behavior can only cover over presence. They don't create presence. Presence is already here. It's all there is.
So you don't need to worry about how to create or maintain awareness. It's not your responsibility because it's not possible to create or maintain. Just watch and listen carefully every moment and notice how the mind wants to know and wants to do something to keep you safe and wants to find answers. See if it is possible for this mind to become completely visible so that it is obvious whenever it wants to do something.
Sitting Here, body moving with the breath, heaviness in tired eyelids, there is no need for being anything in particular. No need for perfection, no need for growth, no need to know what happened before or what should happen next. There is just aliveness. Is anything missing? Listen and listen and listen!
Please write back if something here has not been very clear or doesn't seem right to you or if you want to explore some of this further.
Best,
Jay
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: "Just watch and listen carefully every moment and notice how the mind wants to know and wants to do something to keep you safe and wants to find answers. See if it is possible for this mind to become completely visible so that it is obvious whenever it wants to do something."
Everything mentioned previously sounds very familiar. On watching the mind wanting to do something- I thought I am supposed to guard the mind from wondering/ keep the lid on it as mind goes from one place to another. An apple turns into a football, so on and so forth.
How will I know how the mind will reveal itself? Is there something obvious I need to pay attention to? There were times when I "felt" I had to do certain thing, of course w/ out thinking of doing it before. Is this what you are talking about?
ANSWER: Hi.
The mind reveals itself all the time. For example, if you smell something burning, the mind presents the fact that there is danger and it searches through memory until it recognizes that the smell matches the memory for eggs burning and the brain may present an image of getting up and going quickly to the kitchen or there may be no image but the muscles are activated along with some adrenaline and one gets up and goes to the kitchen.
The problem is that our field of attention is usually very small. We may only be listening to our thoughts and inner words. Because the field of attention is too small, the activity of the mind is not seen clearly.
The key is to stay in a wide open field of attention (unless your situation requires you to focus on something like driving or having a conversation). How do you find a wide open field of attention? Listen with the whole body and mind. Let the attention include the body, the inner feeling of the body. Listen through the body into the space around the body. You will find that there is no real borderline between what we think of as the body and the whole world. Listen with all of this and forget about the mind.
Then if a thought comes up, the thought will hold still and its deepest contents are revealed in a moment. If the field of attention is wide, there is room for thoughts to reveal themselves clearly, not squeezed or pressured as when the field of attention is narrow.
There is no need to guard the mind. Guarding is a narrow field. Experiment with this wide field and you will find that thoughts are not a problem when they come up in wide open awareness because there is an amazing intelligence in this wide space of awareness and that intelligence takes care of things.
If you find thoughts acting in a disturbing way, see if it is possible for more space to open up for them. Feel how the thoughts move in the body, what they press on, where they create tension. See if it is possible for these areas to open more to create more space. If the whole body seems open but thoughts are still disturbing, see if it is possible to open up beyond the body into the world itself.
When everything is wide open, the whole world, body and mind are transparent. Anything that comes up is revealed clearly in its own instant without tension or conflict.
It doesn't matter whether you see thoughts in the mind or don't see any thoughts. The only important thing is the wide openness of awareness - unlimited space in which things can appear as they need or if nothing appears just this space of being. It doesn't matter what is seen. Only the fact of seeing, of wide open presence is important. It is just the universe being itself, complete in this moment. That is all. That is everything.
I'm glad you asked for some clarification. That's helpful for both of us. Please let me know if you have some other questions that come up now, or if something comes up as you explore this.
Best,
Jay
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: As I watched the mind- What is this "mind" then? Seems like it goes wherever, and does whatever- does the mind has the mind of its own?
Kinda like radio signal- getting strong one moment and weak another?
Does the mind have anything to do w/ the so called "universal knowledge"?
Is the mind always revealing itself in a positive way- according to individual moral value? Or, just something each of us has to choose to follow or ignore?
Answer
There is a difference, isn't there, between the content of the mind, going here and there, and the space in which it is observed. What is it that notices this movement of the mind? The thoughts can't observe themselves. It's something else.
If this is observed carefully, it may become clear that there is a space of observing that is sometimes available. When it's not available, it's because the mind is taking over all the energy, but then the space may open up again because it is needed to find out what is going on.
This space of presence, of seeing, is full of intelligence. When the thinking is taking all the energy, there is no intelligence - just reaction, fear, confusion, isolation.
When the mind is going somewhere, doing something, getting stronger or weaker, this is all revealed intelligently in the space of presence. It is not a problem. It is just something that is going on, like the singing of a bird that happens and then is gone. It doesn't need to be understood or analyzed or studied. It is revealed completely as it happens and then something else happens.
Let's agree to use the word mind to mean the content of thinking, imaging, emoting. This is conditioned mind. This mind cannot see itself. It is presence that reveals the mind. Some people use Mind, with the capital M, to refer to this intelligent and compassionate presence. As I said above, this presence has an inherent intelligence. I'm not sure how you are using the phrase universal knowledge. We can say that small mind has no universal knowledge. It has a very fragmented set of facts, which may be very sophisticated in terms of technology or creativity. But small mind cannot see the universal. Presence is universal.
"Is the mind always revealing itself in a positive way- according to individual moral value? Or, just something each of us has to choose to follow or ignore?" Again, I'm not clear on how you are using the word "mind" here. What small mind presents is always open to questioning. There is no authority in the thoughts and images of small mind. A thought may seem noble but it should be examined and questioned carefully. "Examining" means that there is presence, shining light.
For example, suppose you have the thought that you should give money to homeless people on the street every day. In presence one can listen carefully, shed light into the corners of the mind to see where this comes from. This questioning can reveal your motivations. You can come in touch with, maybe, a sense of hopelessness in making the world better and then this idea gives you a sense of hope. Then there can be questioning into where this sense of hopelessness comes from. Maybe you feel that you are not able to even help yourself, that life is slipping away from you. Then you can watch to see if that is really true. Is life slipping away from you? You have to watch this right now, each moment, because this is where life is. Right here. It can't be anywhere else. And this is where watching is. Right here. So you watch and you find out that you can't see any slipping away. Just this moment and this moment and this moment. And then you have proven to yourself that the deep seated feeling of life slipping away is not how it really is.
If the mind takes over again, you may later start to have the feeling that life is slipping away but you will know that it's not true and you will realize that this untrue feeling was created by the action of thinking.
I don't know if I have exactly understood your questions. I'm glad you are considering things for yourself and trying to clarify.
Best,
Jay
