Q: Why do we need to repeatedly practice something to get to a more "natural state"?

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Mission Bay, San Francisco

Why would we need to repeatedly practice something and de-train ourselves to get to a more "natural state"?

The many years of meditation practice that Adyashanti, Gangaji, Rupert Spira, and other teachers have done seems unnatural to me.  So much effort and practice to get to some other state that most humans are not residing in.

How natural can it really be to have to do all that work?

 

 

When you reflect the smile of a passing child, does it take training?   Does falling in love take practice?  When you offer a friend a shoulder to cry on, does it take work?

As a culture, what we repeatedly practice is the belief in the separate self.  This practice does take work.  In fact, it takes an enormous amount of effort to maintain this perspective, this belief in a "me". 

Clench your fist as tightly as you can.  Hold it...  Hold it...  Hold it as tightly as you can for about a minute.    And now, before you relax it, notice that it takes effort to unlock your grip.

As separate selves we are like clenched fists.  Quickly it become painful, difficult, and even familiar  ... yet intuitively we know we are not relaxed… but we have become married to the belief that we must remain locked in the constant battle of discontent, and thus letting go can at first appear to be effort full. 

When this efforting becomes clear to us, we then find the courage to not hold on, to drop our fixation in the "me", and POOF! we discover that it is actually really, really hard to maintain the belief in the separate-self, and it is recognized that it is the effort itself that creates the belief. 

The realization isn't a new found knowledge; it is simply that we discover there is nothing to find, nothing missing, nothing needed.  Nothing at all.  The belief that I am a "me" takes a tremendous amount of effort to maintain.   When we stop holding on to the "me", what remains is.  It simply is.  And it takes no effort at all to know this, to be this.

The smile that comes to your face is not born of practice.  The upwelling of the tears of joy do not show up because you will them.  Be clear about this.

Many teachers spent years upon years studying and practicing, all apparently in an effort to acquire understanding.  While it is easy to conclude that the practice was necessary, very few of these same teachers would say it is so.  Perhaps it is necessary.  Perhaps it is not.  Irregardless, do not trap your self in the belief that practice is necessary.  This is not to say that one should not practice; it is simply a recognition that practicing or not practicing is simply part of the appearance, and as such, it is not significant in and of itself.

While the quieting of spiritual practice can be part of a healthy life-style, like exercise and eating, for many it can instead become another form of rejection, a rejecting of what is already here.

Often when we meditate, chant, do self-inquiry, go to satsang, or do the other things that many seekers do, we are looking for something, for some thing that is outside of ourselves, that we believe we are not (yet), that is separate from our experiencing.  This looking is what is in the way. 

STOP!  You will never, ever, ever find what you are looking for.

Stop looking.  Just be.  Understanding is simply the dropping of misunderstanding.  It is not about acquiring anything.  (It is misleading to even call it understanding.)

You already know what you are.  You are simply rejecting that knowing.  It's too obvious.  Just like the teachers that you refer to used to do, you are working really, really hard to be somebody (even if you are trying to be "nobody").

The thought "I am this person I think myself to be" is just a thought.  It is just an appearance.  Nothing more.  Give it no more attention than the thought "Oh, what a pretty blue bird that is." or "Is that a whistle I hear?" or "I wonder what I should eat for supper tonight."  They are just thoughts, appearances within an apparent field of experiencing.

What is aware of those thoughts?  Could it be awareness?  Could it be what all those teachers were seeking?  Could it be that that is always here?

And what is this awareness?  Is it any thing at all?

 

Q: If you and I are awareness, then why don't you know what I'm thinking and feeling right now?

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The Columbia River, outside of Hood River, OR

In essence, if what I, you, and everyone ultimately is… is awareness, how do we not know what others are thinking and feeling?


 

 

 

 

Attempting to understand awareness with the mind is like being an actor within a movie and attempting to see the screen that the film is being projected upon.  

As a seeker of spiritual understanding, we try to understand "awareness" from the perspective of a personal self, from the "me" that we believe ourselves to be.  From this perspective (the mind's perspective) it is impossible to experience understanding.  In fact, we could even say that true understanding is the complete absence of any perspective. 

Buddhists use the word "ignorance" to describe the mistranslation we make of our experiencing, a translation that leads a "me" to believe that the patterning of thought we experience is an indication of a separate-self.

These words are not for the mind.  Read them from a quieter place than your intellect -- let your own knowing hear the answers and let your mind rest.

So back to your question:  You are assuming that awareness is personal and that it identifies with one person here and another person there. Your question seeks understanding from the perspective of a personal self, and thus it wants an answer that doesn't exist.  So instead of trying to force understanding into the question, let's stay with the personal perspective from which your question arises, and trust that that may also answer an underlying question. 

Each night we sleep and dream (even when we do not remember them).  When we dream, we fabricate entire imaginary worlds -- after all, they are within the dream and thus limited to the two dimensions of our personal experience while our eyes are closed and our bodies resting stationary in our beds.  Sometimes the worlds we create are simple, and other times elaborate; sometimes they are familiar to our waking world, and sometimes they are not. 

In our dreams there are often other people/characters and all of them are apparently animated independently of our perspective as the dreamer (that which is aware of the dream).  The thoughts of the other people (and creatures) within the dreams are unknown to us.  So while we dream, we are creating fully animated characters (such as our partner, co-workers, strangers, etc), and yet still we are not aware of what these characters are thinking and experiencing.  Said another way: Every character, all the laws of physics, of time, the story line, etc, are all of our own imagination as the dreamer of the dream, and within the dream we remain limited to the singular, personal perspective of our experience of the dream.

If we turn the experience of dreaming into a metaphor, you the dreamer are awareness.  As awareness (the dreamer), you are that that is aware of the dream and within which the dream appears.  As the dreamer/awareness, "you" are quite convincingly imagining an entire world and the people within it… and yet you still do not know what the other people within the dream are thinking and feeling.  So now you can see that it is not strange that as awareness, "your" mind and body do not see the thoughts and feelings of others.  After all, as a dreamer, we create every character and yet only know the perspective of one -- our character in the dream! 

In this analogy (and it is only an analogy), the mind/body that you are familiar with is just an appearance, an appearance like every other character in the dream and while in the dream you sometimes believe you are the character, yet when awake you know that character was simply an appearance (and is thus not "you").  As an "expression" of awareness, it is only one version of experiencing... but it is still a manifestation of the dreamer, of that that is aware of the character and that that is the "creator" of everything within the dream.

Your question is from the mind's perspective, a view that effectively sees "awareness" as an object that knows other objects independent and separate from each other.   In the spiritual context that the word "awareness" is often used, it is intended to mean that that knows the experiencing of all objects, and thus that that "knows" the tree, the wind, the sound of the car horn, the thoughts, the body, etc.

As a dreamer you wake and easily understand that the dream is not real in any absolute sense... and similarly, when one wakes spiritually, it is no different: there is simply no longer a belief in the absolute reality of the "waking" life and while you continue to live as you always have, the "you" that was once believed in is no longer seen as concrete or separate from any other object that appears within the field of experiencing (and thus differs only in appearance from the "others" that your question refers to).  And just like the dream, all reference points are seen as simply appearances and thus are no longer have any separate and independent significance.

And while we are in the deep end here, let's push the metaphor a bit farther:  Oneness, metaphorically speaking, could be "defined" as that that every "thing" arises within (including awareness, or within this metaphor, including the dreamer of the dream).  

Don't attempt to translate all of this with your mind... let yourself be drawn into it... let yourself feel the open space the shows up when you step back, back, and even farther "back" into the emptiness of the implications of the metaphor. . .

The "me" that you think you are is just a thought. 

You are aware of your thoughts and thus "you" must be "before" your mind, before the "me" that you think yourself to be.

Who are you?  What are you? 

Are you simply your mind and body... or are you that that is aware of your mind and body? 

Or are you before even that?!

Trust your curiosity.  Trust your process. 

Let yourself be the knowing.