Be YOURSELF

 

"Divine happiness, even the tiniest particle of a grain of it, never leaves one again; and when one attains to the essence of things and finds one's Self-this is supreme happiness. When it is found, nothing else remains to be found; the sense of want will not awaken anymore, and the heart's torment will be stilled forever. Do not be satisfied with fragmentary happiness, which is invariably interrupted by shocks and blows of fate; but become complete, and having attained to perfection, be YOURSELF."

-Anandamayi Ma

3 Types of Life

 “The spiritual life (adhyatma-jivana), the religious life (dharma-jivana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. 

"The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance. 

"The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine, but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. 

"The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.” 

― Śrī Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Vol 1

Thich Nhat Hanh: Being Peace

I had the good fortune to cover Thich Nhat Hanh speaking on fostering peace at Loyola University in 2003, for Yoga Chicago magazine. He spoke at length about how to deal with anger on a personal level. 

“Every one of us has a seed of anger that lies deep in the depths of our consciousness. When that seed of anger is able to sleep quietly we are able to laugh and to lead our daily life, but if some­one comes and says something and does something touching the seed of anger in us, that seed of anger will manifest as an energy of anger in the upper level of our consciousness and we will be inhabited by that energy of anger and we will suffer. If we do not know how to handle the anger we will allow the anger to possess us and push us to say and do things to create suffering for us and do things to the other person or persons. That is why a good practitioner when she knows that anger is manifesting, she immediately goes back to her breathing.”

We shouldn’t try to fight anger. “Mindfulness is just recognizing that anger is there and embraces anger in the most tender way. When your child, your baby suffers and cries, you as the mother go into the room of your baby and the first thing you do is to pick your baby up and hold your baby tenderly in your two arms. You do not know what is the cause of the suffering of your baby, but the fact that you pick up your baby and hold him or her tenderly in your arms, you can already bring a relief. Your anger, your fear, your violence–you don’t know yet what is the nature of it, the roots of it. But if you know how to generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and recognize it and embrace it tenderly with the practice of mindful breathing, mindful walking, you can bring relief to your yowling baby, which is your anger, your fear or your despair.”

Such mindfulness doesn’t happen overnight. “We shouldn’t wait until an emotion comes to begin to practice because if so we’ll forget the practice,” he said. “Every day we have to devote five minutes to deep belly breathing–mindful breathing–and in three weeks it will become a habit. A good habit. And when a strong emotion manifests you will remember how to practice.”

Nor can it be done in a void. It’s important to have the support of a community, or Sangha. He said, “For those of us who are just beginners in the practice, we need a brother or a sister to assist us in difficult moments.” He wrote in Touching Peace (1992) that interpersonal relationships are the key to success in mindfulness practice, and “Without an intimate, deep relationship with at least one person, transformation is unlikely.”

He concluded by reminding us that we can choose which seeds we want to grow and that peace begins at home. “Our family and our school should be the place where we practice selective watering, so that the seeds of hatred and fear will not be watered anymore–instead the seeds of joy, peace, understanding and compassion will have a lot of chances to be watered and educated. Politicians, journalists–we all have to come together and have a discussion as to how to reorganize our way of daily life. There is no way to peace–peace is the way.”

Read the entire article, with context, here.

.

Transcending Judgy-ness

More than anything else, judgment will take you out of the present moment. It will take you out of Oneness into separation. Whenever judgment arises within you, just notice it. Acknowledge it. Confess it. It is just an energy arising within you. Do not judge it or try to get rid of it. Just bring it to consciousness with love, acceptance and compassion. In this way, judgment will be transformed into love.

-Leonard Jacobson

"Trace the Thought to its Place of Origin"

"I return hastily from an exploration of some usually veiled

sanctuaries of the great temple and enter the hall when the

evening meditation period has run out half its life. I slip

quietly to the floor and straightway assume my regular meditation

posture. In a few seconds I compose myself and bring

all wandering thoughts to a strong centre. An intense

interiorization of consciousness comes with the closing of eyes.

"The Maharishee's seated form floats in a vivid manner

before my mind's eye. Following his frequently repeated

instruction I endeavour to pierce through the mental picture

into that which is formless, his real being and inner nature, his

soul. To my surprise the effort meets with almost instantaneous

success and the picture disappears again, leaving me with

nothing more than a strongly felt sense of his intimate presence.

The mental questionings which have marked most of my

earlier meditations have lately begun to cease. I have repeatedly

interrogated my consciousness of physical, emotional and

mental sensations in turn, but, dissatisfied in the quest of self,

have eventually left them all. I have then applied the attention

of consciousness to its own centre, striving to become aware of

its place of origin. Now comes the supreme moment. In

that concentration of stillness, the mind withdrawn into itself,

one's familiar world begins to fade off into shadowy vagueness.

One is apparently environed for a while by sheer nothingness,

having arrived at a kind of mental blank wall. And one has

to be as intense as possible to maintain one's fixed attention.

But how hard to leave the lazy dalliance of our surface life and

draw the mind inwards to a pin-point of concentration!

"To-night I flash swiftly to this point, with barely a skirmish

against the continuous sequence of thoughts which usually

play the prelude to its arrival. Some new and powerful force

comes into dynamic action within my inner world and bears

me inwards with resistless speed. The first great battle is

over, almost without a stroke, and a pleasurable, happy, easeful

feeling succeeds its high tension.

"In the next stage I stand apart from the intellect, conscious

that it is thinking, but warned by an intuitive voice that it is

merely an instrument. I watch these thoughts with a weird

detachment. The power to think, which has hitherto been a

matter for merely ordinary pride, now becomes a thing from

which to escape, for I perceive with startling clarity that I have

been its unconscious captive. There follows the sudden

desire to stand outside the intellect and just be. I want to dive

into a place deeper than thought. I want to know what it will

feel like to deliver myself from the constant bondage of the

brain, but to do so with all my attention awake and alert.

"It is strange enough to be able to stand aside and watch the

very action of the brain as though it were someone else's, and

to see how thoughts take their rise and then die, but it is

stranger still to realize intuitively that one is about to penetrate

into the mysteries which hide the innermost recesses of man's

soul. I feel like some Columbus about to land on an uncharted

continent. A perfectly controlled and subdued anticipation

quietly thrills me.

"But how divorce oneself from the age-old tyranny of

thoughts? I remember that the Maharishee has never

suggested that I should attempt to force the stoppage of thinking.

"Trace thought to its place of origin," is his reiterated

counsel, "watch for the real self to reveal itself, and then

your thoughts will die down of their own accord." So, feeling

that I have found the birthplace of thinking, I let go of the

powerfully positive attitude which has brought my attention

to this point and surrender myself to complete passivity, yet

still keeping as intently watchful as a snake of its prey.

"This poised condition reigns until I discover the correctness

of the sage's prophecy. The waves of thought naturally begin

to diminish. The workings of logical rational sense drop

towards zero point. The strangest sensation I have experienced

till now grips me. Time seems to reel dizzily as the antennas

of my rapidly growing intuition begin to reach out into the

unknown. The reports of my bodily senses are no longer

heard, felt, remembered. I know that at any moment I shall

be standing outside things, on the very edge of the world's

secret. . . .

"Finally it happens. Thought is extinguished like a snuffed

candle. The intellect withdraws into its real ground, that is,

consciousness working unhindered by thoughts. I perceive,

what I have suspected for some time and what the Maharishee

has confidently affirmed, that the mind takes its rise in a

transcendental source. The brain has passed into a state of

complete suspension, as it does in deep sleep, yet there is

not the slightest loss of consciousness. I remain perfectly

calm and fully aware of who I am and what is occurring. Yet

my sense of awareness has been drawn out of the narrow

confines of the separate personality; it has turned into something

sublimely all-embracing. Self still exists, but it is a

changed, radiant self. For something that is far superior to

the unimportant personality which was I, some deeper, diviner

being rises into consciousness and becomes me. With it arrives

an amazing new sense of absolute freedom, for thought is like

a loom-shuttle which is always going to and fro, and to be

freed from its tyrannical motion is to step out of prison into

the open air.

"I find myself outside the rim of world consciousness. The

planet which has so far harboured me, disappears. I am in the

midst of an ocean of blazing light. The latter, I feel rather

than think, is the primeval stuff out of which worlds are

created, the first state of matter. It stretches away into

unreliable infinite space, incredibly alive.

"I touch, as in a flash, the meaning of this mysterious universal

drama which is being enacted in space, and then return to the

primal point of my being. I, the new I, rest in the lap of holy

bliss. I have drunk the Platonic Cup of Lethe, so that yesterday's

bitter memories and to-morrow's anxious cares have

disappeared completely. I have attained a divine liberty and

an almost indescribable felicity. My arms embrace all creation

with profound sympathy, for I understand in the deepest

possible way that to know all is not merely to pardon all, but

to love all. My heart is remoulded in rapture."

-Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret India