Our entire persona is essentially made up of thoughts. All of them, in a lot of categories:
Physical: I am this body. This body is American. This body is male or female (or other). This body is tall/short. This body is handsome/ugly. This body is fat/skinny. This body is part of a tribe. My body's skin is too white, dark, blemished, scaly, dry, oily. My eyes are too big, small, dark, slanty, round, wrong color. My hair is too long, short, dirty, muddy, oily, dry, thin, thick, receding, tangled. My feet...my butt...my fingers... A million thoughts about our body and all its parts and features, any of which MAY be true, as far as the body and its components are concerned. But the first point is that we IDENTIFY with and as the body. You are NOT the body.
Mental: I am my mind. I am smart/stupid. I'm a fast/slow learner. I think too much. I don't think enough. My thoughts are so negative. My thoughts are wonderfully positive. I'm always right. I'm always wrong. I'm too impulsive. I'm too stubborn. I'm too selfish. I'm too giving. I'm too closed off. I'm too empathic. Of course, descriptions don't have to be "TOO" anything - they can just be an idea - good, bad, or indifferent because it all starts with the identification of being the mind! I am my thoughts. You are NOT your thoughts.
For the most part, people don't 'think,' they are thought through. There's lots of exercises to recognize this. For instance, simply try to STOP thinking for a length of time. Don't let even one thought appear! Chances are you can't do it. Thoughts just appear. Or how often have you seen a photo of someone and the thought just appeared, "They are SO stupid/ugly/fat/obnoxious etc etc" and then you think, "Why did I just think that thought?" followed by "I'm a horrible person for thinking like that." Or, you agree with the initial 'bad' thought, and continue the mental rant on how horrible this person is and how they should be wiped from the planet. Often, you may find a group of like-minded haters who all agree on certain person's or thing's horrendous status. But again, they all stem from the identification with the mind and its thoughts. I AM what I think. You are NOT!
Feelings: Same thing again. We say, "I'm sad," but in reality, we are aware of sadness. Sadness arises and we identify with it. Happiness, shame, guilt, sorrow, anxiety - all sensations which arise and we identify with them. It's as if you're wearing colored glasses and you identify everything you see as having a bluish, greenish, yellowish tint.
Stories: When you take all of our history of thoughts, experiences, feelings, throw them into consciousness and stir them all around, you come up with the Story of You! I was born in City, at this Time, and my parents were like THIS, and my childhood was like THAT, and ever since, I've been unable to Fulfill this desire, and everyone knows that I'm like THAT, and I'll never be happy because this part of my story says so. Or, your story is an incredible tale of success and achievement. And of course, there are hundreds of chapters and smaller stories which make up this big story of You. But you're not any of that in reality.
So, if you're NOT your body, and you're not your thoughts, and you're NOT your Story...what ARE you? You are the OBSERVER, or the SEER of your body and your thoughts, as well as perceptions, sensations, conceptions etc. You are NOT what you observe, but the one who sees, feel, hears those things. If you ask, who is seeing, hearing, feeling this? The answer is "I am!" That's it. Not I am THIS or THAT, or something or anything, just "I AM!" Although the wording is not exactly correct here, but FEEL that sense of I am-ness, of Being, of Presence, of Me-ness. This is both simple and difficult. Because for a flash, we get it - Oh, This Me-ness!" and then you want to begin to describe it. You immediately lose the Presence, for the description or excitement of it.
One thing that is very common, is the idea that I HAVE a soul or Self. One thinks, "I'm, me, here, and somewhere inside me I have a self. Untrue - you ARE the Self, and the rest is thoughts, ideas and stories.
You are Consciousness. And Consciousness is infinite. It is vast Presence and everything arises within that Consciousness, and so you identify with those things. Not all of them, but the ones that have more persistence - your body, your thoughts, your emotions, and the stories you create with those things. Even though your body completely changes every 7 years or so, and your thoughts change every second, still you identify with them fully. At least during the day!! Have you ever noticed that your dreams at night are like a whole different world? You may have a different body, different home, a whole different reality, and yet, for the most part, you completely identify with that dreamworldl and accept it as reality - until you wake up. And then you easily slip back into your "real" story of You during your dayworld.
So, you see, it's NOT the thoughts that are the problem; nor the feelings, emotions or stories. It's the IDENTIFICATION with all of them. They feel comfortable. You wear them like your favorite old clothes. But they're not YOU! You ARE the Conscousness Itself, the one who is SEEING all the stories, thoughts, ideas, feelings, perceptions, conceptions ad infinitum. To know who/what you truly are.....Let them all go. Don't worry - they probably won't go anywhere, but just put them down for a bit. Inquire into who that Consciousness is, what is that Presence....and Rest in That. Allow that Presence to be, to expand, to engulf the entire Reality. Stop...And...Be...Presence!
Deep love
Aja
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The core factor in identification is never, never, ever acknowledged or addressed: residual hurt/broken heartedness/psychological trauma... all grounded in pre-"adult" years of life primarily. All constantly exploited on every level of society in all institutions from individuals to schools to churches to advertisers, to entertainment, to governments, to corporations...
ReplyDeleteSpirituality is unsuccessful not because people are "stupid" or "ignorant" but because they're hurting (and almost never know it regardless of their station in life). Yes, there's ignorance. Ignorance can be changed by insight into what's true. The catch is that you have deal with the hurt that makes it difficult to accept new understanding that may disrupt the "order" of the adaptations around survival amidst the pain. The "world"/society punishes anyone who gets out of line. The "world" in us as our inner voice does so. The "world" in others as their criticism and judgement and abuse of whatever power's available to make life difficult or impossible does. The "world" in all social situations and institutions (which is all of the institutions, even "spiritual ones") does...
Spirituality has been stuck in the same place psychology has been for decades. They both have actual understanding available to them about what's really making things difficult and what really can be helpful. Yet they're both clouded by the internal blindness and biases of their practitioners to these, thus they both get stuck at the thought/mind level. They both centrally take "thought" as the core factor. With psychology stuff like "CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy)" is their main tool which is horrible in the most difficult cases: developmental trauma. Spirituality takes self inquiry *alone* as its main tool. It can be helpful, yes. So too can CBT. Yet just like with psychology, the core "knot" is psychological, emotional, and neurological effects of trauma in early life. Spirituality, like psychology fails utterly to meet people where they are and the results with both bear this out. Both arrive at mind/thought centered approaches.
The human experience isn't limited to thought. Thought itself lacks enough structure to be compelling in and of itself. It needs structure. It gets that structure and raw structural material in the psychological, emotional, and neurological aspects of the human experience. In practice this stuff is difficult to face, as evidenced by the extreme rarity with which it's accounted for by even the most famous and "advanced" spiritual teachers. The ancients of course almost never got here but they had the fact that they were in new territory as justification. Current era spirituality/teachers don't have such grounds for missing this. It's like astronomers today failing to see that we orbit a Sun along with other planets.
I'll add that actually seeing into and accounting for this old but long overlooked factor of developmental trauma is an extremely dangerous and threatening thing. No one comes out saintly/shining in view of it. Our parents don't. Our religion doesn't. Our religion doesn't. Our country doesn't. Our culture/ethnicity doesn't. Our species doesn't. Of course we as "persons" don't. This sounds simple in these words but the actual experience of seeing it in-process of that seeing and accounting is many orders different in scope and magnitude of difficulty. In spirituality we take the impression given by culture, society, and even the words/attitudes/actions of the past and current teachers. Except at the end of the day it's all "people" like ourselves and if my experience thus far is any indicator, there are all sorts of factors in and means of escape from this sort of seeing into our own persons (and thus all persons and institutions of persons)...
DeleteThank you 🙏❤️
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