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God , Help us , Please!

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If I told you, that everything is very simple, no brainier; eat healthy, work out, don't worry, and you will have a fairly good life, you would agree with me, but just for a minute, the very minute you’d be reading this sentence. Then you would go back to life full of contradictions. Eat healthy and work out? How many of us do that? Few.

Moreover, there are times when we feel depressed, fed up with our unhappy life, and we ask for help, God, higher self, or other almighty sources: “Why this is happening to me? “ How long am I going to suffer? Please, help me, let me know what to do.”

This is ridiculous, don’t you think so, we know what to do, we are, actually, doing the opposite, and praying for some magical help to come and get us out of this mess.

What happens? Do we forget about it, that we are the ones who don’t do proper things to feel better? I think that’s exactly what is going on. This is a great example of beliefs in work, and how complicated it is to be aware of them. This also tells us that we are rarely conscious of our "active thoughts", or beliefs for that matter.

A neighbor of mine, a Christian believer, often mentions that she prays to God in the times when she feels sick (she has many symptoms, such as arthritis and so on), and also asks God for help to fight the devil.

My suggestion to her is: “get outside, walk, work out, drink plenty of water, practice deep breathing, it is up to you, what god has to do with it, you choose not to work out (you are your own devil,) so your body deteriorates. It is your choice, stop talking about it as if someone/something else does it to you.”

She looks at me in a stumbled way, and says nothing; she knows that this is true. It doesn’t mean that she will give up on her beliefs. Perhaps, at some point, when she’ll get into this “help me god” routine, she will recall, that it is her choice.

Be aware, but not after words, at that very moment, when you are feeling sorry for yourself, and looking for some outside reasons. Stop those thoughts, and remind yourself: ”What do I do to take care of myself? Nothing, or little. None to blame, nothing to ask for.” 

This is very powerful practice, it gives you a sense of responsibility, which in turn might lead you to proper actions. 

Awareness! I can't emphasize this enough. 

When I talk to my friends about it, they seem to understand the concept, but their actions show, that they don't remember about it on a daily basis, only during our conversations. 

I also know people, who get obsessed with healthy eating, and/or working out, obsessed to the point, that they become neurotic. God, help us, please!

Who are we? Body, thoughts, or a witness of all that is?

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Self is a product of the society, well, and heredity (genetics), which is a product of previous societies. All our knowledge about the world, acquired from the very childhood, passed on from generation to generation. An element of fate clearly emerges in the analysis of our "self".

Assuming, that we are not our body and mind, as both are a product of evolution of the society, and undergoes a constant change, it prompts the question, who are we?

It must be something constant, that doesn’t change, and has no characteristics. This is logical because, what is characterized, and undergoes a change, turns into something different from what it was previously.

We must determine, allocate a component of us, which is constant, no matter what. What has not changed in us throughout the years?

In various theories it has different names: "witness," "spirit," "consciousness," and so on, but all the theories have a common description of it. It is something in us that is witnessing everything, the presence, without condemnation, and assessments for all occurring, including our self.

If you stop for a second your thoughts, and just become aware of everything that happens around you, you can experience, get a glimpse of pure awareness. You are the immense field of consciousness in which all objects appear and disappear, including your body and mind.

Lights on, and you are back to your thoughts, firmly believing, that they are real.

Let's go back to our "self", with which we associate most of our stay in this world. "Self" is a child of society, and without society there is no "self". It requires constant reaffirmation of its existence, which is received from society.

The Society is also a formation that develops, and transforms, under the influence of many "self". All are interlinked, all affect each other. Good and bad are a foundation of society.

"Good and bad" are not constant. What was good yesterday today is considered bad, and vice versa. In general, there is nothing good and nothing bad, all defined in accordance with the need of individual to survive.

Unfortunately, or luckily, a person can not create a separate individual mechanism for defining "good and bad", only conceptually, but in practice, in life, for any mechanism to be an active one, participation of other selves is necessary.

Self can be separated from the society to the extent that your leg or arm can exists regardless of your body.

The evolution of a human is a long way to realization of who he is indeed. It is many layers of conditional ties (creation of  mind), which he must live out, and experience many times; until he sees that this is only an illusion of his mind. Hence, the meaning of life unfolds in front of his own eyes.

What is needed and what should be ... already have been and always will.

Becoming Aware of Yourself

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Interesting article! To expand our understanding of beliefs, and awareness, we have to look at it from different angles, and get acquainted to various interpretations. 

We are born with certain basic traits and characteristics that do not go away however we wish. They are those that come with genes and inheritance, which we cannot change and need to accept and cope with, if necessary,  for our inner peace and happiness. Then we have some qualities and aspects of behavior, which we develop as we grow. Some of them are determined very early in the age, before we even knew what was happening. They usually become an integral part of our core mentality and stay for the rest of our lives. They determine our basic personality types and how we behave in different situations. To continue reading...

Stuck in Being

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Balance is the hardest endeavor for a human being. While, reaching a state of perfect balance is unachievable, or better yet, is something we are moving toward to within the domain of evolution, and might be considered as a final destination, remembering about balance is crucial to unfolding of a healthy self.

There are various stages of the spiritual development of self, and each stage has its own dues to be paid, before self can move on to the next level. The development of other domains of self, such as physical, emotional, psychological, mental is not necessarily develops along side with the spiritual. Nevertheless, each domain, no doubt, undergoes fundamental changes, which, based on the traditional point of view, might be defined as dysfunctional.  

IN PRAISE OF BEING STUCK 

Great article, where an author explains his point of view on being stuck, by building a bridge from Psychotherapy to Spiritual Practice.

Frankly speaking, his writing compliments my last article, and might serve as an introduction to the second part of "Stuck in Being." , which is coming up shortly.

"People come to psychotherapy for many reasons with a variety of hopes and expectations as well as anxieties and apprehensions. A precipitating life event, the end of a relationship, a change in career, are just some of the external situations in a person's life that can bring them into therapy. Internally, there may be feelings of confusion, fear, anxiety and depression.

There is perhaps one experience that is common to all the problems we associate with the work of therapy. That is the feeling of being stuck.

Feeling stuck, blocked or just not moving in our lives is a universal human experience. Perhaps it is part of life's journey to experience times when we are stagnant and do not know why or what to do.  Sometimes, it may be a simple matter that is resolved by sleeping on the problem, listening to our favorite music, or taking a long walk in the woods.

But this is not what I mean by being stuck. What do we do when we find ourselves up to our necks in quicksand, when we are at a dark point and feel scared, when we trip and fall and it hurts? What do we do when we have exhausted all known resources trying to get ourselves unglued, free of our tormenting thoughts, the fears that keep us awake at night? What then?

Stuck in Being (part 2)... Evolution of Consciousness

Our evolution has taken us from a period of separation to a point of unification, although we are far from the end of our journey.

The prehistoric people knew little difference between the real and the unreal. The dream state was as real for them as waking state, thus they acted upon the dreams as though they were real. Dreams are frequently examined for all sorts of reasons but their real value is as an analogy.

Random Thoughts

To wish that what you already have, is the highest state of mind. And then something amazing happens, you realize that you have all that you wish.

Consciousness is an incident that allows us to distinguish the imagined reality from the absolute reality,bit by bit.

Belief is such a phenomenon that gives us the ability to perceive the imagined reality as a real one.

The fear is a trend that serves to strengthen and to prolong the imagined reality, like a dropped anchor, that secures the state of a vessel.

Josh Wink... Higher State Of Conciousness

Jnana-Yoga or how to become crazy with the help of your mind

 How can we stabilize intellectual existence? There are two ways to achieve clarity, which, in fact, represent various aspects of the same process, which is called patience. 

Our "silly mind" has just enough brain to know - if all problems created by ignorance, the key is to understand. At the beginning it does not even see any difference between understanding and knowledge, but this should be so, because in reality there is just understanding, and knowledge is simply impossible. 

The man knows nothing except his thoughts. To understand is to reconcile these thoughts with each other. I will have to justify this statement that people may know nothing except their thoughts, and they understand nothing of what they know. 

The person is nothing more than the sum of the knowledge about himself (there is even a version that man is only a distortion of consciousness, because consciousness is not a pure person).

 In other words, “I” is this sort of information that takes place inside of our nervous system, the existence of which is guessed on the basis of our inherent sense. Everyone is a slave of his own understanding, and lives only in the world, which his understanding allows him to see. 

If you think you understand my words, this does not give you any privileges. If we take fool who knows that he knows everything, and Socrates, who knows that he knows nothing, then both of them - people who know. Regardless of content, any kinds of knowledge substantially identical.

 Incidentally, if you think that this is an abstract scholasticism, without a particular goal, you are mistaken. The goal is very specific - to experience profound disappointment in our ability to understand anything, let alone to know. 

If you survive it, the question "why?" simply will not arise.

Man cannot know anything… Because he is a prisoner of his nervous system. We realize it using our common sense… Which is in turn no more than a reflex, hence is unreliable foundation to make conclusions based on it.

Therefore, the first affirmation: "Man cannot know anything!" cannot be reliable… The previous statement is nothing more than the conclusion, based on the common sense.

Are you scared? I am, very much.

In fact, this sacred horror was experienced by ancient Greeks, and I suspect that it is them who said: “IF you are going to think THIS WAY (philosophically) at the end you will not be able to understand  yourself!

Fine. If you are still with me, turn off the anti virus in your head, and listen carefully.

(to be continued..)

Simplified translation of Surat.

No Way Out

You are not ready to accept the fact that you have to give up. A complete and total 'surrender'.... It is a state of hopelessness which says that there is no way out.... Any movement in any direction, on any dimension, at any level, is taking you away from yourself.... --U.G.

Whatever you experience has already been experienced by someone else. Your telling yourself, "Ah! I am in a blissful state," means that someone else before you has experienced that and has passed it on to you. 

Whatever may be the nature of the medium through which you experience, it is a second-hand, third-hand, and last-hand experience.  These experiences, however extraordinary, aren't worth a thing. It is not yours. There is no such thing as your own experience. 

The sensory activity of the living organism is all that exists. Culture has superimposed on it something else which is always in the field of sensuality. Whether it is a spiritual experience or any other experience, it is in the field of pleasure.

The moment a sensation is translated as a pleasurable one there is already a problem. The translation is possible only through the help of knowledge. But the body rejects both pain and pleasure for the simple reason that any sensation that lasts longer than its natural duration is destroying the sensitivity of the nervous system. But we are interested only in the sensual aspect of the sensory activity.

Actually what we see here [in ourselves] is the opposite of what we would like to be, what we would want to be, what we think ought to be or should be. Otherwise there is no way you can create an image of yourself.

Since you want to be something other than what you are, (that's what the culture has put in there,) you create something which is the opposite [of what you would like to be]. That is all the time struggling to be something other than what it is. So what is here is the opposite of what you would like to be, and so that creates time.

Thought can never conceive the possibility of achieving anything except in time. It does not want to let go of this image which is created by what you would like to be, what you think you ought to be or should be. No way out!

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You hold the key to physical, emotional, and spiritual healing within your remarkable mind. We heal by becoming truly ourselves, by discovering our wholeness...