Do you want to feel good forever?

Sorry, but it will never happen - trust me on this one. The first hurdle that will trip you up is your attachment, wanting to feel good. We constantly try to avoid pain by seeking pleasure, always trying to find something to add to our lives that will make us feel better; it's what the Buddhists call samsara - a lifetime of constant suffering. 


There's a problem at the other end of the spectrum too, in trying to find peace and quiet or freedom - or, my favourite, serenity. In pursuing this, we form another attachment to the ways we organise things to bring us the peace and quiet we seek. With an attachment, we find that every noise or intrusion disturbs us.


When I sit in stillness and silence, it is me that needs to be still and silent. It is impossible to arrange the world around me to be completely still when I want it to be. Noises will always intrude, life will continue to go on around us. My situation is complicated by the fact that my hearing appears to have improved significantly. I don't know whether this is a result of being still and silent so much but I now find that I can hear much more than other people - so there is the irony of there being more to intrude on my stillness.


The way forward is to avoid preferring things happening - including stillness and silence, including peace. Everything is as it should be so we need to accept the noises and disturbance around us. If I start my meditation in a quiet house I have to accept my family turning on a TV in another room; on occasions I can even find stillness and silence in  busy train carriages, concentrating on my breathing and accepting what is going on around me.

Emptiness

Keep this in mind: to be full of things is to empty of God, while to be empty of things is to be full of God.

Therefore, if a heart is to be ready for Him, it must be emptied out to nothingness. So too, a disinterested heart, reduced to nothingness, is the optimum, the condition of maximum sensitivity.

When he wrote this, Meister Eckhart went on to suggest that this is what Jesus meant when he said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

If this were a book ...

Then this would be the cover:

This is an artwork, I worked on a few years ago; it's made of archival photographs and montaged into a mandala attempting to integrate what Jung called the shadow-self, where much in my shadow is what my ego decided that it would have no use for. Jung wrote: 

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.

Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion

The mandala contains a Higher- and lower-self and a huge mass of "general, all-over me" spread across the middle; it points to the awakened spirit being aware of all of his or constituent characteristics - both good and bad. It also reminds me that the essence of me doesn't change; I still have all my character defects but in becoming aware of them, and allowing them to be a part of me, I now have little use for them. 

Some who have seen this picture attempt an explanation of the child in the middle. There is no conscious choice in that although I like to think of a T-shirt I was once going to have printed that read "INNER-CHILD MOLESTER" in protest at a new-age psychology.

See for miles

There's a sacredness which is not of thought, nor of a feeling resuscitated by thought. It is not recognizable by thought nor can it be utilized by thought. Thought cannot formulate it. But there's a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word. It is not communicable. It is a fact.

A fact is to be seen and the seeing is not through the word. When a fact is interpreted, it ceases to be a fact; it becomes something entirely different. The seeing is of the highest importance. The seeing is out of time-space; it is immediate, instantaneous. And what's seen is never the same again. 

 Whenever I read J. Krishnamurti (quoted here) I am always struck by his description of the place. He is so clearly in complete touch with wherever he happens to be and he sees so much.

There is no 'time' in the present

This is all there is. What you are aware of around you is all there is. Our life is this unfolding present. It is absolute and it is here and now. It isn't - nor was it ever - some other place or time.


Now is timeless. Time can be used to measure the past and the future but never the present. "What time is it now?" has only one answer: "It is now."


Mystics in each of the spiritual traditions point to this principle - it seems fair to call it an inescapable truth. In Zen Buddhism we have the great question, "If not now, when?" Meister Eckhart, the Christian mystic, explained a problem "Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time." And in Sufism we find "Past and future veil God from our sight." (Rumi)

Living by the rules

Always a big fan of paradox, I was intrigued to hear the advice that "If you want complete freedom, live by the rules."


The analogy the speaker used was driving a car. If you choose to speed in your car, you create tension and put pressure on yourself. At the very least you are on the look-out for cameras or police patrols; plus, the people who won't drive as fast as you will keep getting in the way, slowing you down, making you more. But if you slow down, you can concentrate more on driving itself - come back to the moment and the task at hand - and join in with everybody else at a slower speed.


I like this most particularly because it highlights a major - and continuing - character defect, something that is guaranteed to dislodge me from the present. I look at the world and my instinctive thought is to spot an angle or a wheeze that will make things easier for me: Is there a short cut somewhere? Or something I can do to make things quicker and simpler? 

The trouble with God

There isn't a problem with God, in itself, but rather with the word "God."


The trouble with the word itself is that is both inadequate and that it conveys too much. As soon as I say "God" you will assume that you know what I am talking about. But all you will have done is create a metal image of your own which will have little to do with what I may have said but will have been created by your traditions and your upbringing. A great many people go around using the word "God" as if they know what they are talking about - and a great many religious leaders will expect you to take on trust that they know of what they speak and you'd best take on trust what they're telling you. Equally, a large number of people argue that there is no God, as if they know what they are denying.


It seems that the only safe route forward is direct experience of a-God-thing. I don't know whether it is possible to see or know God directly, but I have my doubts. But I do know it is possible to have direct experience of a-God-thing; I have done it myself. That though hasn't put me in a position to describe or explain what I have experienced in any adequate way. I can give a general outline but it comes nowhere close to anything you would be able to relate to without direct experience yourself.


Now, when somebody starts talking about my God or our God, I run for cover, especially when they move on to describe the "one, true God." And it's the same with those who try to convince me that there is no God. Because I find it impossible to imagine how these people have gained their confidence in either God or no-God.


It seems to me that the name "God," and to some extent the idea of God, are both hiding what they are meant to be pointing at - principally because so few of us can entertain the idea of God without our intellectual or cultural baggage. And if your family or some preacher has managed to scare you with the idea of God, then letting go just might be impossible.


I remain comfortable with the idea that "God is." But as soon as I start to put more in the sentence, I worry that I have started talking about things I know not.

Approval of others

I remember as a child finding my happiness in things that I have now discovered weren't good for me at all. I craved attention looked for appreciation and - by far worst of all - fought for approval. And I grew up, as many of us do, struggling to find these in any situation I was in. So I tried to be top of the class, get my name in the paper and was only content in my work when I was the boss. I chased prestige and power and I fantasised about fame.


To some extent, we are all guilty of looking for these things; and even if we don't, we can so easily be dreading its absence - in permanent fear of making mistakes, of being a failure or of being criticised.


As always, it pays to watch our feelings and behaviour when we encounter these negative situations. It shows us how we have become dependent on the opinions of others - whether we are looking for approval or avoiding disapproval. We are (in the phrase that neatly sums this up) "marching to the beat of another's drum."


Relying on others for support, encouragement or reassurance is a complete barrier to being awakened. With an awakened spirit, we come to realise that other's opinions of us have nothing to do with us. My well-being and happiness do not depend on what you think of me.


In trying to become independent of the opinions of others we soon become aware of our spiritual lack - of what I once heard brilliantly described as "that hole in me through which a cold wind blew." When we try to fill that void with something other than the good opinion of others, we too often turn in the wrong direction and look to the material world and acquire possessions to make us feel better about ourselves. 


All of which leads to inner conflict and somebody reminded me the other day that this is what separates us from the animal world. They do not have inner conflict; they might have fear but it will be about the situation they may be in. And they won't think about this - no rationalisation or analysis. And, most of all, animals don't lie around condemning themselves or feeling guilty. They just ARE.