-Keisang Gyatso (https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/clear)
I am having a hard time putting all I am learning into a simple explanation. As an educator for many years, I used to pride myself on my ability to take complex material and simplify it for student understanding. Now I am struggling with this notion of explaining this idea of discovering who we really are and what happens during the process of discovery. I want to be able to explain it just as much for myself as I do for anyone who might be reading this.
The Need to Make IT clearer
I know words are so limited in their ability to describe IT. IT is something to be experienced more so than described. In order for any learning to sink in to the habitual mind pattern of the subconscious, however, we sometimes need the help of the intellect. That's where the words and explanations come in. I am going to attempt to use words and my intellect ( what is left of it lol) to tap into your intellect...so the door to greater understanding can be opened for both of us. How on earth do I do that?
In class, what I would do after explaining something complicated is open the floor to questions and I would do my best to answer each question in a way that would benefit all. This is also how many Satsangs are held. I will try that approach. I am, by no means, professing to be a wise guru here...just somebody wanting to learn. So here are some questions I had and have as well as my attempt at answering them. Of course, I will be referring to the experts.
What is waking up?
I know people still shake their heads when they hear what they believe to be "New Age Catch Phrases": waking up, awakening, enlightenment, higher consciousness etc. It is uncomfortable for many to consider the process and maybe the idea of waking up contradicts their own belief systems. It may also be fear inducing because it is scary for the ego to think that people are going to leave it behind for enlightenment.
You see, that is all enlightenment or waking up is...a leaving behind of the part of you that does not serve you in the highest way. That part of you is your ego mind and all its selfish desires full of me' and 'mine' obsession. Waking up is a discovery and then a living in the truth of who you really are beneath all these things ego tricks you into believing you are. It is a realization of the you that exists beyond this idea you and others have of you...you beyond the job title , the house, the status, the relationships, the personality, the problems and the body. It is a finding of the real you, you never lost because it was always there beneath what you have come to believe is real but isn't.
What you think is real and important right now...isn't! Some day and in some way...you will wake up to realize that. We all will.
Why do we need to begin the process of waking up in the first place?
Hmmm! The first thing we need to remember is that it is not a choice. Waking up to the truth of who we are and why we are here is something we are all going to do whether we like it or not. Mooji often says that we will do it now or we will do it later, in this life or the next...but eventually we will discover the truth of our existence...what it all means ! Waking up is inevitable.
Doing it sooner than later will benefit you. It will end the suffering you are experiencing.
Suffering?
Yes...suffering! We are all suffering in one way or another. For some that suffering is obvious and seems all consuming...for others it may not be so obvious or believable. "He has everything! How can he be suffering?"
We are all suffering. The first noble truth of Buddhism is about Dukkha...this suffering that is a part of ego consciousness. As long as we are operating from ego ( therefore not awake) we will suffer.
Most of us are suffering because we believe the ego over the real Self, the dream over waking reality, the illusion over truth. Ego tells us that the world is a scary place and that we are constantly vulnerable to attack...from others, the world and ourselves. In order to survive it...we must prepare for defense and attack...so we are always fearful and on guard...that causes suffering. We see this in war zone areas, of course, but we also see it in the anxiety and addiction epidemic in areas where there is no war.
Bodies
Ego tells us we are our bodies and these bodies are vulnerable to attack as well...from others, from outside forces, from illness, from death. We tend to have that belief system supported by our culture. If we are our bodies, and they are vulnerable to illness and death than we will end when our bodies end. We will spend a great deal of mental energy and so called time fearing and being protective of these vehicles. We will 'fight' disease and age. We will 'resist' death and we will suffer because death of the physical body is inevitable. Our bodies will die and so will the bodies of the people and things we love. We will experience a sense of great loss if we see ourselves and others as merely bodies. We will suffer.
Winning
Ego also convinces us that if we seek to attain, gain, win, own, collect, gain social recognition and reward we may be better able to endure this suffering and even find some semblance of 'happiness'. It points us in the direction of external happiness and reward. We will 'work hard', 'struggle', 'fight' and 'seek' for these things. And we may actually succeed and get some of the things it tells us will make us happy but the problem is the thing or the happiness earned in this way will not last. Nothing of the physical world lasts. It is all temporary and fleeting as it is meant to be. We will lose!
We may win some. Gaining one thing will appease our ego for a while but egos are hungry creatures...they will just want more and it will set us on a never ending search for the next thing, and the next, and the next...promising us that we will get the everlasting happiness if we try harder, do more, fight, fight, fight. But we will never get it in this way. We can go through our years gaining and losing...fighting and struggling...doing and doing and doing and still we will not be able to cling to the things we earn...We will suffer!
Ahhh! But there is the love of others who we deem as special or who deem us as special to end our suffering? Right?
Wrong! Looking to others to end this sense of suffering will not end our suffering, it may even cause more. Though love is why we are here and the most precious gift we have to offer or can receive, there is a difference between love and attachment. Many of us cannot make that distinction and relationships become selfish attachments rather than an opportunity to expand in love.
Other people cannot make us happy, healthy or whole. We often go into special relationships with expectations for the other to fulfill us in a ways they are unable to fulfill. Then we get disappointed, hurt, angry, resentful...collect grievances, become victims or villains. We offer guilt or blame, accept guilt or blame as we fight to make the other into something ego wants them to be. It is a given...when egos relate with other egos , there is going to be suffering.
Doing
And we will also turn to work and activity to soothe and numb. We will get lost in 'doing'. Ego doesn't want us calm and still and present. Something exists in that quite stillness that terrifies the %^&* out of ego...so it does whatever it can to keep us away from the moment. It will do so with memories of the past and by filling us with anticipation or dread over the future. It wants us back there or up ahead in a time that never comes so we do not experience its arch enemy... the now. It fills our minds with restless thoughts, judgments, perceptions that make the moment a place we do not want to be in...that we will resist with all our might. When we resist the moment, we are resisting life. Yuck! That's suffering.
Believing ego's version of living equates to suffering. As long as we identify with all the things ego tells us are 'essential and important' we are going to suffer. There is no escaping it.
How do we change our lives so we feel better?
If ego is a part of your conscious mind under which you tend to operate, then the solution to suffering then is to change your mind , is it not? Stop listening to ego! Patanjali often taught, "So the mind so the person, bondage and liberation are in your own mind."...What you think, you become and if ego is doing the thinking...you will become a big blob of suffering. You are stuck in that as long as you think you are. The world will be the gruesome dark place in which you feel stuck. But it doesn't have to be that way. You do not have to subscribe to ego's sick version of the world!
If I so choose I can depart this world entirely. It is not death that makes this possible, but change of mind about the purpose of the world. If I believe it has a value as I see it now, so will it remain for me. But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth.
-ACIM-W-226: 1: 1-5
Simply put we put down ego's illusions, it's sick version of reality for the truth.
What is the truth?
The truth is you are so much more than what ego would have you believe you are. You are so much more than this body personality or name others know you as. And the world is a creation of that that flows through you. You are that very thing ego works so hard to prevent you from experiencing. You are that stillness, that quiet, that space. You are a beautiful expression of Life, presence, the Divine. You are a powerful force.
You are not a little 'me' separated and alone struggling on a dark and dangerous planet. You are a part of One Universal Source that cannot be a part from Its Creator. You are everything and everyone and at the same time you are nothing. (No-thing). You are so much more than a thing of form and you cannot be contained by form.
One should endeavor to keep the suggestion of one’s real self, which is one’s real protection, constantly in mind; that self which is one with all Life and all Intelligence, which not only preserves but provides for all. (Behrend, pg3 4)
Above all else you are loved and you are Love.
I seek my own identity and find it in these words: "Love, which created me, is what I am." Now need I seek no more.
-ACIM-W-229:1:1-2
Seek no more!
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