If you want permanent peace, permanent joy, and permenant happiness, you have to get through to the otherside of the inner turmoil...You just decide once and for all, to take the journey by constantly letting go.
Michael Singer, page 136
Hmmm! Chapter 14 of the untethered soul, really packs a punch. It further expands on the the idea that we as humans tend to build false refuges around ourselves to make our inner lives as bearable and as pain free as possible. Singer explains again how we suffer when we put so much of our enegy into trying to hold these fortresses together.
It also expands on the idea that the only way to truly free ourselves to experience the full lives we are meant to experience is by walking through the very pain and discomfort we built the refuge to protect ourselves from. We do that by letting go of the structures, walls, mental schematas, and personas we created to hide behind.
He explains these concepts a little more by describing two other concepts: clinging and what many of us would call the ego ( though he does not use that term).
Clinging
Clinging, he tells us, is the grabbing onto and the holding onto selected thoughts (which would include memory and conditioned beliefs), emotions and certain energies as they pass by and through us, in an attempt to build a stable mental structure we can live with and hide behind. Because Life is so unpredictable with its comings and goings, and our "unstructured minds" are even more unpredictable and stormy...we have a tendency as humans to cling to certain versions of reality that will help make sense of everything that is in us or outside of us, that will put a certain order , security, predictability into the way we see the world. We select the thoughts, feelings and energies that help us to do that and resist or push away the ones that don't. The ones we hold onto become the bricks that build the walls of the structures, that define who we are, that create a sense of self. We build the structure and then we will cling to it with all our might as long as we think it is protecting us and helping us make sense of Life. Professionals may call it the building of a mental schemata. Singer calls it the creation of "an island of apparent solidity".
Clinging builds the bricks and mortar with which we build a concept of self. In the midst of vast inner space, using nothing but the vapour of thoughts, you created a structure of apparent solidity to rest upon.
Ego?
Let's look a little more into this structure we built ( the mental schemata) . Singer refers to it in many ways: the fortress, the island of apparent solidity, the model of who you are, the focus of a very narrowed consciousness, the false self and a facade. He sees it as an extension of and a very narrowed and limited use of consciousness. He does not call it ego.
I have learned over the years to look at it as a seperate entity in a sense just so I could better understand it and disidentify with it. I, and many others, would refer to it as 'ego'. Again terminology means absolutely nothing in the long run.
What we need to recognize, regardless of what we call it, is that we have built something 'unreal' to protect us from the 'real' . We cling to an "unreal" mental structure and hide behind it in a fruitless attempt to avoid fear and pain. Fear and pain are forever knocking holes in our walls. We are therefore in an endless struggle to hold them up. We turn discomfort into suffering. This becomes the focus of our attention.
In the Background
This structure is in the forefront of our lives and we are so focused on it and the drama of holding it together that we forget all about what is in the background of our lives: the true Self, Awareness, a more expanded consciousness. We are not what we created in front of us...we are that which is in the background, never changing, always watching and never disturbed.
In order to end suffering we must stop clinging...let go of those things we were holding onto and fall back into that witnessing spaciousness that scares the blank out of us because it doesn't make sense to our egos/ the structures we built. None of it is solid anyway!
In order to remember who we truly are, we have to face the inner turmoil, the mess inside, and the fear of falling back into nothing. We also need to face Life as it is in the moment, let go and let it pass right through us. Painful...but necessary for our puriifcation.
We need to stop clinging to what isn't real; stop trying to protect that which keeps us imprisoned and stop running from any disturbance created by what is.
Instead, you will actually permit the things that disturb your model to act as dynamite to break it up and free you.
Let the walls crumble!
We do that by putting our hands down ( no more clinging, no more trying to hold up) . We do that by no longer asking, "What do I do about this?" when dsiturbance starts putting holes in our walls. Instead we ask..."Who am I that notices this?"
You are not that which is being disturbed or the disturbance... You are that which watches the disturbance. You are awareness and Awareness transcends what it is aware of. It is as seperate as lightis from what it shines upon. page 136
Fall behind and relax in what is!
Your only way out is the witness. Just keep letting go by being aware that you are aware. 136
All is well.
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