The moment in front of you is the result of all the natural forces that caused it to be what it is. The preference system in your mind is the result of past experiences that you couldn't handle. These are two totally different sets of forces that have nothing to do with each other. For example, there are current impersonal forces causing it to rain. There are past personal preferences in you to not like the rain. You just pitted yourself against the universe, and you are going to lose. (page 75)
Michael Singer
"Just Tree"
There is a concept in Zen Buddhism called "just tree" and that concept basically explains how a tree, how all of nature, how all of life is not personal to us. It just is as it is. When we put away our narratives, our names, labels, judgements and interpretations about the tree ( about any life event or phenomena), when we can look at the tree without that distorted filter we will experience the justness of the tree.
That is hard for most of us to do. We are so attached to and lost in the constant movement of our personal minds. We look out at the tree, out at Life through that filtered lens. We don't experience the tree as it is. We don't experience Life as it is.
Living in the Head and Not in the Moment
Are you living in your body and in the world as it is right now or are you living in your head? Do you actually feel, see, hear, taste, touch and smell what is around you or are you just too busy listening to a roving reporter in your mind giving you a play by play? Are you actually experiencing Life as it is right here or now or are you lost in an interpretation of it? When you look at a tree...do you experience the tree with awe and wonder....or are you too busy naming, labelling, explaining and connecting it to something from your past, leading to a certain "judgement" of the tree, a certain perception of the tree as "good, bad, or neutral" to actually experience anything but mind stuff? Can you experience the tree with your senses as "just tree"? Can you observe and experience Life as "Just Life"? Or are you like the majority of us, spending most of your daily life in your head?
I woke up this morning and I observed my mind as it ran after one thought, then the other. I got lost in those thoughts, as if they were "life" and not just an interpretation of it. Thoughts built quickly into story, story into mental movies and before I knew it I was swept away from my morning moments so quickly by the habitual pattern of my mind. I forgot where I actually was and the "just-ness" of life. Then awareness would emerge and I would catch myself, say, "Oh...lost in thought again" and I would gently bring myself back to the early morning, the sound of the dogs breathing beside me, the dim and foggy light coming through my window, the feel of the bed beneath me and my breath.
Determined to do better, I would then correct my mind like I would an untrained dog that runs after everything in sight. "Stay!!!" I would command. Once again, I would commit myself to staying with "just this!"
But the dog would get off the leash again and again and run off after mind's interpretation of every sense perception, after memory triggered by each sense perception, after the interpretation and judgment of it....after the emotion pulled up by such chasing and digging. I would fall back into the past or jump into the future and be as scattered as the squirrels my dogs run after in real life. There was little "just" about most of my experience this morning...too much of it was wrapped in mind stuff rather that "just" being what it was. Though I did bring myself back again and again I really had an opportunity to observe how this tendency to go off is still so much in me, even after all my practice. I have more work to do to get myself to the point where I "just" experience what is as it is without getting lost in thought. What about you?
Ironically, the video I opened up to this morning was Eckhart Tolle's, The Deepest Spiritual Practice. In this video he reminds us that what is in our heads is not Life...it is simply an interpretation of it. To live life fully we need to experience it without the narrative. We need to get beyond the narrative in your mind that you confuse with who you are.
Misusing the Brilliant Mind
We are reminded by Tolle and Michael Singer that the human mind is an amazing and brilliant instrument. It can help us to do great things but most of us use it for mixed up personal reasons. We use it to "escape" from the reality of our moments...from the pain of the past that lingers in tangled knots within us always threatening to come up with every bump or knock we get from life and in some foolish attempt to make the future what we think it should be. Looking at a tree, then, is not a simple act of experiencing the tree just as it is. Instead we surround it with mind stuff, names, labels and interpretations about whether or not it reminds us of good or bad things. Does it trigger past pain... fear or doubt? Or does it offer future hope? We experience an interpretation of the tree, rather than the reality of the tree.
Personal Interpretation of the Impersonal
The interpretation is very personal and unique to us. You may look at the tree I look at and come up with a whole different story than I will. You may love the tree because it reminds you of something wonderful and gives you hope for the future. I may look at the tree and hate it because it reminds me of something painful and triggers a certain fear in me for the future. You may describe the tree with a whole host of adjectives and descriptors that are lovely and positive like, "Beautiful. majestic, comforting, amazing, life giving, a testament to nature's bounty." I may look at the tree as "eerie, ugly, in the way, dangerous," etc Now someone who has had no memory or triggering from the tree, but who is so wrapped up in the need to reduce all things to their material form, may come up to the tree and simply label it as a certain species of Oak and proceed to describe in great detail the origin of such trees without any emotional connection to it. The tree gets judged as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. But what all three of us are doing is taking the "justness" of the tree away from the tree. We are personalizing it with our own labeling, judgements, interpretations and narratives. We are not truly experiencing the tree as it is.
We do that with Life.
The personal mind has taken over your entire life. You are no longer free to enjoy the experiences that are actually happening-you are forced to deal with what your mind says is happening. (page 70)
Michael Singer
So most of us are going through this precious gift of Life we were given, in our heads rather than experiencing the beauty of it all just as it is in each moment. The mind itself is brilliant and we could do great things with it but when we personalize it as we do, Tolle reminds us, we carry a burden of unconscious thinking, ...a burden of the unhappy narrative. We can easily get lost in that and in so doing fail to appreciate and be in awe of the "justness" of Life.
Just bring yourself back to this moment as often as you can and settle into the "justness of what is"....again and again and again. Eventually, we will be able to train our minds to "Stay!" and to enjoy this wonderful gift we have been given.
All is well.
Michael Singer ( 2022) Living Untethered. Oakland: New Harbinger/Sounds True
Eckhart Tolle ( October, 2022) The Deepest Spiritual Practice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DLlmpg3D0U
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