My real pleasure was never in earthly things-in husband, wife, children, and other things. For I am like the infinite blue sky: clouds of many colours pass over it and play for a second; they move off, and there is the same unchangeable blue. Happiness and misery, good and evil, may envelop me for a moment, veiling the Self; but I am still there. They pass away because they are changeable. I shine because I am unchangeable.
...For I am It! I am It!
Vivekananda ( 2.6 Practical Vedanta in Complete Works)
Spirituality, according to Michael A. Singer, is all about ceasing to be distracted from our thoughts. It is not about stopping or controlling the mind's thinking...but simply about not getting distracted by thinking, feeling, all the stuff we pick up from our senses, or our attachments to all these worldly things we tend to get attached to.
We can not see the "I am It!" that Vivekananda declares because we are so distracted away from It that we do not even know we are distracted. We are the blue sky, but are focusing so hard on all those "clouds of many colours" : happiness, misery, good, and evil that pass over the blue sky ...we come to believe that is who we are....the clouds. Then we spend our life times defending and protecting these attachments through our philosophies and beliefs...creating more dark clouds over this spacious blue sky.
We are the changeless sky...not the ever changing phenomena that comes and goes across this sky. This cannot, however, be understood with the mind. It can only be experienced.
Philosophy is of mind, and Truth is of direct experience.
Ancient Rishis didn't sit around philosophizing. They directly experienced Truth in Himalayian caves. They realized they were the ones looking at things and not that which they were looking at. They realized that humans were constantly being distracted from the consciousness they were/are by the objects of consciousness. They passed on this hard earned knowledge through yoga so we didn't have to do the asthetic and renounciant cave thing.
Consciousness, soul is the essence of your being...The Kingdom of Heaven is within You...not in your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, worldly attachments...in You...
I like how Singer uses the analogy of 'taking away' to discover we are still there. If our thoughts were taken away...we would still be in here realizing that our thoughts are no longer there. That would mean we are not our thoughts....we are the ones that were witnessing our thoughts. If our feelings were taken away...we would still be in here knowing that our feelings were suddenly not there ( that might be a pleasant experience for many of us). We would realize that we are not our feelings. We were the ones that were witnessing and experiencing our feelings.
We could go further to say if we were standing in a room with those people we are attached to and the furniture was taken away piece by piece...we would be aware that the pieces of furniture were suddenly gone. We would see we were not the material objects we "possessed" and we were not the "woner" of them. Then if the walls were taken away, we would see we are still here watching and experiencing.
And what about "husband wife, children, and other things"? What if our spouse was taken away? We would still be in here witnessing that we no longer had a spouse, yet we were still here. We would see that we are not the "spouse" we identified as. If our children were taken away, we would see that we were not the parent we identified as, because we didn't cease to be when our children were removed. If our jobs or roles are taken away do we cease to be? No. What about parts of our body...eyes, ears, limbs, certain organ functions? No. Heck...we do not cease to be when the body dies because we are not the body! We are that changeless Self beneath it all simply being distracted from the consciousness we are by the objects of consciousness.
We could practice saying to ourselves: I Am It... I am not that which I am looking at...
I think this from the Kena Upanishads says it all:
Not that which the eye can see, but that by which the eye can see; know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore.
Not that which the ear can hear, but that by which the ear can hear; know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore.
Not that which speach can illuminate , but that by which speech can be illuminated; know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore.
Not that which the mind can think, but that by which the mind thinks; know that to be Brahman, and not what people here adore.
The Kena Upanishads
All is well.
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True ( January, 2025) Beyond Philosophy: Experiencing the Truth of Consciousness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj8GD_JXL6U&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=6
Vivekananda...Complete Works...Kindle Edition
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