Keep It Simple
Why wouldn't a mind and body awaken and be at peace because we are knowingly at one with all existence? In this experience of Oneness, the boundaries between our mental and sensorial existence and the world disappear. We experience directly our aware existence and do not limit it in any way. We recognise this experience as being reality. We recognise this experience as being distinct from mental and physical experiences. We recognise this experience of being an indescribably "something but not nothing" or "two but not two". It IS an experience of aware existence, distinct from the experiences of mental and physical activity. It is a presence. We can call it what we will. Once we recognise it, we see it has always been what we are. Even though there are times it has been hidden in the business of living, it has always been there as if an infinite ocean of love in which our mind and body swim. We instantly recognise this is the so-called "I Am" experience. Its borderless nature enables us to see that the appearances of various objective experiences around us that exist have an essential quality of "Isness", and this "Isness" is the same as "Amness". The distinction between an inside and outside collapses, and we glimpse the beautiful peace of our natural Oneness. We have found peace.
But what gets in the way of this? Simply because of the root belief that is the cause of and in the way of this experience. This root belief, which is blind, causes us to identify our consciousness with the feelings of the body and thoughts of the mind separate from the world around us. This identification is an experience that causes us to focus all our attention on thoughts and bodily sensations as if they defined us. This is not a pleasant experience. Its effect equates happiness with a mental and physical state, which is constantly changing—no wonder we feel seasick.
Not realising this, we seek an alternative, more pleasant mental and bodily state and equate this with happiness.
This puts us in a loop of rejecting one mental and bodily state for another. However, in all these activities, we identify as people seeking enlightenment. Desperate to escape suffering states of mind and body and seeking states that we equate with happiness. However, when we fully unravel this process and understand that the mind's belief has somehow limited our Awareness to being an individual separate entity that is the cause of the problem, we can stop this belief in our tracks. It is the mind's conviction that it has evidence that we are a separate physical object, and our lack of challenging this false belief is the cause of all psychological suffering that gets in the way.
Though some spiritual practices aim to calm the mind and body down from their frantic behaviour as a way to the Oneness, there can be no permanent peace unless this false belief is directly uprooted. At best, such practices can only offer a limited temporary relief from this belief because they are not fundamentally addressing it. Therefore, before anything else, we have no choice but to uproot this belief if we seek permanent peace. It is a false belief. It is the root of ignorance of our true nature. It is the singular cause of all psychological suffering. It is the belief that says "your conscious awareness is limited to and generated by the mind and body you occupy". Beliefs of the mind can be uprooted and challenged. One option is to, by force of will, argue with them or assert one belief over another. However, this is also not a good strategy, for it creates the notion that there is an eternal battle between negative beliefs and positive beliefs, and everything depends on belief, which traps us in the mind again. As an old teacher used to say, this makes life seem like a battle "between the Buddha and the Devil". If we want to see life like this, it will reflect this.
However, there is a more sophisticated way to uproot this belief. It is simply to investigate thoroughly all the hidden assumptions that support it. Is it true at all? Is it true that what I am depends on this mind and body's states? It is true because all my life, other people and the culture of the world have said it is true, and only a few radical spiritual people have said it is not. We have to decide for ourselves. We have to be 1 million per cent convinced that this IS just a belief of the mind without any objective or subjective evidence. We have to see that suffering is caused by a mind that believes it knows what we are and is telling us every moment to be a limited object.
Once we are convinced through investigating our experience of being aware that we have no evidence, objective or subjective, whatsoever, we can firmly say to the mind that we cannot know this experience of conscious existence that we recognise is our true nature is mind and body generated. It could equally be a universal consciousness that is unlimited. We can choose to remember this Awareness, an undeniable experience as a quality of the eternal, infinite consciousness that all spiritual teachings have pointed to. After all, we cannot say for sure it is not! It could be. What a miracle it is! As we examine the experience of being aware, we see it has all the hallmarks of being so. But to know for sure is not even necessary. All we have to do to stop the mind from dominating us is to be sure the mind cannot know either way. This admission of not knowing is enough to control the mind in its tracks down the precipice of negative false beliefs. It instantly opens us to the possibility that our Awareness is the ultimate reality. It is simple, not resting on complex systems of thought or difficult practices, just the recognition of the direct experience we already have.
It may seem too simple to be true – but we should always choose the most straightforward solution in life, and we can always verify it in our daily lives by living based on this experience. For the first time, this enables us to establish our lives on an experience we have, always have had and always will have, that of being aware. We no longer have to bolster our confidence in life based on belief. We have surpassed the need for beliefs of the mind. It is not necessary to focus the mind, calm the mind, or stop the mind. It is not required to stop thinking. It is only necessary to recognise that the mind cannot know that this experience of Awareness is not the infinite reality.
The mind, we discover, is more than happy to admit this. Relieved of having to run this false belief in its circuity, it can relax and get on with what is important – celebrating living.
Love
Freyja
