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Welcome back to my blog. I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything here. My goal is to post something new once a week.
I am fascinated by the concepts of personal growth, inner evolution, spiritual development, awakening, and the human potential movement. Perhaps this looks like a lot of different words, but to me they are saying the same thing -- the essence of our existence is to realize our highest potential within our lifetime, and this potential is realized in an ongoing process of evolution.
When I use the term “evolution” I’m not talking about Darwin’s theory or about scientific materialism or about the creationism debate. By evolution I’m talking about one’s inner process of growth or development, our potential to reach higher states and stages of consciousness, which is at the heart of any esoteric understanding of the Gospels or any other spiritual tradition. Evolution occurs within us intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and so on, through many different aspects of our humanity and consciousness. Every living being, and even societies and groupings of things, goes through stages of development. The seed does not remain a seed forever.
Evolution rarely follows a straight line. How often do we set goals for ourselves only to immediately fall out of our discipline and struggle to get back on our path? How easy is it to fall into a stagnant state of inner and outer lethargy if we do not constantly learn new things or challenge ourselves to keep growing, evolving, and thinking in new ways?
In the past three or four months it has become even more apparent to me how powerful the human mind is in creating one’s perception of reality, one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Much of who we think we are has already been programmed or ingrained into us during our childhood, before we were consciously aware of what was happening to us; before we could make a conscious decision whether such programming was constructive for our future well-being or not. I believe part of one’s process of inner evolution absolutely requires that we take a deep look at the way our mind operates, what it focuses on, believes, values, creates, and so on. If we do not truly examine ourselves and begin to consciously think on our own, then we risk going through life as mindless robots, automatons, programmed to keep repeating the same mistakes and sufferings over and over again, within our own life and over generations. We are not truly free or autonomous in such a situation. We become an automatic response mechanism prodded by external events and circumstances, blaming the outside world for our sufferings when really the problem begins within our own minds. We are asleep and will continue to remain asleep until we consciously decide (or allow ourselves) to open our consciousness to new avenues of growth and potential. We must take responsibility for ourselves and for what our mind creates. In spiritual terms, our old self must die in order that a new, greater self can be born. This is evolution in the deepest sense.
But what a struggle it is to find a way to kill our ego (our false sense of self) or to surrender and allow our old self to die! Our egos are greatly attached to the illusions of what we ‘think’ is important, much of which may not even be our authentic thoughts or beliefs anyway, but just programming. We think we feel a sense of safety by holding on to what we know, even though it is not healthy for us to continue living in that way; we end up holding ourselves back, blocking our own way from our greatest potential. We become like the seed that has fallen on rocky ground, starved for nourishment. The spiritual teacher, G.I. Gurdjieff writes:
[Man] is attached to everything in his life; attached to his imagination, attached to his stupidity, attached even to his suffering -- possibly to his suffering more than anything else. He must first free himself from attachment. Attachment to things, identification with things keeps alive a thousand I’s in a man. These I’s must die in order that the big I may be born. But how can they be made to die?... It is at this point that the possibility of awakening comes to the rescue. To awaken means to realize one’s nothingness, that is, to realize one’s complete and absolute mechanicalness, and one’s complete and absolute helplessness... So long as a man is not horrified at himself, he knows nothing about himself.
We have enormous power to create the life we want, if only we wake up to it in time. It is possible to consciously choose, decide, and take responsibility for our own lives, beginning with how we use our minds. But it must start with becoming consciously aware of our own thoughts, emotions, behaviors, opinions, etc. We need to become "horrified" by our false self so much that we are forced to change. We must step back from ourselves in our own minds and observe how our minds operate. Question everything. Question whether your thoughts or opinions are really your own. Question why certain ideas, people, or events make you upset or why others satisfy you. It IS possible to change yourself once you become aware of how your mind works. You are not a slave to it unless you remain unconscious. Take it apart and find out what’s there. Observe your own thoughts and feelings without judgment. Discard anything that holds you back from your highest potential. Focus on what you truly want.
When you take on this responsibility and challenge of delving into your own mind you begin to take an active part in the process of your own evolution as well as the unfoldment of Spirit itself. This is the gateway to true development and growth and the heart of any spiritual path to your greatest Self.
As the Catholic priest and Zen master, Willigis Jager, wrote in Mysticism for Modern Times:
Mysticism says, “The world is born anew in each moment.” It assumes that this ever-new creation is not achieved through the hand of a creator standing outside of evolution. It occurs by itself, following its own impulse. In the view of mystical or evolutionary theology, God is not the initiator of evolution, acting from outside. Evolution is God unfolding himself.
The Catholic Tradition has such immense depth and beauty! There are not enough lifetimes to really study and learn from all of the saints, theologians, writers, Desert Fathers and Mothers, not to mention the Bible itself, with its layers of esoteric meaning and symbolism.
Since I'm in the mood of finding my true self (easier said than done), here is a quote from Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) that I found to fit in well with my earlier post on soul searching. I found this quote in George Maloney's Mysticism and the New Age. Originally, the quote is from Teilhard's The Divine Milieu (confused yet? Sounds like a meta-quote, a quote inside of a quote!):
We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides. Let us try, patiently, to perceive the ocean of forces to which we are subjected and in which our growth is, as it were, steeped... I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seemed clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet... At that moment... I felt the distress characteristic of a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and stars. And if someone saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel... speaking to me, from the depth of the night: It is I, be not afraid.
Makes me think of Russian nesting dolls or the chrysalis that transforms into a butterfly. Could it be that we are made up of many selves, layers of selves, like layers inside an onion? As we go through life, through many stages of growth, we become something a little new and different at each higher stage. We could look back to when we were 20 years old, or 10 years old, or 3 years old, and at each phase we were different, but yet, paradoxically, the same. So, too, spiritually: we have our external outer form, our body, our appearance, and we have our inner world, our interior life, perceptions, memories, and experience. Inner and outer forms change over time, yet what we are deep down, inside our depths, is that which is eternal, our God within.
In the quote above, Teilhard says, "I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seemed clear, I went down into my inmost self." This reminds me of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul, a famous poem and commentary you can read online that describes the journey of the soul towards God. The "lamp" could symbolize the "light of the senses," our physical senses which we use to perceive the world; Teilhard has metaphorically turned the light away from the outer, external world, to find an inner light into his inner abyss. St. John of the Cross also talks about going into the abyss within, "Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart."
It is said in many different spiritual traditions, that at some point one must stop relying on one's physical senses so as to be able to turn inward. Our physical senses are useful and necessary, but they can distract us from discovering the immense universe we have within our own souls. Here is Chapter 12 from the Taoist classic, The Tao Te Ching (translation by Feng/English):
The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.
Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.
In esoteric Christianity, there is a correspondence between the five senses and the Five Wounds of Christ. Our five senses bring us our experience of the outer world, linking us with its joys and sufferings. The symbolic death of our senses is, then, a sort of gateway, an interior resurrection, that unites us with Christ and our own true self.
A Gangaji quote, from The Diamond in Your Pocket, relevant to my life at the moment:
In its power and simplicity, the question Who am I? throws the mind back to the root of personal identification, the basic assumption, "I am somebody." Rather than automatically taking that assumption as the truth, you can investigate deeper.
It is not difficult to see that this initial thought, "I am somebody," leads to all kinds of strategies: to be a better somebody, a more protected somebody, a somebody with more pleasure, more comfort, and more attainment. But when this very basic thought is questioned, the mind encounters the I that is assumed to be separate from what it has been seeking. This is called self-inquiry. This most basic question, Who am I? is the one that is the most overlooked. We spend most of our days telling ourselves or others we are someone important, someone unimportant, someone big, someone little, someone young, or someone old, never truly questioning this most basic assumption.
Who are you, really? How do you know that is who you are? Is that true? Really? If you say you are a person, you know that because you have been taught that. If you say you are good or bad, ignorant or enlightened, these are all just concepts in the mind.
I've reached a place in my life where I am starting to question some of the most basic labels that have been attached to me (whether by myself, by others, or learned through conditioning) to define who I am. I am questioning all of my goals and dreams, wondering how I decided that these were "my" goals and "my" dreams. Who is the "I" that chose them? What if the goals and dreams were changed to something else? Would it matter? Who creates the meaning, or decides which goal or dream is better or worse than another one?
An interesting conversation came up in my life recently about whether my comfortable, non-challenging, non-threatening, middle-class existence really boils down to a life of mediocrity. Is there such a thing as a life that is too easy, too simple, and too comfortable? Does this lead to sleep-walking through life? Can even one's spiritual life, in such a lifestyle, become a mediocrity as well; a hobby to be pursued in one's spare time like everything else? What would an extraordinary life look like, as opposed to a mediocre one?
Certainly there are examples throughout history of people who've awakened in their lives, stepping out of mediocrity into something else. The Buddha comes to mind, walking away from a carefree, sheltered existence in search of essential, naked truths. Yet for you and me, ordinary people working 9-to-5 jobs to pay the mortgage and buy groceries, it is hard to imagine dropping everything - literally everything - and running off to live in a hut on a mountainside, turning one's life upside down in order to get shocked out of complacency. Is it necessary? Is it required before one can truly, radically, evolve? What is the difference between an outer shock (radically changing one's physical life in the world) versus an inner shock (radically changing one's mind, feelings, attitudes, or beliefs)? Do we, those of us who live lives of seeming mediocrity, fool ourselves when we believe we can transform ourselves solely through internal means?
My husband, George, gave me a real Gangaji-moment last week when he asked me: What if, right now in this moment, you had attained all of the goals you had imagined for your life? What if you had a PhD, if you had written many books, composed lots of music, and so on? How would you feel right now? What would that change about you? How would you be different? -- And in all honesty I realized that nothing at all would change about me. Even if I had accomplished all of these things that I thought I had cared about, none of these things ultimately matter! My true self is not about accomplishments or goals or "my story" of what I have done or not done with my life. This was such a gigantic realization for me - how insidious our ego behaves, convincing us that there is always "one more goal" that needs to be finished before we can feel at peace or complete about our lives. We identify ourselves, our self worth, so much through what we do, but ultimately it is all illusory. Our "story," which makes us think that we are "a somebody," is yet another mask we wear to cover up our fears of emptiness and meaninglessness. We're afraid to really look inside and discover that we are not who we thought we were.If we are not our story or our thoughts, then who are we?
Again and again I keep coming back to one fundamental mysterious theme about life: the idea that life as we think we know it, as we think and believe we experience it as individual personalities, is ultimately an illusion. Behind our beliefs and thoughts and attachment to our little individual ego-self, there is a vast hidden reality - the infinite reality of God-consciousness. Between our ego-self and that reality is a veil obscuring our comprehension of that reality.
I believe the ultimate purpose in life must be to cut through that veil to the other side and realize the full truth of who we are (this is what is meant by "waking up"). But the ultimate-ultimate truth behind even that concept, is the truth that there is really no veil at all and never has been. What we are is really not separate from God-consciousness. We, asleep in our ego-self that experiences life as a separate personality, have created that veil. This veil helps to keep us in the illusion of our separate-self inside this world and universe of material forms.
Our experience as an individual ego-self is really the story of the Prodigal Son: we are God's child, gone off on a journey (pilgrimage) to a seemingly distant place (the universe/world of form) to come to know what it is like to have the experience of being an individual self. The underlying reality is that we are still and always have been One with God. We are not separate forms. We are Consciousness evolving and coming into Being. God is coming into Being in and through us, experiencing Himself in you and me and in each and every form, experiencing birth and death and birth again, endlessly. We are the eternally infinite experiencing a finite changing universe. Eventually our form will come to an end, bringing us back, Face to Face with the Father, with our True Self.
But what joy if we can realize this truth while being on the journey, inside the dream! To know that you ARE the Prodigal Son and that it is possible, at any moment, to know, realize, experience, that you and the Father are One? That is the big dilemma and paradox! We seek after this reality not realizing that to seek is to lose what you seek. To seek by not seeking. How can we do it?
Here's a profound quotation from Gangaji in her book, YOU ARE THAT! It's in the form of a dialog, with the student's words italicized:
I know in my mind that these formulations, this body, all these things that I do, are not the truth of who I am. Why--
Knowing this intellectually is insufficient.
I know that!
Stop knowing anything. Stop the search for intellectual understanding. Stop asking why. Every time why arises, it only takes you deeper into intellect. The only answer for why is why not?
You are being called to that which is beyond mental knowledge. You are being called to direct experience. You are hungry for direct experience, and direct experience is not found in any formulation of intellect.
Be still, and then more still, and even more still.
Be still beyond belief. Then that which cannot be known reveals itself, both fresh and ancient, beyond any polarity of knowing or not knowing.
What is needed in stillness?
What survives stillness?
Stay here. Let stillness dissolve belief in any substantiality of independent existence.
Then there is no way to really know, because if you know, your mind is interpreting what consciousness is.
There is pure being, which is where individual being gets its power. There is pure consciousness, which is where limited, individual consciousness gets its power. Pure knowing is not known, nor is it storable, because it is bigger than what can be known from past memory or categories. It is immaculate. It leaves no tracks. It is what space is in, so it is even subtler than space.
And here is a quote about Gurdjieff's ideas, written by Jacob Needleman, from the Introduction to The Inner Journey (an excellent anthology on the Gurdjieff Work by PARABOLA magazine):
Man, Gurdieff taught, is an unfinished creation. He is not fully Man, in the sense of a cosmically unique being whose intelligence and power of action mirror the energies of the source of life itself. On the contrary, man, as he is, is an automaton. Our thoughts, feelings, and deeds are little more than mechanical reactions to external and internal stimuli. In Gurdjieff's terms, we cannot do anything. In and around us, everything "happens" without the participation of an authentic consciousness. But human beings are ignorant of this state of affairs because of the pervasive and deeply internalized influence of culture and education, which engrave in us the illusion of autonomous conscious selves. In short, man is asleep. There is no authentic I am in his presence, but only a fractured egoism which masquerades as the authentic self, and whose machinations poorly imitate the normal human functions of thought, feeling, and will.
It sounds very dualistic - life comes down to whether we realize we have the potential to wake up, and then do what we can to achieve it (seeking by not seeking), or whether we will go through life asleep, an automaton, mechanically reacting to stimuli, mistaking this dream-world and dream-self as reality.
July was a weird month for me. Half of it was spent being knocked down by a nasty flu, with much exhaustion; and the rest of the month was a lot of tumultuous running around and busy-ness and hectic stressful feelings.
I am amazed, yet again, at the human tendency to fall back into old patterns and dysfunctional ways of behaving and thinking. Eckhart Tolle refers to "conditioned thought patterns" -- those ingrained old ways of thinking and behaving that were learned in the past as part of one's coping mechanism. Such patterns can stick around for a very long time and inhibit us from growing into the person we were meant to be. Melody Beattie refers to this backward movement as "recycling" and as a necessary part of a recovery process. She states in Beyond Codependency:
Recycling is a chance to do our recovery work. It's a way to discover what we need to work on and work through. It's one way we figure out what we haven't yet learned, so we can start to learn that. It's a way to solidify what we've already learned, so we continue to know that. Recycling is about learning our lessons so we can move forward on our journey.
Recycling, or regression back into old patterns we thought we had conquered, can feel like banging one's head against a wall over and over and over again. Falling in and out of an exercise routine is but one example. Life should be a process towards self-development and improvement and perfection. Yet there are times when it seems like we're just spinning our wheels, falling backwards along our path. Growth can take place when we catch ourselves in these recycling patterns, learn from what happened, and then move forward. We may fall backwards a little bit, for a little while, but there is still growth, even if only incremental growth.
I am dedicating the month of August to getting back on track, learning from my mistakes and focusing on accomplishing a few key goals. I am determined to observe myself with greater awareness; to become proactive rather than reactive.
As Jack Canfield and others have stated: Take 100% responsibility for your life, your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors.
Here's a nice quote from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:
Reactive people are affected by their social environment, by the "social weather." When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don't, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.
The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values -- carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.
Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.
As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that harms us far more than what happens to us in the first place.
For the past month or so I have enormously enjoyed and benefited from the recorded discussions between Eckhart Tolle and Oprah. More than a dozen hours of discussion can be found for free on Oprah's web site, focused on Tolle's new book, A New Earth. You can download mp3 audio files, watch videos, or read the PDF transcripts of the discussions. I highly recommend checking it out! Usually I do not follow the adventures of Oprah or the topics on her TV show. I haven't owned a television for years. But recently I learned she was following a 21-day vegan diet, and that really piqued my interest. If Oprah can enlighten the mainstream masses towards a more compassionate diet and promote a higher state of consciousness, then I am all for it! Gives me a glimmer of hope for humanity's future.
The following is just one amazing quote from A New Earth:
What you may be aware of as a voice in your head that never stops speaking is the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking. When every thought absorbs your attention completely, when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion, then you are totally identified with form and therefore in the grip of ego. Ego is a conglomeration of recurring thought forms and conditioned mental-emotional patterns that are invested with a sense of I, a sense of ego. Ego arises when your sense of Beingness, of "I Am," which is formless consciousness, gets mixed up with form. This is the meaning of identification. This is forgetfulness of Being, the primary error, the illusion of absolute separateness that turns reality into a nightmare.
So the trick is to realize that when we become so totally identified with our own thoughts, and the emotions that can arise from them, that we have lost touch with our true self, our authentic "sense of Beingness." We have confused our identity with our thoughts. Descartes' famous statement, "I think, therefore I am," really describes the ego, not the true self. As Tolle points out, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre responded with, "The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks." Tolle interprets this as, "When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness."
Any thought or opinion we hold dear can be ripe for examination. It reminds me of some wise words in the movie Fight Club:
You are not your job. You are not how much you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your khakis. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
We could add plenty of other common false identities:
- You are not your health problems.
- You are not your political affiliation.
- You are not your prejudiced viewpoints.
- You are not your religious beliefs.
- You are not your mistakes.
- You are not your successes.
- You are not your depression/anxiety/fear.
- You are not your hobbies.
- You are not your lack of hobbies.
- You are not your nationality/culture/race/gender.
- You are not the television shows that you watch.
- You are not your sense of victimhood.
- You are not the ideology you think you believe in.
- You are not the diet that you follow.
- You are not your face/body in the mirror.
- You are not the success/failure of your children.
- You are not the experiences of your childhood.
- You are not your family's history.
- You are not your opinions.
- You are not your perceptions.
- You are not your feelings.
So if you're not any thing, if you're not a collection of labels or roles or accumulated experiences and conditioning, then what ARE you? As Tolle suggests, your REAL you is that which observes your thoughts. The real you is in the stillness between what your body perceives with its senses and the thoughts that arise in your mind. The real you is the sense of aliveness or Beingness that is having this experience of being a human in this body at this time and place, in this present moment.
Now, this is not to say that the items in the list are not important or that you shouldn't care about anything or not deal with your feelings, opinions, or experiences, or not make an effort to improve the world. The problem arises when you get so absorbed into your thoughts that you confuse your identity with your thoughts. If you hold an opinion so strongly that you get terribly offended or emotional when someone attacks your opinion or disagrees with it, this would be one example in which you have mistaken your opinion, your thought, and made it into your identity. Your ego has decided that your actual opinion is YOU, your identity, and to have your opinion attacked is to be attacked personally. This is an illusion and a terrible cause of much unnecessary suffering.
Become the observer, the witness, of your own thoughts and feelings and see what happens. This is the beginning of disidentification with the ego, your artificial self, the mask that hides the real you inside. This is also the beginning of "salvation" or "enlightenment" which the great religious traditions attempt to lead us towards.
I just finished reading Lost Christianity by Jacob Needleman. The following is a quote from Father Sylvan, a mysterious, spiritually-advanced monk who crossed paths with Mr. Needleman. The author received the monk's journals, using them to explore the deeper levels of Christianity. From Father Sylvan's journal:
The idea of levels of Christianity may never again be known in the West. There is an intermediate level of Christianity which teaches the way that the higher level becomes distorted. We need the intermediate level. We need to observe how we lose Christianity, lose mysticism, lose the energy of God. Here lies the origin of sin and repentance, on the border between heaven and hell.
Modern people do not understand that the Christian ideals to which half the world attempts to conform comprise a description of the results of a specific inner act and inner inquiry. Mysticism is a result, a great result perhaps, of the inner inquiry; but everything is corrupted when I confuse inner work with the results of inner work.
To experience love for God or my neighbor, even for an instant, is no less a result than mystical experience. To be virtuous is a result. To have faith is a result. Similarly, wisdom and compassion are results.
All corruption of tradition begins with the confusion and mixing of inner work with the results of inner work. Jesus saw that the Judaism of his time had fallen into this confusion and that no one was practicing the inner discipline free from the expectation or assumption of results.
And another quote from Father Sylvan:
In a certain sense, the problem of Christianity is not that something has been hidden, but that not enough has stayed hidden.
Fascinating stuff! I think this connects very well with what Maurice Nicoll explores in The New Man:
The idea behind all sacred writing is to convey a higher meaning than the literal words contain, the truth of which must be seen by Man internally. This higher, concealed, inner, or esoteric, meaning, cast in the words and sense-images of ordinary usage, can only be grasped by the understanding, and it is exactly here that the first difficulty lies in conveying higher meaning to Man. A person's literal level of understanding is not necessarily equal to grasping psychological meaning.
And this, also from The New Man:
The Gospels are from beginning to end all about this possible self-evolution. They are psychological documents. They are about the psychology of this possible inner development - that is, about what a man must think, feel, and do in order to reach a new level of understanding. The Gospels are not about the affairs of life, save indirectly, but about this central idea - namely, that Man internally is a seed capable of a definite growth. Man is compared with a seed capable of a definite evolution. As he is, Man is incomplete, unfinished. A man can bring about his own evolution, his own completion, individually. If he does not wish to do this he need not. He is then called grass - that is, burned up as useless. This is the teaching of the Gospels. But this teaching can be given neither directly nor by external compulsion. A man must begin to understand for himself before he can receive it. You cannot make anyone understand by force, by law.
So if we take what Father Sylvan and Maurice Nicoll have said, we get an impression that what we think we know about Christianity could be only a very simplistic and superficial understanding, maybe even a grossly distorted understanding. The depth of truth concealed in the Gospels has probably been beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of humanity for centuries, let alone much of the hierarchy of the Church which has tried to convey those truths. Contrast this with Ken Wilber's concepts of the states and stages of development in Integral Theory. Western civilization has only recently started to emerge from the mythic/ethnocentric stage of development in the past century or two (perhaps as much as 70% of humanity is still at the mythic stage today). If the Gospels are read and comprehended from a mythic, ethnocentric stage of consciousness, then it would make sense why much of humanity has failed to grasp the deeper meaning of the Gospels. This is not to criticize people at the mythic stage. All humans and societies and civilizations progress through stages of development, from lower to higher. But what do we do with this situation, if anything? How do we help that 70% move up to a higher stage of consciousness? Should they be helped or not? Can the "lost Christianity" be rediscovered and be a catalyst for humanity's spiritual development?
There's a wonderful little article on the Oprah web site about five traits of happy people. Here is a quote from the article: Cobbled from the Greek eu ("good") and daimon ("spirit" or "deity"), eudaimonia means striving toward excellence based on one's unique talents and potential—Aristotle considered it to be the noblest goal in life. In his time, the Greeks believed that each child was blessed at birth with a personal daimon embodying the highest possible expression of his or her nature. One way they envisioned the daimon was as a golden figurine that would be revealed by cracking away an outer layer of cheap pottery (the person's baser exterior). The effort to know and realize one's most golden self—"personal growth," in today's lingo—is now the central concept of eudaimonia, which has also come to include continually taking on new challenges and fulfilling one's sense of purpose in life.
I think this is such a wonderful concept! I hadn't heard of eudaimonia before but it really resonates with me as encapsulating something I have been seeking since childhood. I think part of the path of becoming a fully conscious and enlightened human being involves this innate drive towards perfection and fulfillment; of striving towards the best that you can be and fulfilling your life's purpose.
The idea of the "baser exterior" that hides "one's most golden self" can also refer to the way in which our ego, desires, appetites, and attachments, can obscure and block us from getting to know our true inner self (part of the classic conflict between the animal nature versus the rational mind). It makes sense that if you begin to crack apart that false outer layer that you start to tune into that authenticity of knowing your true self, which in turns directs you toward following your life's purpose, which in turn brings real happiness. I am reminded again of Joseph Campbell's famous statement, "Follow your bliss."
Eudaimonia might also correspond to one of the major ideals in Freemasonry, represented by the metaphorical stone of one's self. Through inner work and right conduct the stone is transformed and perfected. What was raw, wild, and unfocused, given to us as a gift by God and nature to carve into being, becomes something beautiful, real, and perfected. The challenge and the path for all human beings is to recognize that this work needs to be done. To leave one's stone, one's self, undeveloped and unknown is to abandon the great potential that we have been given. To only see the "outer layer of cheap pottery" and to mistake it as our true self is to waste our potential and only live within a superficial experience of being.
The above image is a snippet of a spreadsheet I use to keep track of my progress on certain goals. The overall purpose is NOT to try and accomplish each goal every single day. Instead, it is an observation tool to see how much balance I'm creating in my life. Making a little bit of progress each day on a few goals is better than very sporadic or infrequent progress or no progress at all. Consciousness and awareness of one's actions is key. After a period of time the chart shows me if I have neglected any goals or if I have spent too much time on certain goals but not on others. A balanced life leads to fulfillment.
A summary explanation of the goals:
- Exercise - about 10 minutes of bicycle and then some strength training and back exercises.
- Journal - keeping my handwritten diary up to date.
- Catholic Formation - this includes going to church, studying with a private tutor to become a Catholic, spiritual reading, learning, and prayer. There are some really great online study groups at CCEL.
- Big Mind or Shadow - these are practices from Integral Life Practice. You could say that the Big Mind meditation helps you experience god-consciousness. Shadow work (i.e. the 3-2-1 Process) involves dealing with difficult people, emotions, memories, situations, etc.
- ACIM Lesson - study of one of the daily workbook lessons from A Course in Miracles.
- Write my book - progress towards writing my book on esoteric Christianity.
- Compose music - progress on writing about 20 minutes of music for a small string ensemble.
- Blog post - writing posts for my blog, like this one!
- Morse Code - now that I've got my ham license, I want to learn the code before I get on the air. I'm still mastering the alphabet.
- Special Projects - this relates to a list of various special chores around the house, such as organizing all my photographs into albums, cleaning out closets, redecorating, etc.
- Volunteering - time spent helping my condo association; and eventually I would like to volunteer at a nearby hospital.
- Friends & Family - hanging out with people.
- Dining out - not necessarily something I want to do too much, as it can get very expensive very fast. By monitoring my activity I can help to avoid excessive spending.
- Library, Park, Museum - free fun activities that get me out of the house. With 6 months off from a day job it could be easy for me to become a hermit at home. I have to watch that I make sure to get outdoors, enjoy the weather, and socialize.
The older I get, the more I find that my level of mindfulness determines my level of happiness. I would also include related qualities, such as having clearly defined goals, self-discipline, mental clarity and concentration. Without mindfulness (i.e. the awareness of one's own thoughts, feelings, and actions), the mind can just wander off all over the place, skipping from one association to the next, one fear or memory after another, a tendency that Buddhists vividly refer to as "monkey mind". Without mindfulness you can feel as if your life is passing you by, as if you have no control and time is being "stolen" out from under you. And everything starts with the mind first - if the mind is a mess, then the feelings and actions that result will also be a mess (and vice versa).
When I was a teenager and had unlimited free time during summer vacations, I found that if occupied myself with working on my goals and interests that time would just fly by very joyfully. My mind would be so wrapped up in accomplishing goals or learning something new that I didn't wander off into other thoughts or concerns. My mind kicked into gear and focused on one thing and that was the happiest time of all. Such experiences are often described as being in a state of "flow".
But why is it so hard to maintain mindfulness? Without self-discipline to put mindfulness into practice, one can fall into a lesser passive state - sitting for hours watching TV, browsing the Internet, playing video games, drinking alcohol, etc. After wallowing in the passive state you can end up feeling like you didn't accomplish anything. The time flew by with little or no benefit and you might as well have been asleep! Now, this is not to say that mindless leisure and relaxation do not have a valuable purpose. I am all in favor of a little daydreaming or mindless fun activities once in a while to recharge my energy level. The problem comes when you realize that copious amounts of time escaped into nothingness! Weeks, months, years!
Here are a couple of nice quotes from Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:
To control attention means to control experience, and therefore the quality of life. Information reaches consciousness only when we attend to it. Attention acts as a filter between outside events and our experience of them. How much stress we experience depends more on how well we control attention, than on what happens to us. The effect of physical pain, of a monetary loss, of a social snub depends on how much attention we pay to it, how much room we allow for it in consciousness. The more psychic energy we invest in a painful event, the more real it becomes, and the more entropy it introduces in consciousness.
And this:
The only way to take over the ownership of life is by learning to direct psychic energy in line with our own intentions.
And this fits in well with another life-changing book I love, The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. A quote from the very first chapter:
If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health, and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings - everything!
One part of my daily mindfulness practice now includes a spreadsheet in which I monitor the status of my current goals. Every day I check off whether or not I spent some time working towards each goal. This has really helped me tremendously to see where my time has been going! In the past I would create "to-do" lists or schedules, which invariably always seemed to fail. I would not do what I told myself to do, leading to guilty feelings and further procrastination; a vicious feedback loop of failure. But this is different! It is simple self-observation of one's actions and use of time. If you can simply observe yourself, without judgment, you can see what you have been doing with your time and then make adjustments or changes as you go along. It helps to create balance in your use of time, which in turn helps to facilitate the "flow" experience, leading to a higher quality of experiencing life itself.
Tomorrow I will share with you a screen shot of my spreadsheet chart and goals.
