Choose Again

it's a matching game

In response to my last post, a reader asked: "Is 'turning away' from pervasive feelings or thoughts of lack the same as non-resistance to 'what is'? It feels as though acceptance or non-resistance might work easier for me than trying to trick this mind into thinking that there is no lack or no suffering."

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Yes. This is kind of a key point and although it is utterly simple, it seems to be a difficult one for us to see, in love as we are with complexity. It's actually almost too simple. Once you see it, it seems nearly hilarious, how simple it is. But we have eons of complex thought-habits in place, so the simple is not easy to see.

To communicate simply is not easy either, so bear with me!

Let's use the hot stove analogy. You put your hand on a hot stove, and it's burning. In terms of our ordinary lives this can be a situation in which, for whatever reason, there is pain and the temporary appearance of lack.

Here's the thing: we understand what it means, physically, to take our burning hand off a hot stove. That happens automatically unless there is some kind of paralysis occurring.

In our minds, however, there is such atrophy of the power of attention, that there actually is a kind of paralysis occurring. The paralysis has to do with what we think we are, as opposed to what life is. We are not different from what we are experiencing as life. Life is not outside of us. There is nothing, actually, outside of us. What we are experiencing as form is an accurate projection of our own mental states. It's not necessary, or even possible to "get" this, but it can be known by the effects this understanding produces in relation to the amount of suffering we experience.

When we are in pain or experiencing lack we focus immediately upon the pain or lack and we begin an internal litany of complaint and fear in relation to it. This litany produces an illusory yet strong sense of self that is dependent upon suffering as its source. This is our habitual response. This is the mental equivalent of keeping your hand on the hot stove. Continued burning happens.

As A Course in Miracles and just about everyone else out there says, "There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level. T-2.VI.9.13-14 

The simplest way to put it is this: As you focus your attention upon lack or suffering, you create more lack and suffering. So it is not necessary to pretend that your hand doesn't hurt when you place it on a hot stove—the pain automatically does its job and the hand flies off the stove. That's the purpose of pain.

But it is necessary, if you would like to stop suffering, to take your mind, your attention, off the hot stove of your life when it is burning you. The grievance, the complaint, the thought of judgment, the resentment, the resistance, IS the suffering. There is no other suffering.

Be willing to let go of the sense of self you are getting from the pain. Be willing to stop. You can do this by becoming aware. Become aware. See the grievance, the complaint, the pain and just feel it. Just be with it. Watch it. See that you can watch it without having to identify with it.

We think that unless we focus on and identify with what seems to be lacking, we'll never experience completion. This idea has tremendous momentum. It is the main stream of human thought. The truth is exactly the opposite. 

It isn't even necessary to replace what seems to be a negative thought with what seems to be a positive one. What is necessary is that you take your attention off the hot stove if you want to stop burning. Just stop. Drop the storyline of lack and suffering right now, again and again.

Stand there in the nothing. The blessed, sacred nothing. Feel that refreshing vulnerability. Drop it. Whatever you pick up, just drop it. The rest happens on its own. The help that has been there all along can now find you, as the fog of your thought-clinging disperses. It is in this gesture that the heart awakens.

addiction to suffering

In response to my last post, a reader asked, "What is the science behind the habit of holding on to what hurts us instead of simply letting our shoulders drop and the baggage fall away?"

This is a good question. I'll try to answer it here...

We have an experience of "me." It's comprised of body sensations and sensory experiences and a continual, non-stop commentary in words and pictures, going on in the region of the head. The sense of "me" is very noisy. It is this stream of constant thoughts, feelings and sensations that we stitch together and call by our name. It's really more of a swarm of sensations and noises than an actual being.

We create a sense of self from it in the same way that, when we watch a film, our minds link together all the separate frames of film and actually see motion instead of a series of still photographs. We fill in the gaps in order to have a certain type of experience.

You could call this sense of me the ego, or the false self, but I think I'll just call it "mind" for the time being. The mind is actually very simple. It survives only on the idea of there being something outside of it—of there being something other. In relation to this other (the world, the environment, the room in which you are sitting, your kids, your parents, your coffee cup) it has unceasing opinions and judgments. The other is either for me or against me and all the varying shades of grey in between.

This continual play of opinion, of pushing against the other, or trying to attract the other, is what gathers the swarm of sensations and thoughts and feelings into something that appears to be a solid being—a self. It's like watching a dense flock of birds swoop through the air as one when they are frightened by a loud noise.

If you pay attention to your emotions—really look at them—you'll notice that you feel most solid when you are truly opposed to something that is happening in the here and now. Take righteous indignation, for example. Someone done me wrong. That's about the most solid sense of self there is. I have been wronged. An injustice as been done. I'm the innocent one here! I'm the victim!

This me vs. them mentality gathers the swarm of thoughts and sensations in such a dense way that we feel, despite the pain, intensely solid—intensely right. It is at this time that we are most resoundingly, hopelessly confused. Yet it is at this time that we feel most safe and secure. It is this feeling to which we are addicted. We're addicted to it not because it is real or it is good for us, but because it makes us feel as though we exist as separate from everything else. We relish that feeling in a deliciously sick kind of way. It's almost as though we enjoy frightening ourselves. It's a habit in every sense of the word.

There is an alternative mind that does not need an other in order to sense its own being. It is the mind we experience when we stop, drop the storyline, and just let go of the need for opposition. We stop judging, stop seeking, and just greet this plain old moment, greet the "thisness," just as it is. Just as it is. We drop our complaints against now—as it is. As we are.

If you live long enough, you'll realize that in your quest to find the answer, this is the only thing you have not tried.

simplicity itself

We like to make things complicated. Who knows why. It doesn't matter. We're all just learning to let go.

But here's a simple way to look at the whole picture. We are always, in our minds, our usual minds, wanting to "get there." "There" may be freedom from pain, or it may be having more money or it may be finding a mate or it may be reaching enlightenment, awakening, oneness, heaven, whatever.

We look at our state, we look at where we are, and we say, "I want to be over there, instead of where I am."

We say, "I don't want to be here, I want to be over there."  "I don't want to feel this, I want to feel that."

"I don't want to feel that I am not awakened, I want to feel that I am awakened." The simple answer to this problem is this: Turn away from the thought that you are not awakened.

Then you say, "That doesn't help, I'm still here! I'm still not awakened." And again, the answer is, turn away from the thought that you are not awakened. Turn away from it. Just drop it.

Your request has been submitted and was fulfilled before you even asked. Reach for a feeling of trust. You are not being punished. You do not have to pay for past karma. You have done nothing wrong. You are entitled to peace and love and fulfillment as your birthright. But in order to align yourself with these things which have always been there for you, you need to stop struggling.

You need to stop focusing on what you don't have and just let go of that mind that believes it needs to struggle and fight and strive and fix. Turn away from the mind that believes it is alone and without help. Turn away from the mind that believes it will never be loved. Turn away from the mind that believes it will never find completion. It is not telling you the truth.

Be brave. You need not know what you are turning towards—that part is not your business. Just turn away from the thoughts of "not enough" and let it be. Just listen and expect and be content. It's taken care of. It's done, over. All is well. Just take your hand off the hot stove of lack-mind.

And when you hear yourself saying, "But I still don't have!," know that you are again focusing on the mind that believes it is alone and without help and without love and without awakening and again, just turn away from it. Feel the relief of turning away from it. 

That simple gesture is what it's all about. It's the gesture upon which the universe pivots.

piano tuning and the sense of yearning

I used to love to watch piano tuners when I was a kid. We had a piano at home, my father worked in a recording studio, and I went to a music high school, so it seemed like there was always a piano being tuned somewhere.

The tuner would hit each key, over and over, while manipulating the strings to get the false note to match the true one, which existed purely in his memory. With the good tuners there was no use of tuning forks or electronic devices... the notes were there, in existence, and the tuner knew when he'd matched them. Even if you aren't a piano tuner, you can probably hear the difference between a false note and a true one, even if you can't hum the true tone to yourself.

Let's, in this analogy, say that the out-of-tune piano key is the ego, the false self, the temporary, body-identified, threatened, vulnerable sense of me. And let's call the in-tune note the true self, the inner self, the Holy Spirit (in ACIM terms), the presence, what Is.

For each note on the scale of the piano of this dream called life, the in-tune version already exists. Its existence is not threatened by the fact that there is a temporary out-of-tune version existing simultaneously with it. It is not a future version of the false note. It exists side by side with it.

When you begin to realize that life is not delivering to you what you want from it—when the suffering and pain begin to outweigh the fun, and when everything you grasp dissolves in your hand—the yearning for an end to the discordant sense of self begins. What I want you to realize is that the true tone exists NOW. It exists already, the alignment of the temporary false note with the true tone has already happened. It's done. It's already done. But you haven't yet remembered it.

Whatever is experienced in time/space is felt as discordant as long as the false note continues to be struck. When you stop insisting upon the permanent reality of the false note, and you do this by simply withdrawing your attention from it, the piano tuner rings your doorbell and the tuning process begins.

You insist upon the permanent reality of the false note every time you cling to a grievance against anyone or anything. A Course in Miracles calls this "making the dream real." Any time you dwell mentally upon what is wrong with this you prevent the piano tuner from ringing your doorbell. If you prefer the seeking of something other than this, right here, right now, to actually being here—if you want something different and better—that's fine, that's great—but what you need to understand is that the piano of your life cannot be tuned and you cannot have a new experience, until you drop your grievances against the false notes. When you stop struggling, stop seeking, your doorbell rings and the tuning begins, automatically. But you have to DO it. You have to take responsibility for turning your attention away from the frantically seeking thought stream. It is what creates the disharmony.

When you turn your attention away from any grievances against what is, right here and now, you begin to vibrate with the pure note of your being, which is love. At each step, in each moment, you can, if not love what is, at least stop entertaining complaints about it. The alignment has already occurred. The pure note was never touched by the false. That's the atonement.

You cannot experience harmony until you vibrate harmoniously, and the harmony includes every possible note that can be played. Nothing is excluded. The harmony is that in which and from which the piano, the tuner, and the universe that contains them, appear. It is what you essentially are.