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INTEGRAL
SUFFERING AND HAPPINESS
The Inner Warrior's Sacred
Wound
"What gives light must endure burning."
Victor Frankl
"Nobody, as long as he moves about
the chaotic currents of life,
is without trouble."
C.G. Jung
The cure for pain... is pain.
Rumi
This chapter
is about suffering. However, my impulse to write is driven by my happiness.
It is arriving like a
circadian rhythm of joyful ease every morning triggered by my
first and only cup of coffee. When I was younger, I wasn't
particularly happy. The inner
happiness gradually crept in through meditation and the
self-knowledge that emerged from my life long dedicated pursuit of
'innerstanding.'
Already, I find myself in another contradiction. On one hand,
I here state that I 'own' what I write about in the sense that I
only write from personal experience. I only talk what I live. In
crafting this discourse, I adhere to a principle of personal
authenticity: I only share insights and experiences that are
intrinsic to my own life. This commitment ensures that my words
on happiness stem from genuine personal fulfillment,
distinguishing this text from purely academic endeavors or the
narratives of individuals like Alan Watts. Watts, while
articulate in discussing meditation and spirituality, led a life
marked by personal decisions that contrasted sharply with the
wisdom he espoused—evidenced by his departure from his wife and
kid's and his premature demise due to alcoholism.
At
the same time, it is obvious that this happiness is not 'mine'.
By nature, it cannot belong to anyone other than everyone. It
grows by being shared, but actually, we do not even have to
entertain the notion of sharing. Being in happiness is enough
because happiness like all other mental states is infectious by nature.
The Cosmic Fool and the Suffering Scribe
Happiness, I believe, is our natural state. This view may
seem contradictory to the conclusions drawn by many
intellectuals and philosophers throughout history. I 'think'
there's an inherent systemic burden for thinkers: the price of
insight often comes with a sense of alienation. It could also be
the other way around, in the sense that alienation creates a
space for insight. I interpret the quote below from Meister
Eckhart in this spirit. As I always do, I allow myself to
understand the Meister's notion of God as equivalent to the most
mysterious 'no-thing' in us: consciousness.
"Had I a God
whom I could understand,
I would no longer consider him God."
"The more we can impute to Him (God) not-likeness,
the nearer do we get to
understanding Him."
Why, then,
do I write as I do - with so many words and concepts? I think
this urge to verbalize was a gift given to me by the suffering I
went through as a younger man. The
intellect was trying to find a way out of the maze of unease and
confusion,
and it indeed contributed to that crusade. In this sense I 'own'
both suffering and happiness.
The
lover's warmth, the penetrating depth of his voice,
the appeal of his words - all stem from the pain in his heart.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Use the Intellect to Remove
Barriers
I must clarify here, just as intellect can never fully
comprehend the 'soul,' that I don't have the ability to 'create'
happiness.
To chase
happiness is like chasing the famous pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow.
Your task is
not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
Rumi
Happiness isn't an
achievement akin to building muscle through weight lifting.
Rather, it's a byproduct of 'something' that exist beyond our
direct understanding and control. That mysterious something is
consciousness.
Therefore
what I can share are my observations of psychological and
societal barriers that prevent happiness from taking the center
stage in our lives. These barriers are within our cognitive
understanding and our power to overcome.
The Ouroboros of Divine Ignorance
In this endeavor to use the mind to dismantle the alienation
it itself has wrought, I stumbled upon a bizarre yet utterly remarkable
potential within our intellect: It can, in a feedback loop
similar to a policeman handcuffing himself, devour its own tail
like the ouroboros snake,
paving the way for what I dub the highest understanding: divine ignorance. This miraculous
self-destruction opens the gates for those parts of ourselves
that we, in our intellectual arrogance, might have scorned as
crude or simple.
However, the self-devoured intellect
re-emerges, not as a repetitive Phoenix reborn from ashes, but as something
novel and vibrant, humbly assuming the role of a counselor.
Becoming its own beginning in the end, like the Ouroboros snake,
the intellect deeply understands that there is fundamentally
nothing to understand. In this relization, the
transformed intellect serves as a humble guide to the cosmic
fool that is our true essence, albeit in a radically different
context and environment.
The cosmic fool, enigmatic in its presence, takes its place
within a cathedral of elevated consciousness, a sanctuary
dedicated to the highest levels of supreme awareness.
This scenario reflects a supreme form of intelligence that is
simultaneously enveloped in ignorance, akin to the way
slime
mould exhibits a form of super intelligence devoid of
conscious awareness. In the state of supreme awareness, we
delegate our cognitive processes in a manner similar to our
utilization of artificial intelligence. Just as we neither
comprehend nor need to comprehend the workings of our heartbeat
or digestive processes, we also let go of the necessity to grasp the
mechanisms of cognition itself. This realization champions a
form of wisdom that transcends the conventional need for
understanding, embracing instead the
liberating embrace of
divine ignorance.
For further clarification of his
wonderfull and mysterious phenomenon I recommend you to read the
chapter
Ouroboric Super-Awareness.
The God
of Small Things
The outstanding journey of innerstanding did indeed lead me to make big decisive
jumps in order to change my situation. However, it also led in
the opposite direction. At the other end of the scale I found
the god of small things. There's a saying that 'the devil is in
the details,' and I've found this to be true. By heightening my awareness of the small, everyday
things in and around my body, I've gradually made each day, this
moment and tomorrow, incrementally better than the
yesterdays.
All larger things are composed of smaller ones. In my meditative
journey towards heightened awareness, I often uncovered the most profound
truths concealed within the simplest of things.
The microcosm of
our daily lives harbors a secret: Every minor action, every
fleeting thought, either distances us from ourselves or draws us
closer to our true nature. It's the cumulative effect of these
innumerable, minuscule events that ultimately shapes and defines
our lives. To live in a state of heightened awareness is
therefore like incorporating the life a child lives, a life full
of small things we overlook in the more abstract world as
adults.
Happiness - even in Suffering
Of all the wonderful things I realized on this life long
journey of innerstanding, the most important take away is that that happiness
and suffering are not mutually exclusive.
Indeed, it is feasible to find happiness amidst suffering. In
fact, this form of happiness might be the only kind that can be
sustained as a continuous state of being. Let me end this long
intro with some wise words from the Meister.
A life of rest and peace in God is good;
a life of pain in patience is still better;
but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.
Meister Eckhart
However, as
this text progresses, it will be clear that not all kinds of
suffering are beneficial. Some forms of suffering cannot coexist
with happiness and I will also try to identify these forms.
Is there something authentic within us?
Now, is there really such a thing as genuine, authentic
feelings? This question is interlinked with
the question of individuality. Do we at all posses a deeper,
truer individual soul? Despite the highbrow musings I think most
academians and even spiritualists might offer on this
topic, stating that individuality is an illusion, I'm going out on a limb here to assert that, even though
achieving 100% authenticity might be a pipe dream, we can edge
closer to a version of truth. It's a bit like chasing the
horizon—knowing full well we can't ever fully grasp it ('ding
an sich'), yet striving to approach it as closely as we can
from our limited perspective ('für uns'). Yet, out of
personal experience I can assert that every step we take on this
never ending journey at the same time is a plateu with both
deeper and higher states of peace and happiness.
IGNORE
YOURSELF IN FULL AWARENESS
The first step on the ladder of inner happiness is
navigating a path that meanders between the poles of emotion and
reason, between surrender and control. Take, for example the
combination of winter bathing, sauna sessions, and breathing
exercises. This down to earth practice, popularized by the Dutch
'Iceman' Wim Hof, has blossomed into a broad spectrum of
self-disciplinary techniques encompassing yoga and meditation.
I've carved out my own approach to these self-disciplinary
routines and so can you if you like to do so. The important
thing here is to fully experience
one's emotions while simultaneously detaching from them,
ensuring they don't dictate one's actions. How does one remain
in command when engulfed by intense emotions under keen
awareness?
What can we learn from such a simple act as a cold shower? Here
we definitely feel and sense our body while a the same time not
listening to and obeying old instinctual habits. Not listening
to old unconscious impulses is the first step towards not
listening to the story telling mind.
The key lies in abstaining from weaving narratives around our
feelings. Instead ignore them in full awareness of their
precense. One could call it a state of ignorance in awareness.
PIXELLATION MEDITATION
The Zen-buddhist have a saying: Take no notize. We humans, fundamentally bound to storytelling, often narrate
our lives, especially our emotional experiences. Yet, in the
practice I've cultivated, I advocate for a departure from
narrating our feelings. Instead, I propose
a process where emotions are observed in their raw
form, devoid of attached stories. In this practice, feelings are
broken down into manageable 'pixels' of sensation, inviting us
to experience and contain them in full-blown awareness. In the
pixel- state, feelings and sensations are so decomposed that the
thinking mind cannot brew stories out of them, but awarenes on
the other hand is fully capable of awaring them.
This approach
encourages ignoring emotions not through dismissal but through
full, undivided attention, allowing us to politely resist and
control them while being fully present with the sensations
metaphorically perceived as 'energy.'
For further understanding, the chapter, "meditative
pixellation"
delves deeper into actual techniques, offering personal insights
into the transformative
potential of cultivating interoceptive awareness with patience and kindness
but also a bit of self-discipline.
This transformative journey calls for a radically new form of
super-aware consciousness,
one that transcends the limitations of our previous,
problem-inducing state of thought-mind. However, meditation
isn't a direct solution crafted after a hard-fought battle with
our issues. Instead, it often emerges as an unpredictable and
unexpected intuitive response amidst life's chaos when we cease our
attempts at resolution, recognizing the futility of our
endeavors.
Embracing pixellative meditation means accepting, even loving
life's inherent chaos—a task that demands a gradual approach.
It's about learning to live with pixellated suffering and
navigating the delicate balance between exerting control by
kindly turning away from the incessant chatter of the mind and
embracing the loss of control that such detachment inevitably
brings.
This process leads to the rebirth of Nietzsche's dancing star,
symbolizing the emergence of new insights and order from the
acceptance of chaos. Meditation, in this context, is an act of
surrender to the fractal-mathematical intricacies of existence,
where a new intelligent order is born spontaneously but only after the inner
turmoil aligns with the "vertical line in the quadratic
equation" of our being.
Thus, to engage in pixellation in meditation is to undertake a
journey of accepting chaos step by step, finding a way to live
life surfed on the fine line between controlling our response to
the mind's narratives and the liberation that comes from letting
go of this control.
Pixellation in meditation can be seen as a Darwinian act of
survival. When traditional mental solutions fail to alleviate
the pain of a narrative-saturated life, evolving our
consciousness becomes essential. This evolution isn't just about
improvement; it's about survival—adapting our consciousness to
overcome challenges created by our old thought-mind survival
system.
Historically, we haven't been coded to look inward, as it hasn't
offered evolutionary advantages. Our energy has been focused on
survival tasks like procuring food. However, this internal
ignorance is now endangering our species. Richard Dawkins' view
of a soulless human archetype will doom us unless we gain
insight into our own conduct.
AUTHENTIC
FEELINGS AND INTEGRAL
SUFFERING IN HAPPINESS
"The basis for all mental illness
is created in the avoidance of legitimate suffering."
C.G. Jung
Legitimate Suffering
What does Jung mean by legitimate suffering? As I understand it,
it's the suffering that life's natural adversities serve us: a
perfect sweet-sour mix of joy and sorrow. C.G. Jung's
insightful observation highlights a fundamental truth about the
human condition: the essence of our being, or our soul, is not
discovered without enduring pain. This brings us to a critical
distinction—what Jung refers to as legitimate suffering, which I
interpret as pain experienced directly, unamplified and
untainted by the endless cycle of narrative reinforcement.
I propose that the flourishing of the inner human soul is
hindered by excessive indulgence in a one-dimensional pursuit of
positive emotions. Such identifications risks leaving no room for the
existential discomfort necessary for genuine
personal growth. C.G. Jung's ideal of
individuation comes close to such an odysse. In the state of constant
one-sided emotional satiation, the pendulum of our
mental well-being swings persistently towards an artificial
brightness or the opposite, neglecting the necessary dual blend
of darkness and light that gives depth
and substance to our lives.
The Danish poet Otto Gelsted speaks in the poem below, The Common, about
what he calls clean pain. Allowing it to hurt, in Gelsted's
wonderful poem, is a prerequisite for health and further: the
possibility of finding the common great find.
The Common
All alone, just myself
I'm happy anyway
Let it just hurt!
Clean pain, it's healthy!
Lie still like a stone,
become hard and become one -
....
Just go down into loneliness,
maybe you will come - who knows -
through the loneliness portal
out to something free and great,
and the common great find!
lay on the loneliness bottom
Otto Gelsted - 1920
How can we
like the Meister suggest, have peace in a life of pain? We
contain the pain in peace by pixellating it. Meditation is attentively, passively, and as far as possible,
storylessly resting in the suffering that naturally comes to us
on life's road - the road that resembles a platitude in the same
way as us who walk on it, but still contains something we all
agree is the most important thing in the world: namely 'me'.
Here in this natural state, the Soul gains a holographic depth,
which it cannot achieve alone through positive experiences alone.
Accept the pain allotted to you and you will discover in pain a
joy which pleasure cannot yield, for the simple reason that
acceptance of pain takes you much deeper than pleasure does....
Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage, and endurance open
deep and perennial sources of real happiness. Nisargadatta
Maharaj
Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out
of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It
shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that
fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the
rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to
grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things
will take their place. Rumi
I said what about my heart
God said: Tell me what you hold inside it
I said pain and sorrow
He said: Stay with it.
Rumi
Let me here
again assert that I am not talking about the pain we artificially inflict on
ourselves through thought spin, where we weave ourselves into
endless stories of self-pity, but only the sensed pain that
naturally arises in front of our noses on life's not always
nicely paved roads.
What is, IS!
The suffering created by our worried and constantly planning
mind is thus not 'legitimate'.
Legitimate emotions are in this sense the emotions that arise in
the first split second in the present, when we openly meet the
world. Meditation is to rest and spontaneously and powerfully
act in and upon these fresh emotions rather than being thrown back and
forth like a ball in the ping pong machine of thoughts. Note
here that if you fully embrace the first fresh emotion, there
will subsequently not be so many thoughts to create an extended
drama out of the situation.
In this exploration, I delve into the nature of what I term
'fresh emotions.' Fundamentally, our cognitive processes were
honed as a survival mechanism, a response crafted by the
amygdala to navigate through perceived threats and discomforts.
Thoughts, in this context, act as emergency responders rushing
to the scene of an accident. Their objective is clear and
necessary: to manage and rectify the crisis at hand, a function
they have proficiently performed since the inception of our
amygdala. The issue arises not from their initial response, but
when these cognitive processes begin to conjure hypothetical
disasters, trapping us in a loop of imagined crises that our
primordial emotional body struggles to distinguish from actual
threats. This blurring of lines between real and imagined
dangers triggers a cyclical escalation of thoughts and emotions,
a vortex that invariably spirals downward, retraumatizing the
psyche.
The intricate and often downward spiralled dance between thought and emotion, while
evolutionarily advantageous for our mammalian ancestors, beckons
us now to transcend the biological constructs that have been our
survival scaffolds for millennia. The longer we dwell within
these thought spirals, the further we stray from resolution, and
the more we entrench ourselves in destructive patterns. The
freshness of our emotional response becomes diluted,
contaminated by the "ifs, buts, and whens" that clutter our
mental space.
The challenge lies not in the act of thinking itself but
in the clutter of incessant, often unproductive chatter that we
superimpose upon our foundational cognitive layer. This
acknowledgment is not a call for the abandonment of thought but
an invitation to sift through the mental noise, to return to the
immediacy and purity of our initial emotional responses. In
doing so, we pave the way for a more harmonious integration of
thought and feeling, where each serves its purpose without
encumbering the other.
It's crucial to acknowledge the value of a reflective
mind. There can be a tremendeous benefit in translating our
inner emotional state into fresh words. However, there is a hair
fine balance to be obtained in this process. If these first
thoughts entertain into a spiral where thoughts begin to paint
felling patterns on the body-canvas and then new thought try to
solve these new scenarios, then we have entered the vicious
circle of retraumatization. That is why the Meister emphazises
peace in the pain. As long as there is peace in this process,
natural healing occours spontaneously.
To be able to feel oneself uncompromisingly and almost storylessly
acceptant in all life
situations creates spontaneous meditation... One becomes
meditated in and by one's acceptance of oneself and others, an acceptance
that connects the inner and outer person in emotional dialogue.
In this sense, one could call Meditation sensed self-honesty, an
inner emotional honesty, where the one who is oneself
effortlessly becomes meditated by and in oneself.
THE WOUND OF PRESENCE
The incredible miracle here is that the divine mystery touches and
penetrates me precisely where I am most vulnerable, traumatized,
and complicated.
The wound
is the place where the Light enters you
Rumi
To contain oneself is tantamount to exposing the inner person in
the outer. This makes it possible for the soul, our felt
essence, to breathe through the cracks in the armor of the outer
person. To be emotionally honest, first with oneself, then with
others, is tantamount to vulnerability.
The inner person thus exposes itself in the outer in what one
might call a wound of presence.
When inward tenderness finds the secret hurt,
pain itself will crack the rock and Ah!
Let the soul emerge.
-Rumi-
To expose this wound of presence in the fresh air is the highest
form of courage. This form of passive sensing requires courage
and patience because our biological nature has programmed us to
think and then act ourselves out of uncomfortable situations.
The great Whole or God or whatever you want to call the
unfathomable mystery touches me precisely where I am most hurt.
I have spent an
inordinate amount of my life on such scenes to reap the precious
experiences that only mistakes and suffering could give.
To keep that wound open requires a lot of courage and above all
honesty. We have first of all to be as honest to ourselves. This
honesty cannot be learned on universities obtaining all kinds of
degrees. It is all about our character. Most important is the
nobility of our character.
THE INNER WARRIOR'S SACRED WOUND
A shamanic archetype is the wounded healer. On the
contemporary scene of healers, therapist and psychologist most
are helpless helpers. A few of these helpless helpers evolve
into being true wounded healers.
The one who
passively can contain his inner interoceptive body is for me a spiritual
warrior. For this inner wounded warrior, performing outer strength is
the highest degree of cowardice. The spiritual warrior passively
contains his own inner war with a smile, while in his inner
exploration he treads new behavioral paths in the network of
neurons.
In meeting the wound, it is important not to depersonalize
oneself. This is the Eastern meditation survival strategy: that
in case of a painful and catastrophic situation one lets go of
one's humanity and becomes pure spirit.
We are so often told not to take ourselves too seriously, that
it is narcissistic to circle around our own little sore navel.
I will say the opposite: take everything in the world personally
to the highest degree!
Especially take your inner wound seriously. The more secret your
wound is, the more important it is to expose it - for the wound
itself is the opening into the inner side of life. However, at
the same time: ignore your wound in the sense of endless
story-telling.
Just like sleep and meditative wakefulness, the fool and the
wise man are only separated by a hair's breadth, so taking
oneself emotionally seriously is close to self-importance. The
difference lies in the very sensing. The narcissist looks at
himself from a distance, alienated, while story-telling himself.
Meditative self-celebration, on the other hand, is created in
almost thought-free
meditative wakefulness.
Here's my proposal for the most important of all meditations:
Every second, from now and for the rest of your life, whenever
you remember, return to the innocent close sensing of the body's
inner space. Remember yourself in the form of your sensed body.
The mystic Gurdjieff called this act "constant self
remembrance." I would term this with the word 'awarance.
Be in a state of constant pixel awarance of the inner body
canvas of emotions.
The Good Mother's Attention
To allow meditation into the wound of presence requires taking
full responsibility for even the smallest and perhaps most
ridiculous or unreasonable vulnerabilities. Nothing is too
insignificant or small, for the devil is always in the detail.
Let me repeat the lesson: Let's not meditate ourselves away
here.
Instead, allow everything, even the smallest sensed things, to
enter the warming center of attention. Give it the greatest gift
you can give to both yourself and the world: simple,
undifferentiated, and non-cognitive attention.
It's like being the good mother. When her child cries, she picks
it up and gives it attention by cudlling it. She doesn't first ask why the
child is crying. Nor does she judge it. She just picks it up and
nurses it with her attention.
By doing the same with your often unreasonable inner children,
you allow even the most sensitive aspects of your nervous system
to become a serving part of you. Cuddle your inner child. It is
still there - believe me!
To stop and feel yourself as a raw, sensed body is not easy. For
our biological software is outdated and actually programmed for
a life in the Stone Age, where all sensations are divided into
survival-friendly and survival-hostile. Therefore, my dear
friend Rumi must remind us again and again how important it is
not to run away:
"Don't run away from grief, oh soul
Look for the remedy inside the pain.
Because the rose came from the thorn
and the ruby came from a stone."
Rumi
THE HEALING DISCOMFORT
"If you can face it - God can fix it.
If you can feel it - God can heal it."
"Think of
suffering as being washed."
Hafez
Beyond the existential necessity of resting in the body's sensed
duality, there is another, more practical reason to take the
bull of life's pain by the horns.
I will now reveal a secret hidden in the self-evident: that both
the body and mind can actually heal themselves through pain and
discomfort.
For the one who seeks out the pain is not pursued by it.
How do I know this? I know it from my own experience. The best
way to validate my claim is through your own personal
experiences in your own inner body laboratory.
When I call it a secret, it's because this innate ability for
self-healing is so simple and so close to us that we often
overlook or underestimate its wonderful possibilities.
Many years ago, I read in a scientific magazine that some French
researchers had observed the amount of white blood cells in a
finger with an infection. According to them the number of white
blood cells fighting the infection increased when the test
person was keeping his attention on the finger through looking
at it and feeling it from inside at the same time.
Where the
Attention Goes, the Prana Flows
Self-healing, both psychological and physical depends on the
quality and intensity of our attention. The more our supreme awareness
is intensified in meditation, the greater the ability for
self-healing, when this attention is brought into the body's
sensory universe. A tired attention is not of much use.
Attention is anchored in the sense of sensing and feeling. We notice our
feelings. The sense of feeling is the most important of our
close senses. This wonderful sense has a double job. It
functions as the 'body community's border guard' in the form of
the skin's outward sensations and also has an inward task,
patrolling the almost hidden universe of the inner body.
One of
the most important sections on Meditation.dk is devoted to an
investigation of the hidden world of attention.
Meditative healing requires that attention make direct contact
with the wound of presence, to allow full and innocently
wordless attention to feel bodily discomfort without fleeing.
Attention understood as the process of ignorant awarance must be cleansed of understanding
and then in its pure a-ha innocence get close contact with the sensations in the body. The
wound of presence must not be understood but felt. Any attempt
at understanding creates a kind of filter where words, concepts,
and narratives lay like a film between attention and the
attended. When understanding has clamped the pure sensation, we
will, for example, in our constant inner monologue tell
ourselves that we feel sorrow and are sad. The next thing will
be a bigger story where the inner self tells itself that it is a
pity for me. Crying is therefore often, but not always, an
expression of being stuck in a narrative and not having met the
sensations of the body unadulterated by words. As long as one
self-narrates one's feelings, one will be stuck in the mire.
Meditation is to go deeper than words and tears.
To accept discomfort and psychological pain in the body is a
prerequisite for our simple non-analytical attention to make
direct contact with feelings as pure sensations, that is, before
they are interpreted by the mind as discomfort or pain. To feel
your inner body without words allows nature to take care of the
rest: If you can feel it - God can heal it.
To notice suffering without doing anything about it
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
To feel suffering, as the
wonderful new age shaman in the above quote says,
without doing anything about it, without removing it, moving it,
or hiding it, goes against everything we have learned and
instinctively feel. In the same way as animals, we try to avoid
pain.
Let us abandon the older survival systems we created to
survive
Ideas of wellness and that it is spiritual to practice positive
thinking are rooted in the ancient biological struggle for
survival, where we divide the world into what promotes our
survival and what does not. First we divide the world into evil
and good, and then we do something about the evil and try to
achieve the good. In this context, thoughts are nothing more
than survival strategies. This polarization of the world is like
the axis mundi in our old ego-operating system, an obstacle to a
radical upgrade of consciousness into the state I call the
super-awake state.
For the new fluid operating system of awarance to be installed,
it is above all important to do nothing. By doing nothing, by
not acting out of life's numerous traps, by not following
self-development courses, yes, by not understanding, by not
clinging to the comfort of religions, there is a good chance
that the old self-system will collapse, and only in this
collapse can the new consciousness' dancing star be born.
"Stop everything...
Then you will realize you are the freedom
you have always been searching for."
Or maybe even
better: Realize your inner freedom that was always hiding in the
wast darkness of the inner dark cathedral of your body, and then
everything will stop.
The Art of Non-Doing in Awarance
My warm advocacy for
non-doing arises from our ego-reality's overemphasis on
recognizing and acting our way out of uncomfortable situations.
However, turning non-doing into a new truth would be equally
erroneous. As soon as we accept something as true, in this
context, it becomes untrue.
This era's pursuit of an ostensibly perfect and perpetually
happy existence leads, paradoxically, to a profound
superficiality. By narrating away our primordial pain, we not
only distance ourselves from the immediate experience of that
pain but also from the very essence of our soul. The act of
fleeing from the discomfort inherent in life's challenges
through stories and narratives serves to distance us further
from the authentic self, creating a barrier to true
understanding and acceptance of the human experience. It is easy
to see how one can flee from pain by being artificially social
media happy. However, on can also flee from legitimate pain by
identifying as a victim.
What is the soul? For me, the soul is the living hologram of
simple beauty that appears when human consciousness coherently
observes and senses the world's incomprehensible interference
patterns with a light akin to laser light. The more synced our
consciousness becomes, the more synced the world around us will
be.
For our consciousness to achieve sufficient coherence to find or
rather be the multi-dimensional answer to the contradictions that have
no solution on the four-dimensional space-time plane they were created and formulated
in, suffering and darkness must be the equal partner of light
and joy. Meditation therefore starts and ends in the simple
thing that we day in and day out make ourselves as good friends
with negative emotions as we are with positive emotions.
How can I now be sure that life is perfect and not unfair to me?
In my case, I must say that I was not able to intellectually see
through whether the world's total sum of dynamic infinite
interaction in its flow through me was evil or good.
Therefore, I chose to see it as perfect - or rather perfectly
imperfect.
Yes.. everything is chosen so well and every time I lose, I win
a bodily life experience and thus a precious depth in my soul,
which people who have not suffered are not so lucky to get. With
this choice, most of my suffering disappeared; namely the
suffering all my thoughts about what should have been different
had caused. Resting in natural life pain is for me the very
foundation of a healthy life in Meditation. Meditation is in
this sense the amor fati of pain.
Without darkness in life, spiritual development is not possible.
In this sense, pain and discomfort are our best friends - for
unlike joy, which puts us to sleep, suffering keeps us awake if
we are able to be with it.
As the yin yang symbol, happiness always have a dot of sorrow in
it and suffering always a smile.
Further
reading:
Meditative Pixelation
With warm regards,
Gunnar Mühlmann
gunnars@mail.com
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