Edward’s Diary Entry 17 – Social Interlude: Family for Xmas?

You look at a mother, father, brother or sister and think you know them. It’s not true. There’s more to them than you can know if your awareness is on the “normal waking-consciousness” level of Self-Awareness State 2. What you can contemplate on is that your “family” was given to you as your first exercise in the practise of charity as a virtue. Without any heightened awareness, our personalities, already in conflict with ourselves, look for conflict with others as well. And family is a great excuse. “My parents did this”, “my brother or sister did that”. We get sensitive and silly about what others say, do and supposedly think. Family reunions at Christmas can be disastrous. Do we ever grow up? Or do we just play out old games and dwell on outdated grudges? I recently saw how one single (joking) word in a family WhatsApp chat almost wreaked havoc and might have prevented one part of a family from sitting down with the others. I have heard how demands for attention have ended in anger and the temporary suspension of a relationship. We all know what it’s like. One brother’s attitude towards a mother is not the same as another’s and arguments and conflicts can ensue. This is all on a very low and childish level of human existence and interrelationships. And maybe this is why we are given a family or a surrogate family – so we can begin to practise the virtues. But alas, who will teach us this? And how do we learn if our parents haven’t taught us, because they were lost too? One magical way is to receive inspiration in quiet contemplation. Suddenly one sees that growth and development has to set all family members right in one’s mind. The slate has to be wiped clean, through acceptance, forgiveness, charity… However “badly” one thinks a family member acts, they are there for us in Self-Awareness State 3 to provide challenges for remaining calm inside and fully cognizant of the fact that once, we, too, were like them and we can always find the same thoughts, words and deeds in ourselves as well, although perhaps applied to different situations. So once you’ve embarked on the road to increased consciousness of reality and awareness, there are no more excuses or reasons for disquiet, day or night. Like the Christmas carol, “All is calm, all is bright” and we are reborn into a perfect world.

Edward’s Diary Entry 16 – Social Interlude: Virtuous inheritances

With a clear life philosophy, we can classify testators and heirs as virtuous or lacking in virtue. Testators lacking in virtue would do better to spend all their wealth before dying so as not to incur in non-virtuous behaviour on the deathbed and in the afterlife, either on their own or influenced by other non-virtuous family members. That would be ideal. Otherwise too much negative karma (vikarma) is produced. Virtuous testators can bequeath to their heirs and virtue is thereby continued. The non-virtuous always create problems: One side is more grasping than another. An unfair distribution is made. Money and wealth are withheld for personal grudges, misunderstandings and resentments. Miserliness and stinginess are upheld. The heirs find this or that wrong with the distribution, some wanting more, others even more. Everyone has their own subjective opinion and no one fails to argue their case. Temptations come and are succumbed to. It is all very tiring. Grudges and non-virtues are continued, and very few escape the mud and mire of inheritance issues. This of course cannot be otherwise. As long as the mind is lost in materiality and the virtues are lacking, nothing can be done properly, especially since money is a highly powerful corrupter of virtue, with greed and covetousness easily stepping in, ranking second maybe after sex and egocentric love, which foment lust and self-centredness. Non-virtuous heirs place ego and self first, and others second. Virtuous heirs place others first and self second, striving to do justice and act fairly. One’s last will and testament is a conclusion to a life, a legal legacy to one’s moral standing. It’s our time-capsuled last chance to do good in this body. So we should make the most of it. When everybody places self first and others second, we never foster virtue or win in the end, as greater separation is produced between human beings. If we place others first and self last, we always come good in the end, because we are “first” for all others, and cannot fail to win. The argument that “others” don’t do this is futile. We cannot wait for others – that time will never come. We have to start with ourselves – that time is now.

Best wishes for 2016...

Spirituality at the Service Station: Wheel Alignment, or Getting in tune with the universe

We all know cars need to have their wheels aligned. If the thrust is out of balance, your safety and that of others is affected. With four wheels properly adjusted, the car goes straight. If a wheel is out of alignment, you’re wasting energy, wearing out tyres, forcing the machinery and jeopardising your safety. Specifically, alignment involves 3 basic adjustments: camber, caster and toe. There are over ten secondary adjustments as well. So we agree that basic car maintenance is good, right?

Well, how about Mind Alignment? Why don’t we have an “Inspection Service for Mind Alignment” on TV or at health clinics, instead of just boob-tube programmes, blood pressure cuffs and pharmacies dispensing drugs?

Reason Number 1: Because in Self-Awareness State 2, our “normal, waking existence”, this is not known nor is it accepted if it is heard about. The mind is in the state of identification with its past conditioning, present impulses and future expectations – all products of the defective human thinking process. In this state, we are like cars with their wheels misaligned, and like a car, we have no consciousness of being misaligned. Continuing the analogy, we are just driven along like cars and we often have accidents, we get worn out like tyres, we waste fuel and energy and we are definitely unsafe, both for ourselves and for others. Number 2: It seems to be the nature of the world to maintain this state of un-awareness in human beings. The ancients called it “Māyā”, illusion, modern media call it “being entertained at all costs”, and the only choice you have is which channel to watch at any given time. Number 3: Let’s just call this world situation “what is” and accept it this way, suspecting that if it weren’t for the resistance and the overcoming of all this unconsciousness, our Self-Awareness wouldn’t be able to flower in any case. It seems we have to fight against nature, struggle against lethargy, and make an intentional effort to consciously align ourselves with the positive in order to grow towards that, and unveil what we ignorantly believed to be true or real before our eyes were opened. So that’s why many are called, but few actually enter the realm of Self-Awareness State 3 and above. We are too busy believing we are already something, when we’re not.

So we are like cars requiring a wheel alignment, taken as an example of a complete overhaul, which is probably truer. But what can we do?

First we have to find a “service station” that does wheel alignments. It’s not easy. Advertising today is rampant, and many places say they will fix you up and give you the best solution for your money. For example, one place has an alignment system that will give your wheels a special coating that will make them run straighter, and a miniature photocamera is supposedly installed on the front of the car to continually check the front wheel alignment. Another place offers a tablet that you place inside the car to help keep it on track, with optional choices for left, right, straight or 45º angle turns, etc., all controlled by an on-board computer; it keeps your alignment in check at all times. Another corporation offers a platform onto which you drive and do various tests to register how faithfully your vehicle responds to the orders, and then you drive off and try to remember what to do on the open road, but that’s tough, so giant billboards have been installed around the land to keep reminding you what to do. Then there’s another set-up that offers “wheel socialising”, and you sign up to exchange your wheels with others to see if they run truer. Or yet another place takes tiny samples of the rubber on your tyres and sends them to a lab for analysis, and if things don’t look too good, they send you little bits of processed rubber to stick back on your tyres in the hope that they will then be better aligned. It sounds fantastical, but it is all based on the most advanced vulcanisation technology available at present, and it’s a certified system, so it must work. That’s what they say. And those are just a few of the choices in spirituality, religion, politics, social groups and psychology.

So the writer was recently inspired to explain this by a sight seen in the shanty-town-like backstreets of the Casablanca Medina, where everything is still done by hand. There was a rooster crowing and pecking on the pavement; cats lying in the sun oblivious to everything, mothers and children in traditional dress, hanging out clothes in the sun. There were carpenters’ booths, plasterworkers’ huts, metalworkers, marble workers, potters, ironmongers, car radiator fixers, motorbike repair shops, and of course little tea shops for men only. This was near the fruit and vegetable stand section, with fish sellers, bread sellers, sardine grillers, herb sellers, olives, root vegetables, legumes, dried fruit and nuts and more. All in the shambles and ghetto-like area outside the old Medina walls – streets slippery with orange peel, fish oil, grease, crushed fruit, flotsam and jetsam, junk, garbage, vegetable refuse, bikes, motorbikes, carts, women, men, children, cars, cats, water-sellers, and everything all akimbo. There were wheelwrights and a few odd cars with their wheels being aligned by hand. That was the inspiration. These real people with real misaligned wheels on real cars were busy fixing them. And instead of believing in modern technology, they were doing it by hand, eye and heart.

After listening to all the advertising, maybe trying a few solutions, and finding that your mind is still misaligned, you eventually find that the only Service Station that does Mind Alignment for you is your own mind.

You organise your own Service Station by laying out your tools on the appropriate benches. You have the hammering bench, the bending bench and the continuous-flow bench. You can walk around all these benches, look them over, wondering if they are sufficient and good enough for the job, but since they are organic and can adapt, you decide they’re the only tools you have and you just have to go for it, come what may.

Instead of installing an iPod with the top-40 songs for your garage sound system, you only tune in to the best music available: the masters of wisdom, the practical spiritual practitioners, the tried and tested authorities, and you try to understand their melodies, harmonies and rhythms, which is not that easy, as they use quite simple words to describe sometimes complex processes and we have to learn how to listen before the meaning and inspiration actually sinks in.

You begin to discover that what you needed was already there. You just have to bring more awareness to your six senses and allow yourself to get aligned and clean the mind, with thoughts like the following:

1) I was conceived and born because the world needed a potential human soul to come into existence at that time. I accept that responsibility, and work backwards to find out why I was born and what I have to do to pay my fare and return any outstanding debts to the universe.

2) I was given a set of characteristics and qualities, which are my basic tools for life. My time and place of birth is unique, and the situation of the universe at that point in time was unique. Therefore I am unique – and since I don’t know how long I’m going to be here, I take advantage of my uniqueness.

3) I was given a whole set of features, weaknesses and strengths, from the collective unconscious of humankind over the past 40,000 years. I have to learn how to deal with all this.

3) I was placed under all kinds of stresses and strains from birth onwards and made to fit into a particular family or broken home, school, society, cultural milieu, race, and condition of general human development or under-development. I have to live with all this, deal with my conditioning, and work through it all.

4) I developed a mask, a persona, or personality to fit in better or worse in my environment. I have to find out what my personality or ego is like and learn to deal with it.

5) I seek pleasure and avoid pain, cultivate my mind and give free reign to my thinking and feeling processes. I have to start seeing reality as it is and going against the natural flow that keeps me unconscious.

6) I get discouraged because Life always kicks me in the face, and I’m not always “happy”. I think others are to blame. I have to realise only I can learn how to deal with all this.

7) I finally discover that only I can align myself with the universe and I start to develop a new attitude to Life. This is the beginning of my alignment with the universe. My “ego” loses its attraction, and I have a funny feeling that maybe there is something more than just an “I” that is always separate from others.

Take it from there and develop all your potential. If the mind can ask for a reason, there must be a reason for it all, despite the fact that a mind can convince itself that there is no reason for anything – that’s the easy part! The hard part is asking the mind to tell us the reason. It’s a lifelong process, and just like car wheels always needing regular alignment, we have to get rightly aligned with the Universe to live properly.

It’s not the wrong time. It’s not the wrong place. We are all born at exactly the right time in precisely the right place and with the appropriate circumstances. It’s up to us to realise this and be present, and promote Self-Awareness.

Edward’s Diary Entry 15 - One Virtue a Day

First I had memorised the virtues, found pictures that corresponded in my mind to each virtue to make it easier, and used these pictures during certain exercises. These are just subjective images of mine found after some searching. I plan to give examples later on. These images helped me to keep the mind focused on one concept as opposed to just anything that might pop up by association – wanted or unwanted. I did a 1-hour written meditation on the virtues and came up with a few interesting things, but that wasn’t very heartening. The admonition to “take them out” and practise them was difficult. I didn’t know exactly what they were, so how could I put them into practise? So I wrote down: “1) study them, 2) meditate on them; 3) do an exercise; 4) keep them present in the mind and watch my actions; 5) find situations in which the virtue can be applied…” Tall order! The psychological theory behind this was that a virtue is an endowment, so it is like the funds or property given to an institution so it can be run. Virtues are not “part of the mind”, but can be seen as external sources used for a purpose. So we should say “I give way to [a virtue]” or allow it to enter the mind. Then they become contents of the mind, to be accepted, whereas vice or ignorance are to be rejected. This is the way to purify the mind, what the ancients called the Sattwic (pure) temperament, accepting only the 26 virtues and not their opposites. I made a list of the virtues and assigned each of them to one day during the month, from Monday to Saturday, with no virtue to be studied on Sundays. And so the month began… as this year finishes…

Spirituality at the Service Station: Wheel Alignment, or Getting in tune with the universe

Coming this Wednesday, 30th December: We all agree about basic car maintenance. So what about basic mind maintenance? Find out more in this article on aligning the mind with reality.

Edward’s Diary Entry 14 - Virtues

And so we come back to the “Virtues” and look at them. A virtue in today’s world is a nebulous concept like “moral excellence”, “positive trait” or “spiritual quality”. I liked “inner strength” better because it coincided with ancient wisdom. Decartes  went for “correct reasoning”, Kant opined “thoughts, words and deeds according to principle”, and modern psychology says “virtues are the good emotions”, so recently a virtue is not even a quality, it’s an “emotion”, that is, an energy charge in the nervous system, perhaps derived from millions of years of blind “evolution”, which explains nothing. This is not saying what a virtue is; it only describes the resultant emotional charge of whatever this quality may be. The charge is the power, the energy. Where does the power come from? From the bowels of the earth? No. From outer space? Don’t think so. From the sun? Most likely. From nothingness? Is it an invention of the human mind only? Consciousness perceives the resultant force, but where does the force come from? So let’s go back to the original meaning of a virtue being an “endowment”, taking Virtues as being “A Powerful Gift” of the Universe to man, part of his essential nature, but sheathed in ignorance, which must be removed for essential virtue to shine forth, thus the emphasis in the 26 Virtues of the Bhagavad Gita of the 4 basic Virtues, 2 of which have a positive approach, and 2 a negative approach, i.e. removing vice. And in the remaining 22 there are 4 negative perspectives for removal as well. The etymology of “virtue” goes back to Latin “virtutem”, from “vir”, man, and this exactly coincides with Sanskrit “virah” related to “man”, a “hero” and “strength and power”. This is probably why Goethe said “A man (vir) must strive to become what he IS (Virtuous).” I had no idea what the virtues were at first. So after the first month of putting my plan in action, I decided to apply the teaching “Take out each Virtue in turn and practise it”. But how on earth to do that?

A room with a view

From our room, we see the outside world clearly. There's the sea and sky, the trees and sandy earth. We're inside a room looking out, from a house full of rooms, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber. Our curtains look dark from inside, drawn back with tie backs and tassels. There are bars on the window and it is closed. Who is in the room with us? We cannot see. We are transfixed by the beautiful views outside. We do not turn around. There may be a chest of drawers full of valuable objects. There's a luxurious bed, a bathroom en suite, cosy chairs, another window facing south, carpets on the wooden floors. And a door to a corridor and more rooms – a lounge, a salon, a bar, a terrace to have breakfast on, a kitchen where the food is made. And upstairs is a turret tower converted into an observatory, from which we see the moon and the stars. All this is behind us, but our camera eyes only see the world outside. There's more light out there. To whom does this house belong? It needs attention. Please let's call an electrician, have the lights fixed inside the house, and search through all its treasures and joys. We turn around, we look within. Because there is another world waiting to be discovered inside.

Mind Cleaning

Or The Stevie Wonder Method of Always Living in the Positive, or Pratipaksa Bhavana.

Gita Virtue number 24 is “chastity”, but chastity here is not just about restraining sexual impulses. The word comes from Latin, castitatem (nominative castitas) "purity, chastity" from castus, which in turn is from the root “kas” or “kes” “to cut off”. What does it mean to cut off or be cut off? Yes, it’s similar to cutting off testicles, castration, but it refers to “cut off from faults, and hence pure”.  It goes back to the Sanskrit term “Saucam” meaning cleanliness, purity, purity of heart or mind.

The ancients described the mind as being a vessel. A vessel contains material. Water can be poured in. Wine can be stored in it. Grain and seeds can be kept inside. Whatever. But if the mind is a vessel, what do we store in it? You have to look inside and see. There are memories, even if we don’t know exactly how they are remembered; there are thoughts that run on and on perpetually; there are flashes of feeling that rise up and subside; desires, wants, needs; and there is SOMEONE watching this as it happens. That someone is you, your Self-Awareness. As long as there is some degree of self-awareness, there can be a degree of “control” or “observance” of states of mind. You can see a thought, feeling or sensation as it arises. If you can’t, if you’re not “present inside yourself”, you are in “Self-Awareness State 2” (normal waking existence), and therefore you are your thought, feeling or sensation. This is called a state of attachment or identification. It is the basic egoic state. You are identified so completely with your thought, your imagined self or your “ego”, that you have no choice but to be that. At that moment you are nothing else but that. This is the state where all the damage is done, the state of irresponsibility, a state largely enveloped in negativity. This state needs a tool for working on it and dealing with the negativity. This tool is the same as above: increased Self-Awareness, to be able to “clean the mind”.

Our everyday “thinking mind” has to be ironed out and brought into a better condition for any real change to happen. Do you remember an old story about building on a stable full of dung? Hercules had to clean out the Augean Stables as one of the twelve necessary labours, listed as his fifth labour. These Twelve Labours were to atone for his “sins” and be rewarded with immortality. There is no intention of being high-handed by using the word “sin”. The original Greek word (used in the Bible) was hamartano/hamartia, which simply meant “missing  the mark” (as in archery), presupposing there is a “mark” and that when we miss it, we fail to receive our prize. The mark is the achievement of Virtue, the method is by diverting rivers from their course (the flow of unconsciousness) and sending them through the stables of the mind, where the dung is washed out in one day if we are as brave and as strong as Hercules. Or in various days, months or years if we are more ordinary people carrying no laurels on our brows.

One method of cleaning the mind is listening to the Stevie Wonder song “Positivity”, believing the song and applying it. The same method was re-introduced by Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th century after being lost in ancient history for ages. It is simply a practical application of the Bhagavad Gita texts from two millennia before Christ. Ancient wisdom, yes, and it’s called Pratipaksa Bhavana, which means “taking the opposite point of view”. This is an example of the right functioning of the human thinking process to clean up the mind. It presupposes you know what “dirtiness” of the mind is. Dirtiness of the mind is anything that is not Virtue. Since there are about 26 virtues, anything other than these is dirt – unnecessary, useless, expenders of vital energy for no good purpose, to be corrected by the practise of the Virtues.

It is our language that makes us believe certain things, because they have always been described this way. “I feel angry, I feel sad, I feel depressed”, as if the whole of YOU were that feeling and nothing else existed! This is bad psychology, impractical for our purposes. It is more correct to say “I give way to Anger, I give way to Sadness, I give way to Depression.” These states of mind are waves of energy that influence us and exert their power over us. Either you give way to them or you prevent them from taking over your whole being. If you are caught in the middle, then you can apply Pratipaksa Bhavana. Let’s do the exercise:

Anger (wrath)

Someone has said or done something “terrible” to me and I give way to Anger. But I take a few deep breaths, get back into my present moment, and intentionally use my thinking process in the following way (instead of allowing it to continue with my angry thoughts). I start thinking thoughts opposite to the negative thoughts that first came to my mind and which produced the anger. I think as follows:

“Well, this person sees things in a different way, and I don’t know exactly how he sees them, but perhaps earlier on he got angry himself, because something happened to him this morning – he got fired, lost his job, had a fight with his partner, lost his dog, or maybe someone in his family died recently and he’s feeling terrible. So:

1) There are imagined reasons for his anger which I do not know.

2) He can’t always be like this, no one is. He can’t always be angry with everybody, he must show some affection or tenderness to someone at some point, so he can’t be all bad. He must be loving in some cases, it’s just not this time with me.

3) And looking to myself, I think: And why should I give way to anger just because he has insulted me? Does he really know me? If he doesn’t, then his insult isn’t really directed at “me”. If he does, he may be using insider information to get at me, and why should I let him? Why should a close friend or family member use privileged information to insult me or try to hurt me? What is this “me” anyway? I don’t know all of it, and neither does he, so I can’t permit this Angriness to continue inside me, because it is bad for me, will cause a conflict, turn to guilt, self-condemnation, fester and canker in the mind, etc.

4) In any case, I am more than the “me” receiving the Anger and the “him” trying to pass it on to me. What about my inner worth, my human condition of having a spark of Life, Mind or Soul, my intrinsic value and virtue as a person? I am more than one fleeting emotion. And so is this person."

And so after thinking things through rightly, and realising that “negative” things are only incidental to, and not essential to, the person, I apply the Virtue of Forgiveness and exempt the other person from responsibility by taking the responsibility of Forgiving upon myself. And I continue to concentrate on my breathing and I stay in my Present Moment, not going back to reminisce or speculate on the past, because that is just dirtying the mind again, and I have just successfully cleaned away the dirt in a flash. And my next event is in the Now.

So if you want to practise, take out each negative feeling (produced by thought) that you experience and write out your Positive Thinking or Pratipaksa Bhavana about it. Then Forgive and Live. And listen to Stevie Wonder’s “Positivity” if you need a reminder. 

ü  Anger (wrath)

ü  Impatience (initial non-acceptance, leading to annoyance)

ü  Annoyance (the start of irritation)

ü  Irritation (annoyance getting worse)

ü  Frustration (the result of allowing annoyance and irritation to dwell and produce depression)

ü  Boredom (need to be stimulated)

ü  Anxiety (gnawing worry)

ü  Nervousness (fidgeting and worrying)

ü  Covetousness (grasping and desiring)

ü  Despair (disappointment)

ü  Disgust (rejection)

ü  Guilt (shame)

ü  Hostility (bitterness)

ü  Contempt (hate, violence)

ü  Jealousy (fear of someone taking what you think is yours)

ü  Envy (desire for another’s perceived superiority)

ü  Pride (vanity, overweening importance of self)

ü  Sadness (sorrow, hurt)

Edward’s Diary Entry 13 - Higher or Lower

What is it that belongs to Higher or Lower Nature? Do we dare classify human experiences as good or bad? Isn’t everything acceptable today? We are urged to accept things as “normal”… But if we’re smart, we do think about it. But much confusion reigns. If we’re sensitive and listen to certain things, we seem to be threatened with extinction as a species, what with nuclear disasters, climate change, overpopulation or whatever happens to be in the news. But the person intent on Self-Awareness will pay little attention to these matters and will only seek development of his or her own reality, as a means to correct the misbehaviour of the world. Misbehaviour, because there is something higher or lower. Anything that belongs to lower nature has to drop away for evolution. Anything that pertains to Higher Nature must be nurtured and promoted. It’s easy. Except that we don’t always agree on which is higher and which is lower. Six thousand years ago, the Vedantists knew. Today, there is no excuse, we can also know. But the mass of unknowing is very powerful, and modern media can only convey what the “average man or woman” is expected to understand. It’s a tragedy, but it’s an unconscious process: whatever does not evolve and progress, involves and degenerates. But our Self-Awareness process is the other way around: whatever does not promote self-awareness is “bad”, whatever does is “good”. And therefore, life becomes simple. With Self-Awareness and living in the Now, lower nature is seen but not reacted to (as far as possible). You may be wondering, but here are some examples of lower nature, in legalese, including but not limited to: fear, cheating, hypocrisy, untruth, uncleanliness, attachment, likes and dislikes, desires and aversions, envy, jealousy, conflict, separation, guilt, self-condemnation, blame, ignorance, laziness, distraction, miserliness, uncaringness, impulsiveness, lack of spontaneity, indulgence, lack of alertness, lack of discrimination, lack of studiousness, lack of effort, lack of self-discipline, excesses, crookedness, deceit, lying, hurtful truths, non-alignment of though-word-deed, selfishness, harm, injury, violence, anger and wrath (which beget eight kinds of vices: rashness, injustice, persecution, jealousy, taking possession of others’ property, harsh words, cruelty and killing), aggression, lack of self-restraint, impatience, intranquillity, maliciousness, fault-finding, backbiting, complaining, narrow-mindedness, conceit, pride, prejudice, greed, self-mortification, harshness, ill-wishing, lack of modesty or shame, useless activities, fickleness, nervousness, fidgeting, lack of energy, intolerance, lack of forgiveness, lack of forbearance, lack of endurance, deception, lust, resentment, malice, ill-will, overweening pride, egoism, self-centredness. And then go back and start again, with all the variants of these!  More again soon…

¿Quién soy yo?

Nadie realmente sabe…

Cayendo de repente en la cuenta de que no sabía quién era, el Mulá Nasrudín se lanzó a la calle en busca de alguien que lo pudiera reconocer.

La muchedumbre era densa, pero se hallaba en un pueblo ajeno, y no encontró ninguna cara conocida.

De pronto se encontró en la tienda de un ebanista.

–¿Qué puedo hacer por usted? – preguntó el artesano.

Nasrudín no dijo nada.

–¿Desea usted alguna cosa de madera? – le preguntó

– Lo primero es lo primero – dijo el Mulá. – Vamos a ver. ¿Usted me ha visto entrar en su negocio?

– Sí, claro.

– Muy bien. Y ¿me reconoce? ¿Me ha visto usted alguna vez en su vida?

– No, nunca – dijo el artesano.

– Entonces ¿cómo sabe usted que soy yo?

From our copy of The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasreddin, by Idries Shah, illustrated by Richard Williams. Spanish retranslation by us.

Edward’s Diary Entry 12 - Lower and Higher

The inevitable result of mental practice using Self-Enquiry (Vichara) is that life is better, thanks to daily planning and structuring. There is only a given amount of time for “inside” or “spirit”, and a given amount of time for “outside”, or body, family and society. It is orderly, tidy, organised. Yes, exceptions may come, but they can be planned. We are not interested in order for order’s sake, only for the sake of experiencing Self-Awareness. As soon as one forgets oneself, the order has to be disordered or re-ordered. If rhythmic processes like breathing or walking bring forgetfulness or drowsiness, we can change them immediately, by holding our breath, asking “Who Am I?” on the outbreath instead of the inbreath, or in between, or switching from left leg lead to right leg lead when walking – anything your spontaneity suggests. You get skilled at this and it becomes easy to deal with. Social and family life is better too. By practising virtues, or course, one is naturally very kind and sweet, easygoing and patient, quick to laugh, empathetic when listening, calm, tranquil and peaceful, so your companions find a certain good-naturedness that they can appreciate, even if they do think you’re a little strange! One of my great fears years ago was this: “If it is true that the spirit is the only reality, in this world we are going to have to give up so many material and intellectual things that seem ‘good and nice’ How can that be?” When analysed, this is an excuse or a reflection of a stage only. Because it is not so simple. Yes, things must be “given up”. But what things are these? Anything that belongs to “Lower Nature”. But lower nature is not given up because of a belief or a dogma or a conviction. Lower nature is given up when it is seen as being futile, useless and inconvenient. It dissolves into its constituent part, which is a mere passing thought, part of the ceaseless stream of thoughts that come and go. Even when Higher Nature is just beginning to be entrenched – and this is in the measure that lower nature dissolves – then everything becomes much simpler, more natural, and our underlying joy begins to seep through. So, yes, some things go – the unruliness, the wants and needs, the entertainment at any cost, the skirt-chasing or man-hunting, the idea that the world was made to provide me with infinite pleasures, all the ideas, beliefs, convictions, traumas, grudges, complaints, automatic reactions and conditioned behaviour patterns, the philosophical ideas as yet unrealised – all these fly out the window. But the fresh air coming in from what we classify as Higher Nature is more than enough to compensate for this, even if we seem a little childlike to society. Or upside down, like our Mullah Nasrudin, in the picture. It is said that dear old George Bernard Shaw professed his contempt for Indian yogis in 1898 saying, “You Indian saints are the most useless of men; you have no respect for time.” Whereupon the Saint immediately replied, “It is you who are slaves of time. I live in Eternity.” 

Edward’s Diary Entry 11 - Infinity?

We live in a crazy world, and we can now measure the craziness. When I was a kid, I had a book of science-fiction stories called “Store of Infinity”. That’s what it’s like today. A department store with infinite goods and services available for all. With our various interests, we sit down to talk, and all of a sudden we all take out our smartphones and tablets and spend hours and hours – if we have the free time – looking at the latest videos, quotes, jokes, pictures or whatever, expressing our likes or dislikes and comparing them. All the TV series, the films, and books and blogs and videos and tweets, and on and on it goes. At work we have to be totally efficient and use time to our advantage and respond to instantaneous messaging and emails. And then if you watch TV, plug in your earphones and listen to your favourite music, answer emails, read a newspaper or settle down with a nice book, you keep your mind occupied all the time with inputs from outside. And our minds are so smart they adapt right away. They even love it! Minds love to be occupied. It’s their nature; what they’ve been taught to do. And the possibilities are infinite. We no longer believe in Relativity. We want Total Infinity. And thanks to modern media and networks, we’ve got it: Worldometers publishes real-time counters that says some 2.4 million new book titles were published in 2015; 400 million newspapers circulated today; 200 billion emails sent every day; 800 million tweets; 3.5 billion google searches today, etc. Technology is a means to an end, and it’s great. But how often do we use technology instead of letting it use us? We have to have an end for the means to be viable in our lives. So in the face of Infinity, we have to focus daily on One Single Thing, one Finite Element, the one thing that makes our world go round without our even noticing it. One single mantra, a single concept: “I”, or “Who am I”. Only that concept can counteract all the attention-grabbing influences that come from the infinity of aims, desires, wishes, wants and other mental constructs that allow our perceptions to reach out to an infinite choice of possibilities in the world “out there” as opposed to our own “inner world”. Who can do this? Does anyone really want to? Are we “mad” if we look inside? Or saner? You choose.

Mind the Mind - or The Efficient Use of Energy Resources

We received the question: What can we do to help the world, what with climate change, dwindling resources, terrorism, hunger and everything?

Ok, you believe in clean air, healthy food, world peace. You want to combat climate change, overpopulation, hunger. You’re against terrorism, war and hatred. You think love makes the world go round, you have heard that inside we are “pure essences of love”, and you do acts of charity and support your friends, neighbours and even strangers. You try to listen empathetically, you meditate and try to see the oneness of all. So maybe you are a Vegan or a vegetarian, or at least you believe in organic food. You exercise and consume low-fat products, because everyone says that’s what you should be doing. Great. Now what? Have we solved all of life’s problems?

Well, after caring for our bodies – not too ascetically because we live in a culture of abundance – what are we doing with and to our minds? The premise of “you are what you eat” means the body is the recipient of all nourishing and non-nourishing things that we consume through the mouth and enjoy through taste, smell, sight and even touch.

Another premise is “you are what you think, feel and experience”: the mind is the recipient of all nourishing and non-nourishing things that we allow to enter through sight, sound, sensation or feeling (sense perceptions) and how we react by thinking, feeling or reacting to these stimuli (mental reactions).

Why so much concern for the body and what we eat? Of course nowadays, what with so many chemicals and artificial products, we have to be a little more careful than before, when things were “more natural”, but why all this insistence on eating well? Mankind has survived for millions of years without abundance. Humanity grew up by occasionally feasting and often fasting and making do with whatever Nature could give him. In ancient times in fact, scarcity was rampant. Today, abundance is rampant in what we call the civilised world. There are 1.6 billion out of 7.3 billion who are “overweight”, which is 21% of the world’s population. But 784 million are undernourished, 675 million do not have access to drinking water. It would appear to a reasonable observer from another planet that mankind is doing a very poor job of caring for his own species, let alone the other species that are endangered or already practically extinct. Many human beings are well, or too well, but all too many others are unwell. Yet we call ourselves civilised.

The reason is we only start caring about what we put into our bodies when we either have 1) a life philosophy that regulates this, or 2) a kind of superabundance that allows to us be capricious and faddy. When climate change, overpopulation and the desecration and the desertification of the land comes – and it looks like it will if current trends continue – then we shall see if the caprices and fads continue, too, or whether we will have to eat whatever there is, or simply go hungry, starve and finally die out.

So, to prevent this, the solution is the “mind”. My mind, your mind, the mind of your spouse, your lover, your neighbour, the mind of the chance acquaintance at the café round the corner – wherever you happen to be. How can the mind prevent this? By looking at itself, and by first being convinced that there is such a thing as “mind over matter”, and that this “does matter”. For the time being, don’t get overly concerned about what you put into your body. Just go with what you have going. But you should become very, very serious and alert as to what you PUT INTO or ALLOW TO DWELL IN YOUR MIND.

Here is a list of the no-no’s, from A to Z, and it’s not a question of belief or a set or compulsory morals to be adhered to. It’s more a question of sustainability, eco-friendliness, pure ecology and basic psychology of the New Era, to be explained below.

ü  Anger (wrath)

ü  Impatience (initial non-acceptance, leading to annoyance)

ü  Annoyance (the start of irritation)

ü  Irritation (annoyance getting worse)

ü  Frustration (the result of allowing annoyance and irritation to dwell and produce depression)

ü  Boredom (need to be stimulated)

ü  Anxiety (gnawing worry)

ü  Nervousness (fidgeting and worrying)

ü  Covetousness (grasping and desiring)

ü  Despair (disappointment)

ü  Disgust (rejection)

ü  Guilt (shame)

ü  Hostility (bitterness)

ü  Contempt (hate, violence)

ü  Jealousy (fear of someone taking what you think is yours)

ü  Envy (desire for another’s perceived superiority)

ü  Pride (vanity, overweening importance of self)

ü  Sadness (sorrow, hurt)

Each time you “feel” these emotions – we use this verb in quotation marks because they are mostly “thoughts” that affect the nervous system and are not real “feelings” – and act on them, you are contributing to an infection, a viral disease, an epidemic that affects both you, your loved ones, those close to you and the whole planet and universe. Because energy is not created on Earth. We tend to think there is an industry on the planet that “creates” or produces energy, but this is just a conventional fiction. No energy comes from anywhere else but from the Sun, without which we wouldn’t be here. (Petroleum? Liquid solar energy from millions of years ago. Coal? Fossilised solar energy. Water? The blood of the Earth, only here because the Sun is here, etc.). On a normal day, our friends at worldometers calculate that some 20 billion MWh of energy strike the Earth from the Sun. A marvellous figure, and no one should dispute it. It’s not the exact amount that counts, but the fact that it only comes from the Sun. We humans transform our share of this energy by acting and reacting to stimuli. Our minds process this energy in interpreting our sensations. When we feel, we are using solar power. When we think, it’s the sun’s energy. When we move, we locomote thanks to the Sun. Or would you be doing the same things you normally do every day if you were suddenly placed on the surface of Pluto, from which the sun would appear as a star, albeit a bright star? You wouldn’t exist there for a second. You can only exist as you are because of where you are and because of the Earth’s Sun.

Now whatever goes on in your MIND is a planetary, environmental and ecological reality. Either your mind uses the Sun’s energy to promote goodness, healthiness, well-being and serenity, using its limited amount of energy for beneficial purposes, or your mind uses its limited solar power input to create more badness, more unhealthiness, lesser well-being and more insecurity for you and for all. It is really all up to you. You can’t ask or force anyone else to do your work for you. No one can feed energy into a machine to make products it hasn’t been designed to make.  But we humans have been designed to produce a variety of products, for better or for worse. We can and must re-design ourselves. We can because it’s built into our system. That’s what makes us human. But we can also remain sub-human or “normal”, and produce “junk thoughts”, in addition to spam or junk mail. Or we can progress towards being super-human, or fully self-aware. For that we have to re-design our MINDS to produce “good work” for ourselves and humanity before it’s too late. And it’s too late for you when you’re already feeble and dying, or dead. And it’s too late for the World when it’s clogged full of pollution, the ice-caps have melted and famine has spread across the abundant and beautiful lands that human beings didn’t even make – they were only just stupid enough to destroy them because they found they weren’t really as “Aware” or “Self-Aware” as they thought they were. Shame.

So look into your mind, find some support to help you through the initial phases, and practise Self-Awareness. It will help the world. Because the world is you and you create the world through your human experience.

Next article: “Mind Cleaning: The Stevie Wonder Method of Always Living in the Positive”, or Pratipaksa Bhavana.