Edward’s Diary Entry 162: How do we "test-drive" the mind processes?

Someone asked me where I got the 4 “mind components” of Awareness, Memory, Identity and Discrimination from – they weren’t in any textbook he had read. So I said, it’s an update of the ancient yogic description, but let’s talk about a way to see if this actually coincides with what we can see in our minds.

First, you have to sit down quietly to test this out. When you sit and experience, various things happen. You notice your body, your breathing, maybe a discomfort here or there, sounds from outside, maybe a sound of a heartbeat or the gurgling of the stomach from inside. Where is this happening? To whom is the experience being offered? To me, you say. It is happening to me. I notice it. And you’re right: there is something that is basically “you” and that “you” is a screen on which these perceptions appear and disappear. We cannot imagine thoughts arising, emotions being felt, sensations being received, identifying with something or discriminating between anything if there is no “me” to experience this. This “me” is the Awareness we have, or have been given, or promote within ourselves. For anything to be experienced, there must be a consciousness of being the experiencer. That experiencer is what we call Awareness, consciousness, citta – call it by any other name if you will – but this is the basic fact of being alive, reacting to our environment, inside or out, or actually being an entity that perceives something from within or without.

The test of this Awareness is that you cannot get behind it and observe it. You and Awareness are one. If you are observing something (an object), the one that is doing the observing is you (the subject). using Awareness. You can’t make a subject into an object. You can’t observe Awareness. You are either more or less aware or more or less unaware at any given time.

Memory, manas. This is the easiest mind function to observe. While sitting quietly, an image or a picture or a set of words pop up. You see it is something you have experienced in the past. A happening yesterday, or 15 years ago. Someone’s face, some harsh words spoken to you 3 decades ago. A kind, warm feeling of being caressed or kissed, or hugged by your mother. A dog you once knew. A painting or a book that you liked. A long lost friend. This is the storehouse of impressions gathered, at least since childhood. Many of these impressions are “lost” and cannot be found at will, but they seem to be there somehow, because certain circumstances allow them to be “found” again. They may be stored in more conscious places or deep down in the unconscious or subconscious – which are simply storerooms which we have not yet unlocked.

To test this out, you purposefully sit and wait with a question as to where you put something or what was the name of that person who once did or said something. You review the memories surrounding that event and allow pictures and images to flow. You may come up with something, you may not. But you are watching, or placing before your Awareness, all the memories related to this event and perhaps associated with others, as they come out of “nowhere” and begin to flow. But watch out, because Memory (past) is easily converted into Imagination (future) and you may begin to float off on a flight of fantasy. That is the wonder of Memory: it can re-hash and re-concoct past events and create what seem to be brand-new events for the future.

Discrimination (Intellect, buddhi). This is what usually passes for the thinking mind, the logical brain. It is a yes-no, on-off kind of thing. It is the choice – either immediate or pondered on for some time. This is this; this is therefore not that. It’s what computers use: zeros and ones, to attempt to get a firm grasp on a reality, or on the reality it is capable of grasping! This is the “thinking brain” or “thought process” when rationally or logically used to decide on one thing or another. If you use it properly, it is beneficial. If used inadequately, it is a hassle and a nuisance to both yourself and others. An inadequate use of this capacity would be to decide, or come to a fixed conclusion, on who you are, triggering the next capacity: Identity...

Identity (Self-Sense, Ahankara). This is an inculcated “picture” of oneself as an entity, a person, usually being wrapped in a bag of skin, and entertaining certain tendencies, thoughts and feelings about him or herself, based on separation between what is “me” and what is not “me” – like, from skin out equals “not me”; from skin in equals “me”. It is what you usually mean when you say “I”. But at another moment, that same “I” may become something different, because each little thought, feeling or sensation brings another “I” in its train, and these are often contradictory, especially when awareness is low. This is the power of Identification, or I-placement: This capacity tends to ascribe to itself whatever it momentarily deems good, and to others what it considers “not good”.

To test this out, you sit quietly for another session and ask yourself who you are. Your Intellect – if you can keep it on track – will tell you: I am this body, I am this person, a father to some offspring, a child to a parent, a friend to a friend, an enemy to an enemy, a taxpayer to the government, a member of the choir to your church, a bad driver to other drivers if you make a silly mistake, a pianist, a poet, a writer, a famous magistrate, a tramp, a great lover one day and a fool the next, etc., etc. Express your opinion and believe it, placing your sense of self into that opinion, and that’s Identity. You are British, French, a Spaniard, a Catalan separatist, a voter, a member of this or that political party. You wear certain clothes, you comb your hair a certain way, you have a tattoo or a diamond earring. You are expressing an identity with which you feel comfortable. Occasionally there are rumblings from down below with which you don’t feel comfortable, but you try to cover them up or smother them as far as possible and won’t admit these darker experiences to anyone.

If you spend some time on sorting through who you are – who you really are deep down inside – you will see that all you have is opinions and thoughts about it. You’ve read about it, you’ve studied a little modern psychology about it, and maybe even come to some conclusions about it. But you don’t really know. Your sense of self slips into everything you say and feel. You identify with every thought and feeling, with no real knowledge of where these thoughts and feelings come from. You think they are a product of your surroundings, but actually all this experience is happening inside your head, in your brain, your mind. External stimuli set off a reaction and often this reaction is merely unconscious, a sort of reflex.

You’ve been taught that stimuli often rule over you and your reactions. It’s normal, they say. Only a superhuman being could possibly make his or her own mind the seat of all choices and never be influenced by externals, right? No one is really in control of their own minds, haven’t you been told that? And so, lacking in knowledge and believing your social milieu, you make the big lie become true: we are never responsible for what we think, feel, say and often do. We refuse responsibility, and then complain about others being irresponsible.

So in the final analysis, Identity is a convenient or inconvenient fiction, a product of the thought-process, and it has no real existence of its own. It is make-believe. Insofar as it helps us to survive and find well-being, it is good. When it makes our world – our inner and outer world – too small, narrow and constricted, it is a civilised type of criminality that ultimately produces violence in the mindstuff and provokes havoc throughout the world at large. The excesses of Identity must be tamed by the exercise of humility, and other virtues.

Can you find any other capacities for experience in the mind as you sit there quietly and look? Or as you walk about in the world and gather impressions?  List them below and we’ll look at them:

Edward’s Diary Entry 161: Getting back into the “Now”

As a reminder, in case you get flustered, anxious impatient, sad, bored, stressed-out, irritated, frustrated, nervous, angry, aggressive, fearful or violent… and find yourself going on and on and getting nowhere, you’re probably in a mental “now” moment that is either re-hashing the past, or obsessed with the future.

It’s not a question of being in the “now” or not being in the “now”. We’ve already said that now is now and bodies, at least, are in the “now” in real time. The unconscious mind processes are also in “now”-mode, but that doesn’t do us much good… That small percentage of our conscious minds should be focused on the “now” as well.

But this always depends on our Awareness of “now”. And how big and how clear our mental “now” happens to be – or we actually make it! If Awareness is engulfed in a hyperactive thought-process, our “now” can be very small and limited; and that means… you’re in for trouble. Take this situation as an example:

The mental process of 1) receiving an “insult”; 2) getting angry, 3) reacting to that anger and becoming violent in word or deed, 4) mentally dwelling on this and becoming further incensed by the event, and 5) creating a loop-feeling of further insult, agitation and anger, and 6) talking about this and ranting on and on with other people as soon as you have the chance…is all part of a “now” which is totally miniscule and stuck in a single moment of time, quite unconscious of all ensuing realities after the initial event.

I have seen this process last 2 to 3 hours in subjects, and their level of anxiety and mental suffering prevents them from seeing and even doing all sorts of things, even simple things like doing their jobs with a degree of efficacy! And what about the blue sky? the sunshine? a smile? some laughter? Where is the sound of birds singing? Where the cool breeze? A leaf falling from a tree? A sensation of pleasure as one rides a motorcycle or bike? Where the perfect spinning of the world? A cloud flying across the sky? The joy of breathing? What about simply being alive?

No, such a silly happening has drowned out all the beauty in the world, and one’s mind is centred on the insult received 3 hours ago. And not even an insult – just a chance occurrence of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then words were said that swiftly turned a chance encounter into a violent happening that obsesses you for days on end!

Minds initially confused by wrong thinking and undergoing the mental suffering of emotions out of control need to get back on track, and it’s hard to do this once the spark of violence has been ignited.

The recipe, however, is the same as usual: Breathe, Look, Listen, Sense, Taste, Retire to a quiet room and Chant, or repeat Om. Do a physical sensing exercise, or a tensing and relaxation exercise. Snap the mind out of its rut. Get back onto the “now” track.

It takes practise. It takes intelligence. It requires effort and clarity. These all start with willingness. Good luck, everybody.

Edward’s Diary Entry 160: The inevitability of “Now”

It was a hot summer evening, and the waiter I know at a tavern was complaining about the heat. The third time he spluttered and gasped, he remembered I had helped him with the issue of overcoming an illogical fear of a certain type of insect, so he asked me if I had a solution for the heat as well. I said, “let’s write it down and see,” knowing that he liked to jot things down or compose a little drawing. So we wrote down in Spanish, “Can this moment really be any different from what it is? This very moment. Now!”

He thought for a moment and came to his own very appropriate conclusion. “No, I guess this moment can’t be any different, and if that’s inevitable, I guess I shouldn’t complain about it. It wouldn’t make any sense.” For the time being, he stopped complaining. And he returned to the note on the noticeboard several times after that. Months later, it is still hanging there.

So whatever happens “now” is totally inevitable, and so it is totally “perfect”. Human likes have nothing to do with it. Certain circumstances or conditions have preceded this “now”, or actions have been performed leading up to the present instant, so “now” ensues in consequence and cannot possibly be otherwise. If we constructively put our imagination to use and try to picture the immensity of Eternity, each inevitable instant in our experience can be seen to be entirely exclusive and unique… That’s means it is wondrous, wonderful, incredible. This moment –this “now” – has never come to pass before. And it will never come again. It is a completely one-off experience. And it is up to us to appreciate it – or it’s gone forever!

We often labour under the impression that something happening in the “now” either “should be” or “shouldn’t be”. This is only due to wrong thinking, which is a futile form of automatic data-processing based on the past, i.e., pre-conditioning, pre-disposition, fixation with our likes and dislikes, etc. Instead of simply seeing the perfect nature of “now”, our minds pounce on a thinking-based conclusion about what we imagine we perceive. We reject the immensity of the present moment before us, with its infinite possibilities, and grasp onto one single aspect of it: our own opinion of it! That is blindness; imprisonment. Being trapped by a fantasy, a thought-induced fiction that only corresponds to some pre-established bias. This happens because of low Self-Awareness.

So an intelligent student of the mind will always be concerned about how to stop wrong thinking about the present, enhance Self-Awareness, and get in tune with reality as far as possible.

Say an event happens in the “now”. We have two basic choices:

-       Accepting the event in the “now” as inevitable has a positive effect on the mind and emotions. We apply our Self-Awareness and see and accept reality. We do not start thinking that it is either “for or against us”. It is simply reality. This does not mean we don’t do anything about it. What we choose to do about it, how we act in consequence, if action is taken, will depend on our straight thinking process, after recognising the uniqueness of this instant, and deciding on the action to be taken, if any.

-      But immediately rejecting what we see as an event in the “now” has a negative effect on the mind and emotions. We have interpreted “reality” as being “against us” (but who are we anyway? just our image of ourselves?), and this causes a degree of turmoil in our minds, emotions and even body. It gives rise to senseless complaining, moodiness, envy, jealousy, anger, rage, all the way to actual violence. Plant a seed of rejection and you ultimately engender violence. You suffer. You always suffer when your Self-Awareness is low, and the mind simply reacts in habitual patterns. Nothing new ever happens for us in that state. We will repeat and repeat all our little mistakes and quirks and even occasional joys like a clockwork mechanism. We kill all the infinite possibilities of the “now” in one fell swoop. 

So now what? Be present and accept the inevitable now.

Edward’s Diary Entry 159: What is “Now”, anyway?

Merrian-Webster confuses us, because we are already mixed up about “now”. According to the dictionary, it is “a) at the present time or moment; b) in the time immediately before the present; or c) in the time immediately to follow”. Isn’t that cute? Just to cover our ignorance, our “nows” are often “before, now and after”! In Spanish, “now” can even be “mañana”!

Joking apart, in the strictest of analyses, there is only “now”, meaning this very instant or present moment, now! But then again there is very little “now” for most of us, because if we were cognizant of a truly conscious and all-pervading “now” and we were fully immersed in it, we would all be enlightened and see reality as it is. This is obviously not the case, as our “nows” are very tiny and limited, infiltrated with lots of “befores” and “afters” – a product of the thinking process. But in the body the story is different.

Unconsciously, we have many “nows” that are totally functional. Do you think the cells of the body don’t act on “nows” and “right-aways” and “instantaneous moments of reaction”? Of course they do. The body lives in its own world of total “now”. Everything that is happening within the body is on a “now-basis”: instant action and reaction to continue the life process. Can you imagine a lazy blood cell that wants to wait until “tomorrow” to do its job? Or a stressed-out alveoli that says it doesn’t really want to deal with that oxygen intake business right now, preferring to do it “later”? Or maybe a madcap neuron that has declared a strike and refuses to transmit a synapse “at this precise instant”? No, the body is in “now” mode – at least the unconscious survival process corresponding to it.

Within our normal “waking” consciousness, our so-called “will”, or just laziness, may delay reactions or refuse to act, or we may act inefficiently or wrongfully, but this is part of the psychological function; the way our minds operate. But again, unconsciously, everything is OK in the mind. Impressions are being received, willy-nilly, either through our conscious choice or just because of our unconscious conditioning. On the cellular level, the basis of mental reactions is “now-based”. Because herein lies the truth – there IS no other time in any case. Nothing can really be OUTSIDE the “now”. At least nothing of any consequence…

And there’s the rub. Existentially, there is no other time than NOW. Bodies and minds are already in the NOW. But if our partial, puny, untrained thinking minds – in what we on this blog call S-A 2, or the “normal civilised waking state” – are busy with all kinds of ingrained thought processes, and we are fully identified with these, this mode of existence has very little to do psychologically with the true NOW. Stimuli from impressions (which we might call “reality”) hit this reduced field of awareness and provoke habitual reactions in the mindstuff: likes and dislikes, automatic reactions from past experiences, sometimes expectations of future possibilities, etc. Examples: a) It is cold, I don’t like the cold, I complain about the cold, get upset, and wish for warmer weather… b) Someone says a phrase I don’t agree with, I reject it and think how much cleverer I am than that silly person… c) A person does something I think is wrong, and I criticise that person mercilessly, although I have probably done the same thing as him and it didn’t matter much to me at the time!

So, survival and physiology are proceeding quite consequentially from past experiences, and if we don’t realise and accept “now” as it is, it is because our Awareness is low. Our thinking and emoting processes are running the show, controlling our present experience, and making all kinds of judgements about (innocent) present impressions: “I like this”, “I don’t like that”, this is good”, “that is no good”, “I wish this wouldn’t happen”, “If only it could be otherwise”, etc.

The state of our “Nows” depends on our Self-Awareness (S-A), so let’s review the various levels we have talked about before:

In S-A 0, or deep sleep. NOW is timeless. 4 hours is less than a mere instant. We sleep and wake, and to our awareness, no time has passed, and yet somehow the clock says various hours have gone by.

In S-A 1, or REM sleep, NOW is an instant. A dream may seem long, but it may be just a bat of an eyelash. Memory plays a trick on us and makes us think that perhaps many “nows” have gone by.

In S-A 2, or the “normal civilised waking state”, NOW is a barely conscious flash, which then becomes infiltrated by Memory and ensuing Imagination, and hijacked by our own Identification process, producing an automatic (learned) reaction from the mindstuff, and continuing in a chain reaction to produce more of the same: “semi-nows” of unknown consequences… This is where we must distinguish existential “nows” in the survival process; physiological “nows” in our bodily processes; and the highly disorganised psychological “nows” of our mental functions, let’s say “exclusionary nows”, which may or may not correspond to the NOW of reality.

In S-A 3, or a degree of Self-Awareness, NOW is a more conscious reality, and the higher the awareness the more the NOW starts to include or encompass. There begins to be a separation in the mindstuff, with Awareness (“I”) observing the impressions being received by “me”, witnessing reactions in the mind, determining their nature and deciding on the appropriate action or inaction to take. The mental operations of Memory and Identification are observed by Awareness, and the Discriminatory function decides how to interpret these. This is the beginning of awakening to the manifold reality of NOW.

In S-A 4, which we might call Cosmic or Solar Awareness, NOW becomes the only reality, Eternity in one instant, everything is seen as it is in a vast cosmic play of the elements. This is beyond our experience at present, because our Awareness in “lower” states is only partial. It may be a conscious form of the Timeless NOW of S-A 0, when we are in deep sleep and resting in the bosom of the universe.

Next week, we’ll look at the inevitability of now, the exclusivity of now, and how “now” can never be “then”…

Edward’s Diary Entry 158: What Now My Love?

Great version here!

Ordinarily, this is a love song about having lost one’s lover. In the original French composed by Gilbert Bécaud (Et maintenant), as well. The English lyrics are by the great songwriter Carl Sigman (1909-2000). But let’s take another look.

It could very well be the story of modern-day, civilised, “soulless” man (and woman). Let’s take the body and the mind as the “given” and the “acquired” from society and memory, and continue on from there. One’s “love” often refers to the “spirit or soul” in mystical and spiritual poetry. So the lament here is not being in contact with one’s “love”, one’s true self. But why would a soul leave somebody? It doesn’t. It cannot leave the body and mind. It is always there behind it, but our identification with outer things, externals like thought-concepts, beliefs and opinions, and our very own sense of self as a mere bodily mechanism (of which we are conscious of very little in any case) and a thinking mind (idem), is what tricks us into thinking that there is nothing else there. Our “love” never leaves us. It is we who leave Her – way down in the subconscious and unconscious part of ourselves. And there She pines for us.

It is true. When the “spirit” or “you” behind you is lost, the feeling is that you can hardly live though another day. You occupy yourself with adventures and entertainment. But you have that uncanny feeling that all your dreams are nothing but ashes. As you wander from stimulus to new stimulus, your hopes and dreams turn to mud.

Yes, you realise somehow that once you could see and feel. But now you’re numb, and quite unreal, because the most real part of you sits hidden in experiential oblivion. And so you walk in darkness. You have no higher goal. And then the songwriter says it plainly – you’re stripped of your heart, your “soul”. The result? The world no longer makes sense; the stars fall; sea and sky get inverted; you’re the hanged man of the Tarot, upside down in a world that’s crazy.

The ultimate consequence is that one is simply a fool. And if you do go on and on, no one cares, no one cries for you. Others are in the same predicament as well. Everyone is obsessed with their own little worlds, and who cares if someone else should live or die?

In the end, there is nothing, a pitiful little good-bye, one’s last good-bye… You’ve wasted your life. How many more lives to go before you find your Soul, your True Self, and understand where you come from? The answer is in the French title “maintenant”, now. Don’t cry about your life. Find out what it’s all about NOW. Before it’s too late.

Edward’s Diary Entry 157: The busy-ness of doing “nothing”

After another 2-week trip abroad where social commitments were paramount, it’s back to square one: sitting and struggling with the body and mind. The body required a return to Bikram yoga after more a few weeks without stretching, so there was initial stiffness and aching the next day. The mind had to be convinced again that such pursuits were absolutely necessary and that no more laxity would be allowed. Both succumbed to persuasion.

And it is fortunate now that the legs can withstand the crosslegged position, with right leg almost flat on the floor!, for well over an hour while various exercises are being done on the mental scenario. The quieter the body, the calmer the mind can be. Concentration on one single thought is quite good; whereas wandering images, picturings from memory and the fantasies of imagination are quietly observed to spring up, but soon dissipate with sustained awareness on breathing. From the outside, it may seem like nothing much is happening in such a quiet pose, but in fact millions of things are going on at each instant.

One portion of awareness is on the movement of breath, the sensation of incoming air in the nostrils and the deep belly expansion as it gently fills up, stomach moving out to accommodate this invisible nutrient; ribcage reaching out while some hidden spongy tissue gently pushes outwards.

At the same time, part of this awareness is on more weighty physical matters, like the left heel tucked in against the peritoneum, the start of a little numbness in the thigh; the right leg almost drooping down to touch the floor nowadays, with a slight discomfort at the hip socket, which has widened over the last few months to accept this difficult posture for me; the sensation of the spine and neck, with a heavy head perched delicately on top; the hands facing upwards, probably with fingers slightly curled instead of flat, but closed eyes and concentration do not permit one to look down and see... Another dose of awareness hears the inner sound ringing in the head, which never goes away, although one might be more or less conscious of it and listen more or less attentively. Simultaneously the throbbing of the heart can sometimes be noted, and the remote sensation of blood rushing through its chambers and echoing in the inner ears.

And, surprisingly, there is still another share of awareness to be dished out in response to the mental body, the so-called mind. Together with breath – if we are immersed in an exercise using words – there are two phrases repeated over and over again along with the breathing practise. So the sense and meaning of these phrases are present on the mental screen. This becomes repetitious at times and allows the mind, underneath the higher sensation of just being aware and looking, to conjure up picturing of, say, a job to be done, an experience recently had, a string of words heard not too long ago, or a situation automatically imagined as being possible in the near future. As one sits quietly and observes and puts effort into a certain thought, others come unsolicited and un-searched-for. This is the mystery of modern minds. There is no “me” or “I” behind these odd extemporaneous thoughts that pop into the mind: they well up without being asked for from a pit whose bottom we cannot see. We do not know where they come from. We can only see that they do come.

Renewed attention again on either the mental or physical state quietens these occasional meanderings and brings a new sensation of standing above all this activity – both wanted and unwanted. The attention becomes riveted on either a darker speck in the blackness of the eye’s focus on a place, sometimes nearer, sometimes infinitely distant, just above and between the eyebrows; or a field of purple surrounded by yellow that pulsates and comes and goes. It is now, having climbed somewhat above the chattering headbox, that one’s sensation of “I” rests in a gentle and calm cloud of peace and quiet (which may or may not ignite waves of pleasure welling up from the body), which, however, is never enough and must be pursued even further…

And so it is to do nothing and yet be intensely active.

Edward’s Diary Entry 156: Collective Memory Syndrome

Now another factor in national-populism is the constant dwelling on the past. This is where the limited regional “Identity”, ahankara, gets its fuel. The past is present in the mind thanks to "Memory", manas. In Catalonia, the central government gave away powers for education in their own language, Catalán, along with economic and law-enforcement powers, and the region is one of 3 in Spain with its own police force, the Mossos d’Escuadra (along with the Basque country and Navarre). It also has its own communications media. In fact, there is very little the region hasn’t gained from the central government, so autonomy is pretty complete. After 40 years of repression during the Franco regime, things have come full circle since the Spanish Transition and the constitution of ‘78, and today, the region is in the throes of parties who are seeking total “independence”. With just about everything “devolved” or granted to the regional government, some factions want more. They want to set up their own little state, where regional politicians can run the whole show and don’t have to answer to anyone.

This is based on the function of Memory. The younger generation who grew up in an autonomous region under the Spanish constitution of 1978 have no personal experiences of past conflicts. But families always have members who were on one side or another in the past: dictators or democrats, fascists or communists, centre-rights or leftists, monarchists or republicans, Castilian-speakers or Catalan-speakers. These differences in Identity can always be stirred up and made to seem important, like the half-empty-glass theory. There are personal and family memories that have been transmitted, and there are collective memories and history lessons to be “learned”. Memory has a terrible grasp on the mind if it is given exaggerated importance. “Your grandfather was shot by the nationalists”; “Your uncle had to flee Spain and Catalonia so as not to be killed”; “Your mother, your father, your great-grandfather, was this, that or the other.” Poor children of democracy, your forebears had it tough, but now you can identify with them and continue the tradition of strife, struggle and limited identification with stupid human conflicts!

Trapped by Memory, fuelled by fear, hatred and violence, subjected to indoctrination and brain-washing – aka biased and slanted civic education in the hands of well-meaning perhaps, but ignorant heirs of the past – youth has been corrupted and now the new generation sees the world through their parents’, grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ eyes. Not all of course, but maybe 1 million out of 7 million, and that is potentially dangerous for a society when systems have been set up to support this limited view of the universe.

So the power of the human mind to Identify with something, using all the words, images and beliefs conjured up from Memory, with very little Awareness being brought to play, forces the Discriminatory process of the mind to revolve around its own particular obsession… instead of being put in its right place, subordinated to a higher order of human compassion and solidarity and even solidarity with Nature and the World.

And that is the reason for the uprisings in Catalonia. By all means, people, seek your independence – but seek it inside, in the mindstuff itself, not in the outside world if you act contrary to established law. Laws can be improved, social conditions enhanced, traditions can be protected, but please, not with another rebellion that can lead to social disruption and actual physical violence. Then everyone will suffer unnecessarily.

And if “independence” were achieved, what would happen to the little town on the google map above, where the boundary cuts right through the town, through houses, fields and hillsides? 

Edward’s Diary Entry 155: Banalising Identities

Tidying your home and tending your garden are OK. Doing what you see as necessary for your village, town or city is good. You can even say you love your city if you want. And your province or county, your state, region and your country – even your continent or mode of civilisation.

But when your “sense of self”, or your identity, gets bound up in a kind of overwhelming obsession for a partial concept like city, region or country, language and series of customs, or belief, creed or religion, your mind is in trouble. Then it’s “your” identity against someone else’s. In a mental state like this, too much emphasis is placed on comparisons, and intelligence only revolves around the exclusive identity you have chosen to defend. In the final analysis, this identification will result in apprehension, fear, aggression and eventually violence. It is childish really, because just by chance of birth in a certain part of the world, the human spirit becomes a prisoner of a mental construct, of a kind of restricted “me” and “mine”.

Identifying with limited concepts can never be truly conscious behaviour. It is a trick played by the mind due to outside pressure, called propaganda. The ideal situation is for a human spirit to be as all-embracing as possible; not to be confined to a city, region or nation-state. Everything should be in the right place. Yes, I was born in a certain part of the world; yes, I grew up there or elsewhere; went to a certain school; rooted for a given sports team. Yes, I learned a language, hopefully more than one... It is true I can feel a sense of belonging to a city, region or nation. But if I cannot overcome the lesser influences and rise above metropolitanism, regionalism and nationalism, my mind is doomed to become small and petty, fault-finding and exclusivist. And that will spell rejection of others who have different concepts in their minds, and a kind of spiralling virulence that may turn into verbal abuse, mental violence and actual physical aggression. “I’m right and others are wrong!”.

This is why regionalism or even nationalism should always be kept in its rightful place, in its appropriate place. It is of regional or national importance only. It is not something the mind should be obsessed with. Above the city, region and nation stands the fact of sharing the human condition on Earth – we all eat food from the same Earth, drink the same water, breathe the same air and enjoy the same sunlight. Above and beyond any regionalism and nationalism is the increasingly apparent reality of living alongside 7.5 billion other human beings on a crowded and increasingly interconnected planet. Clan-like, tribal and feudal societies have come and gone. Tyrannies and revolutions have brought a semblance of democracy. There are human-made legal frameworks in place wherever you go, even to remote islands and mountain retreats. For example, there are some 3,000 abandoned villages or towns in Spain, and many of these are up for sale, but the legal constraints of municipality, district, province, autonomous community and nation and applicable EU regulations will still be in place. There is no escape. So there is no such thing as “freedom” from the rule of law in modern times; some kind of picturesque dream-like external “freedom” to do as one pleases. Freedom can only be of the mind and spirit, not of the body. And even mental freedom is incredibly difficult to attain, hence the emphasis on “liberation” or mukti, in Asiatic teachings.

So what is the rightful place of the feeling of being a “Catalán” in a population of some 7.5 million, of whom 1.1 million, by the way, are actually foreign residents? It should be sitting in between the fact of pertaining to a municipality and belonging to a nation-state and the European Community. For the more evolved, it is a convenient folkloric background, to be enjoyed and celebrated, without forgetting the sense of being human and reaching for the stars, being global and looking inward to the spirit. A limited Catalonian identity should not raise its head to become ugly, exclude others and strive to become all-important, crossing legal limitations and disrupting social life in cities striving to be cosmopolitan. If it does fight to become overridingly important, it is because the minds of some have become fossilised under an identity that is banal, limited, pugnaciously constrained to its provincialism, and dangerous for children, adolescents and immature adult minds.

Google Maps (image above) paints a dotted line along an established boundary, but the satellite image shows that Nature doesn’t care about man-made lines of demarcation.

More later…

Edward’s Diary Entry 154: On “Potatoes” and Identification with the “Fatherland”

I have been busy studying and reviewing the situation in Catalonia, where “identification” with the concept of what we can call “an exclusive group of people” is running rampant. Many minds out of a population of 7.5 million in 4 provinces of northern Spain are “convinced” they are a special case in the world, and even compare their case to other groups of people around the world who get together and say they are somehow special, either because of language, race, roots, real or imagined history or whatever, viz. Quebec, Flanders, Slovenia or Scotland. This is usually called “nationalism”, “populism” or “national-populism”, although we are now witnessing a “nationalism” that is actually a kind of disputable “regionalism”. But whatever we call it, it is “identification with an exclusive identity”.

After 40 years of democratic, constitutional Spain (new constitution in 1978), in which the 17 regions were given varying degrees of political autonomy, with Catalonia actually being granted the highest degree of autonomous treatment from the central government, it looks like “differences and dissimilarities” have been stirred up to such an extent, and historical stories about break-ups, republics, separation and anti-monarchism have been fuelled to such a high degree that quite a few people in Catalonia now fervently feel they deserve the “right” to become an independent state, contravening Spain’s national constitution. This has even been fomented and supported by the autonomous region’s own television and radio channels, and its total control of devolved powers to provide education for this population, mainly in Catalan, as only a few minutes of watching or listening has proven – the slant and bias is definitely there, and this is part and parcel of a politicised indoctrination process.

You see, when small-scale identities are allowed to run riot in the mind (I am this, I am that, I am whatever), they take over intelligence and obfuscate the discriminatory process. When “identity” attacks, anything can be used as an argument to protect that identity, and clarity in the mind is ousted. One identity completely overrides all others and minds become constipated, dwelling on their own little Weltanschauung, or picture of the world.

This is how expectant young students, university professors, dyed-in-the-wool republicans, potato farmers and tractor drivers could break into tears over the “loss” of their “fatherland”, when the Catalan president saw himself forced to “suspend” a republic he had declared 10 seconds earlier in his 10th October speech from the rostrum of the Catalan Parliament. The regionalist mindset, flagshipping “freedom” (we’ve heard that one before, right?), had taken over from all strivings to become increasingly internationalised, if not globalised, in this 21st-century.

A few days later in the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, where all regions and political parties are represented, in their job of representing the “people of Spain”, a Basque leader talked about Basque potatoes and Catalan potatoes. A Valencian deputy protested that there were also Valencian and Murcian potatoes. Not without his tongue in cheek, Spanish prime minister Rajoy, in his reply, couldn’t help pointing out that with all this talk about potatoes – some hotter, some colder – everyone had forgotten the “Spanish Potato”, which is the kind he and his government were trying to promote!

More next week….

Edward’s Diary Entry 153: What is the stillness within?

In the last diary entry, I mentioned a stillness within… What is this?

Imagine you are sitting, crosslegged, with your left heel firmly placed against the muladhara. The left leg is tucked in nicely; the right leg still protests after a year and 3 months of crosslegged sitting. We Europeans are not used to this and it takes quite a while to re-adapt the body, even if you go to yoga classes 2 or 3 times a week to get more flexible. First you use a cushion under one leg, and as it gets relaxed and more flexible the leg gets lower and lower until it lies flat on the floor. The muscles and tendons cry out, and you have to keep insisting – first 15 to 20 minutes, then add another exercise and go for more. At present I can normally sit for 75 minutes in one session without too much discomfort. Sometimes, the right leg has to be brought up or stretched, but only when I finally make a decision to do this, not just because it hurts. Often times, the pain will diminish or go away completely if relaxation can be managed properly.

So we are firmly rooted on the ground. The physical binds us, letting us know we are mortal and subject to pain and stiffness. It tells us we are basically earth and will return to earth in the form of dust and ashes. For all our rootedness, however, there is a fountain of lightness within, when we place our attention on the breath as it comes in and goes out. Palms are facing upward on our thighs, and the breath enters the higher lobes of the lungs and then gets pushed out again. Such a simple thing is really quite complicated, as perhaps a dull leg pain enters the field of awareness, but at the same time awareness is successively on the in-breath and on the out-breath, one can feels one’s palms, sometimes with quite a strong sensation, which together with a sensation around the forehead, seems to form a triangular field of force. At the same time, one single thought is being used on the in-breath, and another single thought is being mentally reproduced on the out-breath. This goes on for around 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, throughout this process, our awareness is “attacked” at times by evocations from memory, picturings from things seen and heard, or thoughts referring to these past situations; or by the fancies of imagination, wherein we picture a future situation, or conjure up a thought about this, that or whatever. Often, these things have to do with something we plan to do immediately, or with the practise itself, or even with so-called “higher things”, but really there is no higher or lower here – it is all the incessant attempt of the mind to keep moving and active, and keep us bound to it, as the body does. Imaginings are occasional, however, and are simply noted and witnessed. When renewed awareness is placed on the breath, or on the point between the eyebrows with our eyes closed, they mostly dissipate and fall into unimportance. Also occasionally entering awareness is an itch here or there, a hair being moved by the breeze from a window, and other little tricks from the body to try and distract us from our purpose. We ignore these mostly, even if a fly buzzes around our face or sits on our naked leg, which happened to me one day, and I had to laugh.

Then, after the repetition of the 2 thoughts, there is a dwell phase and a listening and doing-nothing phase. And it is here, normally, in this phase, where because of: 1) the stationery bodily position, 2) the awareness of breathing, 3) the 10-min. repetition of a single thought, now finished, and 4) the unwavering focus of the closed eyes between the eyebrows, we come to a point where the sensation of our awareness, of our “I”, is actually floating above the former movement of the mind and seems to be ensconced in a dome-like structure, like the ceiling of a cave, where there is peace, calm, silence, tranquillity and not a little faint joy, sometimes tinged with a bluish or purplish colour, where “all is calm… all is bright”, but there is not even a trace of the music of Silent Night – just the sensation of stillness, where we dwell above the ragings of the mind. This is the stillness within, and its effects give our day a much more joyous experience.

Edward's Diary 152: Ashes...

This was supposed to be a video, but I found out I didn't have the necessary tools to produce a video easily, so for the time being I can't do videos. But here's the script:

1. Inside a little urn lie the ashes of yesterday… There are tiny chunks in the dust, chunks of many shapes and hues. You see, cremation reduces the body to its basic 12 percent of the “Earth” element. The rest – they say – is water, air, space and a little fire, that’s all.

2. Those ashes are yesterday’s thoughts, feelings and sensations. Erstwhile unsolvable problems, incessant dreams, hopes unfulfilled, expectations newly born; desires, passions; the prose and poetry of human yearnings and longings.

3. All those things today are all still fully fleshed, but they will soon disappear as well. And that’s as it should be. Because the “cremation” I’m talking about is the application of “awareness”, pure and simple, with no identification with, or attachment to, the comings and goings of the mind. Body and mind will move along roads both marked and unmarked, always, but the stillness within sits watching, registering, yet not adhering to such movement.

4. And when the little urn of the cranium is kept quite still, and the ashes are not juggled about, the movements gradually die down and give one a modicum of peace and tranquillity… And there, firmly rooted in that space, there is room only for questioning… searching for light… for perseverance only.

Edward’s Diary Entry 151: Time-out!

Diary entries are few and far between recently, because of travelling, summer heat, family reasons, and more travelling, and relaxing as far as writing is concerned. Daily awareness exercises and activities continue, though. When in doubt, persevere, they say.

A reflection from daily activities: Physically, when we touch something or someone, we think we are experiencing that thing or person, but we are only ever experiencing what is inside us, what our sense organs perceive and create inside our minds. On the physical plane, we try to connect and maybe experience some kind of union when holding hands, in an embrace, or in sex. But this doesn’t last long.

By awareness of breathing, however, we can see how we are invisibly connected through air with the rest of humanity, the animal kingdom and plants – the plants and trees that are generating the oxygen we take in, and recycling the carbon dioxide we give off. This doesn’t last long either in our awareness, but in reality it is happening all the time, and we are simply unaware of it.

By awareness of our own consciousness, we are even more invisibly connected with the whole mind of the world, with individual bubbles of awareness in other human beings and that of the animals and the intelligence of Life itself. Those are the (first) three degrees of connectivity we have available. Maybe there are others that are higher. But they must be outside our organs of perception, and outside the mind, which is our normal psychological functioning. Remaining very quiet, with the body and mind still, there are tiny glimpses of something higher than this, but nothing real to report yet.

Edward’s Diary Entry 150: Aaaaa.... a sudden insight?

Now the root sound of all sounds is Aaaa, as in AUM. Not surprisingly, this is the first letter of the alphabet in most languages: A, aleph, alif, alpha, etc. When pronounced, this sound vibrates from a point just below the navel and spreads up throughout the body. We just open our mouths, gently, mouth relaxed, and press out a vowel sound using the diaphragm and out comes the basic sound Aaaa…(in picture, right). If we started gently closing our mouths with this sound, the next sound Uuuu comes out, and when we completely close our mouths, there is only the Mmmm sound left. These are the three basic sounds that we can make without using the tongue. In other words, even if you had no tongue, or your tongue were cut out, you could still say AUM.

When a dog or cat stretches and opens its mouth and then closes it, it also makes something like the sound AUM. Sheep start the sound production process before opening their mouths, and therefore use an explosive B in front of the Aaaa, when they baa. Cows prefer the M at the beginning, followed by the Uuuu and then maybe an Aaa, when they moo. So, the basic process of expelling air from a cavity of the body through a tube creates the Aaa sound, a universal sound, a primary resonance from the root of preceding silence. And therefore we can say that the root of the 3 root sounds is silence itself.

Now as I was pronouncing the “big inner question” about the “I”, I realised that the pronunciation of “I” in English is actually just an Aaaa followed by a tensing of the middle/front part of tongue upwards to end in “ee”, the diphthong [ai]. English has preserved, so to speak, the original Sanskrit “I”, “Aham”, and the root sound “Aaa” is common to both. “I” is “’ana” in Arabic as well. The root sound Aaa is common to the personal pronoun “I”. Why is this?

Look what happened to the scholar-poet Ganapati Muni in the early 20^th C, brought to my attention in Facebook today:

”The Muni approached the Virupaksha Cave where Brahmanaswami lived on the 18th of November 1907. Prostrating before the young Sage, he pleaded with a trembling voice: "All that has to be read I have read. Even Vedanta Sastra I have fully understood. I have performed japa to my heart's content, yet I have not up to this time understood what tapas is. Hence, have I sought refuge at thy feet. Pray enlighten me about the nature of tapas."

For fifteen minutes Sri Ramana Maharshi silently gazed at the Muni. He then spoke:

"If one watches where the notion of 'I' springs, the mind will be absorbed into that. That is tapas.”

“If a mantra is repeated and attention is directed to the source where the mantra sound is produced, the mind will be absorbed into that. That is tapas."

Upon hearing these words of the sage, the scholar-poet was filled with joy and announced that this upadesa was entirely original and that Brahmanaswami was a Maharshi and should be so called thereafter. He then gave the name of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi to Brahmanaswami, whose original name had been Venkataraman.

Now the “Who am I?”-question takes on a new significance. It is not just a thought in so many words. Now it becomes a sound. When walking, the “Who” and the “am” are two footsteps, say using the right foot, repeated silently, and then the “I” can become a long sounded “Aaaaaaiii” for 3 more footsteps. And since there is so much going on in the city streets, with pedestrians on cell phones and vehicles coursing through the streets, no one notices the soft vibrant sound as I walk along… And if they did, perhaps in Spanish they would just think I am complaining about something, as people do here, saying “aaaaayyyyy”, or “woe is me!”. But no, no complaints, just perseverance, that’s all.

Edward’s Diary Entry 149: Off-the Cuff A-to-Z of Things We Have Overcome or Partly Overcome

Anxiety: a wrong use of the thinking function stimulating adrenaline over nothing.

Believing: a harmful non-recognition of not knowing.

Complaining: an adverse and harmful emotional reaction to a fact or reality.

Disliking: a dysfunctional emotional rejection to an Act of God (which can be anything or anyone).

Envy: the misconceived sense that you can have what someone else has worked for without working for it.

Fearing: an illogical feeling of stress derived from unconscious trauma reinforced by habitual thinking patterns.

Gossiping: talking behind people’s backs about things that in any case they can’t help doing or not doing.

Hating: an adverse and harmful emotional reaction stemming from exaggerated disliking.

Identifying: imbuing one’s entire sense of self in a mere idea, notion, belief, assumption or falsehood and then striving to justify it.

Joylessness: being a sourpuss and fretting all the time, instead of observing how joy wells up from inside.

Killing Time: meditation can be “dolce far niente” the sweet idleness of reaching inward, but just “killing time” by not sensing the marvels of the world is out. Time is occupied by inner work and exercises when socialising permits.

Loneliness: a feeling of missing others who you think should be with you even if you know you’re not worth being with because you can’t even stand yourself.

Me-Myself and I-ing: the misconceived act of thinking the whole world is only there for you, and you alone.

Negativity: the tendency to pay more attention to an apparent fault than to a potential virtue.

Opinionatedness: sticking to one’s opinion’s at all costs, with no reasonable analysis of the vast possibilities of declaring ignorance.

Pain when sitting cross-legged: Well, partly overcome, no cushions needed anymore, left leg on floor and right leg almost on floor, relaxation helps, and sitting sessions are sometimes 54-56 mins long. So that’s progress.

Quitting: becoming superficially interested in self-development and then stopping suddenly due to attendant circumstances… Lacking perseverance.

Resentment: a misplaced feeling of having been wronged, but there is nothing in the past that could have been otherwise so there is nothing to feel resentment about.

Susceptibility: an overly self-righteous ego open to bad feelings about being criticised.

Thanklessness: On the contrary, there is much to be thankful for.

Unexamined Life: although examination continues, at least a plan has been established.

Vanity: thinking your bathroom unit is the best in the world, and disregarding all others.

Whining: similar to G, above, but crying behind people’s backs about things that in any case they can’t help doing or not doing.

Xenophobising: fictitiously dividing people into distant GMS positions so you can have temper tantrums about them because you’re actually pissed off by someone geographically closer to you – or your own self!

Yesterday-ing: mental process of continually singing a McCartney song about how you were ditched at some time in the past as an excuse not to start living in the present.

Zombieism: process of living like a half-dead or three-quarters-dead semi-human, who neither thinks, emotes or contributes to human development, but just walks around drooling, looking for food and harming others.