Edward’s Diary Entry 140: Cultivating Awareness 8 – Dreaming?

To dream or not to dream – is that the question? There is no question. We dream when sleeping and we dream when we’re awake… Like Calderón de la Barca said in 1635,

“What is life? 'Tis but a madness.

What is life? A thing that seems,A mirage that falsely gleams,Phantom joy, delusive rest,Since is life a dream at best,And even dreams themselves are dreams.”

Various translations of his play into English were made still during his lifetime, and subsequently, so it is no surprise that some two centuries later a folk song arose to paraphrase him (first documented in the US in the 1852): “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream… Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.”

In the esoteric sense, “life is a dream” means that to the awakened, enlightened or illuminated (a higher state of consciousness), the normal waking state of consciousness is tantamount to a dream. Which is why Gurdjieff stated categorically, “Man is asleep”. The difference is compared to the normal waking state versus a dream situation in your bed, where, as we said a few days ago, you do no harm to anyone, whereas if you are awake in the day-to-day sense, you can and do!

But dream we do when we sleep. Despite all the chatter and psychology and pseudo-science of dream interpretation, to the student of Self-Awareness, dreams are of little import. Look: we go to bed, our minds are still busy from the day’s activities, so obviously we drop into REM sleep occasionally and dream and “create” all those fantasy worlds and images. It’s natural. The perpetual chatter of the waking mind simply slips into sleep – dropping way down to deep sleep, where it remembers nothing, and then popping up for the airy dream-world like a trout catching a fly on the surface of a lake. Awareness is gone in deep sleep, but in REM sleep, a little Awareness is there, and it “remembers” the working of the mind, the “dream”. How you dream – what amount of detail, or colour, or sound or recurrent themes you have – may indicate certain things of interest, but really it is simply a recycling of stuff already in the mind, or a recreation of elements from Imagination – which can be very powerful, obviously. But very, very few dreams are of much importance – most have to do with mind chatter and body chatter only – food and sex.

I dream less on weekdays with their stricter schedule and more practises than on weekends, when social life tends to take over. The more you lounge, the more you dream, and vice versa. Keeping dairies or notes of dreams only provokes more of them. We have all done this at some time, and that should be the lesson. When we are striving to bring an ever-increasing amount of Self-Awareness into our lives, we cannot waste time on fantasies and dreams. It makes no sense to do that. And we already have the explanation as to why dreams occur – highly-developed, quiet and controlled minds have no dreams (except maybe as authentic messages from the Universe!); uncontrolled, untrained, skittish minds will be full of dreams, remembered or not at dawn, because that is their natural tendency.

Sleeping is for getting the best kind of rest possible, so to quieten the mind, we will practise various exercises already mentioned, we will have tried to leave the stomach empty before bed, we will have clean and neat sheets and bedding and room, we will not have provoked the mind and emotions into over-activity. We will strive to maintain Awareness for as long as possible, and when we finally slip away to the dark world of sleep, and come back again, we will have dreamed less, and rested more, ready for a new day of enhancing Self-Awareness, not trying to remember and dwell on our own self-created fantasies.

Sorry, dreamers, you are only dealing with will ‘o’ the wisps, ignis fatuus, little fires in the wood only followed by fools…

Edward’s Diary Entry 139: Cultivating Awareness 7 – Sleeping

How lovely mankind is when we are sleeping! A sleeping glutton wants no more food. A sleeping alcoholic needs no more wine. A sleeping thief steals from no one. A sleeping hooligan causes no ruckus. A sleeping politician accepts no bribes. A sleeping soldier kills no enemy. A sleeping president orders no bomb launches. To be fair, even a sleeping truth-seeker no longer seeks truth! A sleeping world simply dreams of war or peace, justice or crime, good or bad, truth or falsehood – it actually does nothing real in the waking world, where half of humanity is weeping over what they perceive as some injustice having been done.

When we sleep, the atmosphere is calmer in our part of the world, because most humans are fast asleep or only dreaming, and their minds are more at ease, because they perceive no more chaos in their lives. But the next morning, more chaos will come to us, and the quiet time will be halfway round the globe, where the other half of the world is dark and lost in uneasy sleep. In the end, things even themselves out for the whole of humanity. Which is why we wind up getting nowhere.

It’s funny, but the whole aim of enhancing Self-Awareness is – contradictorily – like turning waking men and women into sweet, beautiful sleepers, where no more harm is done to anyone or anything. And if some harm is done (as it must be), it will be done with the appropriate reverence for life. Because everything we use for food is being “harmed” in a way, because we ingest it to transform it into our human selves, and if we do this, at least let us do it reverently, with thankfulness, with joy. No other harm should really be done to another, should it?

So how to transform “waking men and women” into “beautiful dreamers”? That is the question. But we cannot do it. We can talk about it, we can exemplify it, we can hope for it, but “we” cannot really do it. Only “I” can do it. And “you”. “They” will do it whenever they can, if ever, and perhaps sooner if “you” and “I” do it first. So we concentrate on ourselves, egoistically being altruistic, or vice versa.

And if we concentrate on our sleep, then we need restfulness from the day’s activities of the mind, which stumbles along furiously creating conflict in the waking world: “I”, “me”, “mine” vs. “you” and “yours”, not to mention “hers”, “his” and “theirs”. Sleep brings about the destruction of the “Identity” that discriminates everyone and everything in the world. Sleep quietens the “Memory” sack which we carry around and unwittingly apply to just about every situation, appropriate or not. Sleep slays the “Intellect” that cuts the world into little pieces in a frustrated attempt to understand it. Sleep kills the “I want”, “I will”, “I won’t”, “I can’t”, and leaves us in harmless, sweet darkness for a few quiet hours. It is said that people deprived of sleep go berserk after a while. So we need this rest from our waking state. We have to plunge into unconsciousness every now and then to resume our lives more consciously.

Sleep of the deep, quiet kind replenishes our inner being so we can start all over again – despite the onslaught of daily mental non-control that comes with the new day. In deep sleep we are free from our wrong thinking and consequent misconduct. In deep sleep we are at one with the universe. Where have all the beauties and beasts of the mind gone? How is it that our Awareness is temporarily disconnected? Where has it hidden itself away?

And so the question is, can this also be done in a state of heightened awareness, of higher consciousness? Can we sit still and allow the mind to quiet itself? Can we then still have Awareness to see what the world is like on another level? That is what we need to find out. In deep sleep we may already be sitting in the lap of Truth... Can we consciously do the same when we are extremely awake, superlatively non-somnolent, incredibly empowered with Awareness?

Edward’s Diary Entry 138: Cultivating Awareness 6 – Falling Asleep

Of course you can drink alcohol until you almost get sick and you’ll fall asleep right away, don’t worry. Or take sleeping pills. Or watch TV till your eyes close, or listen to music.   But all of this involves losing consciousness, suppressing awareness, and dropping off into oblivion, where succubi and incubi dwell, and where dreams will keep you busy all night. This will not help the practitioner of Self-Awareness.

So how do we fall asleep? How do we die each night, only to be reborn the next morning? If you contemplate this, you can’t help wondering about its elusive magic: that final moment when "you" no longer exist…

Let’s say the room is clean and calm, the bed sheets neat, clean and fresh. We sleep Marilyn Monroe style – she only wore Chanel No. 5 at night, remember? No clumsy clothes for night-time entanglement. We slip between the sheets, with feet facing in any direction except south – because we accept the yogic injunction of not pointing our heads north at night – there’s too much magnetic pull on the head in that direction. We lie on our backs in Shavasana posture and focus our awareness on our breathing…

Why not watch TV in bed? Well, what can you watch? More fake news? Isn’t the news just a one-sided focused look at some situation from someone’s or some channel’s pre-established mindset and opinion? When have you heard good news on TV? Maybe a film? Depends on the film, but why get the mind and emotions all excited just before going to bed? Unless you’re learning a new language and watch TV for that reason before going to bed, I cannot see the point of entertaining the mind – even more – just before sleep. Haven’t you had enough entertainment throughout the day already?

How about a book? Depends on the book, but the reason the mind needs to be entertained at night is that it is still chattering away in your head and you can’t control it – it controls you. So you have to hoodwink it into quiescence by reading until your eyes droop, and then maybe you can drop off to sleep. There are very few books about awareness and sleep, which might be appropriate, so let’s choose no book before sleep.

Maybe some music, with earphones plugged in? If it’s relaxing music, conceived to soothe the mind and inspire you to greater awareness, maybe. Repetitive chants can be used to quiet the mind while you focus on breathing or one single idea, but isn’t this better during the day, at meditation times, or in off-moments when you have nothing else to do? You’re going to miss out on the “big show” if you just drop off…

The “show” is staying aware and pinpointing that very moment where “you” become nothing, and you just fall into sleep. You no longer exist. Neither does the world. The entire universe has been erased. It’s nothingness until you wake up again!

Of course, if you haven’t learned some measure of control over your own mind – the place where you live all day (and often during the night) – and if you haven’t learned how to deal with your day’s issues yet, some say you can practise inner theatre, in which you mentally play back the whole day – without criticising it – and wipe the day’s slate clean, ready for sleep and a new day. But I think it’s better to promote awareness throughout the day and have done with every issue immediately, at each moment as it comes. Then there’s nothing left to think about at night. Because useless thinking is just that – useless.

Remember, you have a natural flow of thoughts in your mind, and these thoughts dip into Memory to conjure up images, pictures, scenes, your own movies, and they trigger off new thoughts and emotions to create a “thought-world” of your own. Memory is a huge accumulation of inputs you have already had. And these memories then fuel up your Imagination, and this tries to create a new world for you out of old inputs and supposedly new ideas, and it can do this very well, as we see in our dreams and fantasies sometimes. This is unnecessary at sleep time, isn’t it? If you want to create a nice little “thought-world” for yourself and write a book about it, can’t you set aside a time during the day to do this?

Here, on this blog for Self-Awareness, anything that prevents us from being totally aware at the time when we fall asleep is contrary to our determination to discover what this Awareness really is. We have been striving for greater awareness during the day. We have placed awareness in breathing, body, exercises, practises, everyday activities, whenever we have been able to. We have tried to expand our awareness to include others, understand the world, accept differences, separate untruths from possible truths, open up our horizons, our eyes, our arms and our hearts. We have widened our outlook and seen similarities where others see distinctions. We have striven to become more conscious in the face of unconscious stupidity. That’s a hard day’s work. 

So now, lying in bed, and at most calming the mind with the inner sound of "aum" or "om", we are in need of rest for a new day – which thankfully has come every day till now, but remember it might slip through our fingers tonight and we might even die – so our effort is to find out where that Awareness goes to, or where “I” go to, because tonight, one of the great marvels of the universe is awaiting me: this little “me” is going to disappear, the “I” will slip into sleep, and here we are just watching to see who that is and where it is going. What is this falling asleep all about? Remember the song, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

Edward’s Diary Entry 137: Cultivating Awareness 5 – Waking

Every night, it’s bedtime. If we are not in “social” or “weekend” mode, one wants to rest properly and be ready for waking in the morning. The shavasana position, or dead-body posture, with a low pillow or no pillow, is best for settling down and “om-ing” oneself to sleep. We will talk about falling asleep and sleeping another time…

The point here is the waking process. Maybe we wake up at certain times during the night. There is a tradition of the Brahma muhurta, one and a half hours before sunrise, ending 48 minutes before that time. If waking happens “automatically” at this time or thereabouts (it varies according to the sun, obviously), and one is not getting up at that time for meditation or practises, adopting shavasana and mentally chanting “om” will do the trick, and we will drop back into sleep. It is not a time for thinking – only for bringing awareness to the body and mind. If thoughts do happen, just be aware of them, watch patiently and allow them to subside. At this time of night, the mind is naturally very quiet, so it is traditionally a good time for practises, prayer or whatever you do. The Benedictines woke at 5:40am for Matins at 6, and ended their day with Compline around 9pm, and thereafter silence till the next morning. Some monks did midnight prayers as well, giving themselves only a bare 6 hours of sleep.

We are not concerned about religions and believers, either Hindus, Christians or fervent atheists. We are interested in the functioning of the body and mind. Practises – whether mental exercises or prayers or chants or whatever they may be – are a means of bringing awareness into what we do. There is awareness of the body and it parts – even parts we do not normally know, such as the so-called chakras; and there is awareness of processes, such as breathing, inhalation and exhalation; or noticing (the five sense); there is awareness of the operation of the senses and their inputs; and there is awareness of the operation of the mind and its constituent parts, such as memory, identification, intellect, and word processing (so-called “thinking” or inner chatter). And then, if we’re lucky, there is awareness of inner calm and silence, when roof-brain chatter has been reduced and we are left with the welling up of energy, power and silence.

So when our waking time comes, whether it’s 5:40 or 6 or 6:30 am, the very first things we notice are the rising sparks of awareness coming back into the mind and body, and prompting the mind to start its “waking conscious” activities… But beware that it doesn’t instantaneously review the lethargic condition of the body, and convince you that you should snooze just a little longer – it is so pleasant just lying in bed, isn’t it? That’s what it will say! But no, we are bent on waking and awakening deeper parts of the mind and fuelling awareness for a new day, so our determination – and simple habit – will assist us in opening up the covers and sitting up on the bed. A quick check on the window and we know the kind of day we will have. And another day means another day to live… perchance not to die. That also helps us fuel awareness. A towel or bathrobe are nearby, so it’s off to the toilet and shower at once. This is a chronometrically planned morning and everything should run smoothly. Water first thing in the morning all over the body wakes and cleanses. Hygiene is done, the body wiped dry and the special clothing for morning practises is put on, after a drink of cool water, which is the only thing I imbibe until much later. This first morning practise takes about 15-18 minutes. The day it takes much longer and I am found still sitting crosslegged at noon will be a major milestone, but that’s just probably a fancy of mine! This first practise is followed by another 17-minute exercise to let the mind know that it shall be subjugated to my will and determination this day as well. May it behave properly! Then clothes are donned and it’s walk-time to get to a Bikram Yoga class, either an hour or 1.5 hours, depending on the day.

After this entire process, the body floats along nicely, the mind is tuned down (not up!) – but it is ready to be adroitly applied to anything instantaneously. This is waking – bringing as much awareness into the process as possible each working day. The work is bringing greater awareness to the life process. It is a work against society, against habit, against the status quo, against just about everything minimally conscious or unconscious. But that’s life... at its best.

Edward’s Diary Entry 136: Intelligent Non-Conformism

A well-known Sufi saying urges us “to be in the world, but not of the world”… What does that mean?

It means that when you eventually grow up a little and begin to question things around you – society, beliefs, opinions, situations, etc. – you realise that it is intelligent to be a non-conformist. We are born into society, but we must always question that society and practically everything it stands for, and if necessary, reject the dross. There is a quiet sensitivity that brings you to this. You see pain, suffering, discontent, anger, violence and killing. You know you don’t want that. If you see it “out there” in society, don’t worry, you have it too, “in there”, in your head and heart. So you deal with what you can, in your own mind. Blind reactionaries will get angry at society and others, and think they can solve things “out there”, with a little more shouting, fighting and violence, which of course fuels the bitter circle of stupidity all the more. The intelligent non-conformist will abstain from angry thoughts and actions and just watch, until he or she can figure out what action is really required, if any.

We are up against a huge tsunami of human hopelessness. Everywhere you look you can see it. A mother on the street today asked her 3-year-old son if “he was angry”. Isn’t that cute? We indoctrinate kids to believe anger is natural. The lion’s share of the entertainment industry fosters all kinds of psychological aberrations, violence, slaughtering, killing, heroes against villains, in cahoots with governments and the military-industrial complex. TV commercials tell you what to eat, drink and buy – from giant conglomerates that have re-processed and neatly packaged what Mother Nature has so kindly provided for our sustenance. News channels offer one-sided pictures of events, and sensationalism flourishes. Truth is a scarce commodity in printed media. Politics hasn’t caught up with 21st-century mindsets or moods either; it is outdated and dangerous. Religions linger on the sidelines waiting to gain adepts for their particular belief-systems. There is no refuge. Everything is contaminated with age-old fictions and modern lies.

So the intelligent non-conformist turns inward, and finds shelter there. There is no shelter in the external world. Only the quiet calm of sitting and watching the mind in all its mundane turmoil tells you what you need to know. You see it flitting this way and that, attracted by one thought, then an emotion, then a memory, then some imagination, then more flights of fantasy, then back to another thought, another emotion, a feeling, a sensation, and on and on it goes, re-arranging its fantasy world a thousand times over with every new hour, every new movement, every new situation. When you see this in your own mind, and then see or infer it in the minds of others, you realise there is no way to conform to the norms, except on the outside. Inside, we are too busy waiting and watching to conform to anything. Because inside we question everything, we pinpoint and meticulously reject every hidden assumption, every unfounded opinion, every chance thought dragged up from memory, and we are free and peaceful. There is a space, a slight distance, between the occurrences of the mind and the watchfulness of our attention, our puny dose of self-awareness, our little cranial cave of dark delight where no more silly thoughts come to bother us.

Being in the world, we look like just about any other person. But not being of the world means that inside, we have shed our mental shackles somewhat, and at least have attained a glimpse of the vast possibilities that open up before us, deep down in our hearts. Remember John 17:14, “they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”

Post-World-Health-Day Depression

According to the WHO, “Depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide. More than 300 million people are now living with depression, an increase of more than 18% between 2005 and 2015.” Out of these, some 800,000 per year go on to commit suicide, which seems to be the end result of depressive thinking… Contemplating this on April 7th, I fought against getting depressed about it and studied the situation...

To put it bluntly, societies produce so many depressed people (and suicides) because they are sick societies. They don’t make their citizens happy. But a higher suicide rate in certain areas of the world may also indicate a traditional acceptance of causing one’s own death, as in North and South Korea (ranking tops at 37 and 29 per 100,000), Japan (18), and maybe Russia (19) and Eastern European countries (red countries range from 40 down to 12). Note that Indian culture (21) is also blasé about taking one’s own life, and some African countries (14-18). On the other hand, Islamic societies in the Middle East seem to show such a great acceptance of Allah’s wishes that they rarely take their own lives: Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Oman, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria and Saudi Arabia are at the bottom of the list, all under 2 per 100,000. Green countries range from 12.84 to 8.54; violet from 8.53 to 4.52; grey countries are below 4.49.

 

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/suicide/by-country/

From the viewpoint of this blog, depression is simple. It’s a result of habitual patterns of wrong thinking and low awareness. The solution is right thinking and increased awareness. The problem is, where to get this from?  Because it isn’t a convenient commodity like a bottle of anti-depressants. Right thinking only comes with high levels of maturity in individual human beings, and this is then reflected to some degree in the societies they live in, or the masses of “followers” they create. But these human beings are few and far between. So people have to look to sometimes surrogate spiritual guides, gurus, religious people and a few intellectuals, psychologists and philosophers to make any headway. The mass media won’t help, nor will governments, political parties, the entertainment industry or big business. Internet today is a major evolutionary step forward in that you can find just about anything - if you feel the urge to look!

Sick societies create depressives, but wrong thinking produces the individual depressive. But mostly this is hardly the individual’s fault. He has been indoctrinated to think falsely and create his or her own messed-up mind. And so we are like tiny little mammals just peeping out of the grass at the lumbering dinosaurs of depression still dominating the Earth. There's lots of evolution to look forward to, but meanwhile what do we do? Without a total understanding of everything that is, the only thing we can do is look to ourselves and strive to increase our own level of awareness and start making the attempt to think properly. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”, as was once said.

Cave Series 14: A Quiet Place

My cave has various chinks in it, maybe five. One lets in a very dim shaft of light, and my movements cause dust particles to rise and they float around in the tenuous light. Another conveys muffled sounds, perhaps from outside, when the wind blows hard. But at the back end of the grotto, what appears to be a dome-like area is the best spot for utter peace and quiet, restfulness and a sense of joy. When sitting here in the darkness, the body dissipates and floats away, tensions are relieved and idle thoughts cease to flow. There is complete silence in this place. The eyes may imagine swirls of colour, but they soon drift away and usher in total blackness and calm, sometimes tinged with a rosy glow of happiness. Many things seem possible here. It is a place of power and joyfulness, and I long to return here whenever I am not groping around the rest of the cave trying get my bearings. I wonder at this spot, and cherish it. It seems like a home away from home, a place to return to always.