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The
Radical Happiness Newsletter
February,
2008
Showing Up
by Nirmala (Gina’s
husband)
From Nothing Personal: Seeing Beyond
the Illusion of a Separate Self
Rather than noticing their experience and knowing that it is the right
one, life for most people is about avoiding pain and getting pleasure.
Some are more oriented towards pleasure, while others are more oriented
towards avoiding pain, but either results in suffering, whether or not
they succeed. The effort, itself, to do either of these is the cause of
suffering. As long as your focus is on getting pleasure or avoiding
pain, you will be miserable. Alternatively, when you just show up in
life and have an experience for the sake of having it, whether it is
painful or pleasurable, you don’t suffer. This is a very
simple
truth.
We come into every experience empty-handed and we leave every
experience empty-handed. Everything you have ever experienced prior to
this moment, even the most painful and most pleasurable experience, is
irrelevant. And regardless of whether this moment is a painful one or a
pleasurable one, in the next moment, that will be irrelevant too. What
happens now won’t matter an hour from now, and what happened
for
the last twenty, thirty, forty years doesn’t matter now. What
matters is showing up for whatever is arising in this moment.
When you finally get exhausted by suffering, which is one way that
grace works, you find yourself doing things just for the sake of doing
them, without any agenda and without any judgment about what is
happening or desire to change it. You just notice your experience and
let it be the way it is. When you are doing something for its own sake,
it doesn’t need to be any different than it is. When you are
noticing your experience and allowing it just for the sake of noticing
and allowing it, then you are free. That is liberation. That is the end
of suffering.
Very commonly, we also use this simple truth to try to increase the
pleasure in our life or erase the pain. We notice our experience and
allow it in order to stop feeling pain or to experience the pleasure
from expanded states that often comes from this. Applying these
instructions with either of these agendas will cause you to suffer just
as much as not applying these instructions. But if you notice and allow
whatever is happening just for its own sake, you will be free of
suffering—not free of pain, but free of suffering.
This isn’t a judgment about seeking pleasure or avoiding
pain;
this approach to life is just part of the human
experience—until
it isn’t. If that is what’s happening, then that is
what’s happening. The invitation is just to show up for that
when
that happens— really experience that. Be curious about it.
Get
really curious about the experience of avoiding pain and the experience
of seeking pleasure, and this will bring you very much into the moment.
When you show up in the moment, you often initially encounter all the
ways you are trying to get away from the moment. Then, if you show up
for this resistance, you see that it is just resistance, and you no
longer suffer over it. You don’t have to wait to become free
of
resistance—it still arises—but by embracing it when
it
arises you become free.
What is it like to be here in this moment without any agenda and
without any conclusions, judgments, beliefs, fantasies, or stories
between you and the truth of this moment? Being here in the moment
requires a willingness to let go of all of your ideas about what is
happening and to not know. The more willing you are to look at what is
here right now, the less you know; and the less willing you are to see
the truth of this moment, the more you rely on what you know.
I
sometimes feel apathetic.
The invitation is to show up for every moment. Apathy is a way of not
showing up for the moment. That’s okay if that is what is
happening, then show up for the apathy. We think we shouldn’t
be
feeling apathetic, but there is some jewel of truth in that apathy that
needs to be uncovered. The truth that is uncovered may not feel good
and it may not be so pretty, but that doesn’t matter. In that
apathy, is some profound gift, something very real and satisfying.
It’s the last place we would think to look for
satisfaction— in our dissatisfaction.
* * *
If you
go to a
meeting like this to get something or to feel a certain way and that
doesn’t happen, you feel like it is a waste of time.
At some point, you start enjoying all the ways you waste your time. You
show up for the ways you waste your time. You get the satisfaction
there, not from some pay-off. You get satisfaction out of just
living—just being.
* * *
I feel
it takes a
lot of energy to maintain awareness, so if I don’t feel
energetic, then my life isn’t the way I want it to be.
The truth is that your life is not going to be the way you want it to
be anyway. It’s going to be the way it is going to be. It is
the
way it is. Life doesn’t check with you first to find out how
you
want it to be. Have you noticed that? Sometimes it does turn out the
way you want, but your desires don’t determine what happens.
Find
out what doesn’t require a lot of energy and maintenance.
* * *
When I
get home
late from work, I don’t go to bed right away because I always
have to do something fun or I feel dissatisfied with my day.
Find out what it is like to be dissatisfied and not indulge it, not
that there is anything wrong with fun and pleasure. Dissatisfaction,
itself, is an exotic land to be explored, not for the purpose of
getting rid of the dissatisfaction but because dissatisfaction is so
rich, so amazing, so unexpected. Instead of trying to fix
dissatisfaction when it arises, what about exploring it? The joy is
always in the exploring, not where it takes you.
* * *
My
tendency is that
when I’m alone I can experience what you are talking about
but
when I’m with people I think I need to create drama or I
don’t have anything to talk about.
Sometimes when you are here in the moment, it’s just a bunch
of sensations. It’s very ordinary.
Ordinary
feels threatening. It feels like it’s not okay.
Can you sense how that is a place where you can never rest? If ordinary
is not okay, then life becomes a lot of work. Is ordinariness really so
dangerous or horrible?
Sometimes
I confuse ordinary with boring. Boring is not okay—unless I
stop resisting it.
Are the sensations of boredom really so bad, if you don’t set
boredom against excitement? Life has both. When you really show up for
boredom, you discover all the other qualities of being that are flowing
in and out of that experience. But if you turn away from boredom and
immediately pick up the TV remote, then you never find out if what
I’m saying is true about boredom, although you may know that
that
richness is true of other kinds of moments, like exciting or blissful
ones. When you are willing to show up for both the surface of your life
and the depths, you’ll find that the surface and the depths
are
not separate. When you show up for the boredom, it suddenly has all of
the depth of your being in it.
* * *
Very
often I choose to suffer. There is a point where I can choose suffering
or not, and I choose to suffer. I think I have an addiction to
suffering. Then later I feel sad over having chosen the suffering
because I know I’m able to say no and follow the truth
instead.
Even after some very deep insights, we may still choose to suffer. One
of the reasons we do this is that it’s easier because
it’s
familiar, whereas staying in the experience of seeing the truth, at
first, requires that we actively choose to not do what is easiest for
us to do. This requires a lot of strength and presence.
Yes,
because for me it’s easier to suffer than to not suffer.
It is easier. It stinks, but it is easier. When you do choose not to do
what will result in suffering, it can feel like a burning. Staying
present to something you used to try to get away from can be very
intense. It can seem like a wall of flames stands between you and the
truth. What you’ve been avoiding seems like something
terrible,
but the wall of flames turns out to be very thin. It is easy to go
through, but if you hesitate, you’ll get burned. It will be
horrible for those moments when you are half in and half out. But at
some point, you are willing to go through the flames, and you discover
that what you have been running from is not so bad. In fact, the truth
feels very satisfying.
In the meantime, get really curious about the times when you choose to
suffer. Really be present to that experience. If you really show up for
the suffering, it will ruin it for you. You’ll see that
it’s not worth it. The bad news is that suffering is what
wakes
us up. The good news is that suffering wakes us up. Eventually you
reach a point when you are willing to just stay right here and look at
the truth.
To order Nothing Personal,
go to the Books page on radicalhappiness.com.
Many
more of Nirmala’s beautiful writings can be downloaded for
free at:
www.endless-satsang.com.
Your Reality
by Gina Lake
When you are identified with the egoic mind, you live in its
world—its reality—and that becomes your reality.
The more
you detach yourself from this mental world, the more you taste Reality,
which is just what is without all the mental images the mind overlays
onto it.
Reality is what it is, but the egoic mind resists it and rejects it,
tries to change it and manage it. And it does this through thought.
What it most tries to change and manage is the image of this I that we
see ourselves as. It works very hard not only at giving this I some
reality by dressing it up in all sorts of images, but also at making it
the right image, and this usually requires spinning a story about how
this I is in relation to the world and to others. It likes to make the
world and others wrong in order to puff up this image and make itself
superior. Others, on the other hand, who have a negative identity have
minds that reinforce and support that self-image, which is accomplished
by telling negative stories about life, the world, itself, and others
out there.
The mind has lots of stories, and these stories create an inner world
and perceptions about the outer world, which are often quite divorced
from Reality. At best, they don’t include enough of Reality,
and
depict only a small part of it. When you tell a story that reflects
only a small part of Reality (the part that reinforces your self-images
and story of I), you are telling a partial truth, and partial truths
are lies by definition. People live in one false reality or another
until they begin to gain some detachment from the egoic mind, which
spins these lies.
Your reality is made up of the stories you tell yourself the most. Some
of these stories change over time, but most of us have core stories
that we cling to throughout our life (until we don’t) that
define
us and give us a sense of identity: I am someone who was abused, I am
the golden child, I am the creative one, I am the princess, I am the
loser, I am the different one, I am the one who can’t do
anything
right, I am the reliable one, I am the adventurer, I am the clown, I am
the smart one, I am the loner, I am the victim, I am the leader, I am
the rebel. I am the special one, I am the lazy one, and so on.
These core identities take on a sense of reality and truth because they
have been reinforced over and over again by mental repetition, either
conscious or unconscious. They also are reinforced by parents, friends,
and others we are close to, who pick up on our self-image and repeat it
back to us. In most cases, the self-image itself was first introduced
by a parent or someone close to us in childhood.
Everyone has a set of identities—not just one—which
make up
this sense of I. These identities take on a life of their own because
they are reinforced internally and externally. We begin to act in
accordance with our self-image: if you see yourself as clumsy, you trip
a lot, or if you see yourself as smart, you study a lot.
These identities, or self-images, are self-fulfilling prophecies: we
make sure that life conforms to and agrees with our self-image by
behaving in ways that cause others to agree with our self-image. And
just to be sure, we tell others outright how we see ourselves and
therefore how they should see us. We make sure that they get our
self-image right, just in case they didn’t catch it in our
behavior or demeanor.
Exercise: Examining Your
Self-Images: Take
a moment to list some of the ways you see yourself. Do you notice any
themes in the images you have of yourself? What underlying beliefs
about yourself do these self-images point to? At your core, what do you
believe about yourself? Any belief you have doesn’t have any
truth or reality. Anything you believe about yourself is just a story
you have been telling yourself, perhaps because someone significant in
your childhood told you that about yourself. These beliefs are only
true because you believe them. Take that statement in for a moment.
Nothing you believe about yourself is inherently true. And yet
believing what you believe about yourself has shaped your life and
affected your experience of yourself, of life, and even of others.
Beliefs are powerful if we believe them.
Having some insight into the reality created by the egoic mind and your
conditioning is important in breaking the identification with the egoic
mind and learning to live from essence. Unless you can see that you are
not the self-images you are living out, it will be difficult to see who
you really are, which has no image attached to it whatsoever. Who you
really are can’t be experienced as an image. It is too vast
and
too much like no-thing to imagine it. The mind can’t grasp
it,
which is one reason it creates self-images that it can grasp. It
overlooks Reality because it can’t grasp it and instead
creates a
reality that it can grasp and have some control over.
The egoic mind’s inner reality and experience spills out into
Reality largely through desires. These inner images activate desires,
and desires propel action toward what is desired. This activity
structures the life: when we are ego-identified, our life is largely
based on getting certain desires met. Our particular desires are shaped
in part by the self-images we have. For instance, if you think of
yourself as a princess, then you want what princesses want. Or if you
think of yourself as a loser, you may want to be a success or you may
want to be taken care of.
Many of our self-images cause us pain or a sense of lack, which we
desire to alleviate by trying to get something—more love,
more
money, more beauty, more success, more education, or more power for
instance. If they are grandiose self-images, then we desire to prove
that to the world, and we are driven toward activities that will do
that. In any event, when we are ego-identified and identified with our
self-images, our life-choices reflect those images, and desires fueled
by these images create the impetus for many of our activities.
When we are identified with the ego, solutions to the pain caused by
our self-images are offered by the ego. This would be fine if the ego
were wise and had values that were worth pursuing, but the
ego’s
values are opposed to the natural order of life, which is love and
unity. The ego is all about separation and being better than others.
So, its solutions are ones that attempt to achieve superiority rather
than love.
Essence, on the other hand, doesn’t drive us to heal the pain
created by our negative beliefs and self-images by getting more of
something or by trying to be better at something than someone else.
Rather, when we are aligned with essence, it is clear that our
self-images are not real or true and that nothing is needed to improve
or heal them. The healing of our self-images comes from seeing that
these self-images were never true and that the only power they ever had
was the power we gave them.
From essence, these self-images just need to be seen for what they are.
Then, when all of our energy is no longer taken up by trying to fix
this me that doesn’t even exist, it is possible to discover
what
essence wants from us in this moment. How would essence structure your
life? What activities does it propel you toward? These will always be
more fulfilling than the ego’s activities.
So, your reality is just that—your own subjective
reality—and you create it with the stories you tell about
yourself, your life, life in general, and other people. The egoic mind
manufactures ideas about yourself, life, and others, and you see
yourself, life, and others through the lens of these stories. They
mediate between you and life and shape your experience of life. You
don’t create Reality, which is a co-creation with many other
forces, but you do create your subjective experience of Reality. Most
people experience their stories more than they experience Reality
because they essentially live in a mental world, only occasionally
coming out of that world for a breath of real air. When they do, it can
feel amazing. Reality is much richer and juicier than subjective
reality.
A Question About Choosing by Theo
Question
from a reader: How do I know if I’m
making the right choice?
Theo:
First
of all, right and wrong is a mental concept. The ego compartmentalizes
life into good or bad, or right or wrong, but life cannot be
compartmentalized. From the standpoint of essence, all choices lead to
learning and growth, so it is impossible to make a wrong choice.
However, some choices are more in alignment with essence’s
intentions for this “you” that it has created than
others,
and these will be more fulfilling than ones that aren’t.
Usually,
several choices could be made that suit the life plan and allow for the
growth and learning that essence intends. Sometimes people get stuck
because they believe there is only one correct choice to be made at a
given time, and that is rarely the case.
That being said, choosing happens either as a result of a mental
conclusion about something, which is how the ego chooses, or it happens
spontaneously and comes out of the moment, unplanned, which is how
essence chooses. These are two very different ways of choosing, with
very different results. The ego chooses based on conditioning,
training, past experience, and information the mind has acquired. These
generally are what inform most people’s decisions. And yet,
everyone has the experience of setting aside the mind’s
decision
and suddenly going with their gut, which is the experience of essence
moving through you. Throughout your day, you choose both from the mind
and from essence. There is an ongoing dance in most people’s
lives between these two ways of being. Eventually, you learn to trust
essence and distrust the mind, and essence moving you becomes your way
of being in the world. It can take quite a while for this to evolve
because trust usually is established slowly over time, and yet, it is
possible in any moment to let essence have you rather than the ego.
The experience of essence choosing is very different from the
experience of the ego choosing. When essence chooses, choosing emerges
seemingly out of nowhere, with little thought preceding it. In fact,
you probably were not even thinking of anything related to that choice
when it arose. When the ego chooses, on the other hand, it thinks and
thinks and thinks again. It goes around and around, examining the pros
and cons and every possible scenario related to that choice. It
evaluates its choices according to what it wants. In other words, it
chooses whatever will maximize its desires, which usually relate to
getting more comfort, money, security, love, safety, fun, and power,
which are its values. Essence on the other hand values love,
connection, learning, growth, and fulfilling the life purpose above the
ego’s values, and its choices will maximize these.
While the ego’s choosing is an experience of confusion and
uncertainty, essence’s choosing is an experience of clarity
and a
sense of rightness, and it is followed by motivation to act
accordingly. Suddenly, you just know what you need to do, and this
leads easily to doing what needs to be done next. Life is much simpler
when essence is running the show and the ego takes a back seat. Then,
you can really relax and enjoy the ride. It knows where you are going
and how to best get you there—so you don’t have to!
Theo is a collective consciousness on the mid-causal plane and teacher
for earth.
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