Freedom from Confusion

The instant you get angry, anxious, depressed, annoyed or have any other negative emotion; stop for a moment and see if you can go outside your mind and observe the energy that's driving the emotional thought.  If you can, you will sense an expansion of awareness with a feeling of being lighter and more alive.  It is an awesome experience.  The act of observing thoughts and the energy of the emotions allows you to realize you are not the content of your mind.

We often have thoughts and forget that we are not actually those thoughts.  It's easy to become locked into the belief that we are our thoughts and emotions.  We forget that we are the observer as we become identified and fused.  By observing our emotions and thoughts from an objective distance we can free ourselves from the tenacious hold they have on us.  It is a freedom most people have never experienced.

Take a toilet paper tube and look through it with an open eye and the other shut.  This is what the world looks like when you are caught up in your thoughts and emotions - just a narrow opening to reality with everything else shut out.  Then take the tube away and open both eyes.  Go outside and look around at the sky and trees and anything else that happens to be in view.  Take in the wondrous world.  This is what it is like when you are not identified with thoughts and emotions. 

Let yourself experience freedom from a negative mind.  Take a deep breath and relax.  Step outside of the mind and observe your thoughts.  Feel the freshness of not being confined by them.

The Five Experiences

Peoples' minds are in one of five places at any given time.  They can be driving a car,walking, talking, listening, meditating, reading a book - anything and their minds will be in one of five places (states of consciousness). 

Even while you are sleep your mind will be in one of these five states.  The five states are waking sleep, absorption, attention, awareness and pure awareness.

When you learn how to recognize these five states of consciousness, you will be able to recognize the moment you become aware.  And when you are able to recognize awareness you can practice staying there.  You can even go further in your practice and learn to stay in pure awareness. 
By closely examining these five different states you can see for yourself how they are separate but yet closely connected experiences.  Once you are capable of recognizing the five states, awareness and pure awareness become clear and identifiable. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCLfsD-dBVs

The Speed of Time

As I pointed out earlier, there really is no such thing as time.  Time is a manifestation of the human mind.  Time is a human concept.  It seems as though things change from reference point to reference point, but that really isn't the case.  The sun looks like it comes up and goes down over a certain period of time but as you know, the sun really doesn't come up and go down. Sometimes time seems to fly and other times it seems to almost stand still.  Clock time and psychological time are two imaginary times and neither one really exists.

You can measure the speed at which the sun revolves around the earth (clock time) and you can wait a long time at the bus station for your sweetheart to return   (psychological time).  In both cases, time is a construct of the human mind. Do an experiment and you will see what I mean.

Immediately at the end of a busy day in which you are going from place to place, meeting and talking to many people, and having to hurry from here to there, notice how it seems as though the day is going by very fast.  And then, when you are resting and eating dinner that evening, reflect back on the day and it will seem as though it lasted a long time.  Two different psychological times, for one person on the same day. How fast time goes by depends on your state of mind.  Busy mind = fast time.  Non-busy mind=slow time.

If you were to sit all day long staring at a blank wall, time would seem to go by slowly.  But if you were doing something fun and exciting it would seem to go by more quickly.  The speed of time has everything to do with mind's activity.  The body is always in the present moment but the mind may be in the past, the future or worrying about some needless matter.  Or, the mind could be in the present moment with the body.  It all depends on you.  Just remember, "There is no time like the present."

Is it Possible to Cultivate Permanent Mindfulness?

Can mindfulness be permanent and everlasting?  The answer is yes because mindfulness is the present moment and the present moment is always permanent no matter what.  Think of it - the only thing that is permanent is the present moment.  Everything else is unstable and impermanent.  The earth, the stars, everything in the universe is changing.  But right now, at this very moment, there is complete and absolute stability.  Don't you see? 

The only reason you don't stay in the present moment is because of the mind.  Your body is in the present moment but your mind wanders from the past to future.  When you keep your mind with your body, you, the total you, will be in the present moment.  Try it. 

When you are in the present moment there is no past and no future - only Now.  And the present moment is unchanging, therefore it is permanent.  There is no permanence, however, when you compare past and present, present and future, or past and future. Also, there is no permanence when you dwell in the past and/or the future.

Simply through the act of thinking, you alter, influence, and even create your own world.  Werner Heisenberg showed this to be true in the1920's with quantum physics.  Your reality depends upon what you have decided it to be.  What you experience and subjectively think about the event with which you observed and possible interacted creates your reality.  You as the observer of your experience, choose how the experience is experienced.  For example, if you see someone you know down the isle in a grocery store, wave at them and they look away, you might create any number of thoughts: (1) "He didn't see me," (2) "He doesn't like me," (3) "It was somebody else," (4) He's a snob."  The more times the same event happens, the stronger the belief and therefore the stronger the reality.
Thoughts and beliefs determine how you see the world.  If you believe that all millionaires are greedy, then all millionaires are greedy. If you believe the world is in a terrible situation, the world is in a terrible situation.  My point is, thinking and believing are what make your own reality.  And thinking is usually focused on the past and the future.  "The world used to be that way, now it's this way and in the future it's going to be that way."  You are comparing the past with the future so there is no permanence. 

By stilling the mind and focusing on the present moment, impermanence immediately disappears.  You can remain in the moment and mindful even if you are deciding what to wear at a party tomorrow night as long as you understand that you are thinking and acting in the present moment.  The chore comes with staying in the present moment.
Remember, everything is already in the present moment except for the out-of-moment mind.  With practice, patience, and persistence the thinking mind will stay longer and longer in mindfulness.  Only a few people will ever achieve the ever-present mind but that doesn't mean you cannot.  Those who give up will never be permanently mindful - only those who persivere.

                                                                      NAMASTE'

Being mindful in dire situations

It's easier to be mindful in less stressful situations than it is in more stressful situations.  That's a stupid statement, but it's true? If you are going to be mindful what is going to prevent you from being mindful when the "chips are down," like when you are confronted by a madman pointing a gun at you or having to kill someone in combat?

Mindfulness is supposed to be living in the moment, accepting what is, having empathy, compassion and being non-aggressive.  When we are confronted with life threatening situations the primal instinct of fight or flight takes over automatically.  It's as natural as farting.  Our body's central nervous system slips into the sympathetic modus operandi under the most dire of situations. We can be in a state of harmony with body and nature and all of a sudden a snake falls out of a tree and lands on our shoulder.  We go from being at peace with the world to panic in a fraction of a second.  It doesn't take much to press the buttons, sound the alarm and jump three feet straight up yelling and screaming.

Although it has been shown that the practice of mindfulness can actually change the structure of the brain (neuroplasticity), it is virtually impossible to override the instinctive reaction of fight or flight. 
It has taken humans thousands of years to get where we are and we aren't about to change overnight.  We are not going to change overnight but we can practice mindfulness and it can become a feature in our everyday life.
Let's say you have been practicing mindfulness for quite a while and you are pretty good at staying in the moment under adverse situations.  When that person cut you off in traffic, the doctor kept you waiting in the examining room for two hours, your spouse yelled at you for no good reason and the bills piled up, you were able to remain cool, calm, and collected.  You stayed in the moment and let the experience occur without becoming agitated, disturbed or frustrated.  But what would you do if you had to go to war and kill the enemy?
When I was in Vietnam there were guys that had ears of the enemy hanging from their belts.  There was no compassion, love or empathy for the people they killed.  After days and days of close, bloody combat they quickly learned that it was either "me or them."  In fact they learned to hate the enemy so much they didn't see them as real people but as objects - "scum", "gooks", "VC".

They wanted them not only dead but blown up, mangled and shredded.

A soldier could go into war and be mindful but it would take lots of mindful practice.  It would take months of practice and would cost the government billions of dollars.  It would take a mindful, understanding and compassionate government to undertake such a program. Since soldiers are seen as expendable that, most likely, will never happen.  But, it would be possible.

You are facing the enemy and see them as humans fighting for their country just like you are.  They come at you with all they've got.  They are running with their bayonets, yelling and screaming with fire in their eyes.  You point your weapon at them and say to yourself, "I'm sorry friend" and pull the trigger.  He goes down and you have sympathy for him.  You point your weapon at another one and kill him too. After the battle you and your buddies gather the dead and say a prayer for them, put them in body bags to be taken back to their country for a proper burial. 

In the Bhagavad-Gita Lord Krishna says to the warrior Arjuna, "If you fail to wage war of sacred duty, you will abandon your own duty and fame only to gain evil," II-33.  Krishna is telling Arjuna that as an honorable warrior he must kill his enemy, but it must be with compassion ("sacred duty").  If it is not not with compassion then you will be eaten up with hatred, hostility, animosity, and antipathy. This is why so many warriors come home mentally broken. Their lack of compassion for their enemy turns into nightmares that haunt them for the rest of their lives.  Too many combat veterans come home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), hatred, insomnia, chronic fatigue, lack of will to live, inability to function in society and even love their spouses. 

If soldiers could learn how to be mindful they would not come home with evil embedded in their souls.  They would come home with compassion and love and there would be no need to spend billions of dollars on the back-end trying to mend broken soldiers.  Why not teach them mindfulness on the front-end, before they go to war?  Treat the enemy as honorable warriors as they deserve to be treated.

Some people like Edward O Wilson, in his new book - The Social Conquest of Earth, views war as a permanent manifestation of human nature.  Then there is John Horgan, director of the Stevens Institute of Technology who declares in his new book, The End of War, that war is not a biological curse but a cultural innovation, an especially vicious, persistent meme, which culture can help us transcend.  Whatever the case, I contend that war is a limiting factor in populations much like social grievances, political and religious values, competition, territoriality, fecundity, food, water and parasites.  Competition can lead to war and war is competition. 

In the next blog - Can you cultivate permanent mindfulness?