Going Naked Without Belief

Friday, 02 July 2010 14:46 Written by Nirmala

A friend has shared how he is struggling to know what to believe and even if anything has any meaning at all. Here is how I responded:

Everything you have written is true....because you wrote it! That is the strange thing about this life, everything means what we decide it means. You have heard the phrase, "Make Believe". Well this whole life is make believe. We make up our beliefs and then believe them. We make it all up as we go, and each moment we are also free to make up a new story. We are free to decide what this means and what that means and also free to then "change our mind" and decide the opposite is true.

So when you think enlightenment is important, then it is important. When you think enlightenment is meaningless, then it is meaningless. When you think what you do is useless, then it is useless. When you think you must go through an ego death, then it will seem like you have to go through an ego death.

I am not saying that you decide what happens. I am saying you decide what it means when anything happens. Meaning is like a work of art that we paint with our thoughts, and that we are constantly retouching and recreating. This does not mean that things have no meaning (unless you decide they have no meaning)....it just means that the meaning they have is something we create.

Given the fluid, ever-changing nature of thought and therefore of meaning, the best approach is to believe whatever you believe, but to hold it very lightly. You need a certain structure of belief to function and orient in the world. But you do not need to come up with a final belief or formula for how anything works or what anything means. You can play with beliefs and meanings and see what effect they have. If they are working great. If they are not working, great, because then you can change what you believe.

And in the midst of all of this play at believing, it is also fine to take a break and just not believe. I am not suggesting you decide that things have no meaning. I am suggesting you take a break from knowing what things mean, if they have a meaning or not, and even if there is such a thing as meaning or not. Not knowing is only a problem if you think it matters what you think. If you have a sense of how it is all make believe, then it is OK to go naked for a while with no belief. Then if you want to believe something for a change, put on some belief clothing again.

It can take a while to get used to this naked possibility of a deep not knowing. It is not better to not know (unless you think it is), it is just different. And at the deepest level of not knowing, it is profoundly different. It is at this deepest level of not knowing, that there is the possibility of seeing things as they really are. And yet even then, it is fine to instead make up a story and make believe it is true, and therefore see and know "reality" that way. The ultimate is not a complete and permanent cessation of knowing, it is a complete flexibility to know or not know from moment to moment. This includes the flexibility to experience the depths of pure Being without the filter of knowing, and it also includes every knowing or belief or meaning you have ever experienced. This flexibility of knowing is not a prescription or something you achieve. It is a description of your consciousness as it is now and as it has always been.

Everything you have ever experienced has been an expression of this capacity you have to make believe. There is no right thing to experience and there is no wrong thing to experience (again unless you decide there is a right and wrong.) Life itself is showing you the full range of your consciousness, from tight constricted, narrow belief to the boundless dimensions of reality unfiltered by meaning or belief. It is the dance between these two--reality and belief-- that makes up your experience in every moment. You might as well enjoy the show!

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Seeing Love in Every Action

Tuesday, 29 June 2010 14:29 Written by Nirmala

Someone questioned me further on my assertion that there is love in every action because love is the nature or essence of everything. Specifically, they questioned whether this leads to a denial of and even justification for cruel and horrible actions. Here is my response:

You are absolutely correct that seeing love in everything can easily drift into a denial of or justification of unkind or even cruel and horrific actions. However I would suggest that it is equally a kind of denial to ignore the love that is present in every action. And paradoxically when we are in denial that the core or essence of everything is love, that is even more often used to justify cruelty, shame, violence and destruction.

The antidote is to see the whole truth of the situation. We can see that the essence of all action is a kind of love or caring, and also clearly see the way this love or caring becomes narrow and incompletely experienced and expressed, including the ways this love can be tragically and horrifically narrow and therefore dangerous and destructive. But in seeing the love that is here in every action, our response tends to be loving and compassionate. Instead of perpetuating the cycle of shame and violence we tend to see the hurt and pain and fear that is contracting the essence and love so horribly. And so instead of inflicting more shame and hurt to punish someone, we address the shame and hurt that is already here to possibly heal it and release everyone involved from their suffering.

And just to be clear, this more complete response to the whole truth of the situation includes doing whatever is possible to prevent someone from doing harm in the first place and to protect ourself and others when necessary. Often this can be accomplished without further violence or shame when we are clear about what the problem really is, and so our actions are in response to the hurt and pain that is fueling the violence, instead of being only a response to our own fear and hurt.

Our mind seeks a world where everything is black or white. But with more experience and maturity we come to see that the world is the way it is and not the way our mind wants to see it. And in this real world there is incredible complexity and subtlety, and at the same time there is an underlying simplicity or oneness of love. It is a tremendous challenge to see the whole truth and then to respond to that instead of our limited ideas and beliefs about good and evil.

All dualities are really differing amounts of one thing. There is no actual energy called darkness, there is just differing amounts of the energy we call light. There is no actual substantial presence called evil, there is just the experience of less and less love and compassion when we are lost in pain and fear. Seeing this truth can inspire the experience and expression of more and more love and compassion. Denying the truth of the presence of love in every experience usually inspires more and more violence and hatred. It is as incomplete a perspective and response as denying the violence and cruelty in the first place.

Ultimately, the question is what do we choose? Do we choose to respond to shame, hurt, violence and hatred with more shame, hurt, violence and hatred? Or do we make the radical choice to see the whole truth of the hurtful or cruel act and so respond to it with love, compassion and understanding as well as protective strength, discrimination and integrity?

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Is There One or Many? Yes!

Saturday, 19 June 2010 14:50 Written by Nirmala

I received the following question via email:

I am reading, for the second time, "Living from the Heart" and still do not understand something about aware space. I understand that who I really am is aware space and not my body, mind and personality. But when there is another person here, they most likely know me as a body, mind and personality. When I am with another person I also am relating to their body mind and personality because that is in my awareness. It seems very contradictory. Can you explain it better? Thank you.

Here is how I responded:

Sorry to take so long to get back to you.

Your question is a very good one. It possibly boils down to the question: is there one awareness or many? And the answer is yes! There is one awareness acting and appearing as many.

The mind does not understand when two apparently opposite things are both true, but it turns out that oneness and multiplicity are not really opposites. They are different qualities or expressions of one thing. The simplest example is your own hand. It has many fingers and yet is also one thing. The many fingers are one expression or aspect of your hand, but the oneness of the hand as a whole is another quality or dimension of the same thing. This metaphor is explored more fully in the article on this site about advaita and oneness available here.

We can experience the obvious uniqueness of our own individual perspective as you described, and we can also directly experience the deeper truth of oneness. Like all deeper truths the experience of oneness is more subtle and yet also more universal or ever present. This makes it more challenging to directly experience oneness, in part because it is such a subtle thing to experience, and yet also in part because oneness is always here in every moment, and so we tend to overlook it. This is similar to the way we do not often consciously notice the air we breathe because we are so used to it that we have learned to take it for granted.

So you can experience that you have an individual body, mind and personality and you can even enjoy the appearance of other unique people with their own perspective. But this does not need to contradict the sense you also have that you are ultimately aware space. The source of awareness is truly infinite in its potential. It creates everything that exists, and one thing it seems to love to create is this experience of individuality. I would also invite you to read the fairy tale at the end of my free ebook, Beyond No Self, which you can read online here or alternatively you can download the PDF ebook here. The ebook ends with a fanciful story about how oneness manages to appear as many, and offers a perspective that suggests every apparent individual is also infinite in potential. That is the great thing about infinity: every part of infinity can also be infinite!

I hope this is helpful.

Going Naked Without Belief

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Seeing Love in Every Action

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Is There One or Many? Yes!

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