Guilt Is Not Very Useful or Meaningful

Sunday, 07 August 2011 16:48 Written by Nirmala

In asking for a mentoring session someone shared they have a problem with guilt. Here is my brief response:

As for guilt, I would point you to the contraction you probably feel when you feel guilty. This is telling you that it is not very true that you are guilty. The truth is what opens your Heart and your sense of Being, so when something causes a contraction that means it is not very true. (There is much more about this in the free download of Part 2 of the book, Living from the Heart, available here.)

Of course there is some truth to the idea of guilt, but overall it is not a very useful or meaningful concept. And it usually does not lead to useful or meaningful action, so this is part of the way it is not really very true or important. Guilt does not often even lead to the desired outcome of changing or correcting our behavior. Because of the discomfort in the contraction we feel when we feel guilty, we often act less kindly and compassionately when we are feeling guilty. This suggests a more practical definition of truth as that which is useful or which leads to a desired outcome. If something does not lead to a desired outcome, then it is not wrong or bad, it is just not very true.

When you feel that kind of contraction, you can just let it be here, and possibly become curious about what else is true. If it is not very true that you or others are guilty, then what else is true about the situation? Small truths are not bad or wrong, they are just quite incomplete. If you or someone else has done something that triggers a sense of guilt, then there is lots to discover about that experience besides how guilty it makes you feel. What else is true about your actions? What were your intentions? How have you been conditioned to act in that situation? What other effects did your action have besides the ones you feel guilty about? Are you even sure that you hurt or harmed someone? What else did you also do in the situation besides the actions that you feel guilty about? What else do you feel besides guilty? What can you do now that will also affect the situation? Is there something you can apologize for or something you can do make up for your unkindness to someone? How important is this experience in the overall context of your life? And finally, what else is going on in your life besides this particular situation? Guilt may be here, but there is probably a lot more happening than that!

There are endless questions that can uncover more and more truth. Why settle for a not very useful or meaningful conclusion about any experience?

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Fears Are True, But Fortunately Not Very True

Friday, 29 July 2011 17:06 Written by Nirmala

Someone emailed me this question:

The recent congressional budget crisis has brought up a lot of fear and frustration. We've been told that the consequenes of a stalemate would be "catastrophic". It is difficult to deal with the emotions that come up around this possibility, partially because this isn't just a personal concern; a lot of people would be affected. The pundits say that it would hurt most economies around the world, and that's difficult to think about. Accepting this placidly seems impossible. Can I ask how you are coping and how you would advise in handling the fear and sadness that this situation brings up?

I replied:

The problem with our fears is that they are all true. Anything we can imagine could happen, and so all of our fears have some truth to them. However, none of our fears have much truth. In fact they have very little truth, and most of them have a ridiculously small amount of truth to them.

First of all, none of our fears have come true yet. If they had,we would not be fearing them anymore! So in that sense, all fear only exists as thoughts in our minds. Fear only exists right now as the movement of thought and feeling, and that is a very small existence. Yet, it is something that we have been taught to focus on. We have been asked over and over, "What do you think?" and "What do you feel?" As a result we pay close attention to the movements of thought and feelings in our mind and body. What do I think about this? What do I think about that? So even though their actual existence is very slight, they can seem much more important and true than they really are. We even use the argument, "Well, that's what I think!" to make a point, as if the mere fact that I think something makes it true!

Secondly, even when a fearful thought comes true, our ideas about what that will be like are usually very incomplete and inaccurate. Using your example of the debt crisis in the news right now, if the worst case scenario happens and the debt ceiling is not raised, it is still unlikely that all of the disasters predicted would actually come true. For example, it is unlikely that the debt ceiling would never be raised. Many of the terrible scenarios depicted by the media would only happen if the government was unable to borrow more money for months and months. And most likely the congress would finally act after the deadline passed and then fix the problem That is what happened back when the TARP program was only passed after the first attempt failed and then the stock market dropped dramatically. A few days later the congress passed TARP on the second try. And who knows, this whole dramatic episode might even shift our political process into a new and more productive direction. So the specific content of our fears is never a very complete picture of what will happen or can happen.

When we shrink our fears down to actual size, they turn out to be cute little unimportant thoughts. However, because they are actually such small truths, they're very effective at contracting our awareness. In this way, they can provide a lot of intensity and drama to our existence. It is this intensity and drama that fuels our tendency to become hypnotized by the media and its focus on the fear producing stories out there. The contraction of awareness is truly a kind of hypnosis or trance that fear triggers in us.

With any form of hypnosis, the antidote is awareness. The more aware you become of your thoughts and fears, the less hypnotized you become by the content of your thoughts and fears. You can also become aware of the underlying structure of thought and feelings. Thought mostly functions to contract our awareness and put us into various trance states. This is not a mistake, but like any other game, it does get old after a while. And then we naturally feel drawn to experiencing more often the flow of awareness without any illusions getting in the way.

The key again is awareness. Years ago, I studied a form of therapeutic hypnosis. As we learned how to induce a hypnotic trance, the instructor explained that by understanding more about how hypnotic trances are triggered, we would become less susceptible to them. We would recognize that someone or something is hypnotizing us and then we could choose whether to follow the suggestions or other trance inducing process.

One of the methods for inducing a trance is to get someone to focus their awareness. One example is the classic method of telling someone to focus on a swinging object like a pocket watch. Similarly, the dramatic and extreme images of dire possible future outcomes get us to focus intently on the images on the television. We are hypnotized by the images on the TV. Television uses many of the techniques I learned for hypnosis. And even more amazing is how our own mind uses those same techniques to shape our own awareness. We have learned what images and thoughts will trigger the deepest trances and so we become hypnotized by our own thoughts! Again this is ultimately not a mistake as consciousness wants to experience all of the different states that are possible, including all of the trance states we call fear.

But there is also no reason not to wake up from your fear trances. Notice the contraction of awareness that comes with every fear. This is a direct sign that your awareness is leaving something out. The more contracted your awareness is, the more expanded your unawareness is! You can wake up from a fear induced trance by simply noticing what else is true besides the content of your fearful thoughts, or by becoming very curious about the feelings and sensations in your body. How true is the content of your thought? What else is true? What else is possible? How do you even know what you are thinking right now? How do you know you are afraid? What sensations are present that let you know you are afraid? Are they really bad sensations or just different sensations?

It is a bit tricky, because directing your awareness in this way to the mental structures and visceral sensations of the fear can start dissolving the fear. It is like the mirages of water you sometimes see on the highway: as you get closer they always disappear. As we get closer to and more curious about our fears, they tend to disappear. All that has disappeared is a thought or feeling that was patterning your awareness. Without that thought or feeling, your awareness expands again to include more of the truth. And it just turns out that the biggest truths here are the truths of love, divine intelligence and the mystery and beauty of life. These bigger truths are not very scary at all! At any moment, you can turn away from the television screen, or from the "television screen" of your own mind, and then you can see what else is here besides your thoughts and fears.

Personally, I am fascinated by all of this. I enjoy occasionally watching or reading the news and especially enjoy watching all of the reactions it can trigger in me and in others. I also enjoy the moments where awareness penetrates into all of this in a new way. For example, as you become more curious about your own fear, you may start to see how much of our society is driven by fear. These political battles are often between one set of fears and another set of fears. And both sides cannot see how their fears limit their view, which naturally leads to extreme or imbalanced approaches. The antidote is always more awareness and truth. The truth really does set you free.

I hope this helps.

2 Comments

"Why?" and "Why Not?" Cancel Each Other Out

Wednesday, 27 July 2011 17:19 Written by Nirmala

Someone contacted me on Facebook to share and ask the following:

I was searching for truth and peace for quite a long time, but at a certain point I felt that there was nothing to search for as everything is just happening of itself. There is nothing else other than what is and it is just exactly this truth. There is nothing to search for anymore. And now I see myself as this in which the search arose. At the same time I was this who was searching, the search itself and that 'nothingness' which was found. Here it stops and what remains is just what has ever been: life is just what is. And the question: what meaning does satsang and pointing to the obvious have in all of this, if everything is just happening spontaneously? Everything has become (or always was!) so easy and simple and yet there are so many teachers and gurus and words making it complicated.

Here is my response:

Thanks for your very good question. I will answer it very simply at first and then I will also use your question to, as you say, "make it more complicated."

So your question is, "What is the point or the meaning of anyone giving satsang or offering spiritual teachings if everything is already fine just as it is?" Why give or attend satsang when everything is already spontaneous and perfect? And from the very big perspective you mention, there is no particular meaning to anything we do. I receive many forms of the question you have asked where someone wonders something like, "If everything is just unfolding as it should, then why would I go to work, try to understand anything, save the world, etc.? And sometimes the question is in the form of "Why not?" If everything is always perfect, then why not just sit on the couch all day, quit my job, or even jump off a cliff?

The best answer to any of these questions is the opposite question. Why give satsang? Why not give satsang? Or, why not jump off a cliff? Why jump off a cliff? The biggest perspective on life does not hold onto making anything special, but it also does not hold onto any resistance to anything. If everything is unfolding just as it should, why would that not include satsang and gurus and words that make things more complicated? It is in this willingness to ask both sides of the question that things can become simple again. Of course it is fine if you personally never go to another satsang or read another spiritual book. But it is also fine if you or anyone else does do these things. And while it is ultimately fine if someone chooses to jump off a cliff, there is almost never a good reason to bother doing so!

It is just a part of this whole process that when we discover this really big truth where everything is already fine just the way it is, that sometimes our ego latches onto this bigger truth and uses it to question something we do not personally agree with or find useful anymore. There is nothing wrong with this, and I have yet to meet someone who does not sometimes use their bigger perspective in this way. But when we are willing to ask the question in both directions (i.e. Why have spiritual gatherings and teachings? Why not have these things?), then there is a recognition of space around all possibilities, and there is room here for all kinds of spiritual and non-spiritual expressions. And of course this means there is room here for you to enjoy the simplicity you have found that appears to have little need for spiritual teachers.

So that is the simple answer: Why not? Or if the question is "Why not?", then the simple answer is "Why?" Because ultimately there is no reason why and no reason why not, these two questions cancel each other out, and leave lots of room for everything else. And please know that you can stop here if you just want the simple answer :)

However, there is still a possible dilemma. Seeing that it does not matter what we do or don't do does not change the fact that we still have to decide either to do something or not do something. There are several levels to truth, and while the biggest truth is that it does not matter, there is still the human practical level of our existence where to some degree it does matter whether we go to satsang or not, whether we go to work or not, and even whether we brush our teeth or not! These different levels are not separate and ultimately they are all part of one thing. And because they are all part of one thing, the different levels do affect each other. (Just to be clear, it is totally arbitrary where we divide the levels and even how many levels we describe.)

The different levels are not separate, but they are different. And so the truth that operates on one level is not always the most important truth on another level. On the ultimate level of truth nothing really exists and so nothing really matters. On the relative level of our existence, everything exists and everything matters, and so it is important to develop a sense of values or morals to guide our actions. On this level we all get to create or choose the values we will live by, and there are always values and morals we can create that work better to create any particular outcome. If you want to be comfortable and well-fed, then valuing work and practical matters will serve you. If you want to be spontaneous and live a materially simple life, then they may not matter as much. If you want to deeply understand and explore the truth, then spiritual teachings may have their place. If you just want to live without lots of subtle spiritual distinctions cluttering up your awareness, then they may not matter as much.

I mentioned that the different levels affect each other. One of the effects of contact with the biggest truth of the inherent perfection of everything is that it tends to dissolve any rigidity we have in the values and morals we hold on the relative level. If it all ultimately does not matter, then it tends to matter less what I choose to make matter on the relative level. The ego is simply the rigidity in all of the emotional and belief structures we developed to sort and handle our relative experience. As we experience more and more of the ultimate perfection of everything these rigid structures are not needed as much anymore. And contact with our ultimate nature does naturally dissolve the rigidity.

This dissolving of our ego structures can bring the dilemma or question of "What to do?" to a new deeper level of questioning. If we truly do not hold any rigid views anymore on what is right or wrong, how do we decide what to do? At this point, we often swing back and forth between a kind of hiding in the absolute perspective that it does not matter, or returning to some rigid old egoic view of what matters. There is another possibility. There is another level of our Being which is our Essence. This is the purer, subtler expression of our Being that includes the qualities of love, compassion, wisdom, clarity, joy, peace and much more. Again, ultimately even these things do not matter, but on the more relative level they matter much more than the daily concerns of life including the practical questions of what to do. Yet by contacting our Essence and these wonderful qualities of our true nature, we can then make relative choices based on the wisdom and clarity and loving kindness that naturally come with this contact with our Essence. Again, this creates a particular outcome in our personal experience. It creates the outcome of more ease, growth, evolution, beauty, freedom, love, and peace in our life.

When the question of how to live from Essence is important, this also happens to be a place where spiritual guidance and teaching can serve. This is because spiritual teaching at its best is an expression of a flexibility to move between the different levels of reality, and to some degree an ability to evoke that same flexibility in others. It may or may not serve your personal outcomes to develop contact with Essence, but a spiritual teacher or teaching can be helpful in doing so. Ideally, they serve to help put you in touch with your own Essence and your own inner guidance. To be clear, it is definitely not necessary to have a spiritual teacher to develop more contact with Essence, and yet it can be helpful. Again there even is ultimately no reason to live from Essence, and yet our Essence exists and is here to help guide and unfold our life. Why live from Essence? Well, why not live from this deeper place within you? Why not experience all of the limitless peace, joy and love available within you? If a spiritual teacher or teaching helps you do so at this point in your unfolding, then why not use them?

Guilt Is Not Very Useful or Meaningful

4 Comments

Fears Are True, But Fortunately Not Very True

2 Comments

"Why?" and "Why Not?" Cancel Each Other Out

4 Comments

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