It's our attachment2outcomes that becomes a Dictator, and one day we WILL break free.

The long list of "should's" and "shouldn'ts" have been put in place by our attachment2outcomes which essentially is the deeply ingrained belief that my happiness, my completeness is to be found in outcomes, in pleasure and not pain. The pleasure we are most attached to is love from the other and material gain. 

The list of should's and should nots are a powerful unconscious strategy to gain as much of these pleasures as possible and what this does is cut us off from accessing and following a feeling of what we really want to do in each moment. This is inauthenticity and it feels very uncomfortable. The uncomfortableness accumulates over time and manifests as an unsatisfactory sense in life. 

Start learning how to do what you feel like more, start with the small things first, and soon enough you'll find it no longer makes sense to live life any other way. 

Freedom, right?

The majority of spiritual concepts are put forward not because they are true but rather to expose and loosen an existing and opposite ingrained belief.

We could say that this journey is ultimately a journey of freedom from belief. 

Take for example the concept "you are not the body you are formless awareness which pervades everything", this concept is not entirely true, however it can effectively bring about the dislodging of a limiting ingrained belief. 

Let's then hope that the concept that has helped remove an ingrained belief doesn't in itself become the new problem. 

You are not Awareness. Even if a new state or way of directly perceiving life sets in and suggests you are, look at it and see if maybe there is another explanation. We so often overlay onto our new experience the descriptions given to us in a teaching and then unquestioningly take that to be the fact. This is not a questioning of the validity of the description as a methodology, it was unquestionably useful in order to bring about change but not necessarily the 'truth' of the matter, and for a while we can be quite deluded about what's what.

In practical terms you are a complete person. A person is the combined result of Consciousness (awareness is a primary faculty of consciousness) functioning through the body, and hence coloured by the characteristics of the body, this results in a personal experience in each moment, an experience of being that individual and of living life, or being lived. 

Even if the sense in the moment is highly impersonal, it is still an individual personal experience which has become in parts coloured with a sense of impersonalness, nonetheless, in practical terms you are still the person.

Remember this when it comes to teachings and how to relate to them (and what is written here also fits into that category):

'whatever is written or spoken is always a concept, no sage, no matter how great, has ever uttered a word of 'Truth', the only Truth in the manifestation is the impersonal sense of 'I Am', I exist now.' ~ Sri Ramesh Balsekar

"use this thorn to remove the thorn embedded in your thumb, but then be sure to throw both thorns away" ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Don't worry, life has this under control, the process will take you there. What is written above is actually just a description of what may happen, and not a prescription of something you have to do. 

In my experience life takes us beyond any states and mindset of not being the person to a standpoint where I see I have always been a person, always will be, and for a while was a person with some fairly inaccurate interpretations of life, like, "I am not the person". 

One of the biggest intellectual shortcomings we tend to have is that we find we are incapable of hearing a concept without either taking it as Truth (turning it into a belief), or dismissing it as entirely wrong.

Coming to have a distinct understanding of the difference between the nature of a concept and the nature of turning that concept into a belief, hence an understanding of the nature of belief is paramount in this transformation process. If we come to see that in principle all and every belief is in principle fundamentally flawed (on the basis that we are incapable of knowing anything absolutely, but rather we will know things only relatively), then we can become free from the error of belief. 

If we start to recognise how we automatically relate to concepts as Truth, this seeing can become the basis of the collapse of our entire upheld system of belief.  

It is the cutting of the Gordian knot of belief.

The core of the person is consciousness.

Peace for now

... is sometimes pleasure and sometimes pain.

The unfolding of life is in some moments as we would like and in other moments not as we would like - it's just the nature of life. 

The sooner this is truly recognised the sooner the attitudinal resistance - which assumes that life should turn out our way - will dissolve.

That is what peace of mind regardless of circumstance looks like.

The reason this peace can be there is because pleasure or pain don't actually touch what we are at our core.

Peace for now

Isn't it true, we are given gifts in life! Gifts of friendship and love for example, and sometimes these gifts are given only for a short time - rarely are we given a gift which remains consistent - it's just not the nature of life's gifts. Yet, nonetheless, they are still precious gifts given.

Having said this there is one very special gift, the gift of our innate Being, the core of each and every human - this is always consistently here.

When the focus turns inwards to the precious gift that is always consistent, then the attitude to the outer gifts adjusts naturally. And then, when an outer gift is no longer there, the attitude is not anymore of loss but rather of appreciation for what was given, even if only for a short time. The whole relationship to the transience of life changes.

Peace for now. 

In these 24 hours you will be wished happiness and in-turn will wish happiness on others more than at any other time in the upcoming year. 

Maybe it's a good time, just for fun, to pause and consider exactly what, in practical terms, that constitutes.

Peace for now
Roger

PS: For those that want a little hint,
happiness doesn't come from outcomes, it isn't a feeling of excitement or joy, or pleasure, not even bliss or ecstasy but rather is described in the second last line of the post above.

The amount of peace in your life is directly correlated with how quickly it is directly known that a particular situation, positive or negative, doesn't touch the core of who you are. 

Whatever happens, I still am. It is only thought which fails to recognise this. The fact remains.

Peace for now. 

Why is it that we get so disturbed when outcomes are not as we would like? 

It's really quite simple, it's because (and this really is quite an oddity given we have so much experience of life), by enlarge we still haven't realised that life is a force unto its own (which we are intrinsically part of) and sometimes life delivers what we want, and sometimes it doesn't - that's it. 

Once this has become crystal clear to us then we stop expecting life to be different, it just doesn't surprise us when things turn out the way they do.
We stop resisting what happens in each moment.

And with this attitude of acceptance and understanding we still have the intelligence and freedom to do whatever we can in each given moment to improve a situation, with the knowing that the outcome is not in our control.


The other factor that forces us to get so disturbed is that humanity tends to be out of touch with the part of themselves which is never affected by outcomes.

The core of the human is unaffected by what happens in the flow of life and it's being familiar with that aspect of ourself which delivers unwavering peace and contentment in daily living.

Peace for now

Rest in the Christmas Spirit - the undeniable, pure existence, at the core of your humanness.

I wish you all the unwavering peace that stems from there.

Peace and loveRoger

Life only ever turns out one way.

A thought or feeling, an action for that matter, are all simply products of a biological organism reacting to stimuli. This sounds very scientific and mechanical doesn't it? Not very human, right?

Nonetheless, the fact is, that for as long as we don't see things with clarity we will continue to experience life with an internal discomfort.

The vast majority of us don't see what happens in life as an impersonal happening, but rather are convinced that there is a 'doer' that is responsible for everything that happens through the body and mind. 

If looked at closely it becomes evident that this supposed entity, 'this fictitious doer', simply doesn't exist. All there really is, is a complex set of automatic biological and psychological reactions which happen, and happen without the need of a 'controller' to produce them. 

From this recognition, witnessing the wonder of life happen (including all the functions of the body) is so much more of a likelihood.

This is the game changer. This is the waking up to the fact that the belief that I am the 'doer' is a complete fiction. There is great liberation in this imagined entity collapsing.

This imagined entity is in itself just a thought.

Peace for now.