Posts

Simplicity

We are destroying ourselves through tribalism,  selfishness, lack of awareness. Living in the present moment with fresh eyes and an open heart is so rare. In it's rarity, it has so much power to transform the suffering of human beings into calm. If we pay attention with as much depth of we possibly can, we get a glimpse into the infinite expansion of space. We are so fully enveloped in the present moment that the past and the future become practically nonexistent. The chain reaction of suffering that is a consequence of primitive human nature ceases, and worries and anxiety about the future become very miniscule. We are fully nourished when we relax into the moment.

Be the Observer

The self identity that makes judgments, formulates theories and chooses to take action is in actuality a small component of the totality of who you really are. This can be proven objectively in moment to moment experience by simply paying attention. There is no further requirement for your enlightenment, in fact. This is not to say that the simple act of observing the totality of your experience rather then being absorbed into the chaotic vortex of incessant mental noise is easy. It requires that you let go of something that you've been tightly clutching onto for the majority of your life. Letting go doesn't mean blocking out or ignoring the mind and its constant activity. It means that you see the mental structure of self identity and your thought stream from the vantage point of the totality of your felt existence. Allow the mind to think freely, and allow the chaos to thrive whenever something powerful like the terror of fear enters the space of your experience. Avoidance...

The Self-Consumed Mind

When I first entered college, about 10 years ago, I was introduced to Marijuana by a friend. It made me feel like every sensation was amplified, and that it's almost like I could 'feel' my mind. Throughout the years, I occasionally found myself going back to the stuff. I felt in the back of my mind like something deeply important was being illuminated. Smoking weed for me is like this potential doorway into the understanding of self through suffering. All of my deepest darkest fears rise to the surface, and haunt me to edge of my life. This horrifying reality is somehow a wonderful teacher. It showed me night and day how the subconscious nature of my mind is: as Alan Watts would say, "a quaking mess". Overwhelming feelings of fear and anxiety commonly overtook me after smoking weed. Though, there were always times like now, when a more calm, centered-self prevailed, and those more primal and frankly self destructive tendencies to focus on negative feelings diminis...

Are you the person?

A man who is numb to the world is blind all the glory of life. That same man takes for granted the smiles and laughter of children playing in a grassy knoll. He overlooks the beauty of the grass itself, sprouting together in synchrony from this lively planet, fueled by a star which undergoes fusion and emits a byproduct of light that has gifted our planet with a constant wave of energy that is absorbed and re-distributed to a magnificent variety of living things. As well as conjuring life, the electromagnetic waves released by the sun regulate our earth’s climate, allowing It to be suitable for life in the first place. Assembled from the atomic byproducts of the fusion of many different stars, a numb man feels nothing but a blunt sense of meaninglessness. He lives only to die, and die he will. What will not die is the only thing that should have ever mattered to him. “Beyond all thoughts of good or evil, there is a field, I will meet you there.” -Rumi The field Rumi refers to is ...

I drowned here

Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning within myself. From the outside you’d see a hollow shell of a man and from the inside I’m literally gasping for breath. It is this feeling of being in all of the chaos in which every thought is taken to be part of reality. Now, I sit and look within to find that there is somehow peace here. Where did that calm arise from, when just moments ago I was drowning from within? That pure space arose when I detached myself from the main source of chaos, which is the mind. Being an internet fiend, I often get lost within the confines of this information storm which feels like an internal flood of energy that overwhelms me and carries me away from my natural place, leaving me gasping for breath and powerless. Sometimes it’s hard to see when the reality you’re living in at any given moment is not an objective reality, but actually a conditioned environment which your mind has constructed for you in reaction to events in your external world. If you’re living ...

Truth is freedom from all suffering

If truth is overlooked, and ignorance is maintained, then suffering will continue. Therefore, I say, truth should be our highest ideal. I can prove that ignorance creates suffering in light of your own experience. If every time you are anxious or stressed or in some deep misery you truly examine with your fullest attention the nature of what you’re experiencing in that moment, you will realize that the negative feeling itself is not actually negative until you assigned it that label with your mind. They are simply feelings happening in that moment. You are then the pure observer of them, and once you observe them from an objective place this way you overcome their power to influence you in a negative light so strongly. They become akin to the weather, changing all the time but their power to influence your day can be diminished to a mere ripple in the context of the whole of your being. If truth, or an end to suffering, is what you seek, then may you first identify what is false. M...

Pure Observation is key

Only pure non-judgmental observation of who we are is the truth about who we are. A natural observation of internal sensation and being. You’re simply here. Nothing more is needed. If you return to your thoughts you have the instrument to realize that those thoughts are observable too. Those thoughts are arising in your consciousness at this moment unrestricted. Let them be just as they are. If you get lost in thoughts or mind then return to the wholeness which reveals that was just a teeny tiny aspect of the whole. The pure awareness I’m speaking of can and will enlighten you to the fact that you are shapeless. Your thinking may try to reel you in and take over, and even if it succeeds the invitation to come back to pure awareness is here at every moment of your existence. You are the shapeless, observing everything but not labeling anything or becoming something you’re not. That means let go of everything but pure awareness of yourself. Here is the beauty and wholeness of having ...