Notes From a Fellow Traveller

Natural Awareness - The Wish-Fulfilling Gem

    There is a story told in the East of a young child sitting on her mother’s lap with her face looking forward, away from mother. In great distress the child, is crying out “mother, mother.” Unable to see her mother she reaches out with confusion and distress. Upon hearing her despair her brother looks up from playing and points out to his young sister that she is sitting on her mother’s lap and all she has to do is turn around and she will immediately see her.

    And so it is with our own lives. We spend our days looking outward, and as a result we cannot see our deepest self– a simple ordinary and untouched spacious awareness that is a wish-fulfilling gem, giving us all we seek in life. It’s so close that we miss it. So instead we ceaselessly search outside for what’s inside, because that’s the direction toward which culture has turned our mind. We’re disappointed, frustrated and feel empty-handed when we cannot find what we’re searching for in the outer world. Yet we continue to look outside, with more and more intensity, for what is already and always present within us. Perseverance is the name we give to this outer search for peace and happiness. Confusion would be a more accurate term.

    What are we looking for that is symbolized in this tale as the child’s mother? It’s of course our essence our true self that we can no longer see because we’ve been turned away from it for such a long time ago. Why do we long for and seek this essence? Because, we need this essence that some call our deeper self, soul or spirit to live a life of truth, happiness, connection, and meaning. It animates and enlivens our life. It’s the great natural healing elixir.

    If we didn’t already and always have this essence within us we would neither know it nor search for it. But we do know it.  We know it’s there. We don’t know how to touch it. It’s the natural birthright of each and every one of us. Yet we’ve lost contact with our deepest self. Perhaps it was a broken intimacy in childhood which turned our gaze outward, the ceaseless pull of an outer-oriented materialistic culture, the mistaken and transient taste of happiness found in outer things, or perhaps it’s just an unfortunate mental misunderstanding that has become a habit.

    Whatever the cause the result is the same. We remain in exile from what is most human about us. We remain in exile from our home, our mother, our source, our greatest gift. And we seek, desire, attach to and become addicted to an endless variety of false and inadequate outer substitutes that are offered as pacifiers by family, culture, and industry. As a result of this mistaken search we suffer – mind, body, and spirit. And we have no clear way out because the only way out is to turn inward. And what’s inside is so close that we can’t see it, so ever present that we forget it, so simple and ordinary that we cannot recognize it. It’s like our own face that’s right there, but without a mirror we can’t see it.

    However, there are ways that allow us to catch a glimpse of what’s possible. For example, there are times that the veil drops and for a moment and we catch a taste. Perhaps it’s a moment of communion with nature, at the peak of athletic performance, in music or dance, in the joy of sexual union, or in the gap between two thoughts. In each of these experiences, for a brief moment we experience selflessness, complete peace and ease, total presence, wholeness, and oneness – the qualities s of our deeper self. For a brief moment we touch our essence, we regain our spiritual nature.

    But it doesn’t last. It can’t. It’s not the real thing. It’s generated by outer and temporary stimuli – people, objects, or experiences. So it invariably dissipates, and usually quite quickly. Even worse, we mistake the messenger for the message. We seek more and more of what we mistakenly believe to be the source of this wondrous moment. And it’s this error that invariably consumes us with a ceaseless and unfulfilled outer reaching, desire, addiction, and suffering. The message is actually quite clear. We are capable of this profound richness, but the source of a true and enduring experience of a larger spiritual life is within, not without. Once we see it no effort is necessary. We simply need to look in the right place. It’s that simple. It’s too simple.

Where Do We Begin?

    We begin by recognizing the truth that what we seek – an enduring happiness, peace, and love – can never be found outside of our self. Look at all your efforts. Look at your relationships, ambitions, achievements, material possessions, fame, pride and so on. Ask yourself, “Have these experiences, people, or objects ever brought me lasting happiness and peace?”

    If happiness and peace was a permanent quality of outer things once we attained them we would be all set. But that’s not how it is. Once we think we’ve captured these in outer life they either lose their luster or begin to dissipate as sources of happiness and peace. So we need continuous upgrades or changes. It’s like being on a never-ending treadmill. It just doesn’t work. That’s why we wear out our body, mind and spirit. Until you get this truth you will not turn inward. You will keep chasing the railroad tracks hoping they will meet somewhere in the distance.

    We turn inward when we let go of the illusion that what we’re seeking can be attained through outer experiences alone. Renunciation, an unpleasant word in the West, is not a great act of discipline and surrender. It’s a natural unfolding of truth that’s driven by repeated suffering, disillusionment, and endless frustration. We finally stop our self in our tracks and realize we’ve been heading in the wrong direction. We realize that there is no gold at the end of our journey, only the sadness and regret of a road poorly chosen. Hopefully, there’s enough time in life to turn towards the real gold. Hopefully we wake up to the truth before it’s too late. That’s how renunciation takes place.

    Renunciation is not a disciplined denial but rather a natural result of the recognition that what we’re doing doesn’t work. It doesn’t take discipline. It takes distress and suffering. Distress and suffering, when deeply felt and considered wakes us from a deep slumber driven by mistaken habits. When we’ve come to the end of the wrong road that’s where our life, our second birth begins. If that’s where you are then read further. If not, place what follows on your desk and save it for the right moment – if you’re fortunate.

View, Path, and Fruition

    So how do we take the inward journey? The great traditions inform of us about the basic elements of the return trip home. Each tradition has its own specificities and words but the signposts are similar. Once we turn away from the wrong direction and focus inward we begin the journey. The first step is gaining the correct view. The view is of critical importance. As we’ve seen already, if you have the wrong view, a wrong understanding – for example, you believe that happiness and peace are found outside of your self in experiences, objects and people – you will never get to where you want to go. It’s like taking a rode that goes north to get from New York to California.

    If your compass is incorrect, all of your choices and actions will be mistaken. That’s why it’s critical to understand things correctly, to have an accurate understanding of self and life. Just as we must develop a certainty that past views are wrong, in order to change course we must similarly develop a certainty that the view we’re committing to is correct. Too many of us go about this by trial and error. If something doesn’t work we quickly try the next thing that comes along. That’s a long process. Wouldn’t it be best to sit back and carefully consider what’s the correct view, the correct understanding?

The View

    So setting off on the right path is essential. This may require time, study, and reflection. I will tell you how I’ve done this in my own life. I’ve first read the great stories. There are many of them ranging from Homer’s 3000 year old trilogy The Oddessy to Von Escehenback’s Parsifal’s Grail Legend to the modern day writings of Somerset Maugham, James Joyce, and Joseph Campbell among many others. I’ve similarly read the words of the sages, particularly those who’ve founded the great spiritual traditions. And finally, I’ve looked to find and meet great and noble people of our own time who can serve as living examples of a well-lived life. It’s here from these great stories and great people that I’ve found an enduring truth, immeasurable inspiration and steady assurance that’s been consistently validated across culture and time by those who’ve walked the path toward full humanity.

    Remarkably, although cloaked in diverse cultural or religious trappings, they all teach us the same thing. So what is this universal and timeless viewpoint, this description of the heights of human perfection? Here it is. There is an essence in each of us that can be called natural awareness, Christ nature, Buddha nature, Soul, Spirit, Atman. The Great Perfection, Satori, and a myriad of other names. It has so many names because once you touch it it’s nameless and wordless, so for convenience any name will do. What’s most important is to understand the nature of this experience that’s been given so many names.
    To begin, it’s experienced as spacious like space, an open presence and being. Because this experience of open awareness is beyond the conceptual mind it’s not obstructed by ongoing mental activity – thoughts, feelings, and mental images. It’s completely open and boundless. It’s like a great field in which everything can rise and fall, an allowing space in which all of life can take place with an interconnected ease. That’s how it is – a deceptively simple lightness of being.

    Living beyond the conceptual mind there are no comparisons, judgments, likes or dislikes, mental clutter, worry, anxiety, hope, fear, self-cherishing, disconnection, or suffering. All of these experiences are part of our mental life, our conceptual mind. What we experience when we arrive home is quite the opposite. We experience an ease, peace, and rest that is an innate characteristic of the mind beyond thoughts. And this natural and effortless peace and ease gives rise to feelings of contentment and happiness that similarly are innate to our deepest essence. Finally, there is a care and compassion that seamlessly unfolds from clarity and truth.

    So our natural home is spacious, empty of any fixed experiences, transparent, open, and at the same time filled with the qualities noted above. Nothing is there and yet everything is possible. It’s the gap between two thoughts, those glimpses we’ve previously spoken of, and who we are beyond our intellectual life and fixed sense of “I.” No one can take it from us and we cannot lose it. We can only forget it. And that’s exactly what we do. So we do not have to create this home anew. It is already there. We only need to move away the obstructions to it and accommodate our self to this natural experience.

    But this is not so easy to do as all of our life we’ve been habituated to leave this home and live in exile in an outer world that is neither informed nor anchored by our deepest self. So we need a process or method that can help as reveal and stabilize this natural home so it becomes our way of life. Then, our usual sense of “I” and life become instruments and servants of this greater sense of self where all goodness is found. Where the perfection of human life is found. We are not led by our intellectual mind but rather by our heart and soul. The way home is a path that begins with the correct view of what’s possible.

The Path

    Although a clear vision is essential, it’s not sufficient. We must take practical and actual steps to realize this view and integrate it into our life through learning and practice. There are two ways of learning. The first is inferential learning or intellectual learning. The second is direct experience. They are both important. If we want to construct a house we need to learn how to do by taking classes and reading instructional materials. With this background we gain sufficient knowledge to start the building process. Then, we learn directly from the actual experience of construction. Intellectual understanding is necessary to get us going, but once we learn from direct experience it’s far less important.

    Inner development is much the same. First, it’s necessary to understand certain things about the mind. We learn this from listening to teachers or reading books. We learn about the busy mind, the sill mind, and finally, about the fundamental nature of the mind. With this knowledge in hand we begin to practice what we’ve already learned and gain certainty through direct experience. When we see it directly and clearly for our self, a sort of “aha” experience, we no longer have to rely on the writings or words of others. We arrive it our own truth. The process is study, reflection, and practice. The first two are the foundation, intellectual learning, and the last, practice, is direct experience.

    It’s not as if we study, reflect and then move on to practice, like it was a fixed sequence. It’s not like that. It’s a continuous process of clarifying and strengthening our view and understandings and then validating our new and upgraded understandings through practice. It is a lifelong practice of growth and development, of study, reflection, and practice that progressively expands and enhances our understanding, awareness, experience, and life.

    Much as the microscope or other technological instruments are the central tools with which we investigate the natural world, meditation is the instrument or tool we use to investigate the nature of our mind and inner life. It’s the central practice tool. It would be an error to cloak the instrument of meditation in a variety of mystical or cultural ideas. It’s simply a neutral tool much like a microscope. The microscope is used to examine and penetrate the mysteries of the outer world and meditation is used to examine and penetrate the mysteries of the inner world. It is no more complicated or mysterious than that.

    Meditation is new to many of us. So here is a brief description. There are two aspects of meditation. The first is calming the mind. The second is developing insight into the nature of the mind. First we must calm the mind and then we can observe and learn from it. That’s the sequence. We’re not accustomed to a calm mind. We’re accustomed to endless mental chatter. We consider a cluttered and busy mind to be normal even if we find it exhausting and stressful. Chasing after random thoughts, feelings, and mental images is the way of an untrained and unfocused mind. When our mind is occupied and cluttered by mental chatter it’s not possible to explore it. There is no space, clarity or openness in our busy mind. It’s taken over by mental chatter. We must properly prepare the mind so that it can be examined, understood, and optimally used in the same way we prepare a laboratory slide so we can correctly view it, or prepare the body for a proper radiographic examination. This preparation is the first aspect of meditation. It’s aptly called calming the mind.

Calming the Mind

    The age-old method of calming the mind is to take a retreat from daily activities, even if this is only 20 minutes a day. We use this time to practice gaining control of our monkey mind and replacing mental chatter with inner stillness. At first, this is not an easy task as we’ve been so accustomed to mental chatter. Our mind has been practicing busyness most of our life. So we begin by motivating our self. We do this by reminding our self over and over of the fact that we each have the opportunity for a very special and precious human existence. We can become far more that we are. The mind is not just a mental chatterbox. Once we tame and train the mind we progressively discover that it’s the source of a profound peace, happiness, wisdom, wholeness, and love. It’s the source of all we seek in life.

    However, to achieve a fully lived life we must apply effort in that direction. And the window of opportunity does not last forever. If we do not prioritize inner development now when we have the opportunity, teachings, teachers, and a sound mind and body we may never actualize this possibility. The alternative to living a larger life is repeating throughout our lifetime the same mental chatter and mental habits. Without effort we will neither know nor experience the profound beauty and possibilities of life. We will live an “ordinary” or “normal” life, the usual diseases, aging and death. Keeping these thoughts in mind and reinforcing them regularly will motivate us to practice.

    Meditation practice is a relatively standard technique that varies very little across time and diverse cultures. Calming the mind is accomplished by training it to focus on one thing at a time. This quiets the mind. So we pick a focal point. We generally choose as a focal point the movement of the breath as it’s experienced at the nostrils, chest, or abdomen. We settle on one or the other. We begin by assuming a straight and noble posture on a chair or cushion, closing our eyes or gently gazing downward, and taking 10 deep breaths imagining we are blowing out tension with the out-breath and taking in ease with the in-breath. We then place our awareness on the breathing cycle as noted above. We use a bit more mental tension in the beginning as to hold our attention but not too much that we become tense.

    We now make use of two mental tools: mindfulness and vigilance. The first aides us in remember our focal point and the instructions. The second is a careful observer, noticing when our mind strays toward a random thought, feeling, or image. It takes time to develop these mental tools as we’ve become accustomed to “mindlessness” – being lost in one thought after another. So we strengthen and use these mental tools to stay with the breath, irrespective of how many times we need to bring our mind back from its tendency to wander.

    How do we treat mental chatter – thoughts, feelings, or mental images that arise spontaneously? Whenever we experience our mind as wandering from the focal point we’re careful not to follow thoughts into the past, project them into the future or preoccupy our self with them in the present. We learn early on that the problem isn’t as much the mental movements but our chasing after them. If we just leave them alone they disappear by themselves like writing on water with ones finger.

    We continue this practice until our practice period of about 20 minutes has been completed. We need to be careful not to bring our usual psychology into meditation practice. We don’t judge, grade, compare, or otherwise comment on our practice session. It’s what it is. We just follow the instructions and when there is a problem we seek guidance from a skilled instructor.

    With time the mind will increasingly become still and we will experience brief periods in which we can let go of our focus on the breath and just rest and relax into the mind’s stillness. However, we still need to maintain a certain degree of mindfulness and vigilance although not as much as before, as the mental movements are more subtle and easier to deal with. This is called resting in stillness. If the mind becomes too active or you “drop off” you should return to the breathing practice to refocus yourself and renew your alertness. This practice can be done once or twice a day. At the beginning the practice sessions may be shorter. With time they will progress. Although discipline and commitment is essential you do not want to become frustrated. You want to enjoy and rest in the practice.

    Because we are not seminarians and monks it’s important for us to use all of our daily activities as practice opportunities. I will mention here just two examples. The first is listening to others from inner stillness. Rather than our breathing, the words and speaking of the other becomes our focal point. We listen with full attention and whenever our mind wanders to a response, judgment, interpretation, or other commentary we note this with our mindfulness and vigilance and return to our focal point, open and focused listening. There is nothing to do and nothing to try to understand. There is only listening. This is one way we practice in our day-to-day life.

    Another way is to begin the practice of bringing full attention to the task-at-hand. Whether tying our shoes, walking, eating, or brushing our teeth we use mindfulness and vigilance to return to and sustain our focal point – what’s happening here and now in the moment. This practice allows us to further strengthen mindfulness and vigilance as effective mental tools while simultaneously maintaining a calm mental state.
    This is our first practice – calm abiding. It must be added here that as your experience progresses you will naturally note that there are certain conditions that cultivate a quiet mind – for example, serene surroundings, non-reactivity, mindfulness to the task-at-hand, and a loving and accepting mental attitude. There are other experiences that encourage mental chatter – for example, unnecessary conversations, endless busyness and multi-tasking. In time we learn to cultivate what supports inner calm and meditation practice and to abandon what obstructs our goal of a quieter and more stable inner life.

Gaining Insight   

    The second aspect of meditation is gaining insight. The purpose of gaining insight is to learn about the nature of the mind and ultimately the nature of reality itself. Once we have a correct understanding and experience of mind and reality we rid our self of the confusion and misunderstandings that lead to suffering and obscure the great treasures of human life. We cut the problems of human life at their root source – incorrect understanding leading to incorrect actions leading to mental distress.

    We begin by gaining insight into the basic nature of the still and moving mind. Specifically, we gain an understanding of the transient and insubstantial nature of the thoughts, feelings, and images that are themselves the source of mental chatter, distress, and suffering. We then gain an understanding of the “I,” the personality self, that is a more complex thought pattern developed over time.  And finally, we gain an understanding of the very nature of the mind and reality itself. This describes a progression of understanding moving from coarse to subtle to subtlest. This evolving wisdom cuts the roots of mental chatter and mental affliction, slowly reveals to us the nature of mind and reality, opening the way to an enduring happiness, wisdom and compassion.

    Once we calm our mind we can actually observe it and learn how it works. The first thing we will notice is that most if not all of our mental chatter is troublesome. It’s disturbing and afflictive. We worry about the future and resent the past. We’re anxious, stressed, and moody. We follow our mental chatter mindlessly and then automatically act and speak it in the world, most often thoughtlessly.  Our inner chatter is a major source of mental distress and suffering.

    But there is more. We will also discover that what appears to be powerful and solid thoughts, feelings, and images that guide and compel our actions and speech are in actuality brief mental blips, neuro-electrical discharges. They’re actually not much of anything. When we stop chasing them and leave them alone they dissipate by themselves, leaving stillness in their wake. So what turns an innocuous mental movement into an experience of stress, distress, and anxiety? It’s not the thought, feeling, or image itself, but rather our mental habit of chasing after, attaching to, and identifying with one or more of these movements. Once we do this – and it occurs quite automatically – we now “become” the thought, feeling, or image and lose the stillness and awareness that enables us to stand back, observe it and allow the mental movement to naturally dissipate on its own.

    There are two points here. The first is that we’ve developed the habit of automatically chasing after mental movements, attaching to and identifying with them, and then embellishing these mental blips with a story line from our past history. To this we add a value tone – we either like or dislike each particular mental movement. We make something out of nothing. And this something, this personal narrative runs our life whether we like it or not.

    If we can stand back and observe these mental movements rather than get enmeshed in them we will discover a second important truth. The normal lifecycle of an “untouched” thought, feeling, or image is imperceptibly brief. Left alone they arise, abide, and fall back into awareness as immediately as the disappearance of the writing done with a finger on water. Taken together these two points teach us that in actuality mental movements are insubstantial. Through habit we mistakenly alter them by chasing after them and embellishing them beyond what they really are. We solidify, prolong, and empower what are no more that brief electrical discharges experienced as mental movements. And that’s how we drive our self “crazy.” That’s the nature of how we create afflictive emotions out of nothing.

    Once we have an intellectual understanding of mental movements we can then observe them directly without analysis during meditation. That’s how we verify and gain certainty through experience what we’ve learned through intellectual understanding. Then, through personal experience gained in meditation, we know with clarity and certainty the truth about mental chatter and disturbing emotions. We see directly how mental activity comes and goes on its own leaving stillness in its wake. This will definitely alter our relationships to mental movements, disempowering them, and eventually freeing us from the suffering of mental discord. This takes time. So we must continually recollect our updated and accurate understanding of the busy mind and revalidate this knowledge again and again in practice.

    We can also learn about the still mind. We notice directly during meditation that the still mind is open, spacious, transparent, non-obstructed by mental movements, peaceful and easeful. It will feel far more like your natural self than the usual mental chatter. You will also notice that with practice you can gain control of your mind and intentionally create and inner peace and ease.. At first this experience may be brief, but with time it will expand and stabilize. When you discover this you will know that this is a far more reliant and enduring source of happiness and peace than anything in the outer world. And although you may forget this inner home, this inner refuge – you can never lose it. It’s with you wherever you go. Discovering this inner source of comfort and ease is a very important moment. There is no longer the question of whether you can live in peace and happiness, but only the process of learning how to stabilize it.

    So we have now gained insight into the nature of the still and moving mind. Of course this will develop and mature over time. So be patient each time you get caught in mental chatter. Moments of clarity and stillness will at first be brief, but with time these islands of rest and stillness will coagulate into larger land masses and become progressively more stable.

    The second and more subtle source of insight is into the nature of the “I” or “Self.” This insight is essential, but difficult. Why is this insight so essential? To rid our life of suffering and gain the riches of human existence we must remove the causes of suffering and the obstructions to a larger life. Our mental habit of experiencing the personality “self” as a separate, independent, and solid entity is the cause of many of our difficulties. It leads to an excess of self-cherishing, self-protection, self-absorption, and disconnection from others To soften and eventually rid our life of this hardened sense of self is quite important. When we do so we also break the illusion of separateness and the resulting disturbing thoughts and emotions.

    Let’s look at this self that we are so invested in. Ask the following questions. Does it have a shape? Does it have color? Does it have form? Is it inside our outside the body? If it’s inside the body where is it? Is it in our fingers, arms, legs, liver, head, or brain?  Can we say that it is in one or all of the parts of the body? If it’s located in one part of the body, then where is it located? If alternatively  it’s located in all of our parts would that mean we have many “selfs?” Is it located in the brain? If so in the right brain, left brain, nerve cells, or electrical discharges? Where exactly is it? Does it have matter? If you search and search and cannot find the self you’ve been successful. Our “I” can neither be located nor does it have mass. If the “I” cannot be located and it has no physical mass how can it be so powerful, so independent, so separate from others? It isn’t. We make it so because we falsely believe it’s autonomous, independent, and solidly existing. However, it does not exist the way it appears to us.

    We can continue this analysis in many different ways and there are many scholarly books that do just that. But the point remains as we’ve stated it. The insight is that the “I” that we work so hard to assert and protect does not exist in the way that it appears. How does it actually exist? Using the mind and body as a basis we mentally impute or mentally make-up an “I.” This is a superimposition on mind and body. So this mental “I” does exist and function much as it does in a night dream. But it has no real existence other than the one we make-up mentally. It is neither substantial itself nor independent of its parts – mind and body. That’s why it disappears when the body deteriorates and dies. The “I” that we give our own name has no life of its own. It’s empty of essence and nature. It exists only as a mental creation based on mind and body.

    That’s quite a bit for one paragraph. It will take time to slowly overcome our fixed sense of self. But we must not do this by completely denying the self, as it does exist. It just does not exist as it appears – independent, autonomous, solid, and separate. So don’t worry, you can hold onto it and use it to live life, but just allow it to soften and soften until your view of it is consistent with how it actually exists.

    So this is our second major insight that again takes a long time to get accustomed to. Just understanding that it actually exists different than it appears is a major first step. As you read and study you will increasingly gain a correct view of the self and progressively free your self of the problems associated with this confusion. When resting in stillness during meditation you can observe that the “idea” of a separate, independent, and autonomous “I” is just another thought, another mental movement which will dissipate if you neither chase after nor identify with it. Through meditation you will increasingly and directly experience the transient and ephemeral nature of the “I” and this truth will dawn in your mind as a profound life-altering wisdom. Be patient. I am laying out a sequential process that evolves with study, reflection, and practice rather than suggesting that these increasingly subtle insights will come all at once.

    We finally come to the third insight that is the subtlest of all. This insight is into the fundamental nature of the mind. As the mind is the source of all our experiences – mental experiences as well as sensory appearances – it is an insight that equally applies to all reality. It is here that we lose words. We can only gain this final insight through a direct intuitive knowing that goes beyond words and logic. We are now in the realm of poetry.

    Once we’ve achieved a stable stillness of mind we can begin to “look” at the stillness itself to see its underlying nature. That underlying nature is the fundamental nature of mind. While resting and relaxing into stillness we drop the sense of a meditator, meditation practice, and the tools of mindfulness and vigilance that were previously needed to calm the mind. We’re now moving beyond any mental processes into the realm of pure presence and experience. We merely rest into the stillness and experience its nature. If we catch a glimpse of the nature of the mind it will only last a few seconds before we try to label and mentalize it. That’s OK. Be patient and in time these experiences will expand. Here are the instructions of the wise sage Tilopa:

            To realize this inexpressible truth,
            Do not manipulate mind or body
            But simply open into transparency
            With relaxed, natural grace –
            Intellect at ease in silence,
            Limbs at rest in stillness
            Like hollow bamboos.
            Neither breathing in nor breathing out
            With the breath of habitual thinking,
            Allow the mind to experience peace
            In brilliant wakefulness.

    When we directly experience the nature of the mind we will observe that it’s empty like space – this means it’s not cluttered by lingering thoughts, feelings, or images. It’s also spacious like space. It’s open, clear, and boundless. We can use one of many words or terms to express this open spaciousness. These include: timeless awareness, pure presence, naked awareness, empty awareness, ground of being, pure consciousness. Although there is nothing actually in this open awareness, paradoxically everything arises in it. This awareness can express itself in form as thoughts, feelings, images, or sensory appearances that arise from and then return to this basic awareness. There is no separateness. This is a continuous seamless flow of experience.

    But there is also something else that is seamlessly inseparable from this space. This space has an intuitive knowing in it. It knows itself. It knows present moment awareness. It knows that mental appearances – thoughts, feelings, and images – come and go. It knows their nature to be awareness itself. By knowing the open and aware nature of mind it knows the nature of all reality.

    Beyond this, and also seamlessly present, is a profound sense of peace, ease, oneness, and over time the development of a stable and penetrating wisdom, love and compassion. It’s with this most subtle and difficult recognition that we finally become completely and irreversibly free of suffering and open to receiving the blessings of the great gifts of the human experience.

    We finally experience our consciousness as a continuous stream of open, free, and unconditioned awareness in which arises and falls the many forms of awareness that we call mental movements. Nothing sticks, all is insubstantial, and life takes on a present moment aliveness, vividness, presence, and beauty that many will call the authentic religious experience. It’s all really quite simple and ordinary. We are just resting in our natural state of awareness and experiencing the continuous flow of life as it is. Paradoxically, in the East they call this the ordinary mind.

    Here are  the words the wise teacher Shakbar  used to describe this ultimate insight and reality.

            Not knowing that this state is within oneself,
            How amazing that one searches for it elsewhere!
            Although it is clearly manifest, like the radiant disc of the sun,
            How amazing that so few people see it.

            How amazing that without being fabricated,
            This mind, which is unborn and primordially pure,
            Is spontaneously present from the beginning.
            This self awareness is naturally free from the very first,
            How amazing it is liberated by just resting –
            At ease in whatever happens.

            When you directly perceive the luminosity of your mind,
            There is no reasons to listen to theories about it.
            When you have molasses right on your tongue,
            You don’t need to be told how it tastes.

            It is present as transparent, utter openness,
            Without outside – without inside –
            An all-pervasiveness
            Without boundary and without direction. –
            …like the sky …like space:
            Without center, without edge, without goal.

                                        The Fruition – The Wish-Fulfilling Gem

    As we’ve said, it’s all so simple. At the end of the path we return with well deserved wisdom to where we started – an open and vast awareness and presence in life that is uncontaminated by the residue of past history or the shaping forces of future projections. That is where we start our lives as young children. But as the world closes down on us we retreat into intellect, doing, achievement, and other worldly endeavors, leaving behind our natural home. Although the path we’ve discussed is a homecoming it doesn’t take us back in the same way we left it. As a child we experience but are ignorant of the beauty and splendor of the present moment. As an adult we re-experience this beauty and presence but our time on the path has graced us with the wisdom to know who and what we actually are. We learn to live in this center of our being with great awareness and grace. We live from the inside out. We are masters of both worlds – inner and outer.

     Once we return to the center of our being we discover the wish-fulfilling gem that awaits us. What is this wish-fulfilling gem? It’s no more and no less than our natural presence, our natural home. What wishes are fulfilled? We find over time that this center of our being, this essence of who and what we are is inseparable, as water is from wetness, from the great gifts in life. They arrive in a single package and are revealed to us sequentially to the extent that we can live in this space of open mind and open heart. First is a peace and ease that surpasses anything we have known. It’s not relaxation. It has no opposite. It has no real name. Everything is just as it should be. There is no fear, no hope, no needs, and no desires. The experience of being itself is the ultimate elixir of peace.

    This profound sense of peace is pervaded by an equally profound contentment and happiness. We cannot compare this to what we call happiness/pleasure. It is permanent, abundant, and experienced in body, mind, and spirit. We have all glimpsed moments, or perhaps better said facsimiles of such peace and happiness. So remember such a moment and then imagine you can stretch in out so it’s your entire life. That will give you an idea of what’s possible.

    And there is more – a profound wisdom. When we are cleared of the veils of mental habits we can “see” and experience clearly for the first time. We see our self and our world as is not as constructed by our overactive mental life. To see what is as is is to know the truth of all things. To know the truth of reality is to be freed of delusions, confusion, and the distress and suffering that follows.  To know the truth is to live in the peace and happiness we have spoken of. To know the truth is to know a profound wisdom that cuts through all falsehoods and re-connects us to the essence of our life and all life.

    And as we shall discover, our natural state of awareness, presence, and being is seamlessly connected to all of life. It was only the cognitive mind and its labeling and fabrications that created the illusion of separateness  – I and other and I and it. That’s the way life appears, but it’s not the way it actually is. Life is a seamlessly inter-connected whole. There is no disconnection, no separation, no isolation, and no aloneness. There is only the wholeness that was always there.

    Our natural awareness and presence is the wish-fulfilling gem because it brings us the gifts we’ve longed for but inadvertently searched for in the wrong places. Now we know that these great human gifts are in actuality innate to human existence. We do not need to search outside of our self. They are right here right now. We only need to look in the right direction. We are finally home – and what a homecoming.

    We may fairly ask why do we have to go through this long journey of questioning, study, and practice to return to what has always been there? It is hard to give a precise answer so it is best to return again to the great stories. Whether it is Odysseus, Oedipus, Dante, Parsifal, or King Lear the message is the same. We get lost and we cannot return home through the same door through which we left. We must first gain a larger vision and view, and then through intention, study, reflection and practice realize this great vision. When we do so we will live under the guidance of an unconditioned wisdom and unconditional heart. Perhaps we an also call this heaven.

            In the words of the poet Derek Walcott:
            There will come a time when with elation
            You will greet yourself arriving at your own door:
            In your own mirror
            And each will smile at the other’s welcome
            And say, sit here, eat.
            You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
            Give wine, give bread.
            Give back your heart to itself,
            to the stranger who has loved you all your life,
            Whom you ignored for another,
            Who knows you by heart.

                                                    www.elliottdacher.org

The Nature of Suffering

(this is an updated version of a previous post)

    The aim of contemplative practice and inner development is to eliminate suffering and promote high-level health and human flourishing. If this were not a real possibility for each of us at this very moment there would be no need to go further. But it is. That’s not my assertion alone, but the assertion of all of the great traditions. Each of us can identify at least one individual that exemplifies this great human possibility. Recall for yourself an individual who lives in great peace, happiness, and wisdom. Would you like that for your self? It’s definitely possible. But such an attainment does not happen on-its-own. We really have to want it. And even then it will take our whole being to choose and traverse the path to this accomplishment. It takes devotion, faith, and disciplined effort. But you can do it. And if not, what is the alternative?

    Optimal well being requires both a sound mind and body. Biological medicine has given us mastery of the physical aspects of life. It supports us in maintaining the health of our body. And a healthy body is an important asset in the movement towards human flourishing.  But physical medicine alone cannot heal what is inner in nature. Suffering and happiness are internal experiences and can only be approached through inner understandings and development. That is why this course places so much emphasis on inner development and its primary technique, meditation.

    When we’re suffering, whether the cause of our suffering is overt or hidden, we can neither be happy nor healthy. So we begin with an effort to understand the nature of suffering. If there wasn’t a reversible cause for suffering there could be no successful remedy and we would be wasting our time. But there is both a reversible cause and a genuine remedy.

    Although a comprehensive and accurate understanding of suffering is pivotal in achieving mental and physical well being, it’s rare to hear any real discussion about the nature of suffering. There was never such a discussion in my medical training and it’s quite difficult to find any detailed discussion in the West of this important life experience that has so thoroughly been explored and taught in the East. However, unless we understand and address the true causes of suffering we will definitely continue to experience suffering as part of our life, and a sustained happiness and health will remain forever elusive. So let’s begin.

The Hidden Gift of Suffering

    Suffering is a powerful holistic experience involving body, mind, and spirit. Emotional or physical suffering casts a black cloud over our life, relationships, and experiences, shifting our attention from the routines of day-to-day life to the suffering itself. It becomes the singular focus of our attention. We either collapse into it in helplessness and hopelessness or divert all our energy towards coping with it and attempting to relieve it.

    Yet suffering, unlike few other experiences, simultaneously offers us the extraordinary opportunity to gain our full humanity. Why? Because distress, despair, and disease lead to an unusual level of openness and vulnerability, crowded schedules give way to the luxury of time, meaningless mental activity drops away, the ego surrenders its useless attempt to control life, rigid belief systems begin to crack, the pursuit of deceptive outer pleasures fall away, and just when there appears to be no way out new horizons suddenly appear and a life and love previously undreamed of becomes possible. Finally, we are compelled to focus on the profound issues of life – on the true essence of life. In this way suffering can be a doorway to the most teachable and potentially transformative moments in life. This is the hidden gift of suffering.

    Yet we miss it thousands and thousands of times in medical offices, hospitals, and in the quiet and lonely despair of a troubled and unsatisfied personal life. We lose this transformative moment by only addressing the physical sources of suffering and failing to understand or address the inner root causes. Seeking to provide immediate relief, we label acute suffering with a medical diagnosis and automatically prescribe corresponding remedies and therapies. Or alternatively, we bear down hoping and waiting for it to pass. In any case, that’s where we stop!

    However, it’s not only in moments of intense overt suffering that we lose the opportunity to grow a larger health and life. Unknown and unseen by us this same opportunity occurs regularly in our daily life. We miss it because we’ve become anesthetized to the subtler forms of suffering that we accept them as ordinary and normal parts of life. Suffering in the form of meaninglessness, doubt, confusion, ongoing emotional disturbances such as anxiety, stress, depression, helplessness and fear does not descend upon us with a suddenness that shocks our life. We’ve become accustomed to them. They too often go for normal. Nevertheless, these mental disturbances when seen from the perspective of a joyful and loving life are recognized more accurately as profound and insidious sources of suffering that on a daily basis steal from life its vitality and richest possibilities. This more subtle form of suffering when seen and deeply felt is also a basis for great life change.

    It’s not only the actual experience of suffering that’s so troublesome, it’s also the loss of the important opportunity to permanently change one’s life for the better. First, we unknowingly miss the opportunity to bring suffering to an end. Then we miss the opportunity to transform suffering – the experience that appears to destroy our body, mind, and spirit – into the wisdom, wholeness, love, compassion, and authentic happiness that can indeed save our life. What’s startling is that in the midst of suffering – more so than any other human experience – abides the ever-present possibility of human flourishing. In fact, this possibility is most available to us when we clearly and decisively address the very life experience that would appear to our greatest threat. We can actually say that when seen at great depth and truth human flourishing is the core and essence of all suffering.

    So why do we miss these opportunities – again and again? The problem is that we don’t understand the nature of suffering. And in our desire to be rid of suffering as soon as possible, we miss its call to awakening. We want relief and we want it now. Of course relieving suffering in any manner is important. But the great tragedy in addressing only the acute and most overt aspects of suffering is that we fail to address its deeper sources. We’ve had the experience of suffering, but we’ve lost its meaning and possibilities.

Impermanence

    We begin our exploration of suffering by briefly discussing the nature of impermanence because the distinction between how things appear to exist (permanently) and how they actually exist (impermanently) is an important contributing cause to human suffering.

    If we look carefully we will discover that all phenomenon ¬– mental and physical – are impermanent. They are impermanent because they are a collection of parts. Nothing that we experience is partless. Because everything is compounded or arises from the aggregation of smaller units there is not a specific and permanent self-nature to anything. This applies to the chairs we are sitting on, our random thoughts, our body, and the building we are now in. Everything is subject to change because of its very nature.

    We usually see change only in its coarse appearance. We see it in our body at times of disease, aging, or death. We see it in outside objects at the time of gross deterioration – rotting wood on our house, leaves falling from the trees in fall, the crumbling of an old building. Such change is apparent to us. But things don’t change all at once. Although change may appear to occur suddenly it’s really a process that goes on moment-to-moment. We call this unapparent change “subtle impermanence.” How could it be otherwise? What changes in time must be undergoing change at all times. We simply cannot see subtle change with our usual senses. This is quite important to realize, as we are lulled into forgetting that change is an innate and continuous process in all things – animate and inanimate.

    How is this related to the discussion on suffering that follows? Our cognitive mind makes a critical mistake. The mind, in its inability to see subtle impermanence, imagines things to appear as solid, fixed, and permanent. Stated another way, the truth of how things are is contaminated with a false understanding or at best a deluded understanding. As a result we neither directly experience nor confront the reality of impermanence. We tend to grasp at mental and physical phenomenon and freeze them in place, seeking to make permanent what is by nature otherwise. We are in conflict with the truth of life, and this conflict – a view that is in disregard of the truth of how things are – is an important cause of suffering.

The Three Sources of Suffering

    A very wise teacher once said, “You must know suffering.” It took awhile for me to fully realize the double meaning of this statement. First, we must have the experience of personal suffering – spiritual, mental, or physical – in order to gain the motivation to be free of suffering. Second, to be free of suffering we must know suffering in the sense of understanding it through examination and analysis. Knowing suffering in the first instance motivates us to delve into it and in the latter instance a thorough understanding of its root causes offers the opportunity to end suffering in this lifetime.

Overt Suffering

    There are three forms of suffering: gross suffering, disguised suffering, and the root cause of all suffering – the suffering that occurs when we are in exile from our inner home, when we forget our deepest nature.

     We are all familiar with overt or obvious suffering. It’s the physical, emotional, and spiritual distress that we’ve all experienced at one time or another. It’s most often associated with afflictive and disturbing emotions, loss, disease, aging, and death. When overt suffering occurs, we are quite aware of its presence. We know we are suffering. It takes precedence over all other concerns. At times we can resolve it with external techniques and therapies. This works fine for a laceration, abscess, sore throat, or minor headache. We do not need to dive deeply into every pain and ever experience of suffering. So some aspects of overt suffering are transient and easily resolved. But the suffering of persistent mental distress, disease, aging, and death requires analysis and understanding so that we may succeed in permanently gaining freedom from suffering. In order to attain this understanding we must move below the surface of overt suffering to its more subtle causes.

Disguised Suffering

    The second cause of suffering is far subtler. The major difficulty with disguised suffering is that it isn’t recognized. It’s disguised as pleasure. As a result, not only do we not see this suffering, but we crave it and can spend much of our life and energy chasing it! Imagine chasing suffering thinking it’s pleasure! Therefore this is the most insidious and difficult form of suffering to work with.

    Until the connection between what we call “pleasure” and its deeper reality, suffering, is clearly seen nothing at all can be accomplished to alleviate this subtle aspect of suffering and its effect on our mind, body, and spirit. So the first step in working with this aspect of suffering is to gain an intellectual understanding of it. Once we shine a light on disguised suffering it losses its cover. But be prepared. What we are about to discuss goes against all we’ve been taught. In a sense we can say it’s inconceivable. So, there will be much resistance to this new and more accurate way of understanding.

    Because of this radical shift in thinking it will take time to reflect upon this material. So please be very patient with this introduction and allow time for ongoing study and reflection that will unfold these thoughts, discovering for yourself their truth in your own life. Only then can you fully act on this wisdom.

    There are several essential points I wish to address regarding disguised suffering. Let’s look at these one-at-a-time.

1. We mistakenly learn to look outside for security, comfort,
    approval, and love.

    Early in life we learn to search outside of our self for pleasure and satisfaction – a search that consumes most of our life. Actually, when looked at closely it is not as much a search for pleasure and satisfaction as it is a search to relieve the discontent, disconnectedness, and void left over from childhood. This mistaken outer search is a misdirected and powerfully habituated longing for the deeper and more authentic experience of peace, happiness, and wholeness that is naturally within. But unfortunately we lose access to this human inner gem early in life and substitute a mistaken longing for outer pleasures.

    The great psychologist Carl Jung stated it best when speaking about alcoholism. He remarked that the use of “spirits” was a misguided search for spirit. What Jung was telling us was that our search for peace, inner ease, happiness, and wholeness is really a search for our inner self – for our spirit. But a lifetime of training takes us on the wrong path and in the wrong direction. We search outside rather than turn our efforts inward. We seek outside experiences, objects, or people rather than turn inwards. Alcohol and our other attachments and addictions become misguided substitutes for the real thing. And as we shall see, this mistaken direction takes us towards suffering that’s disguised as pleasure. The only cure, Jung suggested, was to return to our inner source.  

2. Pleasure is the word we use for an outer experience, object, or
    person that relieves a previous moment of longing or suffering.

    Take a careful look and you will see something quite startling. We generally apply the label “pleasurable” to outer experiences, objects, or people that relieve a previous moment of suffering. Said another way, the word pleasure is a term we apply to an experience that appears to be an improvement over a previous mental state. Watch this in your own life.

    In time this relief wears off and we need another a fix to relieve the next moment of suffering or sorrow. Consider a mango. If we follow a rotten mango with a good mango we call the latter one pleasurable. However, if we follow this with even a better mango the second is no longer as pleasurable. The third mango becomes most pleasurable. And this can go on and on with experiences, objects, or people. The observation here is that the experience of pleasure is only relative to our prior experience. It is not a constant feature of the experience, object or person we attribute it to. This takes us to our next point.

3. The quality of pleasure does not reside in an outer  
    experience, object, or person.

    Consider a fan. In the summer we consider a fan pleasant and in the winter unpleasant. But the fan hasn’t changed! The same can be said about eating. A certain amount of food can be pleasurable, but continue eating this “pleasant” meal and it soon becomes unpleasant. And how often do we discover that individuals that we initially experienced as pleasant in time become unpleasant.

 So an outer or inner experience is neither intrinsically pleasant nor unpleasant in itself. What is pleasurable in one context can be the opposite in another. If we can understand this one aspect of pleasure, we will be a bit less invested in chasing after external stimuli that provide momentary pleasure but may as well be experienced in the next moment as unpleasant.

 If the experience of pleasure is not innate to the experience, object, or person what makes one experience pleasurable and another not? And, why does this change from person-to-person and moment-to-moment? The answer is quite clear. Everything is always in flux and at any one moment multiple factors come together that create an experience that according to our personal past experience we will label that as pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. But this will change according to the circumstances of the moment. That is why what we label pleasurable is so unstable. This is why the quality of pleasure does not reside in the particular experience but rather in the complexity of related factors and how we view them from our personal experience.

 Consider the experience of romantic passion. We generally attribute this to the attributes of the other person. But if this were so it would never change. But we know it does. On closer examination we see that passion arises as a result of many factors: our personal sense of what is attractive, novelty, imagination, at times unavailability, a previous moment of loneliness, and so on. If one of these factors drops out the passion will shift, change and perhaps disappear. So the sense of pleasure originates with our personal take on attractiveness but is further developed through multiple other factors – none of which truly reside in the other person. If the quality of passion merely resided in the other it would never change. That is why the experience of pleasure does not innately and permanently reside solely in the outer experience, object, or person.

4. When we mistakenly think pleasure innately resides in an   
    experience, object, or person we desire more of it, crave it, develop 
    an attachment, and in certain cases an addiction to it. From this 
    comes all of the afflictive and disturbing emotions that result in  
    mental distress and suffering.

    What happens when we mistakenly think pleasure is an intrinsic property of outer experiences, objects, or people? Once we label an outer experience or object as pleasurable, we naturally want more of it. We crave and chase after it, whether it is a material possession, wealth, relationship, sexuality, praise, approval, name, or fame. In time our desire and craving turns into attachment. And over time, this insatiable hunger needs more and more of these pleasurable experiences and objects. We need and are driven to upgrade the intensity of the experience to continue to feel its “high.” Invariably, all strong desire and attachment leads to some level of addiction. So our pleasures become our attachments, addictions, and suffering.

    Here is where our understanding of impermanence is essential. It’s where the truth meets our confusion. All of our so-called “pleasurable” experiences are by nature impermanent. They arise as pleasant experiences as a result of a specific and temporary combination of causes and circumstances. But even so we remain mistakenly certain that we can grab them, make them our own, and hold on. However, it’s like chasing a rainbow or a mirage in the desert.

    In time, fearful of loss, we begin to protect and defend our “pleasures” against potential harm or loss. We become possessive, defensive, jealous, competitive, and if anyone gets in our way, we become annoyed, angry, or even hateful. Yet the very nature of an impermanent world – experiences, objects, and people – is change. That is the nature of all experience. Change is inevitable irrespective of our attempts to fix in place the ever-changing outer world.

Consider the following 4 truths:

    1. Whatever is born will die.
    2. All meetings will end in separations.
    3. Whatever is accumulated will be consumed.
    4. Whatever is high will become low.

    Everything is subject to a cycle of change. We cannot control this aspect of nature. We can only free our self from the suffering and distress by seeing this truth and ceasing to attach to outer phenomenon that are bound to change and do not innately and permanently contain the quality of pleasure.

    Suffering and loss is inevitable when we depend upon external stimuli to provide us with happiness. So if you follow the natural progression of an experience of pleasure, you will see that it invariably turns into disillusionment, loss, and suffering, then again to pleasure, and again to suffering. It is an endless cycle that goes nowhere.

5. What we experience as pleasure is actually suffering-in-disguise.

    So, in actuality pleasure doesn’t turn into suffering. Suffering is already embedded in what we mistakenly perceive as pleasurable, much as a fully-grown plant is unseen but embedded in the seed. We cannot see it at first, but invariably it sprouts and blossoms. That is why we call this type of suffering “disguised suffering.” It lies dormant in the experience of pleasure. Once the experience of pleasure has run its course – desire, craving, attachment, addiction, and loss – it reveals its true nature ¬– suffering. This may occur over minutes, days, years, or even decades. But rest assured it will occur. The cycle will run its course. In time all outer pleasure will bear its fruit of suffering, loss, mental distress, and sorrow.

    So we have now discovered certain facts or truths about what we call pleasure. To summarize them, pleasure is not intrinsic to an outer experience, object, or person. It’s an inner mental labeling of an experience, object, or person that relieves a previous moment of suffering under a particular set of circumstances. Pleasure results from the context of our experience – remember, the fan in summer and winter.

    The outer experiences we label as pleasure are impermanent and to one extent or another give rise to the cycle of desire, craving, attachment, addiction, and loss which invariably must end in suffering, sorrow, and further unsatisfied craving.  Reflect on these truths. Observe how they play out in your own life. The more you can grasp these truths the closer you will come to ending the cycle of pleasure/suffering and discovering the actual source and path to authentic happiness freed from any linkage to suffering.

    Unlike the first type of suffering, overt suffering, disguised suffering is far subtler and thus more difficult to identify. Who wants to think about or give up the experiences or objects that appear to offer pleasure. So we persistently hold onto and chase these poor imitations of true happiness when in actuality we are only chasing suffering. Very few of us are aware of the abundance of true happiness, peace, and joy that’s available through inner development. Very few of us are aware that authentic happiness neither deteriorates into suffering, nor is susceptible to the usual adversities of life. Those that know, do not seek ephemeral, external, and poison laced pleasures.

    Because of the subtle nature of disguised suffering, one can rarely deal with it directly until at least one of two conditions are met: (1) either you have recognized that all your efforts to achieve happiness through outer experiences, objects or people have and will recurrently fail and you realize with certainty that more effort in this direction will only lead to the same result, or, (2) unrelenting stress, anxiety, depression, meaninglessness, doubt, confusion, restlessness, unsatisfied striving or chronic disease force you into this recognition.

    When one of these two conditions is met, and the effort to remedy life’s sufferings with temporary pleasures is seen for what it is, we let go of what no longer works. Only then does the path to personal transformation, authentic happiness, and the permanent relief of suffering become available and desirable. This path requires turning away from outer objects of pleasure to the development of your inner life through study, reflection, and practice. It is there that one finds the authentic source of happiness – right where it has always been.

    When disguised suffering loses its disguise and is seen for what it is we can then begin to work with this second type of suffering. And by working with this second type of suffering, we simultaneously undermine overt suffering and come closer to recognizing the actual source of all suffering, the third type of suffering. We begin by gaining an intellectual understanding of the nature of disguised suffering as we have discussed here. We then reflect on our new understandings. And at the same time we begin to explore our inner life through contemplative practice that slowly reveals the authentic and hardy health, happiness, peace, and wholeness that are truth-given rather than outer stimulus-driven. Authentic health, happiness, peace, and wholeness exist without reference to outer experiences. As this work progresses we slowly undermine this second cause of suffering and come closer to the final and root cause of all suffering
.

Living in Exile From Our Natural Home

    We live in exile from our soul - from our essential self. There are many explanations of how this occurred. The great traditions say that we lost this awareness of a deeper Self following a great fall from faith and grace, that we lost this awareness of Self though the obscurations of an overactive mind and under-active heart, or that we fell under the influence, an intoxication of sorts, of the outer world and its perceived pleasures. In either case, what was a once luminous peace, happiness, and wholeness became increasingly dim, dimmer, and finally, unseen.

    The larger Self, the repository of the great riches of human life and the authentic source of happiness went underground – unseen and unknown. We lost access to the wish-fulfilling gem of our natural Self. This larger Self was replaced by a mental sense of self, our ego, that in its hollowness lacks essence. And this mental self that we call by our name mistakenly reaches outside to find what it can no longer see within. As a result of this misguided reaching out for transitory and stimulus-driven pleasure we end up with mental distress, unrelenting and unsatisfying cravings, stress, anxiety and emotional afflictions. We look for pleasure but end up with suffering – mind, body, and spirit.

    So we live in a substitute world of rationality, surface understandings, misunderstandings, and ephemeral and anesthetizing pleasures -– a continual self-betrayal of our deeper nature and its possibilities. And this betrayal flows through all levels of our being – body, mind, and spirit. Our body suffers the disharmony of a lost deeper Self down through its cells and the vibrations of its molecules. In the body we call this loss disease.

    Our mind suffers the emotional and mental distress of the forgotten open, spacious, wise, peaceful, and loving Self that is our essence. We call this loss mental suffering. Our spirit is lost in confusion, doubt, and a blindness that cannot be cured by any physical remedy or mental fix. We call this loss confusion and meaninglessness. We live as refugees from life in exile from our deepest humanity. We are lost as the poet Dante said, “ in a dark wood … for we have lost the path of truth that never strays.”

    This is the subtlest and root source of all suffering. Here we come to the deepest sorrow of humanity. If we rid our self of all the afflictive emotions characteristic of the second type of suffering we will directly experience this profound sense of disconnection that accompanies a loss of our deepest self and our proper place in the great and mysterious creation called life. So this final and root cause of all suffering is the wandering in exile from a home we barely remember.

    The reason we can with certainty make the statement that all suffering can come to an end is because of those courageous beings who have penetrated the depths of suffering and confronted the central affliction of humanity – the disconnection and separation from the essence of self and life. They cured suffering once-and-for-all within themselves, demonstrating to all of us ordinary beings this extraordinary possibility.

    When we lost the connection to our deepest sense of Self, we simultaneously lost a connection from others, the earth, and the natural rhythms of life. Disconnected in this manner, we now float in a sea of meaninglessness, confusion, doubt, fear, and emotional afflictions, reaching out for any available anchors – for whatever relieves the pain and suffering of this loss. We desperately reach out, chasing after whatever can offer us momentary comfort, security, or meaning. And we hold on to these anchors as if they were our sources of salvation. We attach, protect, and defend these illusionary and suffering-laced substitutions for the real thing. But this cannot work – certainly not for very long.

    Thus we suffer the loss of our inner life, the third and subtlest form of suffering. In response, we mistakenly reach outside for remedies that only contain within themselves the seed of the second type of suffering – disguised suffering which we mistakenly label pleasure. Unaware of this mistake we continue to court suffering, and as a result invariably end up with overt suffering - the only type of suffering we are actually aware of. That’s where the chain of suffering that begins with the forgotten Self ends up. We end up with blind and meaningless overt suffering. We are unaware of its subtle causes and its call to awaken. That’s the greatest tragedy of suffering – the fact that it obstructs the path to a larger life and health.

    To eradicate suffering is to return from exile to our natural home, to our inner life. Upon return we find that this natural home contains the wisdom, peace, happiness, wholeness, love, and healing that not only permanently eradicates suffering, but guarantees a perfected life and health – a life of harmony that rolls through and transforms body, mind, and spirit. It’s a second birth from the womb of suffering into the joy of Self. And like a ripened fruit it cannot reverse its course. Once accomplished, the return from exile is a final homecoming.

    It is like meeting a beloved parent or lover after many years of separation. We feel the remembrance, the warmth, the sense of being, the assurance, and the joy. It’s all very familiar. When we return home to our inner self we dissolve into it as we would to a long lost beloved of the soul. In this dissolving into the other there is a felt oneness that naturally arises along with a sense of wholeness and connectedness. Similarly this wholeness, ease, and connectedness naturally arise within us when we are reunited with our essential self.

The poet Derek Walcott says it this way:

                            The time will come,
                            when, with elation,
                            you will greet yourself arriving
                            at your own door,
                            in your own mirror,
                            and each will smile at the others welcome,
                            and say, sit here. Eat.
                            You will love again the stranger who once was yourself.
                            Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
                            To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
                            all your life, whom you ignored
                             for another, who knows you by heart,

    This essential self is not so far away. In the East they tell the story of a young child sitting on its mother’s lap facing away from her mother. The child is crying for mother and looking forward and to the side for her. But she cannot see her mother. Then her brother points out to her that her mother is right there and she is sitting on her lap. That’s how it is with us. When we become to re-discover this inner self we find it has always been right there. We’ve been sitting right in its lap. We’ve just been looking in the wrong direction and someone has to point out to us where to look. And the place to look is within. And the looking is with meditation.

----------------------

    We work with overt suffering with a variety of remedies, therapies, and techniques that sooth the emotional pain. We work with disguised suffering by gaining an understanding of why we recurrently end up suffering, despite our intense efforts to reach out to worldly pleasures. The remedy here is to turn away from what hasn’t worked, to forgo temporary outer and stimulus-driven pleasures that contain the seeds of suffering, and to turn inwards towards the development of a calm, more insightful, and more illuminated inner life with its fruit of truth-given happiness. We work with the subtlest root cause of suffering – exile from our natural home. Through inner development we gradually find our way back to our forgotten Self. It is here that we find with certainty and finality the authentic object of our longing –a genuine, vibrant, and enduring happiness free of suffering.

    So here you have it. The causes and remedy for all suffering. If we do not understand the cause we cannot apply the proper remedy. But if we know the true cause we can successfully apply the proper remedy. Only then can we reverse suffering in all its forms. We do this through study, reflection and practice which gives us a true, penetrating, and complete understanding of suffering, informs us about what to cultivate and what to abandon in order to alleviate and eradicate suffering, and through practice allows for a direct experience of what we have learned. Early small steps can make a great difference. Take your time re-reading and reflecting on this chapter and practicing in formal session and in day-to-day life. Use everything to help you grow. Slowly but shortly you will begin to learn through experience what has been written above. See for yourself what is truth and what is false.

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Total Freedom

    There are three types of freedom: outer, inner, innermost. The attainment of innermost freedom leads to a complete, hardy,and irreversible freedom.

     The first, outer, is political and economic – the absence of perceived external restrictions and constrictions. The second, mental freedom, is freedom from emotional distress – afflictive, ceaseless and uncontrolled mental chatter. The third, innermost, is freedom from the known ¬– from the past, and from all mental conditioning. Total freedom is the freedom to simply be. We can call the first  conventional freedom, the second psychological freedom, and the third spiritual freedom.

    In the West we’ve come a long way in assuring outer freedom, but at the same time we’ve failed to address inner or innermost freedom. And without these subtler aspects of freedom, we are anything but free, regardless of our customary notions about freedom.

    If I were to make a general inquiry into the question of freedom as it applied to my own life my initial response would be a certainty that I was fortunate to be free – free to choose to be here or there, write these words, organize my life as I wish, make choices freed from compulsion, assert views arrived it without undue influence, choose friends, career, home, and dinner. A simple review of my life would assure me of my freedom.

    So why not leave it at that? Why go further? Why inquire more deeply? The answer is clear yet difficult to grasp. Because I appear to be free does not necessarily mean that I am actually free. Authentic freedom is actually quite subtle and profound. What do I mean? Please consider the following. Many life experiences appear one way but actually exist in quite another. We call them illusions – the railroad tracks that seem to meet in the distance, the mirage of water on the desert road, the echo, the reflection in the mirror, and the night dream with all its vividness and apparent truthfulness.

    What if our sense of freedom was itself one of these illusions? What if we are actually living in an invisible prison woven by time, thought, habit, and fixed perceptions, but cannot see it and therefore mistake our condition for freedom when we are actually imprisoned? How could we ever get out? What if upon analysis we find our self free in a conventional or outer sense but are actually living a very predictable, automated, and pre-determined life? What if our illusion of freedom and free will is shattered? Wouldn’t it be worth knowing this? Wouldn’t it be worth knowing if we are actually living an illusion of personal freedom – the possibility that we are enmeshed in a self-betraying myth that limits our life and possibilities?

    As humans this should be of particular interest as we have the unique capacity to attain a profound, complete, and total freedom. And only when we are totally free are we free to know, to love, to be at peace, and to live with out total being. So you might agree that it’s worth a personal inquiry that can establish whether or not we actually live in total freedom or the illusion of it. For if the latter is the case we will have surrendered our deepest possibilities to a comforting myth.

Outer Freedom: Perceived External Constrictions or Restrictions

    I will not discuss outer freedom – political and economic freedom – in great detail as my focus here is to explore the subtler aspects of freedom. But even when it comes to political and economic freedom – the freedom to express our beliefs and be freedom from material needs ¬– there are important questions to consider.

    Is the ability to express our beliefs the only measure of political freedom? Are we truly free if our beliefs themselves, our ideologies, arise from complex religious, cultural, and personal forces that compel our viewpoint and limit our perspective? Consider whether any ideology based on thought, based on the known, based on the past can be free. Where is its flexibility, its openness, is relevance to the direct experience of the moment? And further, does a fixed ideology bring connection or disconnection, an open or closed heart? When you have a fixed viewpoint are you able to respond to the facts of the moment as they are with an open mind and heart? Or, are you limited to seeing and responding with your set political perspective? If so you are coming from habit and from the past rather than a spontaneous and fresh response to the truth of the moment? It may seem like political freedom, but is it?

    The same can be said for the issue of economic freedom. Can we be economically free if we are influenced and compelled by a cascading series of wants that are confused with needs? Are we economically free when we lack contentment and gratitude for what we are given? Are we economically free when we are dissatisfied with how we live, fearful that we may fall back, or always reaching higher and higher for more and more? When thought defines what we need and the income we are required to generate can we ever be free of want? When the mind is involved in cascading desire can we be economically free regardless of what we have?

    I would like to leave these questions here and ask you to consider them further. Inquire, reflect, examine whether you can be free when the mind is constructing and pledging allegiance to ideologies or enslaved to ceaseless desires. When you analyze this to its end you will discover that even in the most politically open and economically secure cultures outer freedom is not possible without mental freedom.

Mental Freedom: Psychological Freedom

    Inner freedom is the freedom from mental disturbances. It’s the freedom from fear, anxiety, stress, worry, mood disturbances, and afflictive emotions such as anger, jealousy, hatred, and false pride. Each of these mental experiences shows up as ceaseless mental chatter – the active mind that we live with each day. When we look at our mental activity we realize that 90% of it is negative, afflictive, and disturbing. Do I have control over this mental activity or does this mental activity have control over me? Can I be free when I ceaselessly and involuntarily chase after mental activity? Few of us would allow another to control our lives to the extent that we are controlled by the random mental movements of our mind. Yet, we allow this to happen each moment, never recognizing our enslavement to this inner tyranny of mental chatter.

    Let’s inquire together. To be certain, this is a difficult inquiry because it will force us to see the truth of our existence and the horror of our lifelong enslavement to the autonomous movements of our mental life. But for you and I to be willing to undertake this inquiry right now in this moment is in itself a radical freedom that does not arise from routine mental activity. It is a statement that there is an innerness that can stand separate from and make decisions about our mental life rather than be constantly subject to random thoughts, feelings, and images. Such an inquiry is an assertion of our humanity and a down payment on authentic freedom.

    Let’s begin. Make a choice here and now to attend to your breath for a few moments. You’re free to do that, aren’t you? Observe how long you can follow your breath before your mind automatically draws you to its mental chatter that you may become enmeshed and lost in for a moment, hours, days, or a lifetime. Where is your freedom if you cannot control how your mind works, if you cannot pay attention? Try it again. Can you hold your free choice to follow your breath more than a few moments before your routine mental activity pulls you away? Who is in control?

    Pick another focal point. Place your attention on anything you are doing – tying your shoes, eating a meal, walking down the street, watching a beautiful sunset, talking to your beloved. How long can you hold your attention? Is it measured in seconds? Can you pay attention to another’s words for more than a brief moment without your mind taking over with judgments, interpretations, or the formulation of a response? Try this experiment. Try listening to another with a clear and still mind. How long can you do this?  Where is your freedom to choose what you do with your mind? Try this over and over until you are willing to confront the actuality that you are enslaved by the autonomous activity of your mind. We call our self free but we cannot control our own mind and thus our speech and actions which follow the uncontrolled movements of our mind. 

    It is an imaginary world that we wander in – a world of repetitive and predictable thoughts, feelings, and mental images. They enslave us but allow us to think we are free. We’re compelled to dance with our mental chatter yet we think we are free. This is the mental illusion of freedom.
    The initial step in gaining mental or inner freedom is to attain some distance and freedom from our enslavement to mental afflictions – our continuous and disturbing mental chatter. For this we use the practice of meditation. Meditation is to inner understanding what the microscope is to outer understanding. Meditation stops our ceaseless mental activity and allows us sufficient separation from it to see it as it is, to understand what is actually happening in our mind. We become able to see our prison. We begin to see the mechanics and horror of inner enslavement.

    We begin to taste mental freedom at the very earliest stages of meditation. It shows up as diminished reactivity, greater patience, improved relationships, growing compassion, and increased mental stillness and spaciousness. This can be seen in the first few weeks of meditation practice. And with the dawning of this new awareness we then we ask with great disgust, “What has been going on all of these years?” Where have I been?

    The ability to observe mental activity without grabbing onto it – the progressive development of a witnessing state – is complemented by the simultaneous recognition that random mental activity – thoughts, feelings, and mental images – have no real substance. Left alone they merely dissolve back into awareness leaving no trace behind. Just watch a particular thought, feeling, or image and you will note that if you merely observe it its life cycle is quite rapid and simple – it rises, abides and dissolves quite instantaneously like writing done with a finger on water or waves collapsing into the sea.

    We discover that the same thoughts, feelings, and images that can enslave us from dawn to dusk are empty of any substance. Left alone they disappear by themselves. We suffer from nothing. We’re enslaved by ghosts of time past.

    As we progressively take charge of our inner life, calm our mind and allow mental chatter to subside we discover a previously unknown inner spaciousness and freedom. We are no longer compelled to automatically react or to ruminate for hours on whatever arises in our mind. We are increasingly more able to live moment-to-moment with a presence that is free to allow life to unfold as it is. Our life is no longer a response to random mental activity but rather a vivid aliveness and presence in the unfolding moment. We learn to experience and let go, experience and let go. And in daily life this translates into greater peace and ease, diminished reactivity, and an enhanced presence in the moment. This is the nature of mental freedom – freedom from afflictive emotions, freedom from the out-of-control mind, inner peace, and a presence to life as it is actually happening.

Spiritual Freedom: Freedom from The Known

     If we’ve already gained freedom from the tyranny of autonomous mental chatter and afflictive emotions what further level of freedom can there be? Yet even with an inner mental freedom there continues to remain a further obstacle to total freedom. This obstacle is our very subtle conditioning.

    Because of previous life experiences and our cultural education we progressively develop a fixed set of perspectives, attitudes, and patterns of behavior. We unconsciously and rapidly attach these to all new experiences. We name our experiences, shape them, and lock them in place according to prior understandings and experiences. Our tendency to freeze moment-to-moment experience by labeling it, elaborating it, and fitting it into our templates of previously acquired knowledge automates our lives and experiences, robbing the present moment of its freshness, firstness, vitality, and freedom to be as it is. We become like wind-up toys, wound up in youth with ideas, attitudes, and perceptions and then robotically unwind over the course of our lifetime.

    When a child first sees a tree it has no previous knowledge by which to categorize it. The child looks at the tree for the first time with a sense of awe and wonder freed of labels and elaborations from memory. The child lives into the unfolding experience of the moment as it is. The child is totally free to experience the tree in its uniqueness of the moment. The present remains unshaped by the past. The tree as it is in the moment, freed from our learned stories about it. Rather than a highly conditioned and shaped experience that has little relevance to the moment, the child is free to experience the actual moment.

    Have you ever really seen a tree in your adult life? Have you seen its texture, movement, its rhythm, colors, or its relationship to its environment? Have you ever seen a tree not merely with your eyes but with you entire being? Have you ever seen a tree not as a separate observer with the boundaries of subject and other but as one with your experience? Have you ever seen the beauty, truth, wholeness, sacredness, and actuality of this experience as it is and has never been before? Can you feel all that is in the tree: the elements, the water, the sun – all of life itself? Have you ever seen a tree without knowing it as a tree – or for that manner anything else?

    Consider our relationships. Is it possible to experience someone you already know as if you are meeting this person for the first time? Can you see and hear this person in the moment unaltered by past perceptions and images? Are you able to let go of all of your prejudices, judgments, likes, dislikes, fears, hopes, acceptance, rejection, and fixed opinions? Are you able to meet this individual in the total freedom of the moment without constricting beliefs, without a name, without a past – just as he or she is in that moment? Or, are you forever stuck with a fixed sense of this person, in a past image of this person, in an illusion of who he or she is?

    What we are speaking about is the natural capacity to experience with a naked, bare, choiceless awareness. When we experience in this way we are fully aware of our experience without altering it according to our stored mental activity with its old ideas and perspectives. We are living in the continuous moment-to-moment unfolding of life. We are present to the moment as it is rather than as we shape it with our mental activity. The perceptions of our sensory organs are fresh without commentary. Mental experiences similarly arise and fall without commentary. There is a freshness and vitality to lived experience that is freed of any fixation or shaping.

    Of course, we are not speaking about an end to our cognitive mind and memory. Certainly we don’t wish to learn how to drive a car over and over. The cognitive mind plays an important role in allowing us to live life, but it is simultaneously a great obstacle to experiencing life authentically as it is each moment. So we learn to use the cognitive mind with all its marvelous capacity when necessary and as an instrument of a deeper knowing. Our cognitive mind does not run our life. Rather, it is an instrument of our life to be used when needed, not allowed to obscure our direct and unfiltered experience of life. Our primary mode of consciousness becomes an open and naked awareness.

    This subtlest and most profound freedom from the conditioning of the past is spiritual freedom. It’s the innermost and final accomplishment of personal development. It’s not easy to express this state of being in words, as it transcends our ordinary experience. It differs from how we’ve learned to live and experience the world. It’s a radical departure from conventional life. Spiritual freedom shows up as a stable, effortless, imperturbable, and natural moment-to-moment awareness freed of mental elaboration, fixation, and rumination. Life unfolds and is experienced as it is moment-to-moment
without mental commentary. 

     An open, naked, and choiceless awareness is like space. It’s expansive, open, pervasive, transparent, and clear. Like the sun it’s luminous. Like the vast ocean that’s steady irrespective of changes on its surface, it’s stable when confronted with the winds of adversity. Like a mirror that reflects but does not react to appearances on its surface, moment-to-moment awareness is unaffected by the ongoing appearance of sensory or mental experiences. In its clarity it knows. We can say it is wise, not in a conventional rational way. Its knowing arises from a deep knowledge that goes beyond ordinary thought. Spiritual freedom transcends and seals all lesser aspects of freedom.

Total Freedom: Freed to Be

    Total freedom is the freedom from the two major obstacles to freedom – mental afflictions and mental conditioning. When these are overcome what is left is who we are – a simple and quite ordinary awareness living in complete freedom in life as it is.

    We are free of mental disturbances that occupy and disturb our mind. We are free of the conditioning of past experience that fixes, shapes, and alters present moment experience. We are free from acceptance and rejection, hope and fear, desire and aversion, past and future, mortality and immortality, restriction, constriction, and suffering, and we are free from time. We are free to be, now. And this freedom is holy, sacred and religious in nature. For here lies the immediacy, spontaneity, and directness of experience as given in its natural and ordained truth and beauty. There is no barrier between our self and the divine experience of life in its glorious, full, and unfolding splendor.

    This is not an unreachable goal. It is in fact who we are at our essence. We’ve each experienced moments and glimpses of total freedom. If it wasn’t already our natural essence we couldn’t create it anew. Once experienced, all we must do is to extend and stabilize these moments of total presence and freedom. To accomplish this we slowly become aware of and chisel away at the two obstacles to complete freedom – mental disturbances and mental conditioning. We do this initially through the practice of meditation, and related study and reflection. Progressively we discover the insubstantiality of our mental afflictions and the fraudulent shaping of present moment experience through cognitive elaboration.

    Our lives become more open and present. This is our aim. And as we progress we gain a lightness of being. We move beyond the constraints of ordinary notions of freedom to an authentic freedom that was always present but only revealed once the temporary obscurations of emotional afflictions and entrenched conditioning are lifted. That is total freedom. And you can have it in this moment.

The Path: Gradual and Immediate

    If you are reading this posting, like me, you are on the gradual path to total freedom. This means that through the process of study, reflection, and meditative practice we are simultaneously diminishing the intensity and frequency of afflictive emotions and undermining the shaping forces of past experiences, fixed perceptions and mental attitudes. As a result we experience more of reality in the moment as it is rather than as we shape it from our memory. We are not detached but actually more present to life and to others.

    Once we begin our efforts to expand personal freedom we’ll begin to see changes within the first few weeks. We will feel more patient, less reactive, more peaceful and easeful, and a notice a joyful lightness of being. This will extend itself as we gain further experience with practice and simultaneously integrate our efforts into day-to-day life. And there is more. Our heart will feel more open, we’ll be more understanding of the suffering and struggle of others, and the feel of mental and physical tenseness and constriction will slowly be replaced by inner spaciousness.

    These changes will be gradual and take time to stabilize. There will be many back and forths. These must be used to motivate further practice rather than causing disabling frustration or disappointment. It is important to note again that we are gradually purifying our ordinary mind, cleaning it of disturbing mental afflictions and habitual conditioning. This takes time and it takes help – guidance from a skillful teacher, a like-minded community, and life changes that support your efforts.

    However, there are those very rare and fortunate beings who touch total freedom, the experience of an open and naked awareness, one time and never return to the ordinary mind. They have been blessed by grace to see the truth and essence of life beyond the ordinary and henceforth to permanently remain in this profound state of being. They are our wisest mystics and sages who demonstrate by example the final attainment. They allow us to directly see the joyful fruits of our effort.

    Yet it is important for us not to focus on the final attainment alone but rather, on the day-to-day changes that we achieve through our daily efforts. In this way we will progressively feel an expanded sense of freedom accompanied by all of its related qualities – happiness, wholeness, love, compassion and peace. It’s this gradual process of human flourishing that will be our contribution to a better life for our self and for others. It’s the great healing elixir for our mind, body, spirit, and world. It’s the way to total freedom.

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The Hero's Journey toward Well Being and Human Flourishing

    There are times in each of our lives when our well-ordered existence seems to crack open and things no longer seem to work as they once did. This may occur slowly over time or with an unexpected suddenness. We may be shaken or taken over by a persistent boredom and discontent, or feel the disturbing, anxious or depressing sense that something is not right, or we may be shocked by the “unexpected” appearance of disabling emotional distress or physical disease. Or perhaps we may have simply reached a time in life when we can no longer avoid the inner longing that knows that there is something more – something more meaningful and more possible for our life.

    When we reach a critical crossroad, sensing that movement in any direction will not resolve our growing disenchantment, we are stopped in our tracks, and primed, like it or not, for momentous change. In the words of Mary Oliver:

            Because we always had to run
            Through the enormous yards of day
            To do all that we hope to do,
            We did not hear, beneath our lives,
            The old walls falling out of true,
            Foundations shifting in the dark.

        These words are echoed by Dante in the opening lines of his Divine Comedy:

  When I had lived half my life’s way
  I found myself in a dark wood
  For I had lost the true path that never strays.

    At such a moment we are at the entranceway to a life transition, a very special, sacred and pregnant time that is filled with unseen possibilities. If this opportunity is taken up and fully lived and experienced our lives can expand and be reborn into a larger life filled with new possibilities. But if we refuse or deny this opportunity our life will recede into the stagnation of the past accompanied by the signs and symptoms of persistent emotional distress and premature illness whose source seems obscure to ordinary vision but is most assuredly our refusal to grow larger. We run, we run, we run from no other than our self. Our excuses are man: not enough time, not enough money, I’ll wait till the kids are out of school, perhaps during summer break, and on and on. The poet Francis Thompson offers us these words:

                    I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
                    I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
                    I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways;
                    Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
                    I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

    And so it is that we find ourselves confronting the great transitions in our life at moments of pain and struggle, distress and disease. At such times we most acutely feel the fear, the darkness and the terrifying unknown. All that our well organized life has avoided comes to the forefront. Reaching outside for help we will often consult a psychologist or physician hoping for a remedy to our growing distress. And at times there is help – the temporary relief from physical suffering, a medical treatment, new psychological tools or medications and at times even a cure. What we call ordinary health may return and this is good, but if that is all that happens it is a false achievement.

     Unfortunately most psychologists and physicians are not trained to identify or to cultivate this precious and rare “teaching moment.” As a result, the potential life transition that our distress points to is lost. We may feel better as we return to “normal,” but the opportunity to be reborn into a larger life and health has been lost in the narrowness and blindness of a limited view of health, healing and the human possibility. Here we arrive at the wisdom of the great psychologist Carl Jung who urges us onward toward transition and new growth rather than faltering in the stagnation in the past.

                It must be understood that the mere fact of living in the present
                does not make a man modern, for in that case everyone presently
                alive would be so He alone is modern who is fully conscious of the
                present …. Indeed, he is completely modern only when he has
                come to the very edge of the world, leaving behind him all that
                has been discarded and outgrown, and acknowledging that he stands
                before a void from which all things may grow.

    So to grasp this opportunity we must look beyond the limited training of our usual helpers, see through the darkness, accept the call to a new life, fall in-love with the possibilities, and find inspiration in the great stories of transition and change. We can learn from the journey of Odysseus, the quest of Parsifal, the trials of Job or perhaps even from our next door neighbor. These great stories of death and renewal inspire us, offer us a map that can guide us through the dark night, reconnect us to our soul, and bring forth the light of a larger life. It is a map that gives us a clear picture of the stages and process of transition, a map that can alchemically help us transmute suffering, pain and disease into the great human treasures of wholeness, peace, love and joy. It is this map that I will begin to share with you here.

    The great poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “The end is where we start from.” All transitions begin with endings that in their essence are a dying off and separation from certain parts of our life and identity that no longer work for us. This may include relationships, lifestyles, work, meanings, values, desires, mental attitudes, or the false sense of our immortality. This beginning stage of a life transition is a difficult one that is filled with disenchantment and disillusionment with what has been accompanied by a painful recognition that what once worked will no longer work for us and cannot be fixed. Endings must precede new beginnings and yet many, immobilized by an understandable fear, will refuse this call, recoil from this adventure and grasp onto the old ways, returning to the stagnation and spiritual decay of what was – losing personal power, creativity and the life force itself to years of quiet desperation.

    This critical period, when we hear and are summoned to answer the call to change is a momentous time of our life when the courage and risks taken will determine for many years ahead the character of our lives. Those who chose to pass through the threshold and move beyond will be taken into a new life through a passage into and then out of the chaos of the unknown and unfamiliar. The writer Tolstoy describes his journey into the unknown with the following words:

                I felt that something had broken within me upon which my
                life had always rested, that I had nothing left to hold on to …
                an invincible force impelled me to get rid of my existence ..
                I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I was driven to leave it …

    But when we choose to answer the larger call and take distress, anxiety, confusion, doubt, despair or disease as a message for change we will not be alone. Unexpectedly we will find the appearance of inner and outer spiritual guides. As an inner guide you will experience an unknown stillness and peace and faith, conviction and confidence that the correct path has been chosen and that the storm will be weathered. As an outer guide an individual will often appear who is experienced with such transitions and can and will become for you an invaluable first mate on your journey of renewal.

    This stage of transition, the movement into the unknown, can be marked by perilous and strange times of disorientation, numbness, uncertainty and fear. These feelings, feelings that may vary in intensity for months, are often punctuated by moments of extraordinary illumination – glimpses of the new and larger life to come. These are difficult times, but with help from our guides we can learn how to stay the course, live into our experiences and develop a faith in the process of change, growth and renewal.

    And it is important not only to seek the assistance of a wise guide but also to take care, good care of your body. When we may be less than motivated to care for our self it is most important to eat well, get lots of sleep, stay away from intoxicants and exercise regularly. When we move through our life transition to the other side we want to have a healthy a body with which to experience the reconnection to our soul and spirit.

    As one slowly surrenders to the realization that no one thing or one person can maker it better there emerges an acceptance and even an anticipation of the unfolding of a new life. The distress slowly lifts and a deepening sense of self-confidence, self-reliance and self responsibility enters into our life. Finally, we reconnect with our soul essence of authentic life. Abandoning the illusionary dependence on relationships, career, fame and power as the sources of security and happiness, we begin to discover within what we have always and unsuccessfully searched for on the outside. The poet Pablo Neruda speaks to this moment in transition in the following words:

                    And I went on my way;
                    Deciphering that burning fire
                    And I wrote the first bare line.

    And this exhilarating first discovery of our inner life is the shift we have awaited – the shift that awakens us to a new and genuine existence. We are slowly able to read the yearning of our soul – the fire in our belly. We begin to write that first line that is bare of our previous existence, our old patterns and outdated directions. It is a solid, secure and meaningful ground upon which to build the next movement of your life.

    There is much we learn in transitional times including the nature of humility. Coming from a place of comfort, security, achievement and stability we are forced to let go of a tightly held control and surrender to life itself. We soon discover that what separates each of us from the predicament of others is no more than the moment between two beats of the heart. And then, there arises within us a profound compassion for others, a compassion whose basis is a wisdom and love that connects and heals all that is touched by it.

    The natural unfolding of a life transition is such that in time turmoil and disorientation are replaced by a deeper understanding of life, a previously unknown inner peace, security, ease and freedom, and a healing that is also a wholing. Returning to our day-to-day life we bring to others what we have learned from our spiritual journey. We  soften and enrich the world around us – family, friends, relationships, work and community. And we begin to divest our self of trivial activities and meaningless entertainment, choosing rather to surround ourselves with companions and experiences that support our growing inner life.

    The reward for the completion of a heroic journey is the return home to who and what we are, the return home to a health and healing of mind, body and spirit, a return home to a renewed life of authenticity, joy and freedom. Stripped of old fears, limitations, illusions and fantasies we can engage life with the freshness and firstness of an early spring morning. And this is the nobility of human life and the essence of a final, comprehensive and complete healing. Here we come to the words of Derek Walcot:

                There will come a time when with elation
                You will greet yourself arriving at your own door:
                In your own mirror
                And each will smile at the other’s welcome
                And say, sit here, eat.
                You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
                Give wine, give bread.
                Give back your heart to itself,
                to the stranger who has loved you all your life,
                Whom you ignored for another,
                Who knows you by heart.

    These are the touchstones of the transition process. And as difficult and as treacherous as it may seem when the ripening occurs and life begins to return you come to know that the modern day hero no longer fights his battles on the fields of Troy or the beaches of Normandy, but rather plants his flag on the battlefield of the soul. And the peace and healing we find inside becomes the peace that will be found outside. Through our own courage to engage change we become the seeds for a better world.
There are those who ask, “Why do I have to go through this while others seem to be happy and never in crisis?” Perhaps it is no more complex than the realization that some of us are born to be seekers and some not and some of us are destined for a larger healing and wholing and others not. The writer Anais Nin stated it this way:

                I live the personal drama responsible for the larger one, seeking
                a cure. Perhaps it is the greater agony to live this life in which
                my awareness makes a thousand revolutions while others make
                only one. My span may seem smaller but it is really larger because
                it covers all the obscure routes of the soul and body, never
                receiving medals for its courage.

    You may inquire as to what all of this has to do with health and healing? Why would a physician trained as a healer write about chaos, crisis and transition? The answer always jumps out the same. We are connected beings, One cannot separate mind, body and spirit. We know now more than ever through personal experience and scientific research that throughout life the human body is shaped and molded by our mind and spirit. Thus our choice to respond to inner and outer adversity by growing our inner life insures not only an inner harmony but an outer one as well. Discovering and unfolding the great treasures of human life – wholeness, peace, love and happiness – permanently harmonizes and heals our entire being, allowing us to arrive at a full, comprehensive, and sustained healing of mind, body and spirit. This is the gift of undertaking the journey of life transition and renewal.

    From years of medical practice I know how easy it is to close the door on the highly vulnerable and pivotal moments of distress and disease, moments that contain the possibility of great change. These opportunities for a larger life are often closed with the very drugs and treatments whose only effect is to relieve symptoms, providing needed comfort while the larger healing and wholing is lost.
And so I write these words to you to let you know that your deepest distress and despair, the suffering and fear of illness, intractable addiction and even death itself can be transformed into a possibility to discover the beauty and nobility of human life. These difficult moments can become the source of a final and complete healing. That is what a meaningful and precious human life is about. That is what the great sages have always taught us across time and cultures.

    The final words will come from our Western tradition, words written by the father of Western philosophy in approximately 450 B.C. Speaking of each of us he says:

                During their lifetimes they see such a
                Little part of life and then they are off:
                Short-lived, flying up and away like smoke,
                Totally persuaded by what each of them
                Happen to bump into while being driven
                One way, another way, all over the place. And
                They claim in vain that they have found the whole.
                Like this, they now say that people can see or
                Hear or consciously grasp the things I have to teach.
                But as for you:
                Because you have come aside here, you will learn.

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Authentic Love

    Love is the most desired and cherished human experience. It frees the mind, opens the heart, connects one to another, and uplifts the soul. It brings depth, richness, and meaning to life. Although we expect it to spontaneously arise in adult life with the purity, grace, and naturalness of a mother’s love for her child, this is not the case. Adult life is filled with complexity and obstacles that obscure and hinder the full measure of this joyous and liberating experience.

    You would not expect yourself to undertake building a bridge or any other complex project without the requisite knowledge and training. That would be foolish, useless, and often dangerous as well. Yet we routinely attempt to undertake this most difficult of human endeavors, the effort to love another human being, with little understanding about the nature of love or the process of loving. Is there any question why our efforts so often go astray? And when they do, after a period of frustration and disillusionment, don’t we just try the same thing but with a bit more intensity? Can the result be any different? Have you ever wondered why we are never taught about the nature of authentic love and the means of attaining and sustaining it?
    To learn about love by trial and error is a long process that may take longer than the years of one lifetime. And there is no need to do so. Wise men and woman across cultures and time have left us the knowledge and means by which to attain and sustain authentic love free from suffering. They have also shown us the obstacles that must be cleared away before this is possible and inspired us with the possibility of an all-encompassing love that embraces all of humanity.

Love and Need-Based Attachment are not the Same

    This is where we begin our lessons on love. For most of us there is no distinction between love and the emotions that arise with attachment. In fact, we don’t even give this issue consideration. Genuine love and needs-based “love” are most often tangled together and both are usually referred to as love as if they were the same, and they are not. When we feel a dependent attachment to another we confuse that with love. We can usually get away with this lack of understanding in the first few weeks of “romantic” love, but we will eventually pay a price for our confusion with heartache, disillusionment, and suffering. So we begin here.

    Attachment is the desire, craving, grasping, and even addiction to another person with the aim of satisfying ones personal need for security, comfort, pleasure, companionship, and touch. Love is the desire that another person attains happiness that is free from any suffering. It’s that simple and that difficult. The emotions we label “love,” when based on the gratification of our needs, are quite fickle and can easily turn in the other direction, as they often do. Such “love” for another is in actuality love for our self. The surface feelings of authentic love and needs-based “love” appear the same. However, on close examination they are quite different.

    Let’s now take a closer look at these two very differences that are rarely distinguished from each other. But without seeing their clear differences we are bound to confusion and disturbed love.

Self-Cherishing vs. Other-Cherishing

    It would seem obvious that love should be about cherishing and caring for another. We would all attest to that. But most often, if we have the courage to look closely, we will discover that the reality is far different than our professed goal. Because of the confused entanglement of authentic love and needs-based “love” what we call love is always a mixture of both until we have achieved a high level of understanding and capacity.

    In its most primitive form needs-based love is seen in the dependent newborn that instinctively “uses” mother to relieve discomfort, hunger, and thirst. For most of us this infantile instinctive pattern of looking outwards for satiation of our needs extends in part or in entirety into our adult relationships. When we are dependent on another to meet our needs we are simply repeating the childhood pattern, attaching to them as the source of pleasure and satisfaction. To some extent this is a part of all of our relationships. Our relationships bring us psychological and physical pleasure so we cling to them.

    Be willing to examine your intimate relationships. To what extend are your feelings of care and love related to your needs being met by the other? What happens to your “love” when your lover is not meeting your needs, is acting in an unsatisfying manner, or his/her attention goes elsewhere? Do you subtly demand or expect certain behavior in return for your love? Is your love fickle, changing moment-to-moment, related to the external circumstance? Can your love easily turn into anger or even hatred.

    As mentioned, authentic love – other-cherishing – is always mixed with attachment – self-cherishing. So take a careful look at your relationships. With total honesty look to see how much of your “love” is actually needs-based and how much is other-cherishing – love that exists regardless of the benefit or gain to you? Is it half and half? Is it more one than the other? Is it different from one relationship to another? An easy way to examine this is to ask yourself what would happen to your feelings for another if they undertook an action that offered them happiness but left your needs unsatisfied. Even if this action was dysfunctional and hurtful would your love still be there, or would it leave when your needs go unmet or even violated?

    This is not to say that we continue to be in relationship with dysfunctional individuals whose actions cause suffering. That’s a different issue. The question is what happens to our love. Is it possible to love someone who is dysfunctional and hurtful the same as when this person was pleasing and pleasant? Is love about my needs or is it about the wisdom and openness of my heart regardless of my needs?

    It will take along time for us to grow into a full authentic love that exists independent of our own needs. What we’re concerned with here is merely knowing the difference between self-cherishing attachment and other-cherishing love. Once we know this we can begin to take the necessary actions to shift from a child-like demanding and dependent love to an open and liberating other-cherishing love. It is not so important that we reach the mountaintop. It’s important we know the truth of how we love, and with this knowledge choose to love in a more fully human and satisfying manner.

Vulnerable vs. Stability

    To the extent that our love for another is contaminated with our need for pleasure, comfort or security we are very easily wounded and our attachment/love can quite quickly turn into anger, resentment, and even hatred. Why? When, in the name of love, we turn to others to meet our own needs we become dependent on them. The more attached and dependent we are the more vulnerable we are to hurt. Every individual has their own needs and their own psychological circumstance. Others do not exist merely to meet our needs. Although this may appear to occur for moments and perhaps even years circumstances will change, needs change. This neat conspiracy or business-like relationship is a fragile balance of reciprocation that is either certain to break down over time or solidify into a life-depriving prison. To the degree our relationships are contaminated by attachment, the need or unstated demand for the other to meet our needs, we are highly vulnerable to hurt and suffering.

    In contrast, to the extent we love another from our heart, desiring nothing more than their happiness, we shall be invulnerable to the shifts and changes in people, relationships, and circumstances. Why, because we are not looking to others to meet our needs. We meet them our self through the development of an inner life where a secure sense of self, peace, joy, and wholeness naturally reside. We demand nothing of others. We merely hope for their best. The absence of attached dependence results in the absence of vulnerability. To the extent that we actually love another rather than our own needs we shall find our love to be invulnerable to the ever-changing human experience.

Suffering vs. Happiness

    When we look to another to meet our needs and call this love we are destined for suffering. That is the reality of looking outside for what can only be attained in a permanent and secure way from a matured inner life. Grasping onto to others for what we cannot give to our self is a demand that cannot be met with any consistency and assurance. Attachment and dependency disguised as love is untrustworthy, unreliable, inconsistent, and never good enough. We need more and more and react with anger and resentment the moment our needs are not met. We point the finger at the other. We ask, “Why did you change?” At such moments it’s better to look at the character and quality of our own love. We will discover we love our own needs rather than the other. This is a recipe for suffering.

    To the extent that our love is other-cherishing it is not at all dependent on the other’s behavior or the presence or absence of a particular form of relationship. We love from an open heart that wishes happiness for others. We may or may not choose to be in active relationship with a particular person, but our love exists and continues even when it does so in silence. Authentic love generated from an open and healthy heart begets more and more love. It is open, free, bountiful, and spacious. It is given without a hidden agenda.

Connection vs. Disconnection

    Attachment to another is a connection based on need. It’s a connection to our self far more than it is to the other. We are aware of and concerned with our needs, and experience the world and others though its filters. When our needs are met or the other is pleasing to us we respond with positive emotions. We our needs are unmet or the other is displeasing our emotions shift in the other direction. We feel connected when our needs are satiated and distant, denied, and disconnected when they are unmet. The connection that arises with attachment is personal to our own needs, utilitarian in that its central purpose is to serve our needs, and extremely fragile as regards the steadiness of emotions. We are actually connected to our dysfunctional self rather than the other.

    Authentic love is an open, undemanding, giving to another without concern for benefit or gain to one self. What we give is the heartfelt desire that the other find happiness free of suffering. Because we’re not blinded by our overriding needs, we can actually see the other separate from our self. We can know the other for who he or she is. It is this knowing and reaching out with true care and love that results in an intimate connection that transcends needs and wants. We love because we love. And such a love is deeply connecting. The connection is heart-to-heart and is unrelated to the movements of the other’s personality and life.

    It’s easy to get a bit confused here. We ask, “How can I love someone who is unkind to me, or a stranger, or even an enemy? Why not? To love is a condition of the heart. What we love in another is their basic goodness however dysfunctional they may be. We see through and in. Nothing needs to be done about one’s love. Day-to-day relationship or intimacy is not the goal of love. It may occur with some and not with others. Love is simply the compassionate opening of our heart to all others. This may seem strange at first, but give it some thought.

Let’s Have a Conversation

    A conversation related to attached love would go something like the following. Let’ start with the emotions and feelings related to attachment. “Hi honey, I love how your look. It’s great that you like the same activities as me. You’re so sweet to be around.  I love the way you care for me and the way you make me feel about myself. I love the way you make me laugh. You’re wonderful. I feel wonderful around you. I love you. I really love you.” But wait a second! What goes unsaid here is what happens to these seemingly string emotions if the object of my love begins to act or behave in ways that don’t please me, if the other individual, in the healthy pursuit of their own life, ceases to comfort, please me, or meet our needs. Or perhaps the intensity of their attention diminishes over time as it naturally may as attention turns towards their personal development. Then the conversation shifts. We then ask ,“Why did you change?” I loved you just the way you were. I don’t think I have the same feelings as before. I’m falling out-of-love with you.

    In comparison, what is the sound of authentic love? Consider the following. “How are you today sweetheart? Is there anything I can do for you? If you need to talk let’s sit for awhile so I can completely hear you. I want you to know that if you need to change your life in this or that way I’ll always support you regardless of how it feels to me in the moment. I love you and your life.  I wish happiness for you.

    Needs-based love is emotional and fickle. It gets blown around like a leaf in the fall depending on whether my needs are met or not. Authentic love is stable like a mountain or the ocean depths. It’s not moved by moment-to-moment changes on the surface. It’s a deep empathic caring rather than an unstable emotion. It cares for the essence of the other rather than one specific quality or attribute. Its focus is the happiness of the other regardless of benefit or gain to our self. It’s not dependent on the actions of the other nor is such love dependent on the type of relationship we share with the other. Authentic love is stable, enduring, and other-centered. It leads to an entirely different conversation and interaction.

A Universal Embrace

    We’ve spoken about the difference between a self-cherishing needs-based “love” and an authentic other-cherishing live. I’ve made this distinction so we can each assess the quality of our love and seek to mature and grow how we love another. The shift from a self-centered to other-centered love is an important but only first sense. The next leap in the maturation of our love is the ability to extend its reach. The perfection of human love occurs as we reach outward with our love expanding our embrace. The movement is from an exclusive focus on “I” to a concern for the other, “You,” to a concern for humanity, “Us” to “All of Us” to “One.”

    As noted above we begin infancy with an exclusive focus on our self. If we do not linger in child hood dependencies we mature and deepen our love and consciousness by desiring for others what we want for our self – happiness free from suffering. We then further extend the range of our love to include our loved ones, day-to-day acquaintances, and then all beings including strangers and enemies. Can you imagine this progressive opening of your heart? Can you feel the movement from an exclusive love to a universal embrace?

    Each of these steps is related to a simultaneous growth in consciousness – the development of our inner life. As we approach the peak of this development we arrive at the knowledge that we are all inter-dependent and inter-related. We experience a profound sense of oneness in which the distinction between “I” and “other” have disappeared into the luminosity of a shared humanity. This is the pinnacle of the development of authentic and profound love. It’s transcendent love. It’s the perfection of love. By opening our heart to all, all is cared for. There is no separation between our self and other. When we love another we love our self. When we help another we help our self.

The Path

    How do we shift from attachment to authentic love? Let’s briefly review what we discussed above. We begin by recognizing that what we now call “love” is a combination of needs-based attachment and authentic caring. Dependent attachment is a tenacious hold over from childhood. It uses others to meet our basic needs. It is self-cherishing. Authentic love is a development of adulthood. It’s other-cherishing. It’s the maturation of human love and compassion. It seeks the happiness of others irrespective of gain or benefit to one self. We must know this critical distinction if we are to grow the quality of our love. With this knowledge in hand we can begin the path that will take us toward the perfection of authentic love.

Basic Well Being

    When the sages from the East first came to the West they were surprised to discover a certain level of unease and agitation that appeared to be pervasive among westerners. It was as if we each live with an inner engine that never goes into neutral. We’re always in gear. This unease and agitation expresses itself as unending mental chatter, endless busyness and striving, and a continuously activated physiology. We call this normal.

    It was their understanding, much in agreement with western psychology, that this ceaseless inner agitation resulted from childhood wounds of intimacy carried into adulthood. A dysfunctional restlessness in adulthood results from the failure to experience a basic peace, ease, satiation, and self-efficacy in childhood. Unlike the circumstance in traditional eastern cultures where a very large extended family is available to meet the needs of the infant and growing child our culture places this entire responsibility on one or two parents. This does not allow for proper nurturing. The result is an absence of inner satiation, the absence of a basic well being.

    An authentic love for others cannot come from the absence of a basic well being. So it’s important at the start to develop a personal sense of well being – a basic sense of inner ease, security, rest, and lovability. Until we have achieved this it’s impossible to resolve our inner agitation, busyness, and striving and less so to reach out with love and care to others. Until this is accomplished we will always look toward and become dependent upon others to meet what’s lacking within. The ability to experience a basic well being is our beginning.

    To attain within our self what we search for outside requires that we first develop our inner life. There are two basic approaches to inner development – psychology and meditation. There’s a time for each. The first seeks to identify and understand the emotional disturbances that block basic well being. This psychological approach diminishes the power of these disturbances allowing more of our inner light to shine through.

    Meditation or spiritual development is far different. It seeks to understand the basic workings of the mind, undermine the mental process that leads to emotional disturbance, and take us directly to the inner sources of well being.  Early on in meditation practice we experience moments of stillness, peace, and calm. When these moments occur everything seems well and whole. For these brief moments we re-experience in adulthood the sense of well being that under the best circumstances we would have experienced in childhood. We discover that irrespective of our childhood situation we can develop an inner peace and calm.

    However briefly, these early mediation experiences resolve the agitation, busyness, and unsettledness that’s been so much a part of our lives. The mental chatter slows and ceases, peace replaces anxiety and agitation, our engine of busyness stops, striving disappears, and for a glorious moment all things are well. If we can experience this for a moment we can cultivate this as our ongoing experience. The issue is no longer whether it is possible to achieve a basic sense of well being – an inner peace, ease, and rest – but whether we choose to stabilize it with regular meditation practice.

Equalizing and Exchanging

    When we have attained an inner calm – a basic well being – we no longer look outside to people, objects, and experiences for what we have found within. In fact, we begin to see that others are in the circumstance that we were in. They also suffer from an absence of inner well being. We know that others just as our self want happiness free of suffering. Realizing our self how this can be permanently  achieved we wish that others can experience the same happiness and peace that is slowly becoming a part of our own life. Why not? Is their happiness and peace less valuable than ours? Do they deserve happiness and peace less than we do? The less we need from others the more we wish them what we wish for our self.

    This is called equalizing.  We recognize that others, in their desire for happiness and well being, are equal to our self. At first glance this may seem obvious, but it’s not. In the beginning we cherish personal happiness and well being as if it was of greater importance to us than others. But in time we realize that this is not so. We realizr  all of us are equally deserving of these gifts of human life. We work on developing this attitude both by both cultivating our own basic wellness and recognizing that we all deserve happiness free of suffering.

    When we have matured this attitude in our heart and mind we then work at exchanging. Exchanging is the intention and heartfelt desire to give to others what we wish for our self. We affirm this intention during our meditative practice by repeating with heartfelt feeling  the following phrases at the conclusion of our meditation.

                             May all beings be free of suffering.
                             May all beings find happiness.
                             May all beings never be separated from happiness.
                             May all beings live in peace.

    In this manner we slowly develop the mental attitude that truly wishes this for others. We complement this in day-to-day life by cultivating the qualities of generosity, kindness, patience and empathic listening. Slowly we find that we act towards others in a way we previously wanted merely for our self.

The Flourishing of Authentic Love

    Over time these efforts give rise to a natural compassion and authentic love for others, all others.  Even our enemies want happiness. Even our enemies desire to be free of suffering. Even our enemies want love. As a result of our own efforts we can now see their dilemma more clearly than ever before. We can see how they are trapped in their childhood and unconsciously act in a manner that causes suffering for themselves and others. Their confusion is no different than the confusion and blindness that once characterized our own life. We know they would choose love and happiness if they only understood the harm they cause themselves though dysfunctional speech and action. What was once anger towards another is slowly transformed into compassion. We wish for them, as for our self, that they attain happiness free from suffering.

    With insight, practice, and self-development the authentic love that emanates from an open heart extends to everyone whether we know them personally or not, whether we approve of their behavior or not, whether they harm us or not
.
    This is a very high state of development and not where we begin. We first gain an intellectual grasp of the distinction between needs-based “love” and authentic love. This requires the courage to examine the truth of the way we currently “love.” We then engage in meditative practices that progressively open our heart. We increase the quality of love we give to our loved ones, and then extend this to others.

    With these ongoing steps we find that the love we sought outside arrives when we love rather than seek love. We meet our needs by giving love rather than trying to squeeze it out of others. We discover that love is abundant rather than scarce. And finally we discover the wisdom of the ages that genuine love is the great elixir that heals all.

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The Evolving Self: From Instinct to Wisdom

    If I asked you the question, “Who are you?”  it’s likely you would pause for a moment and then answer with a list of qualities and characteristics. We each have a well-developed sense of self. This sense of self defines our self-image, personality, and the way we perceive and relate to the world and others. It’s the hub of our life experience; its our own little CEO, determining our likes and dislikes, our choices, and basic orientation to self, others, and the world. Its patterns, habits, and attitudes are established and set in place early in life. We give our “self” a name and become quite attached to it, cherishing and protecting it.

    It’s a bit strange that this sense of self that largely determines our life experience – our joy and suffering – is rarely examined. In actuality we take far more interest and care in considering a potential life partner, managing our finances, and developing a career than we do in examining this entity we call our self. Although we would carefully select a CEO to run our family business we accept without question inner CEO acquired early in life. It appears to be such a fixed part of our being, perhaps that’s why we rarely question it.

    Let’s consider how our sense of self develops and ask two questions” “How did we develop this sense of self, and is there a further stage of development that awaits us?”

The Instinctive “Self”

    During the first year of life the sense of self is very instinctive. We can almost call it sensorimotor. We experience through our sense without mental elaboration and then our physiology reacts without the mediating influence of thought. This is a bare or naked awareness, a direct perception of the world unfiltered by mental activity. We experience sensations such as hunger, comfort, discomfort and sleepiness. We similarly experience motion, images, sensations, and then instinctively react.
This non-reflective “self” arises on the basis of a mind and body. It’s simple, immediate, and direct. Life is lived in the present moment unadorned by conceptual knowledge. There is no sense of separateness from others or from the outer world. There is no cognition and thus no sense of time.  There is simply the continual flow of sensations accompanied by primitive reaction patterns. We are more like an amoeba than a fully developed human.

The Evolving “Self”

    By about the time of our first birthday the psychological or conceptual self begins to develop. This evolving self can now distinguish itself as separate from others and the outer world. Mother is no longer a mere extension of ones own body. Our slowly expanding sense of self soon begins to fill with names of things, thoughts, and feelings. Remember the books we read. We learned about an apple. We learned that it’s edible, comes from a tree, and relieves hunger. We learned that this or that person is safe and comforting and another is not. There is a growing sense of continuity of experience from past to present to future.  And, the growing child begins to experience its effect on others.

    Yet there is no fixed sense of self. It’s only over time that our world contracts around a frozen sense of self – a complex entity that appears autonomous and independent. Life is still a continuity of flow with a soft conceptual flavor and sense of self that is yet to harden into a frozen self-image.

The Autonomous, Independent, Conceptual-Ego Self

    Slowly but assuredly we begin to move away from a fluid and open experience of life. Over time, and with the assistance of parents and educators we create a conceptual identity with fixed attitudes, preferences, reaction patterns, and interpretive templates. This sense of self increasingly becomes the hub of our life, the center from which we live. Out of the fabric of early experience and learning we’ve constructed a personal CEO. We care for it, cherish it, protect it, perceive the world through its filters and defend its viewpoints. It is held together by the designation of a name, our name. It becomes the sense of self that’s familiar to each of us.

    With the development of the conceptual-ego self we experience our existence as separate and distinct from that of others and the outer world. This encapsulated sense of self is experienced as autonomous and independent. It appears to exist as a separate thing in and of itself. The once fluid self that moved with the continuous flow of consciousness is frozen and fixed. We freeze our self-image, our interpretations, and our reactions. We freeze our experience of the outer world by assigning unchanging labels and functions to outer objects. Our sense of self and the world is tied up in a neat little package.

    This fixed CEO no longer directly experiences the world as it is. The child’s immediacy, naked seeing, and openness are gone. For the adult, that world is lost. Through the filters of our mental self we  now define certain experiences as pleasant and others as unpleasant. We desire the former and push away the latter. We seek to control our world, seeking to assure comfort and security while avoiding anxiety and fear. The natural unfolding of the conceptual-ego self leads to self-centeredness, disconnection from others and the outer world, and the host of related mental afflictions and mood disorders.

    There are those that will point to this conceptual-ego self and claim that it’s the main source of worldly achievement and outer success. No doubt a certain sense of self is essential to successfully navigate the day-to-day world. However, if we are honest we must acknowledge that in its ambitious striving to manipulate and control the world for personal satisfaction our ego self expands and expands way what’s need to live a simple and good life.

    It appears on the surface that if we calm down or let go of the excesses of our ego self then our world and effectiveness will diminish in proportion. But this is not so. If we take a look at the most extraordinary, effective and powerful individuals of our time – for example, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela – we will note their humbleness. They have not arrived at their achievements through an ever-striving puffed-up sense of self. Their confidence, abilities, peace, and joy come from a far deeper source. They are in fact selfless. And in that selflessness, the defining characteristic of the essential self, there is far more confidence and power than in the puffed-up ego.

The Essential Self

    Fortunately, there is still a further level of development. When we have reached a stage or moment in life when cracks appear in the conceptual-ego self – cracks that may be catalyzed by illness, frustration, or suffering – we may be forced to stop and re-evaluate our life. The recognition that our efforts have not taken us towards authentic happiness, love, and personal fulfillment open the door for the final stage in the growth of self. This can be a precious and pivotal moment in life. If we turn away from this opportunity we will live out our years under the guidance of our conceptual-ego self. We will have an ordinary life, an ordinary health, and an ordinary death. We will have missed the greatest possibility of existence – the discovery of the essential self.

    If we walk through the door of transformation and thereby seek the essential self we will uncover the final stage in human development that leads to the perfection of human existence.
The essential self is a simple unelaborated presence in life that experiences life moment-to-moment without a conceptual overlay. We experience what is as is – the naked and uncontrived suchness of life. At one time or another we’ve all touched this aspect of self, but have missed its meaning. We may have had a glimpse when in communion with nature, through dance or the arts, at the peaks of athletic activity, at the moment of sexual orgasm, or in the early moments of romance.

    Can you remember this brief glimpse? It has a sense of openness, timelessness, spaciousness, ease, well-being and connectedness? For a brief moment you lost your ego self and dropped into your underlying essential self that has no name, no label, and no content. This self lives in the present moment experiencing what is as is without an ongoing mental commentary. There is a very deep sense of self, but it’s not a cognitive and frozen identity. It is a simple presence and being – an immediacy of living, a profound aliveness.

    There is no suffering in the essential self. In the fully developed and stable essential self there’s an authentic happiness, a peace that surpasses understanding, a selfless compassion and love, and a natural wholeness and connectedness. When we stabilize the essential self we taste the peak of human perfection. We bring an end to all suffering and distress. We’ve finally taken our human journey to its complete fulfillment.
It’s not our destiny to stop at the fearful and frozen conceptual-ego self, our own little contracted CEO. It is not our destiny to be falsely charmed by the illusion of an autonomous and independent self that brims with an over-inflated and disconnected sense of confidence and capacity. It is our destiny to complete the human journey that leads to the re-discovery of the essential self and its precious qualities.

    These are the four steps in the full development of self. Taken to the end it is an extraordinary journey described in the words of the poet T.S. Eliot:

                                        We shall not cease from exploration
                                        And the end of all our exploring
                                        Will be to arrive where we started
                                        And know the place for the first time.

    As the poet says the end is the same as the beginning with the one single exception – we know it. The connectedness and unadorned present moment experience of the early self is the same as the final experience of the essential self. However, the early instinctual self abides in ignorance. The adult who has re-discovered through inner development the simple essential self abides in wisdom. And that makes all the difference.

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Exercise

The Development of the Self

Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths blowing out stress on the out-breath and taking in peace and ease on the in-breath. Completely relax your mind and body, letting go of all effort or striving.
Place the image of a newborn infant in front of you. Observe it. Notice how it instinctively relates to the environment. It experiences comfort, discomfort, and hunger, and reacts according with sleep, distress, or the feeding reflex. Watch this through your image. Recognize the instinctive nature of this earliest self.

Jump a year in time. Place an image in your mind of a one or two year old. Notice the emerging sense of self. There is an emerging identity and the slow appearance of a personality. But there is not as yet a well defined and fixed sense of self. The young child still maintains an immediate and largely unfiltered relationship with the outer world, flowing with what is as is.

Now jump to your present life. Notice the existence of a fixed sense of self with definite views, clear preferences, and a distinct self-image. Now, for the first time, you can answer the question, “Who are you?” Notice how this self appears autonomous and independent, and how it has become center of your life. It conveys predictability and constancy of experience. Notice the tendency of this fixed conceptual-ego self to cherish itself, feel distinct from others, and harbor hope and fear.

Leave these images and through your breath and meditation return to the stillness and silence within. Notice the stillness, openness, and spaciousness of experience. Be present in the moment – an open and flowing awareness. Sensory impressions, thoughts, and emotions arise and fall but you don’t attach to them. You remain in the underlying awareness that has no name. This open and choiceless awareness and presence is who you are. It is your essential self.

This essential self experiences life with a directness, immediacy, and freshness that is unfiltered and unmediated by mental content. Experience this state of being. You’ve now returned home to where you started but know it for the first time. The infantile instinctual self has matured and evolved through the stages of development into the wisdom-based essential self. It now knows radical freedom, peace, authentic and enduring happiness, and non-dual wholeness.

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Take Your Choice

    The center of our adult life is our conceptual or ego self. It’s the source of all of our acquired qualities and identities. It guides our life – determining our likes and dislikes and how we interpret and respond to the world. As noted before, the conceptual self defines and freezes the world we live in – our possibilities, limitations, moments of pleasure, and suffering. We take this self as the only self that’s available to us. After all, that’s who I am. So we live with it, honor it, and protect it from harm and threat.

    Beyond this encapsulated sense of self and world lies another self that is usually hidden from us like clouds that obscure the sun. The essential self is obscured by the conceptual-ego self. It’s open awareness and presence is free of fixed perspectives and habitual reaction patterns. It’s a state of radical freedom. It does not develop on its own. It requires personal choice and intention. The essential self opens new horizons and takes us toward the fullness of life.

    Let’s take a detailed look at some of the differences between the conceptual-ego self and the fully evolved essential self. Understanding these differences helps us to further undermine the dominance of the ego self.

Vulnerability vs Stability

    The conceptual self is our day-to-day CEO. It’s highly vulnerable to change. And life is change – constant change. That’s why, regardless of its seeming strength and stability it’s easily wounded in a world of constant movement and change. In reality we cannot control people or circumstances. As a result, the conceptual self is easily knocked about.

     Look carefully at your life. Examine your attitudes and perspectives. Examine your likes and dislikes. Look at your reaction patterns. Can you allow entirely new responses to the same circumstance? Or, do you always draw from the same reservoir? If you look carefully you will see the rigidity of the conceptual self. Nothing new happens, although it may seem otherwise. Don’t take this personally. It’s a characteristic of the self-cherishing ego. And that’s not your ultimate self.

    The essential self is invulnerable. There’s no fixed sense of self in the essential self, just a simple presence and suchness It flows with the moment, responding naturally, directly, and appropriately to what is as is. Wisdom replaces information, compassion replaces self-cherishing, peace overcomes anxious guardedness, and wholeness resolves disconnection.

    “So,” you ask, “how do we function without a conceptual self or ego?” No doubt this can be confusing at first. But in time you discover the feel, ease, and delight of flowing and moving with life. You discover how to be skillful and appropriate in your responses. You discover the joy of living with an open undefended heart. You become carefree. Everything still goes on but you meet it with a stronger, more confident, open, patient, and flexible self. You will continue to use aspects of your conceptual self to navigate the world. But it is no longer an illusionary CEO. We are guided by the wisdom and open-heartedness of our essential self. This self is invulnerable.

Disconnection vs, Connection

    The conceptual self divides the world into self and others. In a world of self and other there is no true connectedness. For moments we may be fooled. But when two “selfs” meet their meeting is always on the surface. It’s based on mutual satisfaction. My needs and your needs are satisfied. You feel good and I feel good. True connection can never arise when there is duality of self and other.

    The essential self goes beyond the limits of the conceptual self, way beyond. There isn’t the hard distinction between self and other that characterizes the conceptual self. There is a penetrating wisdom that knows that all is interconnected, that all of life is an inter-related whole. The world is not split into me and mine, this and that, I and other. The sense of interconnectedness and interrelationship that characterizes the essential self is how things actually are.

    When we are connected at the level of oneness our heart embraces everyone and everything. Helping another is helping your self. Understanding another is understanding your self. Healing another is healing your self. The essential self transcends the disconnectedness of our conceptual self.

Suffering vs. Happiness

    Self-cherishing is a characteristic of the conceptual self. First we establish an encapsulated and seeming autonomous independent self. Then we cherish, protect, and defend it. We grasp at pleasure. We focus on “my and mine.” Seeking pleasure leads to desire, craving, attachment and in its final stage addiction. The ego self becomes possessive, jealous, defensive, and at times arrogant and aggressive in its efforts to care for itself. What we don’t like we push away. We do so with aggressiveness, judgment, anger, and even hatred. All of the afflictive and disturbing emotions can be trace to the self-cherishing conceptual self. Suffering is a quality exclusively associated with the conceptual self.    

    The deeper self transcends our ego and resides in the present moment, with all its vividness and beauty. There is no fixed self  and none of the associated mental afflictions, so there is no suffering. The essential self is characterized by peace, connectedness, and happiness. And its happiness begets happiness rather than suffering

Self-Cherishing vs. Other Cherishing

    Above all, the conceptual ego self is in love with itself. It views the world through this lens. It adores and chases after people, objects, and experiences that bring pleasure, comfort, and security. Ambition, success, approval fame, prestige, power, and control are all sought after for the sole purpose of supporting and inflating our ego. Underlying every action of the conceptual self is a calculation of the benefit and gain to the ego. The world is seen in terms of me and mine. The basic self-centeredness of the conceptual self leads to disconnection from others and afflictive emotions.

    The essential self knows the false and afflictive nature of the self-cherishing ego. To arrive at this ultimate and freeing sense of self is to have lived through and seen the contracted and suffering world of the encapsulated self. The essential self knows that the end of suffering and all happiness comes from valuing others. The essential self sees the world as an opportunity to serve others.

The Unseen Self

    The conceptual self cannot see beyond itself. It’s enmeshed, enslaved, and blinded by its habits, interpretive templates, and rigid protectiveness. As a result, we are trapped in a room without an exit. In this way the conceptual self obscures and obstructs the final development of the self.
It is only when the enclosure of the conceptual self is ruptured and cracked by suffering, disease, aging, impending death, or profound love that a door opens. If we can see the doorway and step outside, like the movement out of Plato’s cave, we discover a world beyond our ego.

    As Plato describes it, when leaving the cave we leave the world of darkness and illusion and enter the world of spaciousness, openness, and luminosity. We see for the first time the contours of the prison we called life and the illusions we called truth. This transcendent perspective is irreversible. We cannot go back to what was. We can now see the conceptual self from the vantage point of a larger truth.

    The emergence of the essential self affirms that we have gained a radical freedom and profound knowing. We have traversed each of the stages of the development of self to arrive at the ultimate self which is no more than a presence, spacious awareness, and lightness of being.

Finding the Exit

    The way that we evolve from the limited conceptual self to the essential self with its radical freedom is by slowly undermining the false sense of autonomy and independence claimed by the conceptual-ego self. Because the ego self does not exist the way it appears to exist – autonomous and independent – careful and repeated examination of this seemingly solid personal CEO will deflate this false sense of self. We begin by analyzing the conceptual-ego self to see if it actually exists as it appears to exist, and then we further explore the nature of this false self through meditation. Using both these approaches we slowly undermine its dominance and come closer to recognizing and actualizing our authentic essential self and its qualities – radical freedom, peace, wisdom, compassion, and wholeness freed from suffering.

Does My Conceptual-Ego Self Have a Color?

    Close your eyes and quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Then ask yourself, “Does my sense of self, the ego self, have a specific color?” Resolve this question by searching for its color. When you have arrived at the resolution you will discover the truth. Your ego self has no color.

Does My Conceptual-Ego Self Have a Shape or Form?

    Again, close your eyes and quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Then as yourself, “Does my sense of self, the ego self, have a specific shape or form?” Resolve this question by searching for its shape. ? Take your time exploring this. When you’ve arrived at the resolution you will discover the truth. Your ego self has no shape or form.

Is the Conceptual-Ego Self Inside or Outside Your Mind and Body?

    Close your eyes and slowly quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Then as yourself, Ask yourself, “Is your conceptual self inside or outside your mind and body?”  Resolve this question by searching for its location. Take your time exploring this. Certainly it is not outside your body – somewhere down the street! The only alternative is that it must be within mind and body.

Where is the Location of the Ego Self Within Mind and Body?

    Close your eyes and slowly quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Search throughout the mind and body to see if you can find the location of the self. If you lost one arm would you still have this self? If you lost both arms and legs would you still have this sense of self? If you had your organs transplanted would you still have this sense of self? Perhaps it’s located in the brain.

    If so, where is it located in the brain? Is it located in the gray or white matter, in the front or the back of the brain? Is it located in the brain cells, the nuclei of the cells, the electrons that are the basis of matter? Or, is it located in the space between protons and electrons? Can you find the location of the ego self in the mind? When you have resolved this question your will have successfully determined that the ego self cannot be definitely located in either mind or body. If it’s not located in the mind and body or outside the mind and body then where is it located?

Does the Ego Self have Any Physical Matter?

    Close your eyes and slowly quiet your mind with 10 deep breaths. Search throughout the mind and body to see if the ego self has any matter, any physical substance? Is it possible to see it, touch it, or experience it through any of the five senses? When you have resolved this you will successfully discover that this self has no matter and cannot be detected through any of your senses.

The Conclusion

    If the ego-conceptual self has neither distinct location in mind or body, nor shape, form, color, or matter can it be said to truly exist as an independent and autonomous personal CEO? Consider this question. When you have fully resolved it you will realize that this self has no substantial independent existence. This does not mean that there is no conceptual-ego self, but rather that it’s a fluid aggregation of life experiences rather than a fixed, independent, autonomous, and unchanging self. We use it when it is helpful, but we do not let its habitual patterns and perspectives run our lives.

     But, you might ask, “If this self that’s so near and dear to me and appears to be the essence of my existence does not exist as it appears – what is self, who am I? This question is easy to answer once we let go, even a bit, of our attachment to the conceptual-ego self. Our authentic self is our essential self. It has no fixed location, matter, color, or so on. It’s pure open awareness.

    This self arises on the basis of our living mind and body. It’s a simple awareness of life as it is     happening. It has an immediacy and directness. It is unadorned by conceptual knowledge. It’s connected to others and the outer world. It’s a timeless awareness, a timeless self.  There is simply the continual flow of experience. We are aware and know that we are experiencing moment-to-moment, but we do not elaborate, conceptualize, or freeze the continuity of flow. We are in life rather than in a commentary about life.

    It takes time to be reacquainted with our essential self – to live in each and every moment with a complete presence unmediated by the conceptual elaborations of past experience or future anticipation. But we begin to move towards this larger self by practicing the analysis above gaining a certainty of the dream-like nature of the conceptual-ego self. Simultaneously, we verify our findings in meditation where we directly encounter the open spaciousness of the essential self.. This essential self is awareness itself. It’s always with us. It is no one thing. It has no name. It’s our direct experience of life.

    As we slowly grow into our authentic essential self we also move away from suffering and towards the preciousness of human life with all its gifts. We move towards human flourishing – the fullness of our potential. And this is characterized by a deep and sustaining health, happiness, and wholeness.
That’s the journey from and instinctive self, to an evolving self, to a fixed conceptual-ego self, to the fully actualized essential self. It is the maturation of human life. It’s the fulfillment of our human potential. It’s our divine spark brought to life.

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Happiness

    We can all agree on one fact –we value and seek happiness. All humans share this universal aspiration. Achieving genuine and lasting happiness can be said to be a central goal of human life. But if we so strongly desire happiness why are our lives so often filled with stress, distress, and overt suffering? Why does sustained happiness seems elusive at best? Is life by its nature a cycle of pleasure and suffering with suffering winning in the end when we arrive at the unavoidable realities of aging, disease and death? If this is hard-wired into human existence then there is little more to say except to learn to bare it as gracefully as possible.

    But let’s take a radical view and suggest that happiness is innate to human life and that suffering is a reversible add-on. If this were so the immediate question would be: “Then why is happiness so ephemeral and elusive, and dissatisfaction, discontent, and suffering so ever-present?” If one takes the radical view that happiness is innate to human life and suffering a mere add-on then one is forced to meaningfully and successfully address this question. We must show why this is so and how we can actually and finally attain our goal of happiness freed from recurrent suffering. Failure to do so would render unbelievable the assumption that happiness is innate to human life.

    But we are fortunate here. For millennia very wise individuals across diverse cultures and time have explored the issue of happiness. They have carefully examined their own experience and remarkably they’ve arrived at the same conclusion: happiness is innate to human life and suffering can be largely eradicated. Even further, we are now learning from modern scientific research that they are right. Research is confirming that enduring happiness can be cultivated and suffering brought to an end. Through mind training practices we see individual’s growing into happiness and through neuroscience we are increasingly seeing that the same mind training can result in physiological and structural changes in the brain consistent with higher levels of happiness and well being.

    So where do we start the journey towards authentic happiness? There can be many starting points, but it is best to begin by removing one the greatest obstacles to happiness. We start by looking at a widely held illusion – a powerful illusion that keeps us from pursuing the happiness we all want. We begin by looking at the mistaken belief that pleasure and happiness are the same. Until we can see that they are profoundly different we will not give up chasing pleasure and turn towards cultivating true happiness.

Pleasure and Happiness are Not the Same

    Let’s go directly to the point. Pleasure, which is mistaken for authentic happiness, is the experience of satisfaction and delight that we attribute to an external stimulus.  Simply stated we find certain people, objects, and experiences to be satisfying and others unsatisfying. We orient our self towards what is pleasurable and avoid what we consider unpleasant. Pleasure is seen as residing in an outer person, object, or experience.

    Happiness is much different. Happiness is the experience of peace, delight, and joy that naturally arises from a healthy and wise mind and a compassionate and loving heart. Its source is internal rather than external. It‘s self cultivated within rather than sought after in the external world. And unlike externally derived moments of pleasure it is enduring and immune to the inevitable shifts and changes in objects, people, and experiences that are  innate to an impermanent world.
When we seek pleasure in the external world – mistaking it for authentic happiness – we become like scavengers searching here and there to gather what we can from a seeming scarcity of such experiences. And when we find islands of pleasure we protect them against any threats, real or imagined.

    As we come to know authentic happiness we become more like farmers cultivating an endless crop. There is so much we give it away. It oozes out of us and touches everything and everyone.
However, we persist in holding to and acting as if pleasure is the same as happiness. Such a mistaken or false belief is called an illusion. An echo, mirage, or train tracks appearing to meet in the distance are examples of false perceptions. They are illusions. The way they appear is not the way they actually exist. It’s the same with pleasure and happiness. We think pleasure is the same as happiness. At first glance it looks that way and tastes that way, but it isn’t. Failure to see the truth of their profound differences binds us to an endless search for pleasure and keeps us from attaining the real thing. This is the core of the problem. This is why we neither know nor live an authentic happiness. We can’t, as long as we are chasing pleasure and think they are the same.

    If we take a closer look we will more clearly see the differences between pleasure and happiness. We will see that pleasure is dependent on outer people, objects and experiences. Happiness comes solely from within. Pleasure is transient and fickle. Happiness is stable. Pleasure focuses on oneself. Happiness focuses on others. Pleasure always leads to suffering. Happiness always leads to more happiness.  And finally, pleasure is a momentary state and happiness a permanent trait. Let’s look at these differences one-at-a-time. By correctly understanding these differences we will progressively undermine the illusion that pleasure and happiness are the same and realize the truth, pleasure can never lead to happiness. It is an end, a dead end, in itself.

Pleasure Relies on Outer Experiences – Happiness Comes from Within

    From early on in life we are taught to orient our self toward the outer world for “happiness.” What we were taught as children and young adults is further supported and encouraged in adult life. What we learned about in our youth and pursue in adulthood is pleasure, not happiness.
We were taught that certain people, things, and experiences are pleasurable and others are not. As a result, we are drawn towards what is pleasant and push away from what’s unpleasant. External activities become our source of pleasure. As a result, we mistakenly come to believe that pleasure is an innate quality of outer objects, people, or experiences. We seek them more and more expecting to gain further pleasure. But the following examples will show that although pleasure is reliant on outer stimuli they are not a steady or reliable source of pleasure. What is pleasant can easily turn unpleasant when circumstances and conditions change.

    Consider the following. In the summer, when we sit in front of a fan we experience the fan to be pleasurable. In the winter, when sitting in front of the same fan we experience it as unpleasant. In the summer we think that pleasure is an innate quality of the fan. We say the fan is pleasurable. In the winter we feel chilled and unpleasant. We say the fan is unpleasant.

    Let’s look at this more closely. Was pleasure or displeasure an innate quality of the fan? Or, was our experience of pleasure a composite experience based on the actions of the fan, the outside temperature, the relief of a preceding moment of distress, and a variety of other factors? Upon reflection we would agree that the fan does not contain the quality of pleasant or unpleasant. If it did it would have to be one or the other all of the time.

    Let’s look at another example. We would all consider eating a fine meal as quite pleasurable. Again we would ascribe the pleasure to the quality of the food. Yet if we continue to eat the same food until we are overfilled we would no longer consider our meal to be pleasurable. We might even feel ill. If the quality of pleasure was in the food then it would be pleasurable all the time and the more we ate the happier we would be. Common sense tells us this is incorrect. Even a fine meal is neither innately pleasant nor unpleasant.

    Pleasure relies on external stimuli – on objects, people, and experiences. Yet the very things we rely on for pleasure do not actually contain pleasure as a steady, trustworthy, and reliable characteristic. What gives pleasure one day may give suffering the next.

Unlike pleasure, authentic happiness comes solely from within. It’s not reliant on external objects, people, or experiences. Its source is a healthy mind and heart. That’s what it’s dependent on. As a result it’s stable, unchanging, reliable, and trustworthy. In this way pleasure is very different from happiness.

Pleasure is Transitory – Happiness is Permanent

All outer things – people, objects, and experiences – are impermanent in their nature and are always undergoing change. As circumstances and conditions change the feeling of the pleasure we derive from them similarly changes. This is easy to see in our own life. Lovers can become enemies and enemies can become friends. Objects we once admired no longer hold interest. Tastes change. Needs change. Life changes. As a result, pleasure in its dependence on external stimuli is always in flux. It is fickle and ever changing. It’s like a moving target. That’s why we are always chasing it and can never quite hold it in place.

    This constant chasing after a moving target is like having to run faster and faster on an out-of-control treadmill. That’s why the search for pleasure in the outer world – mistaken as a search for happiness – is relentless, exhausting, disillusioning, and in the end unsatisfying. And yet we are pushed further and further by the never-ending innovations of our advertising and marketing industries. They keep us on the treadmill and flourish on the fickleness of pleasure and the false conception that pleasure equals happiness.

    Authentic happiness is permanent. It does not rely on outer people, objects, or experiences. It relies on a healthy mind and open heart. When we discover how to live in this natural state of being and presence happiness is found at its core. Even though we may neither see nor be in touch when we’re chasing after pleasure it’s always there. It’s simply clouded over by our obsession with the outer world. Once we see our natural happiness, know it, and begin to abide in it we will discover its unchanging nature.. We will discover that happiness, unlike pleasure, once embraced is permanent and unchanging.

Pleasure Focuses on Self – Happiness Focuses on Others

    Pleasure is a self-centered drive. Its only concern is obtaining personal comfort and security from the external world. It is about meeting one’s own needs even when this means causing harm to others including those we claim to love the most.

    We do great harm both individually and collectively when we act from a selfish motivation and in the end selfishness blocks the path to happiness. Further, we’re separated from others because we selfishly use them as objects of pleasure and we systemically rape our environment in order to distil bits of personal pleasure. This self-centered search for pleasure harms our life and disconnects us from authentic happiness. And why do we take such a self-destructive course? It’s because we mistake pleasure as being happiness. If we don’t know the real source of happiness we end up obsessively chasing pleasure, leaving a wake of suffering behind us.

    Happiness is selfless. It’s about others. It naturally opens to and seeks to connect with others rather than seeking to extract pleasure from them. And when we are authentically happy we want the same happiness for others. Why not? Don’t others deserve and want happiness the same as our self? Even further, we rejoice in the happiness of others. The happiness of others adds to our own.
Pleasure is self-centered. Happiness is other-centered. This is the third way in which pleasure differs from happiness.

Pleasure Leads to Suffering – Happiness Leads to More Happiness

    Because pleasure is reliant on external stimuli we are always grasping at what we find pleasurable. Whether it’s a person, object, or experience we want more and more. So our grasping turns into clinging, then to attachment, and finally to addiction. There are some pleasures that don’t take us through this entire cycle, but those external circumstances that have become major sources of pleasure in time become our obsessions, addictions, and greatest sources of mental distress.

    There are several problems here. Because external experiences are in a state of constant change we cannot control them. As much as we may try to fix them and possess their “pleasure” we cannot succeed. The effort to attach to outer circumstances as a source of unending pleasure is exhausting. We try harder and harder to possess and defend our sources of pleasure. It’s like chasing a moving target. With time we become disillusioned, experience loss, and can even become angry and resentful. But our learned response is to continue to play out the same dead-end pattern, trying the same thing with more and more effort – reaching out, reaching out. I can just feel the exhaustion. Can you?

    In this way the cycle of craving, clinging, attachment, and addiction always leads to dissatisfaction, anxiety, disillusionment, and suffering. This is the major problem we face with chasing pleasure. We cannot catch and hold it. It becomes a lifelong chase. It’s like we’re on a treadmill going faster and faster but never reaching our goal. And because we persist in our belief that pleasure is the same as happiness we cannot re-direct our efforts in the right direction.

    Unlike pleasure happiness is stable. It is innately and permanently present in the healthy mind and open heart. It does not need to be sought after as it is always there. We cannot lose it. We can only forget it. Authentic happiness only leads to more happiness and never to the suffering and afflictions that are a constant companion of the outer search for pleasure. This is the fourth way in which happiness differs from pleasure. To understand this is to further undermine the illusion that they are the same.

Pleasure is a Momentary State – Happiness is a Permanent Trait

    A state is an impermanent feeling. A trait is a permanent and stable part of our life. Pleasure is a temporary state of being that alternates with, indifference, and dislike. We go back-and-forth from one to the other as the person, object, or experience changes according to changing circumstances and conditions. We have a good, a bad day, and a blah day.  That’s how it is with external sources of pleasure. They appear, they change, disappear, and reappear. Pleasure is never constant as its source is ever-changing.

    Unlike pleasure we are discovering that authentic happiness is a trait. Once cultivated and revealed it’s internal, permanent, and unchanging. You can count on it. Because it’s a trait it’s stable and conveys a progressively immunity to life’s adversities including aging, disease, and death.

    There is recent research by Richard Davidson and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin that may be of interest here. Their research focused on the most recently developed part of our brain – the prefrontal cortex. The left prefrontal cortex appears to be the brain center for the experience of happiness and well being and the right side the opposite. It’s as if the left side stands for the glass half full and the right for the glass half empty.

    Through their research they discovered that each of us has a basic disposition that contains a certain ratio of left to right activity. Some of us are more left-sided – the optimism and well being of a glass half filled. Some of us are more right sided – the pessimism and dissatisfaction of a glass half empty. In actuality we are each a mixture – a bit of each side. However, whatever our basic disposition it is stable over time. That’s why it is called a trait.

    If we have a pleasurable experience related to external pleasure the shift of activation will be to the left pre-frontal cortex and if we have an unpleasant experience the activation shifts to the right side. But this is only temporary – a state change. We soon revert back to our basic disposition that is a stable trait – our default. I’m sure we can all see this in our personal experience. We have a certain basic disposition. Life’s shifts and changes can move us in either direction – pleasure or discontent – but in time we more or less return to our “old” self.

    What is important about this research was the discovery that well trained meditators (50,000 – 70,000 hours in a lifetime) could alter their basic disposition and shift their baseline for well being and happiness way over to the left frontal cortex. They have demonstrated for us that a basic trait can be permanently enhanced or changed by mind training. Happiness and well being can be learned.
 Even more important is the discovery that individuals who are just beginners in mind training can show early but definite shifts in the ratio left to right pre-frontal activity. Because pleasure is a state it can never be stabilized and fixed. Fortunately the same can be said of suffering. However, happiness is a stable trait. And the good news is that we can develop and enhance this stable experience throughout our adult life.

    In summary, pleasure is associated with external experiences, is by nature unstable and fickle, self-centered, and leads to mental distress and suffering. Happiness comes from within, is permanent, stable and abundant, embraces others and the world, and is accompanied by peace, compassion and wisdom. Pleasure is a momentary state. Happiness is a permanent and learnable trait. Pleasure and happiness, although mistaken as the same from early in life, are not the same. They lead to very different life experiences.

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A Moment for Reflection
Distinguishing Pleasure and Happiness

Find a comfortable place to sit and close your eyes for this brief reflection. Bring to mind a moment when you felt great pleasure from a person, object, or experience. Take yourself back to this moment as if it was now. Observe it carefully. What does it feel like? Where is this feeling located in your body? How much was it dependent on the external condition? How long did it last? What was it like when it came to an end? Consider this for a few minutes.

Next, take yourself back to a time of inner happiness.  This might be when you helped someone in a way that made you happy, or simply the joy of seeing another’s happiness. Recall a time we you focused on another. Take yourself back to this moment as if it was happening now. What is the feeling? Does it feel inner or outer? Does it have duration? Can you still feel it now? What feeling is left when it is over? Consider this for a few minutes.

    Can you distinguish the difference between outer pleasure and inner happiness in your own life? Become more aware of these different experiences as you life unfolds.

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Learning Happiness

    Once we break through the illusion that pleasure and happiness are the same we can turn our attention towards cultivating a true inner happiness, the most precious gift and goal of the human experience. Learning about and cultivating happiness involves several major steps and a number of little ones that are matured over time. Here is an overview of the essential steps. Each of these will be covered in greater detail in the upcoming chapters.

Step#1: Calming the Mind

    Calming the mind we’re refers to quieting the continuous mental chatter that constitutes most if not all of our day-to-day mental life. This random, automatic, and continuous mental chatter both agitates and disturbs our mind and body and obscures the deeper levels of our mind robbing us of the quiet and clarity that are necessary to attain true happiness freed from suffering.

    We each have an intimate relationship with the busy out-of-control mind. It’s our usual mental state. We call it normal. Yet, it’s the main reason why individuals begin mind training. When I go begin a mediation workshop I usually ask each participant why they signed up for the program. The runaway mind is usually on top of the list. “I can’t get to sleep.” “It drives me crazy.” “How can I stop my mind from talking?” However, underlying the overt desire to slow down the mind is the more subtle desire to find peace and happiness. That’s the real reason everyone is there.

    I tell them that until we can settle the mind and create a respite from non-stop mental chatter we cannot change our life. That’s where we have to start. Everything depends upon gaining control of our mind. Until then we are like animals leashed to our mental chatter. We go here and there without choice attaching to and unconsciously following one thought, emotion, or image after another. We are in a sense enslaved and intoxicated by our overactive mind and we cannot see or know the happiness that awaits within.

    All cultures and traditions that work with the mind recognize the need to settle it as a pre-requisite for a larger life and health. That’s why techniques to calm and settle the mind are found in all religious and spiritual traditions. It’s the beginning point. It’s the foundation of all further efforts to attain the universal human aspiration of happiness freed from suffering. We must begin by taking charge of our mind.

Step #2: Knowing What to Cultivate and What to Abandon

    One cannot expect a fish to survive if dropped in a cesspool. Similarly, efforts to tame and train the mind cannot succeed when thrown into the context of an out-of-control life. If we wish to support a life of profound and enduring health and happiness we must know what to cultivate and what to abandon. We cultivate attitudes, speech, and behaviors that support our efforts and abandon those that do not.

    This is a two-part process. In the beginning we take a personal inventory and decide what supports us and what gets in our way. As we progress in our work these initial efforts are stabilized further refined. At the onset we may have to exert effort to reorient certain aspects of our life. However, in time we will naturally finding our self moving towards supportive people, activities and environments.

    Let’s take a sampling here of what to abandon and what to cultivate – choices that will vary amongst individuals. To begin, we must abandon the view that well-being is merely a biological issue and develop a certainty that health and happiness require a healthy mind and body. This view is an easy one to acknowledge but far more difficult to act on in a culture that only values the physical and material. Time, money, and attention come easy when we are physically challenged. But ask yourself if the same is true when we are mentally challenged, as we are each day.

    Next, we must cease reaching out for happiness to people, objects, or experiences. This may offer some momentary pleasure but it is not the source of an enduring and true happiness.
 Finally, we must abandon actions and speech that cause suffering to our self or others. Before we speak or act we must ask our self, “Are these words or actions skillful, or not. Do they promote further suffering, takes us on a detour from the real source of happiness, or promote inner development?”
In summary we must abandon the false view that health and well being can be attained solely through biological advances. We must abandon the view that true happiness can be found outside of our self. And finally, we must abandon speech and actions that are harmful to our self our others.

    What do we cultivate? First, we cultivate a quieter life. We gravitate toward environments, people, and experiences that support inner stillness and mental stability. Take an inventory of the people and experiences in your life. Which people and experiences agitate your mind and which support stillness? Which should you cultivate and which should you abandon?

    We next cultivate the attitude and actions of loving-kindness. Opening the heart naturally stills the mind, and maintains supportive and healthy relationships. Through specific practices we affirm in mind and heart the intention that others find happiness freed from suffering.  We wish for others the same that we wish for our self. As we become more settled in this attitude we take up outer actions, actions such as patience, kindness, gentle and healing speech, and generosity. This is how we cultivate loving-kindness.

    Finally we cultivate a sense of contentment and gratitude for what we are given. We are given a health mind and body, the ability to gain true and enduring happiness freed from suffering, teachers and teachings to show us the way, and leisure time to move forward. What greater gift could there be? What other gift could act as a wishing fulfilling gem that grants each of us the great riches of human life? Sometime we forget what we really have and get caught up in our lack of this or that. Focus on the real riches in life, the real sources of happiness and be thankful that you have all that you need to create a precious and beautiful life.

    In summary, we cultivate inner stillness, an open heart, and contentment and gratitude for what has been given to us.

Step #3: Opening the Heart

    To open the heart is to go directly into the divine center of life – the very seat of permanent and true happiness. Some of us are more adept at opening our heart and some less so. Opening the heart is about otherness in contrast to selfness.

    So much of the grief in the world comes from self-centeredness. Such an attitude can never lead to happiness freed of suffering. That can only arrive when by shifting towards otherness.

    Consider the following. All people want happiness and no one wants suffering. In this way all individuals are just like me. Why is it that my happiness is more important or significant than that of others? Certainly my quest to gain happiness free from suffering is equal to that of all others. Why should I not value that desire in others, all others, as I do in myself? Of course I should. It’s only logical. We are all the same. We’re all in the same “boat.” Why not?

    If we can get beyond the step of seeing how my desire is equal to that of others perhaps we can take the next step and see how my happiness is actually dependent on desiring happiness freed of suffering for all others. Only when I take this attitude do I sufficiently undermine my self-centeredness and experience a genuine and heartfelt connection with others – a connection that rapidly upgrades inner happiness. When I keep happiness for my self I will suffer. When I give it away I will gain more in return.

Step #4: Presence

    To be fully present is to be free of enslavement to mental chatter.. Specifically, this means to be free of bondage to the intellectual mind. Presence requires inner stillness As we gain the capacity to calm the mind we simultaneously gain the capacity to be present in the moment, the only moment, the timeless and immortal moment. Here is the source, the only source of peace and true happiness.

    To be present in the moment is to live life as it is with all its vividness and aliveness. We do so from an inner spaciousness. We do not chase our mental commentary, elaborate on what we experience, judge it as pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. We are simply there with what is as is. And that is full health, happiness, and wholeness freed from suffering.

    Happiness can be learned. Working with each of these steps places us directly on the path. Gradually – beginning early on – we can experience moments in which we glimpse our natural state of peace and happiness. Initially we get brief glimpses. But in time these islands of experience will gather together providing a progressively more sustained sense of true happiness.

    There are three types of faith that come to bear here. The first is called certain faith. This is our intellectual understanding that pleasure is not happiness. The second type of faith is called clear faith. This faith arises when you have a definite and clear personal experience that confirms your intellectual understanding. These are “aha” meditative experiences that show you directly the truth of what you are learning. Now you know not because of what you have been told or read, but from your own experience. Finally, there is longing faith. Once you see the truth, once you see the path to a better life, once you know what is possible you then long for it with all of your heart and soul. The progressive movement through these three types of faith will carry you towards the precious gift of happiness

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Basic Well-Being -- Basic Wellness

Basic well-being is a stable sense of inner peace, ease, and comfort that is natural to human existence. It is no more or less than the normal built-in harmony of our mind and body. It’s the natural way to be in the world - a mind and body working together with ease as they were designed. But this innate sense of simple being does not last long. The traumas of early childhood and the demands of an outer oriented culture soon override our basic nature.

As adults we’ve become accustomed to living without this innate basic well-being. Unknown to us this simple sense of rest and ease is insidiously replaced early in life by a subtle sense of restlessness, rootlessness, and inner agitation that subsequently guides, defines, and drives our life. The difference between a basic well-being and the absence of it is like the difference between a car resting in neutral and one that is always in gear and rearing to go. The latter is how we are. And we don’t know it. We take this subtle state of mental disharmony for normal.

Although we don’t directly recognize this loss we are quite aware of the overt symptoms left in its wake. Our endless busyness, over-sized ambitions, ceaseless striving, anxiety, and overactive physiology are its most apparent symptoms. We simply cannot rest. We cannot be still. We cannot, as the poet Mary Oliver says, “be idle and blessed.” We live with an inner engine that never turns off. We are always on the move, rarely satisfied with what is, always a bit incomplete, and the remedy is always around the corner and invariably related to some achievement, experience, or relationship that at best temporarily relieves our acquired inner malaise - our exile from our natural inner ease.

It is difficulty to describe such subtleties in words. So let’s try another way. Consider a time when you’ve experienced, if even for a few moments, a complete sense of ease, comfort, and inner peace. Perhaps this was at a time of communion with nature, in the abandon of dance and music, in the early days of romance, at the moment of sexual union, after a great massage, or in the relaxation phase of yoga. Close your eyes for a moment and allow this experience of rest to permeate your body. This is a taste of the natural mental and physical experience of basic well-being.  I use the word taste because this is not the actual experience itself because it is stimulus driven rather than naturally and effortlessly present, and thus lacks stability. It’s simply a momentary relief. A glimpse of what once was our natural state of being.
    Now consider the moments following this experience of rest and ease. Notice how your normal baseline returns. Before long the muscles get tense, the mind fills with chatter, concerns mount, anxiety returns and the underlying sense of restlessness and agitation reasserts itself. We rapidly and automatically shift from a moment of simple ease to our usual runaway chattering mind and relentless doing.

Our Natural State

Basic well-being -– the sense of inner peace, calm, and rest ¬– is naturally present at the beginning of our life. In actuality it never leaves us. What happens is that it becomes obscured by overactive and disturbing mental activity. Our mental life takes over and destroys the built-in harmony of mind and body. Dis-ease becomes our baseline, our ordinary way of life. We lose the experience of our innate restfulness.

   Think of it this way. What’s it like when an infant is fully satiated by the nurturing of a caring and present mother – nurtured by the mother’s body,  gaze, touch, breast, and assured presence? Can you imagine the natural and innate sense of rest, ease, security and peace of the infant so held? In contrast imagine the agitation and restlessness – mental and physiologic ¬– of a child denied this constancy of care, adoration, and tenderness.

The Loss of Natural Well-Being

Like most of us I searched in many places for this basic sense of well-being. Of course I did not see it that way. I didn’t understand what was going on. What I saw was a successful, ambitious, and achievement oriented young man seeking what we all seek. It seemed quite normal. I didn’t notice the agitation, restlessness, and lack of inner ease that unceasingly drove my life. It all seemed quite natural. Even my eventual pursuit of a more spiritual life was in a sense part of this drive that unknowingly was seeking relief from the stress and distress of the absence of a basic wellness. When exhaustion set in and I had to acknowledge the absence of a deep and sustained inner happiness I knew something was wrong. But I didn’t know what.

It was not until I was attending a talk by a wise teacher that understood this dilemma that I began to understand what was going on. He reiterated the often-made comment by teachers from Asia. When they began arriving to teach in the West they observed a level of mental distress and suffering, the prevalence of a negative self-image, the endless striving and restlessness, and the lack of self-confidence. This was not a sense of life that they grew up with. In time, like many of us raised in the West, they began to realize that this western dis-ease was a result of emotional disruptions of early childhood.. It wasn’t always this way. Children were once raised by an extended family that shared responsibility for meeting a child’s needs. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, and siblings were ever-present sources of care and affection, tenderness and warmth. In our times it is very difficult for a single parent or over-worked parents, suffering from the loss of their own basic wellness, to raise a child while struggling to make ends meet.

No one is at fault here. It is just a side-effect of modern life, – the nuclear family and economic necessities. We no longer grow up with consistent and high quality intimacy, reassurance, security, ease, comfort, and the confidence it bestows. We learn quite early that we need to perform to feel better inside. We learn to look outside for what we lost within. Our natural peace, calm, and ease get covered over with restlessness, agitation, and the compulsive need to do,  achieve, succeed, and be approved.

Culture teaches us to substitute money, materialism, sex, fame, name, relationship, and adult toys for the simple lost presence and loving gaze of a stable parent. Because these outer satisfactions are inherently impermanent we continue on the treadmill seeking more and more of the same. We don’t know why. We just do it and rarely stop. We become exhausted, fatigued, anxious, and discontent. We get used to this experience.

The Symptoms that Go for Normal

The cost of our loss of basic well-being is quite high. It can be seen in our emotional life, our body, and our spirit. It is a precursor of mental and physiologic distress and an obstacle to meaningful relationships and authentic, profound, and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness.

The Mind

The absence of basic well-being is expressed in the mind as ceaseless mental chatter, afflictive emotions, and a persistent restlessness. We call this the ordinary mind. We cannot imagine a life without mental chatter. What will we do? Where will we go? What will happen to our mind? If we let go of our only anchor, our mental chatter, it may feel like falling off a cliff, dropping into nothingness, or leaving life itself. It is our familiar friend. It is our worst enemy.

Our mental chatter leaves no room for insight or understanding, personal development, or meaningful relationships. We run the same scripts over and over seeking a resolution to our subtle inner discomfort – to the exile from our natural home. We don’t know that that mental chatter is a symptom of the loss of basic well-being. It is the problem rather than the solution.

If we do an even cursory examination of our mental chatter we will discover the most of it is negative, afflictive, and disturbing. A good estimate would be that ninety percent of our mind talk is filled with fear, insecurity, anxiety, mood disturbances, anger, worry, and resentment. This is all a reaction to our loss of basic well-being and a mistaken attempt to regain some sense of peace and ease. But of course it doesn’t work. Afflictive emotions become the cause for further mental disturbance and endless rumination that extend through the day and then into our sleep and dreams.

 Afflictive and disturbing emotions are the gross manifestations of the underlying agitation and restlessness. The sequence begins with broken intimacy and a loss of our natural peace and ease. This natural state is then covered over by a very subtle agitation and restlessness that grasps for outer sources of peace, ease, security, and comfort. This becomes the basis of and content of our mental chatter and afflictive emotions. This disturbed mental life then defines our perspectives, determines our actions, and drives our life. It invariably leads to mental distress, difficult relationships, and physiologic disharmony.

The Body

The mind and body appear distinct but in reality they are indivisible. They always move together. To mistake the appearance of distinctness for the truth of their inseparability is to defy common sense, logic, and personal experience. ”Butterflies” in the stomach, muscle tension on a difficult day, an anxiety headache, a “nervous” stomach, and the physical response to sexual imagery are among the many examples of common experiences that validate the indivisibility of mind and body.

Our common sense and experience is well supported by psychological research that documents the relationship of physical and mental states, the understanding of the physiological components of the stress response, development of the fields of biofeedback, psychoneuroimmunology and neuro and cognitive sciences, and the more recent correlation of meditative practice and physiologic and structural change. It would be difficult to find an aspect of the body – from organ system to the cellular level – that is not influenced by the state of our mind. There is no longer any acceptable rationale that supports the separation of mind and body.

Yet these fields of inquiry and research have primarily been concerned with gross mind/body interactions.  Why? Because our understanding of the mind has been limited to its most overt activities – for example, the stress response, symptomatic anxiety or disabling mood disturbances. We have not as yet explored the more subtle aspects of the mind and thus our mind/body understanding and strategies are of a superficial nature.

As we delve deeper into consciousness we begin to unveil a subtle mind/body understanding and medicine. If we look below overt mental disturbances to the subtle restlessness, agitation, unsettledness, and dis-ease that drives the “ordinary” life we touch the more subtle aspects of the mind and open an entirely new aspect of mind/body understanding. We know that overt mental distress elevates blood pressure and pulse, activates stress related hormones, dis-regulates the immune system, and effects most physiological functions. But we assume that when overt mental distress is absent that our physiology returns to normal.

We are so accustomed to a subtle restlessness, agitation, dis-ease and its reflection in obsessive striving, ambition, and ceaseless mental chatter that we are unaware of its constant influence on our subtle physiology. Only when we begin to calm our mental chatter with meditative approaches do we become aware of this underlying mental unrest and its subtle mpact on our body. When we first feel a stable stillness of mind we become aware of the correlate of a truly still body. The exploration of the subtle mind and its relationship to our subtle physiology will allow for a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the mind/body interface, an increased appreciation of the long-term effects of childhood wounds, and appropriate strategies to restore basic well-being to mind and body.

Spirit

When we lack a sense of basic well-being – a natural ease and peace –we are unable to further develop our health. We are in a constant “on” mode. Our engine is always running and our mind contracted on our day-to-day existence. We cope with the moment. We cannot see further. We cannot see the possibility of a life without suffering, a mind that is still, relationships that are steady, harmonious, and life giving. We cannot image a life of a profound and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness that is resistant to outer adversities including disease, aging, and death.

That is why it is so essential to understand and know through direct experience this basic absence of well-being. Without this recognition and understanding we can neither restore the innate natural balance of mind and body, nor aspire and to and actualize the highest levels of well-being – what the wise beings have called the perfection of health.

Basic well-being is the launching paid for a high-level health. Human flourishing – a profound and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness – is our human birthright. It is present within us in the beginning of our life, the middle, and at the end. But it cannot be revealed, known, or realized until we confront the subtle restless and agitation in our life and return to the calm and ease of our natural state. This inner harmony is the sole basis upon which we can develop, mature, and stabilize the qualities of a profound well-being.

Basic Well-Being

We begin by taking steps to shut off the ceaseless engine that drives us, and in this way slowly but surely return to a life grounded in natural comfort, security, and ease. How do we do this? There are two ways: psychological strategies and meditative techniques. They both aim at restoring basic well-being. Each approaches the same problem from different directions.

We are most familiar with the field of psychology whose development can be traced to the seminal psychologist William James in the late 19th century. The diverse field of psychology that followed is based on the personal narrative. The individual’s “story” provides the elements of an individual’s historical development. Old wounds, ingrained patterns, fixed perspectives are uncovered and current life afflictions are traced to their historical roots in this lifetime. Once early childhood traumas are understood, the light shined upon them undermines their power and force.

What was once unconscious becomes conscious. And once conscious the power of these old imprints is diminished. We can now see why we do things. We can see why we repeat the same patterns. We can see the patterns themselves. This knowledge allows us to question our choices, to look more carefully at our actions, to understand why we suffer, and to develop strategies and practices that help restore basic well-being. The field of psychology has greatly advanced our understanding of emotional afflictions and assisted the process of restoring basic well-being.

But it is not enough. Psychology is based on our historical history – the chain of events that leads from childhood wounds to adult mental distress. It works to control, manage, and diminish the effects of these early traumas, but it does not go to the source – to the fundamental cause of the restlessness, agitation, and disease that underlie mental distress. Psychology allows us to understand the historical sequence of events that lead from childhood traumas to adult disturbances. But it does not help us understand why childhood traumas persist and continue to cause damage so many years after the fact. Psychological investigation does not explore or explain the flawed workings of the mind that transform past childhood traumas into persistent, rigid, and dysfunctional perspective and patterns that express themselves in the now.

Why, does the mind allow this to happen? Why isn’t the past just the past? How does our imagination carry a long ago event into current experience? Psychological explorations do not get to the root of the problem. It’s like pulling weeds out of a garden. We think we’ve done the work, but the roots have been left in the ground and the emotional afflictions invariably return. Psychology contributes to the restoration of basic-well being, but it cannot complete the job. For this we need the practices of meditation.

Meditation is not concerned with the specifics of the personal narrative. It is not concerned with the historical development of mental distress. It goes directly to the source. Basic well-being is lost because the mind has, in a flawed manner, taken these early experiences, fixated on them, and brought them into adulthood as if they were present in the here and now. Yes, if not for early traumas we would have retained our basic ease and natural peace. But once having occurred it is the way our mind mistakenly processes these early traumas that fixes them in place. If we understand these flawed workings of the mind than we can address the root cause of all mental distress and cut it at the source and restore basic well-being  without addressing the individual historical components.
The first goal of meditation is to calm the mind through a variety of approaches. Calming the mind allows us to temporarily experience basic well-being, and with some distance to investigate how the mind actually works to create the sufferings of adulthood.

Time and again I have seen individuals arriving for an office visit suffering from one or another form of mental distress. After listening empathicaly to their entire story we close our eyes and work at calming the mind by moving beyond the personal narrative. I have found that with skill and time any individual can be taken from an agitated and restless mind to a calm mind. For the few moments that the calm and still mind is present the individual can directly experience the feel and possibility of basic well-being. She or he can feel the ease, peace, security, comfort and openness that is the characteristic of mother’s tender embrace and gaze.

For many individuals this is the first time such inner rest has been experienced. With no change in outer circumstances peace has replaced suffering. And this peace and ease of mind seems so natural and simple. I point this out directly by stating the obvious -– that I have not injected that experience into their blood. It is there, has always been there, and although it is now only a temporary encounter with basic health with practice it can become increasingly permanent. Basic well-being can be restored through mental training.

Until the mind is settled it cannot get the distance and perspective that is necessary to “look at” its own workings. Mental chatter seems real, tangible, and a fixed part of mental life until you get the space to look directly at it. This is the second gift of a calm mind. It allows us the space and distance to observe our mind and understand its workings. We can explore how thoughts, feelings, and mental images arise, abide, and dissolve back into awareness. We can ascertain how an early experience gets erroneously fixed in the mind and body.. We can understand from a perspective the flawed workings of the mind and how and why an experience of childhood becomes our life. And in this way we can re-orient our mind, more easily than you would think, recovering its normal function. In this way we use meditative approaches to restore basic well-being – our innate way of being and the essential foundation for a larger life and health.

Getting Started

It may appear a Herculean task to tame and quiet the mind. At first many individuals cannot even imagine a still mind and the ease, peace, and comfort that comes with it. It is important to remember that we are not actually creating a still mind. The still mind is always present even though we cannot see it through constant mental chatter. So the first step in returning to a basic and natural sense of well-being is quieting the mind.

Almost all spiritual traditions seek to calm the mind as the first task in establishing the basis for a larger life. The techniques and approaches may vary but the aim is the same. There are certain basic preliminaries that greatly assist in accomplishing our objective. There are conditions that support our effort to calm the mind and those that are obstacles. So we must become aware of what to cultivate and what to abandon in our life. We cultivate those aspects of our life that support our effort and slowly abandon those that create obstacles. This is an ongoing process that gets refined over time. What in the beginning is an intentional effort in time becomes a preferred way of living.

While learning to create a proper and supportive context for our effort to tame and train the mind we being each day the actual sitting practice of meditation. Practice is an intentional focused effort to work with our mind, take control of its chatter, and return it to a state of natural ease and rest. To further support this effort we continue to practice while engaging in our daily routines by using all of our life as a possibility for practice. We each have a busy life and so it is most important to learn to integrate our practice into daily life – into our activities and our relationships. We will see how to accomplish this in the chapters that follow.

As we take these initial steps towards restoring a basic well-being we can have faith in the knowledge that many wise and courageous individuals past and present have undertaken this journey. They have shown us the way with time-tested approaches that can easily and progressively integrated into your life. So this is where we begin. We start by calming our mind, creating mental spaciousness, and restoring our natural sense of peace and ease.

Ending Suffering - Awakening Genuine Happiness

            Wetness is inseparable from water. Similarly, heat is inseparable from a flame. We can’t have one without the other.  If suffering was in the same way inseparable from human life we could stop right here. There would be little more to say about suffering except for perhaps a few words about how to manage it as best we can.

But suffering is not innate to human life. It’s a temporary contaminant. As an example consider a glass filled with dirty water. When the particulate matter sinks to the bottom the dirty water appears clear. Actually, the water’s nature never changed. It was always clear and pure. The silt was merely a contaminant that temporarily obscured the natural clarity of the water. Similarly, in the midst of distress human life appears inseparable from suffering. However, when suffering is fully understood and addressed we find that suffering is a temporary contaminant that can fall away much like silt in water. We can then see that the essence of human life. We can see that this essence is peaceful, whole, and free from suffering.

Regardless of appearance the fact is that happiness rather than suffering is innate to human life. This is not to deny the pervasiveness of suffering in human life but to merely state the fundamental truth that it is not innate – it is not hard-wired – into our life.

Because we fail to truly grasp the temporary nature of suffering we attempt to rid our self of it in misdirected ways that only lead to further suffering. We seek to alleviate suffering through romance, relationships, drugs, materialism, name, fame, self-help programs, and whatever else we can get our hands on. We have build an entire culture based on avoiding suffering by covering them over with temporary pleasures. And these efforts have failed us. At best these mistaken remedies provide only temporary relief. They fail go to the root of the problem – our false understanding of suffering. The only way to separate suffering from human life is to correctly understand its causes and permanently sever it at its root source. This is what wise men and women have known for millennia.

What is Suffering?

         Suffering, unlike physical pain, is a mental rather than a sensory experience. Suffering, or mental angst, takes various shapes and forms. It manifests as disturbing and negative emotions such as worry, fear, anxiety, rumination, mood disturbances, confusion, doubt, insecurity, a negative self-image, meaninglessness, anger, hatred, attachment, loss, and endless variations of these thoughts and emotions. The one common thread is that each of these mental experiences causes distress and suffering.

            If we observe our mental life we discover that most of our thoughts, feelings, and images are disturbing or negative. When your mind is very active stop for a few moments and take an inventory of the percentage of mental activity that is of a disturbing nature. This may reach as high as ninety percent. That’s how our mind works. We ruminate on fearful and negative thoughts and emotions. In contrast, moments of what we call pleasure and happiness are far more fleeting. It’s the presence of these ongoing and persistent disturbing emotions that we commonly label suffering. The more intense they are the more we experience suffering.

            The experience of suffering gets automatically upgraded as we ruminate on these disturbing emotions. At times it’s as if we cannot get away from them. They pull us into their negativity for hours at a time causing a complete loss of perspective and self. We become these disturbing emotions. We become suffering. At least that is how it seems at the time. Our body reacts to this mental distress. We then have a mind/body problem. Disharmony is now disharmony in the body.

            So we can say that suffering is the feeling of dread and mental discomfort that arises from our uncontrolled preoccupation with negative thoughts and emotions. We usually acknowledge suffering when we feel overt distress. However, from the perspective of an individual who has realized a genuine, profound, and sustained peace and happiness most of what we ordinarily call happiness is known for what it is – suffering in disguise. We have learned to settle for very little happiness and mistake what we have as being the real thing. So many of us simply do not know that our lives are filled with a certain sense of loss, malaise, incompleteness, and subtle distress. We don’t know what it feels like to be free of all suffering – gross and subtle. We don’t know what it is to be truly peaceful and happy. As a result we settle for scraps and miss the gold.

            In summary, suffering is the mental distress caused by disturbing and negative emotions. When recognizable our suffering is gross or apparent. When unrecognized it is subtle, disguised, and mistaken for ordinary life.

The Origins of Suffering

         The next question is how do these disturbing and negative emotions arise? If we can identify how they arise we can determine how to best deal with them. In medicine we call this making a diagnosis that then leads us to the precise and correct therapy. If we have the wrong diagnosis we will apply the wrong remedy.

What is the trigger for our negative thoughts and emotions? There are several answers here. To be precise, four answers. They are each correct, but not equally correct. The first answer is that adverse outer events are the cause of the disturbing emotions that lead to suffering. The second answer is that both the mind and outer events are the cause of suffering. The third is that the mind itself is the cause of suffering. And the fourth answer is that suffering is neither a result of the mind nor of outer circumstance. Don’t get confused here. Read on.

            In order to get to the heart of the matter let’s take these one at a time. No one could rationally deny that a poor person living on the street in a cardboard box or an individual in the midst of a severe illness is suffering. It is apparent to all of us that outer circumstances can trigger disturbing emotions and suffering. To deny this is to defy conventional logic and experience.

            The second answer suggests that both inner attitude and outer circumstance combine to determine the presence and intensity of suffering. This more flexible and expansive perspective – the mind/body perspective – acknowledges the inter-dependence and inter-action of outer circumstances and our inner life. It’s also impossible to deny this formulation of the problem.  We know from our experience that adversity and our reaction to it determine our degree of suffering. This is a more complete and matured understanding than exclusively blaming outer adversity.

A more subtle and difficult leap is to understand that the mind itself is the primary cause of suffering, An unstable and undeveloped mind is highly susceptible to outer adversity. A moderately developed consciousness is less susceptible. However, a highly developed mind is immune to the winds of outer experience – including disease, aging, and death. As it is not part of our ordinary experience we are unfamiliar with this possibility. We cannot imagine moving through these great life transitions without suffering. However, this is what we see in all fully realized beings across time and cultures. In ordinary life we can get a sense of this extraordinary possibility by observing the large variation in how adversity is experienced amongst different individuals.

Consider the following. What is the difference between the beggar in the street and the monk in a wet and dirty cave? Both have similar outer circumstances. In one case there is suffering and felt deprivation and in the other the peace and joy of the search for inner freedom.  The only difference lies in how the mind holds the outer circumstance. To deny this higher truth and understanding is to deny the observable fact that irrespective of outer circumstances ones mental attitude towards that circumstances determines the absence, presence, or degree of suffering. This is a challenging yet true understanding. This is good news as we can’t control all outer circumstances and people, but we can control our mind.

            The fourth answer is the most difficult and subtle yet it is our greatest hope. I will only address this briefly. Here we state that suffering is neither caused by our mental attitude nor by outer adversity. Suffering, from this perspective is caused by a loss of an awareness of our deepest self – our human essence. When we recognize and rest stably in our deepest essence we are immune from outer adversities and afflictive thoughts and emotions. From this point of view when we touch into our deepest home we find that suffering does not live there irrespective of the attitude and meanderings of our mind or the unpredictability of outer circumstance. Once you see this you will understand why suffering can be permanently eradicated through a thorough and complete understanding of suffering, the full development of consciousness, and the realization of our true nature.

            So why are each of these answers valid even though they appear dissimilar from each other? It’s because they reflect an increasingly subtle understanding of the nature of human suffering. The more sophisticated our understanding the closer we get to the full and actual truth of suffering. The more subtle our understanding the closer we come to our final goal – the permanent eradication of suffering.

            If we think that outer events are the only cause of suffering then the only available remedy is to control outer experience. To some extent this can reduce suffering, and of course it’s important to avoid unnecessary external triggers of suffering. But we would all agree that as a single strategy used over the long-term this is an ineffective approach that in itself may lead to further suffering. We can neither control all individuals or outer circumstances nor the personal process of aging, disease, and death. So we cannot hope to eradicate suffering by merely attending to outer circumstances. This is only a partial and temporary solution.

            If we expand our understanding to consider both the inner and outer aspects of suffering we extend our possible remedies. We care for the outer aspects of life – for example, taking care of our body and avoiding harmful circumstances – and at the same time we concern our self with our psychology and reactive mental patterns. The upgraded mind/body perspective allows us to make greater progress in our effort to deal with suffering.

            If our understanding shifts to an even subtler level we realize that the mind itself is the primary source of all suffering. This is a very difficult expansion in understanding. It takes time and inner development to move away from our focus on the role of external circumstances. But with such an effort we will discover that how we relate to adversity – the state of our mind – determines whether or not we suffer or the degree to which we suffer. If we are convinced of this very subtle understanding our main effort to eradicate suffering turns inward towards the development of consciousness. Through this effort we progressively free our self of mental afflictions – regardless of our outer circumstance. In this way we undermine the mental causes of suffering and arrive at the final step in the permanent eradication of all suffering.

            Let’s ground this last point in our ordinary experience. All of us have watched others deal with adversity. Even in the most difficult circumstance of death we observe great variation in how people respond. Some collapse into despair, fear, and great suffering. Others move through with grace and peace.
What is the difference between these individuals? Death is the same in all. The difference lies in their mental state alone. Perhaps we can see in our own life how that as we have grown and matured we progressively handle adversity with greater peace and ease. Now imagine extending this capacity with further inner development. You can then see how it is possible to move over time towards the full eradication of suffering.
            To gain a full, permanent, and final freedom from suffering we must go even further. We must go beyond our usual notions of mind to discover the underlying essence of the mind that transcends cognition and our usual sense of “I.” This is a high degree of inner development. We then discover that our true nature is characterized by an open, vast, still, and peaceful spaciousness where suffering cannot exist in any form. We are not accustomed to this natural joyful presence. For far too long in exile from it. – like refugees in a foreign land.  But once we touch our true source we know with certainty that suffering is an experience that is limited to our runaway cognitive mind  – a result of hyper-mentation. Our natural self – like water freed of silt – is free of all suffering. This is the ultimate and final remedy.

            Let’s again try to ground this very subtle accomplishment in our ordinary experience. We all know a time when our cognitive chattering mind stopped, and we experienced a state of consciousness without the usual thoughts and feelings. This may have occurred in a communion with nature, at the peak of athletic activity, while dancing, or playing music, at the moment of sexual orgasm, or at other times. At such a moment the mind is still, our experience is spacious, our heart is open, and we know a peace that surpasses understanding and does not allow for suffering. If we could stretch these moments out and make them our life we would know for certain that suffering can be permanently eradicated. If it can be gone for a moment it can be gone for a lifetime. We would know that suffering is only a contaminant of human life and cannot be simultaneously present when we live in the spaciousness and openness of our natural and deepest self. 

Of course these moments are now only transient, but to know that they are possible for you at all is to know the issue is not whether suffering can be brought to an end but learning how to stabilize through inner development our essential nature. We do not need to create this natural state of being. It is always there. We only need to learn how to access, recognize, and stabilize it. Then suffering will permanently end. So it is here we realize through our own experience that suffering at its most subtle understanding is neither about our mental attitude nor outer circumstances. It is about living in our true and essential nature.

            When free of the constraints of suffering armoring of the heart comes to an end, isolation and disconnectedness end, and the heart opens to a large embrace. A mind free of suffering opens the heart. We know this from our own life. When we feel happy and mentally clear our heart naturally opens to others. And this openness and reaching out connects us to others and to life around us. We are no longer living in the delusional separateness of a hyperactive mind but in the reality of our interconnectedness with all that is. This felt connection brings isolation and aloneness to an end.

With the end of suffering we flourish into the fullness of our human capacity. We flourish in a life that is characterized by an enduring and profound peace, happiness, and wholeness. This is how suffering comes to an end and we awaken into the natural fullness of life.

Working the Path

         Given these four progressively subtler aspects of suffering how do we start along the path of reducing and eventually eradicating suffering in our life? I will now overview five steps that will take us towards our goal of eradicating suffering and awakening happiness. They are both sequential and highly interactive. We begin with the most basic step and slowly progress to the most sophisticated approach. Each is essential to attaining our final goal.

Cultivating and Abandoning

            Let’s begin with the first step that accords with our most basic understanding of mental afflictions and suffering: suffering is caused by external and adverse circumstances. We address this in a way that at the onset is straightforward and clear. We simply avoid people or circumstances that cause suffering and cultivate those that bring peace and happiness.  When it comes to caring for our health, hooking-up our seat belt, or setting boundaries around difficult people this is quite simple.

            However, when it comes to more complex issues where simple avoidance is impossible – such as our supervisor at work or a circumstance that cannot be categorized as all good or all bad – we are called upon to be far more skillful in determining our choices. The wisdom that enables us to choose speech and actions that are most appropriate to a particular situation is matured over time through inner development. It’s easy to quickly act/react that are pushed by old patterns or intense emotions. This will only lead to more suffering. It is more difficult to begin to get some space, still the mind reflect, and act with clarity, skill, and appropriateness. This will diminish suffering and promote well-being.

            So we begin with a simple guideline that can be found in all the great traditions – avoid all actions that directly, indirectly, long-term, or short term cause suffering to you or to others. Examples are easy. They include: maintaining honesty, avoiding judgments about others, harsh or angry language, physical harm, taking what is not yours, engaging in inappropriate sexual activity, and so on. These are obvious. It’s a place to start. Following these simple guidelines alone will result in less suffering for you and others. As we progress in understanding our self and others we will be able to extend skillful behavior into more subtle and complex situations.

            The same can be said about cultivating relationships and circumstances that bring peace and happiness. Again, examples are easy. Cultivate friendships with kind and loving people that can see beyond themselves, open your heart in a loving embrace to others, cultivate activities that are health to body, mind, and spirit, and expand moments of stillness and silence in your life by taking breaks from an overactive life.  As we progress in inner development we will learn to cultivate increasingly subtle sources of happiness and health.

            So the question we must ask our self when confronting people and circumstances is, “How can I respond in a way that minimizes suffering for myself and others and maximizes peace and happiness?” What would be skillful in this situation? How can I handle this outer experience in a way that supports my goal of minimizing and ending suffering?

The Mind/Body Connection

            When we upgrade our understanding of suffering to include our mental attitude we expand our ability to work with suffering. We are no longer limited to choosing what works for us and avoiding what doesn’t. We have more flexibility. In addition to using skill in dealing with outer circumstances and other people we now can address the role of our mental perspective in the development distress and suffering. At this level of understanding there are two approaches that can be used. The first is psychology and the second is meditation.

            Psychology allows us to understand our mental attitude, our perspectives, the way we translate outer experiences according to our inner stories, and our reaction patterns. To accomplish this psychological work explores the history of our thoughts, emotions, and patterns. It illuminates how we color experience through interpretation, shape experience through our patterned projections, and needlessly and unconsciously cause suffering for our self and others. With this knowledge we are better able to understand how our mind and its mental activity collaborate with outer circumstances to create an amalgam of inner attitude and outer experience that results in suffering. With this knowledge we become more sensitive to our mind as well as our outer actions and are capable of approaching life with greater understanding, skill, and less suffering.

            Meditation works with the mind in an entirely different way. It neither concerns itself with the historical content of our life nor with the specific afflictive emotion (jealousy, anger, attachment, and so on.) Meditation concerns itself with providing an understanding of the mind itself and how it works. By understanding the mechanics of the mind we develop the capacity to undermine afflictive thoughts and emotions at their root source  – in the flawed workings of the mind.

            We begin by taming and calming the mind. There is nothing one can do with an endlessly out-of-control mind except follow it as it involuntarily drags us into recurring suffering. By learning to calm the mind we discover early on that we are more peaceful and less reactive to others and to outer circumstances. We gain some inner space that separates us from enmeshing our self in outer adversity as if it belonged to us and identifying our self with mental afflictions as if that is who we are. We identify less with our mental chatter and outer circumstances and gain a surprising new sense of ease and peace. Psychological investigation coupled with meditative training further  breaks the cycle of reactive suffering and sets the stage for an even subtler step in addressing suffering. 

The Mind

            We further upgrade our approach to suffering when we turn inward toward the recognition that transforming our mental life is a more direct, subtle, and effective way of approaching suffering. The great Indian scholar Shantideva said it in the following way. He says that one cannot control outer circumstances or other people. To do this he suggests is like trying to cover all the thorns in the world with leather. Isn’t it easier, he asks, to simply cover our feet in leather?  Then we don’t have to deal with all the thorns of life one-at-a-time. That is what this next step is about. We decide to focus our efforts on the mind rather than expend too much effort on trying to avoid or control what we cannot.

            This turn inward takes us to a new stage in meditation. Having gained skill in taming and calming the mind and its endless chatter we are now able to explore the mind itself. This is not possible when the mind is endlessly active. It requires inner stillness. With this exploration we begin to discover that the mind has two aspects – the moving mind and the still mind. The first is our ordinary chatter that usually enslaves us, dragging us here and there throughout the day, ruminating on mental disturbances, and taking us away from life in the present moment. Through observation we discover that our thoughts, feelings, and imagery when left alone dissolve as soon as they appear like words written in the water with ones finger. When we grasp at them and expand them with our inner stories they expand, take on a familiar tone, become quite real, are solid like an etching in stone, and are quickly acted out in speech and action. All because we have not learned to just leave them alone and allow them to naturally dissolve into the still mind.

The still mind is merely our ordinary mind minus the noise. The still mind is calm, easeful, and at peace. Suffering cannot occur when the mind is still. It is a very important moment when we recognize that that there is a place in us, – a place of refuge – that is immune from mental afflictions and outer adversities. It is ours. Although covered over with mental chatter it has always been there. To know that we have an inner place of rest and peace that is always available is a great relief. It is a profound and transformative shift. The more we access and stabilize this inner stillness the greater our immunity to mental afflictions and outside influences.

Our focus on the mind does not cancel out our efforts at cultivating what is good for us and abandoning sources of suffering. Nor do we abandon psychological inquiry or our initial efforts to tame and stabilize the mind. We simply add a subtler skill – investigating the workings of the mind – to our growing repertoire. This allows us to further understand the mind. In this way gain in our capacity to undermine the dominance and influence of afflictive emotions. We move further towards defeating suffering and gain greater freedom from mental and external influences. Understanding and stabilizing the mind is what Shantideva spoke of when he suggested we place leather over our feet rather than trying to cover the entire world with leather. If we can overcome our runaway mind we overcome mental afflictions and  develop greater immunity to suffering.

Returning Home From Exile

            If we come this far and go no further we will have come very close to realizing our goal of eradicating suffering. To bring permanence and closure to suffering there is one final step. It is also the final step in the full development of human consciousness and the human possibility.

            This final step requires that we move beyond the confines of our ordinary mind to the open spaciousness, connectedness, and oneness of what we shall term naked awareness. Naked awareness is the simple and ordinary moment-to-moment presence in life as it is without the superimposition of our imagined mental life. It is being with what is as is rather than being involuntarily enmeshed in an imaginary and self-created world of mental judgments, preferences, perspectives, and patterns. We transcend an exclusive and hyperactive mental life and gain a direct presence in life itself.

            Naked awareness can also be referred to as bare awareness, pure awareness, clear awareness, or primal unconditioned awareness. However we name it naked awareness is stripped clear of our overactive mental life that obscures the natural and unaltered experience of life itself. We can experience tastes of this in meditation, nature, the peaks of athletic activity, the arts, sexuality and other activities. In these moments the mind stills, our usual sense of self drops away, and we rest in an oceanic ease and happiness. These tastes do not last. To stabilize and live in this immediate presence requires that we overcome the dominance of our mental life through inner development gained through insight and contemplative practice.
            There is no mental “I” or ego in naked awareness. And if there is no sense of “I” there is no one to suffer. Neither are their mental afflictions to suffer from as we have transcended the dominance of mental life. So with no one to suffer and nothing to suffer we have reached the end of suffering – finally and permanently.

            We will then discover that our mental life has obscured not only our natural and untainted awareness but also our innate peace, happiness, and wholeness. So we find that an expansive and enduring well-being awakens within us at the same time that suffering comes to an end. As we progress along the steps that bring suffering to an end we simultaneously experience the dawn of a natural state of joy and delight. This is the fruit of the path that takes us to the end of suffering. In actuality this journey is not as much about eliminating suffering as it is about awakening within our self the full potential of human life and human flourishing.

Intellectual Understanding and Direct Knowing

            In our journey through the steps that take us to a larger life freed from suffering and filled with peace and happiness we will find that there are two interweaving approaches: intellectual understanding and direct perception. It is important for us to first gain an intellectual understanding of the sources of suffering and the path and methods that take us towards freedom from suffering. This understanding guides and assists us in creating a context for the realizations that are gained through the experiential path of meditative practice - in both formal sessions and in daily life.

            Intellectual understanding sets the framework. Direct knowing through our own experience personalizes our understanding and makes it our own. We move from intellectual belief to a certainty of knowing. And when we know that we know with certainty there is no falling back. A ripened fruit cannot become unripe. So as we gain direct experience we place our self directly and firmly on the path that guarantees us freedom from suffering and an enduring peace, happiness, and wholeness.

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Life Transitions - The Doorway to a Larger Life and Health

There are times in each of our lives when our well-ordered existence seems to crack open and things no longer seem to work as they once did.  This may occur slowly over time or with an unexpected suddenness. We may be shaken or taken over by a persistent boredom and discontent, or feel the disturbing, anxious or depressing sense that something is not right, or we may be shocked by the “unexpected” appearance of disabling emotional distress or physical disease. Or perhaps we may have simply reached the time in life when we can no longer avoid the inner longing that knows that there is something more - something more meaningful and more possible for our life.

When we begin to lose control and things seem to fall apart, we are at the entranceway to a life transition, a very special, sacred and pregnant time that is filled with unseen and well-disguised possibilities. If this opportunity is taken up and fully lived and experienced our lives can expand and be reborn into a larger health and a new possibility. But if we refuse or deny this opportunity our life recedes into the stagnation of the past accompanied by the signs and symptoms of persistent emotional distress and premature illness whose source seems obscure to ordinary vision.

And so it is that we find ourselves confronting the great transitions in our life at moments of pain and struggle, distress and disease. At such times we most acutely feel the fear, the darkness and the terrifying unknown. Reaching outside for help we will often consult a psychologist or a physician hoping for a remedy to our distress. And at times there is help – the temporary relief from physical suffering, a medical treatment, new psychological tools or medications and at times even a cure. What we call ordinary health may return and this is good, but if that is all that happens it is a false achievement. Unfortunately most psychologists and physicians are not trained to see or to cultivate the important and through and through life transition that our distress points to and that this brief moment in life offers us. And so we may feel better, but the opportunity to be reborn into a larger life and health has been lost in the narrowness and blindness of a limited view of health, healing and the human possibility.

So to grasp this opportunity we must look beyond the limited training of our usual helpers, see through the darkness, accept the call to a new life, fall in-love with the possibilities, and find inspiration in the great stories of transition and change. We can learn from the journey of Odysseus, the quest of Parsifal, the trials of Job, Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces, or perhaps even from our next door neighbor. We can learn that these great stories offer us a map that can serve to guide us through the dark night, reconnect us to our soul, and bring forth the light of a larger life. It is a map that gives us a clear picture of the stages and process of transition, a map that can alchemically help us transmute suffering, pain and disease into the great human treasures of wholeness, peace, love and joy. It is this map that I will begin to share with you here.

The great poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “The end is where we start from.” All transitions begin with endings that in their essence are a dying off and separation from certain parts of our life and identity that no longer work for us. This may include relationships, lifestyles, work, meanings, values, desires, mental attitudes, or the false sense of our immortality. This beginning stage of a life transition is a difficult one that is filled with disenchantment and disillusionment with what has been, and a painful recognition that what was will no longer work for us and cannot be fixed. Endings must precede new beginnings and yet many, immobilized by an understandable fear, will refuse this call, recoil from this adventure and grasp onto the old ways, returning to the stagnation and spiritual decay of what was – losing personal power, creativity and the life force itself to years of quiet desperation.

This critical period, when we hear and are summoned to answer the call to change, is a momentous time of our life when the courage and risks taken will determine for many years ahead the character of our lives. Those who chose to pass through the threshold and move beyond will be taken into a new life through a passage into and then out of the chaos of the unknown and unfamiliar.

The writer Tolstoy describes his journey into the unknown with the following words:

                    I felt that something had broken within me upon which my life had always
                    rested, that I had nothing left to hold on to … an invincible force impelled
                    me to get rid of my existence .. I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid
                    of life; I was driven to leave it …

But when we choose to answer the larger call and take distress or disease as a signal to move into the dark night of the soul we will not be alone. Unexpectedly we will find the appearance inner and outer spiritual guides. As an inner guide you will experience a deep personal faith, conviction and confidence that the correct path has been chosen and that the storm will be weathered. As an outer guide an individual will often appear who is experienced with such transitions and can and will become for you an invaluable first mate on your journey of renewal.

This stage of transition, the movement into the unknown, is marked by perilous and strange times of disorientation, numbness, chaos, uncertainty and fear. These feelings, feelings that may vary in intensity for months, are often punctuated by moments of extraordinary illumination – glimpses of the new and larger life to come. These are difficult times, but with help from our guides we can learn how to stay the course, live into our experiences and develop a faith in the process of change, growth and renewal.

And it is important not only to seek the assistance of a wise guide but also to take care, good care of our body. When we may be less than motivated to care for ourself it is most important to eat well, get lots of sleep, stay away from intoxicants and exercise. When we move through our life transition to the other side we want to have a healthy a body with which to experience the reconnection to our soul and spirit.

As one slowly surrenders to the realization that no one thing or one person can maker it better there emerges an acceptance and even an anticipation of the unfolding of a new life. The pain and suffering slowly lifts and a deepening sense of self-confidence, self-reliance and self responsibility enters into our life as we finally reconnect with our soul and with our essence. Abandoning the illusionary dependence on relationships, career, fame and power as the sources of security and happiness, we begin to discover within what we have always and unsuccessfully searched for on the outside. And this discovery of our inner life is the shift we have awaited – the shift that awakens us to a new and authentic life. It is a solid, secure and meaningful ground upon which to build the next movement of your life.

There is much we learn in transitional times including the nature of humility. Coming from a place of comfort, security, achievement and stability we are forced to let go of a tightly held control and surrender to life itself, discovering that at all times what separates each of us from the predicament of all others is no more than the moment between two beats of the heart. And then, there arises within us a profound compassion for others, a compassion whose basis is a universal love that connects and heals all that is touched by it.

The natural unfolding of a life transition is such that in time chaos, turmoil and disorientation are replaced by a deeper understanding of life, an previously unknown inner peace, security, ease and freedom, and a healing  that is also a wholing. Returning to our day-to-day life we bring back what we have learned from our spiritual journey to soften and enrich the world around us - our family, friends, relationships, work and community, and we begin to divest our self of trivial activities and meaningless entertainment, choosing rather to surround ourselves with companions and experiences that support our growing inner life.

The reward for the completion of an heroic journey is the return home to who and what we are, the return home to a health and healing of mind, body and spirit, a return home to a renewed life of authenticity, joy and freedom. Stripped of old fears, limitations, illusions and fantasies we can engage life with the freshness and firstness of an early spring morning. And this is the nobility of human life and the essence of a final, comprehensive and complete healing.

These are the touchstones of the transition process. And as difficult and as treacherous as it may seem, when the ripening occurs, life begins to return and you come to know that the modern day hero no longer fights his battles on the fields of Troy or the beaches of Normandy, but rather plants his flag on the battlefield of the soul. And the peace and healing we find inside becomes the peace that will be found outside. Through our own courage to engage change we become the seeds for a better world.
There are those who ask, “Why do I have to go through this while others seem to be happy and never in crisis?” Perhaps it is no more complex than the realization that some of us are born to be seekers and some not and some of us are destined for a larger healing and wholing and others not. The writer Anais Nin stated it this way:

                I live the personal drama responsible for the larger one, seeking a cure.
                Perhaps it is the greater agony to live this life in which my awareness
                makes a thousand revolutions while others make only one. My span may
                seem smaller but it is really larger because it covers all the obscure
                routes of the soul and body, never receiving medals for its courage.

You may inquire as to what all of this has to do with health and healing? Why would a physician trained as a healer write about chaos, crisis and transition? The answer always jumps out the same. We are connected beings. One cannot separate out mind, body and spirit. We know now more than ever through personal experiences and scientific research that throughout life the human body is shaped and molded by our mind and spirit. Thus our choice to respond to inner and outer adversity by growing our inner life insures not only an inner harmony but an outer one as well. Discovering and unfolding the great treasures of human life – wholeness, peace, love and joy – permanently harmonize and heal our entire being, allowing us to arrive at a full, comprehensive, and sustained healing of mind, body and spirit. This is the gift of undertaking the journey of life transition and renewal.

From years of medical practice I know how easy it is to close the door on the highly vulnerable and pivotal moments of distress and disease, moments that contain the possibility of great change. These opportunities for a larger life are often closed with the very drugs and treatments whose only effect is to relieve symptoms, inadvertently comforting everyone while the larger healing and wholing is lost. And so I write these words to you to let you know that your deepest distress and despair, the suffering and fear of illness, the intractable addiction and even death itself can be transformed into the possibility to discover the beauty and nobility of human life. These difficult moments can become the source of a final and complete healing. That is what a meaningful and precious human life is about. That is what the great sages have always taught us if we would but listen.

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