Notes From a Fellow Traveller

Good Enough, or Not

The pediatrician and psychotherapist D.W. Winnicott coined the expression a “good enough mother” or perhaps one might say “good enough parenting.” It refers to the manner in which a mother responds to her infant child with age-related sensitivity and care, allowing the infant to successfully transition to an autonomous and well-functioning adult.

We will all pass through the oceanic unity of infancy into the subjective individual world of the adult. How else could we navigate the human world we are given? That necessary movement is characterized by the development of a personal identity that defines our separateness as an adult. We are given a name and our sense of self is progressively filled in by life’s events and experiences, wholesome and difficult.

We lose the inter-connected, spontaneous, and innocent experience of the young child, as we take on the conditioning, patterning, and limitations of an adult. Our infantile world disssapears, but we are able to navigate the day-to-day world of work, intimacy, and social relations. With “good enough” parenting and early circumstances we can do so with kindness, patience, virtue, and human decency. That is an accomplishment that begins with the absence of neglect and the presence of familial circumstances that support healthy development. For that we do not need perfect parenting, but “good enough” parenting.

Much as healthy adult development is the aim of psychology, it is also the first aim of meditation – creating a healthy human life – mental calm, virtuous attitudes and behaviors, a tempering of ego cherishing, and the cultivation of loving kindness towards others. There is a large body of Eastern literature and practices devoted to this important psychological accomplishment.

But is this accomplishment all we can hope to achieve? Consider the work of the developmental psychologist Abraham Maslow. His well known Hierarchy of Needs delineates the stages of human development from basic physiologic needs to self-realization. Self-realization, the culmination of his developmental pyramid, was considered the pinnacle of personal growth and fulfillment.

At the end of his life, some 20 years after the articulation of this model, Maslow declared the model incomplete and began to speak of a state of being he termed “transcendence.” That capacity went beyond the well cultivated personal self, the goal of psychological development. It’s an awakening to the spiritual and mystical experiences of wholeness and oneness. As it turns out, the peak of personal development was not the peak of human possibility. There was more.

It can be said that healthy development is an important preparation for the experience of a larger spiritual life. A “good enough” childhood increases the probability that we will experience life’s larger possibilities, and it does. But paradoxically, the condition of individuality that is fostered by healthy individual development can as well get in the way of spiritual attainment.

Why? Because individualism is by definition a state of separateness and disconnection from others, our highest self, and our planet. The stronger our individual sense of self, and perhaps the healthier, the more it can serve as an obstacle to touching into what lies beyond. What is valuable for one stage of development can paradoxically be an obstacle to the next level of development. The stronger our sense of distinctiveness and separateness the more closed off we may be to what lies beyond.

So, we can say that good enough parenting supports healthy development, but it may not be good enough to go beyond. I recall one of my Eastern teacher’s description of a traditional family upbringing in his culture. There may be dozens of family and close friends raising the child, always a hand to hold, arms to convey security, and the wisdom to navigate times of difficulty. The child was raised by a community bypassing the limitations of a one-or-two person family.

Meditation was a regular family activity, as was the expression of kindness and compassion. Often the community elders would visit and lead songs of awakening called dohas. These pointed to, modeled, and normalized for young adults the state of consciousness beyond individualism. This very different “good enough” upbringing honored both the psychological and transcendent as touchstones of a fully lived life.

I remember meeting a young western woman at dinner, when I was studying in India. We had not met before. After some introductory conversation, she mentioned her recent marriage to a Tibetan man. Curious, I asked her if she could share something she learned from their cross-cultural intimacy. She mentioned that they were living with his brother, and it was odd to her that the brothers never knew whose clothes belonged to whom. I thought back to my own children, and of course that was not the situation I recall. They definitely knew the word mine.

It appears that a “good enough” upbringing is relative to the culture, its values, and aspirations. Certainly, there are elements of care, kindness, responsiveness, and supportive environments that are cross-cultural. But, if one’s familial and cultural values further emphasize selfless compassion, love without an object, and a world that goes beyond the subjective and personal, there will be a larger sense of the human capacity for spiritual development, and a greater chance that it will be attained and lived in adult life.

Could it be that the childhood rearing that’s good enough for a healthy personal self may not be good enough to go beyond, to encourage the fullest of human possibilities? Could it be that by emphasizing only personal development we deprive ourselves of the treasures of human flourishing that lie beyond who we think we are, who we have become? Perhaps we can learn from Maslow that it is never too late to reach beyond. It’s never too late to go beyond the psychological view of adult development to the too often unseen treasures of the spiritual life. It is never too late to expand our view of what it means to be fully human and to adjust our cultural values and parenting skills to align with this larger knowing.

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The Lost Self

In my many years of medical training, I recall the first time that I was able to pause and take a fully relaxed breath. I had completed my medical internship and signed up as a physician at a health center in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. That was when I was able to take that first full breath.

I still have a vivid recollection of relaxing in my new apartment, sitting on a soft sofa in the corner of the family room, and reading The Greening of America by Charles Reich. I recall thumbing through the pages, when I came upon a chapter entitled “The Lost Self.” It instantly drew my attention, and I can still recall how deeply I was touched. We all have had the experience of a single word or phrase touching a tender spot. That was such a moment. A sense of sadness, and joy arose, all at once.

Reich went on to list those things that we forget in our usual busyness. Here is my list: the sunset, stillness, relating, playing, deep loving, patience, listening, treasuring the moment, and kindness. Add to this list as you wish.

It was as if his simple few words – the lost self – had broken through years of one-dimensional living. I had learned the theory, research, and practices of a brilliant medicine, but at the price of living. I learned about clinical medicine, but little about the human that is central to the healing process. And that, I was to discover, was costly for both myself and my patients.

That recognition led to a rush of questioning, reading, and reflection. I opened to feelings and emotions that were denied for many years. There was more ease, heart, and family time. A more vital life took root. In time, I progressively assumed this new and expanded sense of self.

There was a second recognition that came years later, when I was well established in medical practice and my householding and child rearing responsibilities were completed. I once again had time to take a deep breath and reflect. Although, I had achieved all I had set out to accomplish in life, something was still missing. Is this all there is, I thought? Do I just sit back and live the fruits of my earlier efforts? What more could there be? As I reflected, I had a sense that there was an even deeper self that had eluded my awareness.

I read and re-read the self-development books that had previously guided me to a saner life, seeking an answer to what was missing. However, rather than discovering a specific answer, I discovered that revealing this final lost self did not require further self-improvement methods, more reading, or additional understandings. It required a sustained inner stillness, a receptivity to the innermost voice of life. That is the traditional path to directly experiencing the true self – cultivating a still and unconditioned awareness.

For me, this led once again to taking a pause in medical practice, leaving my usual home, and settling into a quieter, natural setting to silently listen to my inner voice. With patience and time, I began to discover the second and deeper lost self. It was more subtle, defied words, and did not assert or promote itself. This inner home felt authentic, true, trustworthy, and free of all previous identities. Just a glimpse was deeply reassuring. Just a glimpse revealed to me that this was the true center of life – an ultimate self that had no name or configuration.

It is not that I had not touched this sense of the innermost self before. I had, in the midst of nature, intimacy, art, beauty, and other circumstances. But I took these moments as fleeting pleasurable experiences. I enjoyed them and watched them quickly dissipate. They were indeed glimpses of my true self. Unfortunately, I had the experience but missed the real meaning.

The first self lost in medical training was the loss of a healthy personal self. The deeper self, that, unknown to me, I had lost early in life, was my essential true self. I slowly realized that I could not live a full life without living from that foundational center of my being That’s what propelled me toward the study and practice of meditation – a yearning to reclaim with stability this unchanging essence of my life, this more primary and vital lost self.

That self has nothing to do with the personal self and its accumulated identities, habits, and patterns. These are acquired throughout life as a means of accommodating to early trauma, familial, educational, or cultural demands. The true self has nothing to do with self-improvement or self-development. Our true self is there from infancy, innate to our existence. Although obscured from awareness by the thick veils of the personal self, it remains ever-present, untouched, and uncontaminated by past history and trauma. It is the pure and simple truth of who we are.

This homecoming was not such an easy task. It has taken reflection, devotion, and practice to begin to pull back the obscuring veils and be with the true self that lies on the other side. It has taken perseverance to return again and again to reclaim it. But, once touched and re-touched there is no longer an alternative, is there? Our life becomes a one-way street, continuously returning home to who and what we truly are.

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                                             Meditation and Beyond at Amazon

Self-Remembering

For those who are only familiar with their ordinary self the phrase “self-remembering” may be a bit confusing. However, for others, who have explored further, it is apparent that there are two distinct “selves.” The first is our ordinary day-to-day self and the second is our natural, fundamental, and essential Self.

We are not born with our personal self. This day-to day self is acquired over many years. Early in life we are given a name, which over time becomes the repository of our day-to-day experiences. These experiences are strung together by memory into what appears to be a continuous personal self. From that accumulated history we form our beliefs, likes and dislikes, and reactive habits, all of which we know as our personal self.

But the mental gymnastics of our psyche has tricked us into believing this collection of experiences, thoughts, feelings, and habits is actually who we are. The cost for this mistaken belief is considerable. Although there are many positive qualities and capacities of our personal self, it is by nature self-cherishing, disconnected from others, shaped by our history, limited in reach, and unable to grasp or adapt to an impermanent and ever-changing landscape. The result is a built-in fragility and susceptibility to stress, distress, and suffering. We all have experienced this.

Now let’s look at the other self. Our natural self, from the onset of life, resides at the center of our being. Although in adulthood it’s obscured by the personal self and its restless mind, it is always present and available if we turn towards it. This essential self is spacious, unconditioned, ever-present, easeful, and spontaneously present. We can say it self-reveals when the veils of our personal self fall away.

Like the flower that spontaneously gives forth its perfume, our true self has its own perfume – it exudes a natural and profound serenity, easeful delight, keen wisdom, and selfless heart. There is nothing we need to do to experience these gems of life except to remember who we truly are and align ourself with our true nature.

So why is self-remembering so important and how do we “do it?” If we do not remember and know our true self we are bound to live and die within the conditioning and constraints of our personal self. We never know our true self, others, or reality as they actually exist. We can only know them through the filters of past experience. We miss the truth and vitality of life and self. And that is not without its consequences – confusion, mistaken understandings, emotional disturbances, distress, and suffering scattered amongst moments of transient pleasure.

To move beyond these limitations and gain the treasures of human flourishing we must self-remember our essence that’s been obscured by the trials and tribulations of our restless personal self. How do we accomplish this? We begin by understanding these two selves and re-directing our attention inward to our larger natural self. We do this through study, reflection, and practice.

Let’s talk about practice. Practice, or perhaps more accurately said “self remembering,” is done in both formal daily sessions and throughout the day. The practice we will shortly do together will demonstrate the details of a daily 20-30 minute practice, preferably done early in the morning. Sometimes your mind will be quite active and other times it will be still, the veils will part, and for a transient period of time you will experience the beauty and grace of your true nature. It may not be stable, but the perfume of it will permeate your day-to-day life.

Of equal importance is daily practice. Multiple times a day for a few minutes you can self-remember by practicing the breath holding technique. Other times during the day you can stop what you are doing for a few minutes, remember, and drop into your natural self. These small islands of remembering your true self will over time become larger land masses that will shift your life.

The simple and profound teaching is to remember who you are. Stay with who you are? Do not squander any more time or energy with whom you are not. Remember who you are.

                                                   www.elliottdacher.org

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                                       Elliott's Podcast: Meditation and Beyond

Spiritus

In 1961 Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, wrote a letter to Carl Jung, the famed Swiss psychologist. He conveyed to Jung how the origin of Alcoholics Anonymous began with a patient in his office. On one of his visits, Jung confronted his alcoholic patient, telling him that there was no medical or psychological cure for his problem. The patient asked if his case was indeed hopeless. Jung replied that the only cure was a spiritual cure. Writing to Bill Wilson years later Jung further explained, “His craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness,” … “You see,” Jung said, “Alcohol in Latin is "spiritus" and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison.” The turn toward alcohol is a mistaken effort to experience the wholeness that is naturally experienced through spiritual development. (repeat)

But this is not only a problem associated with alcoholism. There is an underlying and troublesome hollowness in the Western psyche. That’s the result of an inability to access our fundamental, natural, and unchanging well-being, an ever-present wholeness in each of us. In response to this loss of our essential self and its well-being, we are mistakenly taught by an ill-informed culture to seek from the outer world that which is missing in our inner world. We seek possessions, fame, fortune, relationships, drugs and even healthy pursuits such as fitness, self-improvement, yoga, and meditation as remedies to this underlying emptiness. For periods of time, we may seem to succeed in these efforts, but because our efforts fail to address the underlying wound, the hidden soul at the core of our being, these efforts will each, in their turn fail. And even if they seem to succeed, they fail. A spiritual wound requires, as Jung so eloquently stated, a spiritual remedy, not a surface one. It requires spiritus.

Joseph Campbell, author and master teacher, offers us this short parable that characterizes our modern-day search for Spiritus. Early in life, he says, we place our ladder against a wall and begin the arduous effort of climbing to the top, seeking to find the magic elixir to life’s challenges. When those who arrive at the top of the ladder look over the wall, they too often tragically discover a barren landscape. They realize they have placed their ladder against the wrong wall. What they sought, the joy, serenity, and wholeness of Spiritus, is not to be found on the other side of the wall. There is only one enduring resolution, come down the ladder and find the right wall, the right direction to apply our efforts. If we are fortunate, we will realize that the direct path to life’s treasures, to Spiritus, requires an inner turn, a spiritual education through which we can discover and return home to our true essential self.

Joseph Campbell also offered the following advice when asked for guidance, “Follow your bliss.” He didn’t say follow your pleasures. He didn’t say follow the endless desires of your ordinary self. The bliss, he spoke of, is the deep and unchanging contentment and joy found in our natural self at the center of our being. Here we find a timeless and abundant source of peace and delight. Here we find the authentic and trustworthy Spiritus.

We now know the remedy to the human feeling of emptiness and despair that arises from the lost self and the mistaken and fruitless effort to resolve this loss in the outer world. It is the re-discovery of our spiritual life, Spiritus. The remedy is a self-remembering.

When we return home to the center of our being our search will be resolved at the source. In the joy of simple being there is nothing further to seek in the outer world. The seeking is done and the seeker has dissolved in the expansiveness of being.

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Audio Podcasts

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Loss Without Suffering

It is certain that each of us will experience loss. It may come in one of many forms - loss of a loved one, loss of mental or physical capacities, loss of material possessions, or future possibilities. Significant loss often heralds a time of sadness, emotional pain, or perhaps a sense of hopelessness or despair. It can be an inconsolable time.

We cannot easily accept loss. We don't like it. We don't want it. We resist it. We wish it to be otherwise. We seek to order life in a familiar way that accords with our desires and preferences. But that is not how life works.

If we can understand and fully accept life as it actually is, impermanent and ever changing, we will still experience loss. However, we will not add an extra layer of pain and suffering by resisting life’s ebb and flow. We will not fight loss. We will not struggle with it. We will neither push it away, nor suppress it. We will not try to stop life’s natural flow.

To move beyond suffering, we must abandon the false belief that we can ultimately control life and avoid or minimize change. We must surrender the willful belief that life should proceed according to our desires and wants. Letting go of our resistance to change is not a punishment. It's a wise act of courage.

Loss is real. Fear, despair, anxiety, and depression are mental experiences superimposed onto loss. Therefor they vary person-to-person. They are reactions to loss. They are not innate to loss. Perhaps we can learn to separate our mental add-ons from the experience of loss itself, relax and ease into loss, experience it in our heart, let go of our efforts to control life, and stop resisting what is unalterable in life.

This is not to say that we do not feel the emotions of loss, but rather that we do not add on anxiety, fear, or hopelessness. Loss is a fact. The rest are projections. I recall a question to a wise teacher regarding loss. Do enlightened beings experience loss,” the student asked. The teacher replied “of course” there is sadness and a sense of loss, but it rests on a deep foundation of serenity and contentment, and an acceptance of life as it is. So, the emotions are held in a large field of peace. The emotions are fully experienced, but there is no add-on that creates additional suffering.

And if we are truly fortunate, something further may happen. In the midst of sadness and grief the heart's vulnerability and tenderness maybe felt. If we rest into that vulnerability without judgment or reaction, we may find an inner place of peace and sustenance that is unchanging and never leaves us. Yes, in the center of the full experience of loss it is possible to find a spaciousness unchanging  serenity.

And, in the tenderness of a broken heart is also found a compassionate understanding of the suffering of others. Out of the experience of our pain arises the beginning of universal compassion. That concern for others, moves us away from self-rumination, isolation, and disconnection. It moves us towards a healing connection to others.

It is said that a woman visited the Buddha in utter despair regarding the loss of her young daughter. The Buddha instructed her to go to each home in the village and ask if they suffered any loss. When she returned the Buddha asked her what she learned. Every home, she said had loss and some far worse than mine. I felt my heart open to them. I felt a kinship. I felt connected. My heart is now open. My suffering is relieved.

As we walk through the door of loss with wisdom, grace, and surrender, there is something very important waiting to greet us. As the fire of our pain progressively burns away our little self and its illusion of control, we progressively free our self from fears, anxieties, and ceaseless mental commentaries. And, we return to a self-remembering of who we truly are.

When we become observers of our experience, accept life as it is and allow loss and other challenging emotions to flow through us without struggle or resistance, we become re-connected to the natural rhythms of life. Loss well lived becomes the basis for and support for self-remembering, and a wise and sustained serenity and freedom.

Let’s now practice Self-remembering. What we learn from teachings must be re-enforced by practice, in practice sessions and daily life. By repeatedly dropping into who we are we progressively rest in the stable peace and serenity of our natural self, which remains constant through the challenges of life.

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Our Virtual Reality

We hear the word virtual quite a bit these days. It refers to an experience that appears to be real, to exist in its own right, but in actuality is not. In common parlance we speak of the virtual memory of a computer, but the computer doesn’t really have a memory. It’s a collection of technologies created by human consciousness that simulates what we know as memory. Close, perhaps almost indistinguishable, but not quite there. Then there is the avatar, the electronic facsimile of a person, or even more so a “world civilization” of avatars in a video game that can seem quite real to the human eye, but it's not. In each case the virtual experience can appear and simulate reality, but it is actually not true.

Virtual reality by another name – relative reality – is a basic view of Buddhism. It is similarly articulated in early Western civilization in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both speak of a relative and ultimate reality. Relative reality is our day-to-day experience that to the participant or non-analytic observer seems quite real. However, to one that has access to deeper understandings, relative day-to-day reality is merely a mentally fabricated experience. It is real as an appearance but not true as a final irrefutable reality. It is virtual, not essence.

What is the distinction between relative reality, ordinary day-to-day experience, and virtual reality. Virtual reality, in common parlance, is a creation of the mind. Relative reality is also a creation of the mind. Ultimately, both are creations of the mind, of consciousness. Both are composites and have no essence of their own. Both appear real to common experience, but are false to the knower of fundamental truth. To perceive the virtual and relative as final truth is a source of confusion, illusion, and suffering. The entire process of awakening or enlightenment is to know truth rather than its impersonation, virtual or relative reality.

Our day-to-day world is a construction of our mind – memory, past experiences, learned and socially shared perceptions, and a plenitude of forms mentally generated in the visual and auditory cortex and projected onto the outer world. It is largely programmed and pre-determined. I know this is difficult to grasp, for you and for me. It is okay to experience our day-to-day world as real, live in it, and function in it. It is also essential that we know it to be a projection of the mind created by consciousness.

We can play with this internal/external drama, but only if we know it’s merely a play-like illusion. If we fail to understand this distinction, we suffer the related illusion of impermanence, attachment, unbridled desire, disconnection, psychological suffering, and the inability to know, experience, or live in the ground of our being, the center of our being, our true home and self.

The final reality, the ultimate reality is the simple, unconditioned consciousness from which arises and falls all impermanent mental activity and sensory experiences, that are the basis of our relative, virtual, day-to-day experience of people, places, and things. Awareness and consciousness are the foundational essence of our being and our experiences.

Words can only take us so far in understanding this. The final and irrevocable understanding comes from experiencing it directly in meditation practice or the glimpses that are given to us in the gaps between thoughts that are a gift of grace. You know these gaps as the experience of awe, delight, or astonishment, the “lostness” in music, art, nature, intimacy, service, dance, and so on. For a fleeting moment, what you lose is your small self, your relative reality, and gain the blessing of wholeness, flow, simple and pure awareness, ease, and delight. You experience and know the truth of reality and lose the impersonation of relative reality. You experience the final source and truth of all that we experience in life.

Why is knowing this ultimate truth so important? To know this truth is to avoid being caught up in the dramas and suffering of an unbridled investment and belief in the virtual/relative reality of the personal self. Unlike this temporary personal self, we find that the true self is permanent, serene beyond understanding, happy without a reason, selflessly loving and compassionate, and free of the oppression of the known. We can still play in the virtual/relative world of our day-to-day experience. It is also part of our consciousness. But we are not lost in it, attached to it, or suffer from its dramas.

We know it is a computer programmer that programs virtual computer technology. That programmer knows he has created a virtual world. Virtual reality is manufactured and pre-determined by consciousness. Similarly, day-to-day reality is manufactured and pre-determined by consciousness. As noted, it’s difficult to grasp that we largely live in a programmed computer-like experience. But it is so. Unlike a computer program which cannot transcend itself, cannot experience more than its parts, human consciousness can. In modern parlance, “Do you wish the red pill or the blue pill?” The choice is yours.

That understanding causes the wise one to ask, “What is the source of the fundamental consciousness that is the basis of all experience?” “What is the source of the unconditioned unprogrammed awareness, beingness, isness. That we cannot speak of here. Words cannot offer a knowledge of the fundamental source. That can only be known through direct experience. Yet, it is available to everyone because it is in everyone. And, the probabilities of a direct experience of the nature of existence increases with a clear mind and good heart.

But the best of us can be touched by this experience as well as the worst of us, the youngest and the oldest, the able and the body/mind challenged. The blessing of our sacred and wholistic nature is always there and the most we can do as an intentional act is to know the deepest truth we can, trust life, and let go of who we are not. If you are blessed, the source will reveal itself in its own time. If you are double blessed it will sustain itself and become your life.

But do not seek or expect to touch the divine. Simply live the most awakened selfless life that you can, surrender the illusions of the virtual/ relative self, drop into the vast expanse of beingness, and know the difference between what appears real and what is true.

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Homecoming

To create a world of inner and outer sanity, a world free of the limitations and consequences of the mentally fabricated personal self, we must return home to our true self. In the words of the poet Derek Walcott:

“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 other's welcome, and say sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself.”

And we may add, is yourself. Although obscured by the ramblings and diversions of our ordinary mind, our natural essence is ever present. When the clouds of mental activity cease there it is, revealed as it has always been. We return home to who and what we have always been, a homecoming! Our vision of the possible human.

Why is it so difficult to see through to the core truth of our life, to the essence of who we are and have always been? Stated simply: We have forgotten who we are and deeply believe in who we are not. What happens when we follow a false and limiting vision of self? What happens when we lose touch with the center of our being?

We search endlessly for what we have forgotten, mistakenly looking outward towards materialism, ambition, success, relationships, drugs, entertainment, and even relaxation-based meditation practices for our natural self that has long been obscured and forgotten. We look and look and look to outer experiences invariably suffering disappointment, frustration, and loss.

However, if we look closely and listen carefully, we recognize a subtle persistent ache that breaks through, an insistent longing, a sense that we have missed life, a sense that there is more. A poignant and critical reminder from our depths. 

The Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung said it well when speaking of the root source of alcoholism, as an example of this misdirected outer search – “(The) craving for alcohol (is) an equivalent on a low level of the spiritual search of our being for wholeness expressed in medieval language: the union with God. … The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happens to you in reality and can only happen when you walk on a path that leads you to higher understanding.” And that walk is a spiritual walk, an inner walk. That walk is the second and traditional vision of contemplative practice.

What happens when we wake-up to the essence of our being? We progressively discover that we are not the self-cherishing, disconnected personal self that we believe we are. We are then free and primed to begin our journey home by growing and developing our psychological self into its healthiest version – loving, kind, generous, virtuous, wise, patient, and non-judgmental. Yet our growing does not stop there. As we upgrade our personal self, we discover the subtle remnants of self-centeredness and disconnection cannot be completely overcome only through self-improvement strategies.

Simultaneously, we begin to touch deeper and beyond, revealing and recognizing our true and foundational self. Progressively, we shift the center of being from our psychological self to our natural self, to our spiritual self. And, our life takes an irreversible turn.

As we awaken to our natural state of being, many of the futile and exhausting efforts of daily life begin to drop away. We increasingly live from our essential self. It makes no difference what our actual calling or work is. If we live from the center of our being, our work will be healing work, our relationships marked by otherness, our presence will be love. The ancient Greeks called this the good the true and the beautiful. They knew the preciousness and possibilities of human life.

Our vision, we find, is not new. It is the shared vision of humanity expressed in different ways in varying cultures. Christian faith there is a double movement - the movement towards the divine state of being, the true self, and the subsequent return to green the world through agape, through selfless service. In the Hindu tradition Aurobindo referred to these movements as the ascent and descent. Campbell in his Hero’s Journey referred to this universal movements as the apotheosis and return. The ancient Greeks called it the hierosgamos, the sacred marriage. Here we call it a homecoming – the modern term for the second aim of meditation.

The words of the poet, T.S. Eliot, speak to that homecoming:

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.

And that is our vision

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Awakening

Awakening

We all know the feeling of awakening from an evening dream. We suddenly realize, often to our relief, that the dream – its images, thoughts, and feelings – which seemed undeniably real in the dream state is clearly seen as false in our wakeful state. The dream, we discover, was merely a fiction created by our creative imagination, an illusion, not a fact.

However, when we transition into the waking state, unknown to us at the time, we seamlessly pass from one dream state, the sleep state, to another dream state the wakeful dream state. It is the rare individual that actually experiences ordinary wakefulness as just another expression of our creative imagination, a day dream.

In the day dream we dream a personal “I.” We dream an independent, autonomous person identified by our name that relates, functions, and navigates its own dream world. The dream of a personal “I” is a habit cultivated and solidified over a lifetime. It seems quite real, like the night dream, but it isn’t.

Much like the night dream the personal “I” is insubstantial, a mental creation. If you look for the personal self it cannot be found anywhere except as a mental experience. It has no shape, form, weight, location, color or other tangible characteristics. As soon as you try to pin it down, it disappears. There is no part of mind or body that can be identified as the personal self, as an independent self-existing entity.

The content of the day dream – personal desires, identities, actions, ambitions, the world of people, places and things – appear real and true, just as the night dream appears true. When one is entangled in the day dream one cannot see beyond it any more than the dreamer can see beyond the night dream. For each, the dream is true, the dream is reality. To see beyond that false, but very convincing appearance, one must first wake-up.

Our physiology awakens us from the night dream, allowing us to see its imaginary nature each morning. We are similarly given moments of awakening in daily life that offer a glimpse of what lies beyond the day-dream. These glimpses occur in what we can call “gaps” in our wakeful consciousness. We have to be a bit mindful to catch them. Here are some of the experiences that offer glimpses: immersion in nature, the rapture of dance or music, the experience of intimacy, selfless service, art, and beauty. And, there are many more.

What is common to all of these experiences is the momentary dissolution of our personal identity, the core of the day dream. For a moment, we forget our personal identity and the day-dream dissolves, revealing the truth of who we are and have always been. What remains when the day-dream de-constructs is a simple momentary awareness and experience – no commentary, no conceptualization, no judgments, no identity, no memory – just what is as is.

For a moment you are the dancer and the dance, the musician and the music, the beholder and the beauty, the lover and the loving, awareness aware of itself, oneness. There is no further separation. No disconnection. Do you recall a moment when you experienced the simplicity of your wholeness, connectedness, natural harmony and flow? For that brief moment you transcended and escaped the confines of the day dream and experienced the vastness of being. And that’s who you are!

That glimpse is a Self-recognition, a reminder of the essence of who we are. But it is transient, what is called a state rather than a stage of development. A state is a brief transient experience of a larger experience of consciousness. A stage of development is the irreversible and stable experience of that level of consciousness.

Our habituated dream of the personal self pulls us back from the taste of our true self, the state experience, and that glimpse will mistakenly be remembered as a mere sweet reverie, a pleasurable interlude from the anxieties, worries, and stories dreamt by the personal self. We will have had the experience of our true essence, but missed the meaning.

We can stabilize these glimpses, these awakenings, through formal meditation sessions augmented by mini-practices during the day. We’ve previously discussed the elements of formal daily practice, which contain the elements of a condensed mini-practice. You can tailor these practices into a simple method of awakening, Self-recognition, during daily activities. Here it is:

1. Stop in the midst of your daily activities.
2. Take a deep in-breath, empty your mind on the out-breath followed by a breath hold. Dwell in the stillness of the extended hold. Repeat 3-5 times. Return to a normal breath.
3. Drop into a simple natural state of presence and awareness.
4. If mental activity occurs, Observe It. Do not engage with it. Continue self-recognition for 3-5 minutes.
5. Return to your activities.

I would suggest trying this multiple times a day. Each time notice how you are gaining distance from the cacophony of the day dream, how you awaken into a larger and more serene self. Then you can return to the day dream, knowing it is a day dream and making it the healthiest and best day dream possible, while being anchored to a deeper and more expansive reality. You are not the day dream. You know you are in it, but you are not of it.

Practicing self-recognition during your formal meditation and daily activities stabilizes the awakened state. It becomes easier to drop-in, and your natural self progressively replaces your personal ego self as the foundation upon which the day-dream and its drama play out. The transient state experience becomes a stable stage of development.

That shifts our “energies.” Dreams, night or day, require considerable energy. They are exhausting. They rob us of a rejuvenating evening rest and the delight of a fully energetic day. The exhaustion of ceaseless mental activity shows up as fatigue, irritability, anxiety, overwhelm, and more. We all know that experience, that exhaustion. The peaceful and still mind that is our true nature does not exhaust energy. It allows it to be used in fruitful and joyful ways that advance vitality and life. And that is far more of a delight than the exhaustion of dream states masquerading as reality.

The final awakening includes the psychological, physiological, and spiritual. It is a complete integrated healing of mind, body, and spirit. Psychology is healed as its basis, past experience, dissolves in present moment awareness. Our physiology adheres to the ancient dictum – health mind, healthy body. Physical harmony follows mental harmony. And spirit is revealed as it has always been – the center of our being and the elixir of a whole healing.

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Nothing to Wait For

There are some experiences that naturally evolve over time. The meeting with our true self and the awakening to a larger life is not one of those experiences. It is here, right now, already, and always. It requires no preparation, no preliminaries, no putting off until another day.

Of course, it’s our learned habit to put things off for another day. It is no different with awakening to our inner self. We put that off as well, wrongly thinking it is developmental or a result of progressive self-improvement. That is not a belief that’s easy to change. It’s a tenacious belief that obscures our deeper life.

Awakening is not like progressively cultivating a seed into a plant and fruit over time. What we are seeking is there at the beginning – complete, finished, whole.

Consider a moment when you had a glimpse of awakening – an immersion in nature, the oneness of intimacy, the astonishment and wonder of beauty and art, the absorption in dance or music. Suddenly and spontaneously you experienced an easeful and expansive sense of self. Did this require any preparation? Did you previously plan this glimpse of awakening, or schedule it sometime in the future? I don’t think so.

These special circumstances stop our personal and cognitive self in its tracks. They open a gap in which the complex psychology, identities, tomorrows, fears, and anxieties dissolve. The mind stills, the past is gone, the heart opens, spaciousness and freedom arise, our consciousness shifts, and we awaken to a natural and fundamental self that has no name and no identity. We touch the awakened joy of who we truly are. We experience it. We live it. Right here, right now. Unfortunately, those moments in which we catch a glimpse are circumstance-dependent and thus transient. And most often we are unaware that what we label as a happy and pleasurable experience was actually a profound taste of the awakened state of our inner self.

A metaphor can help us here. What happens when you try to look though an aquarium that is filled with silt. To the extent that you can see through the silty water to the other side what you see will be clouded, unclear, obscured. We say the water is dirty, unclear. When the silt settles, we can see clearly through the water. We say the water is now clear. But was the water ever unclear? Did the water change at all? At all times the water was clear. Its clarity was simply obscured by the silt.

In much the same way our natural self and its life-enhancing qualities – the peace that surpasses understanding, happiness without a reason, natural wisdom, selfless love and compassion, and freedom from the known – are already and always present and fully complete. They await the obscuring veils of our personal self – its recurring history, habit patterns, fixed perspectives, and endless rumination – to dissipate like silt in water. That’s what takes time.

What we are waiting for is not the unfolding or evolution of our awakened self. What we are waiting for is the obscuring veils of our personal self to drop away. Who we truly are and have always been is then revealed. It is not created in time. It is not arranged by the ego. It is the grace that is always present when we let go of who we are not. It is then that we naturally experience who we truly are. The true, the good, and the beautiful.  

During one of my stays in India, I recall a student rising to ask a question of a very wise elder teacher. “Why,” he asked “can I not see my essence?” The teacher simply replied, “Just stop, be still, look, and you will see that it is there right now.”

Right now. Not tomorrow or the next day. It’s there right now. Drop the search. Drop the one who is searching. Just be.

Silence descended in the room, as the seeker and the seeking in each of us softened and then dissolved. In the stillness of that simple, unprepared moment, our natural essence revealed itself. In this instance it required the presence and pointing of the teacher, but what we experienced was our own essence, and we can learn to reveal that on our own.

Although there is nothing to wait for in terms of the spontaneous appearance of the awakened experience, we too often have to wait for the “silt” to settle so we can experience with clarity and stability what is actually there. There are two ways to accomplish this – the quick way and the gradual way. The quick way is to simply take a few deep breaths, stop what you are doing, observe how the veil of incessant mind talk obscures your deeper experience, and let go and disempower all that is not you – thoughts, feelings, imagery, sensations, memory, past history, and your multiple identities. Again, again, and again. Pay them no attention. Let them dissolve on their own. Your true self will self-reveal itself each time you lose your small self.

However, our small fictional self is a strong habit we have developed and practiced for a lifetime. For some it will not go easily. That leaves us with the effort of learning how to let go of who we are not, to remove, or at least soften, the trance of personhood, to disinvest in our fabricated individualism, the belief in a personal self. That might take time, but that is different than waiting for the awakened self, which is always present.

You have to want to know your true nature and its treasures with all of your being – body, mind, and spirit. You may have to touch and dwell for awhile in the frustration, needless angst, and endless cycle of human suffering until you are motivated to permanently let go of the influence and centrality of your small fabricated self. Some say that suffering is necessary to break through its hold on us. And perhaps that is true. If we can look directly at distress and suffering and allow it to crush the illusion of the personal self, the vulnerable and tender heart may suddenly open. If that is you, use your suffering to end suffering. Use your suffering and distress to reveal your true self.

The most important take away from these words is where we started. There is no time to waste. There is nothing to wait for. Don’t squander your life. Don’t believe the falsehood that awakening to a larger life is an evolutionary developmental process. It is here right now. Can’t you see it?

www.elliottdacher.org

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Awareness

Awareness

Awareness can neither be perceived by the senses nor known by thought. It is not a “thing” in the usual sense. It has no identifiable location, shape, form, texture, color, or weight. However, it is the ever-present basis of all we experience. Awareness is our fundamental nature, already and always. It is our true self. We must know and dwell in it to live our full humanity.

It can only be known by direct experience. All that another can do is point you towards that experience. If you follow that pointing you will certainly, when the moment is ripe, know it for yourself. Experiencing your natural, unaltered, and simple awareness is experiencing precisely who you are and have always been. This awareness has no purpose, intention, expectation, or attachment. It just is.

It’s actually quite simple to experience. We are born into a pure and simple awareness. A young child naturally experiences one thing after another without interpretation and commentary, without separation into “I” and It.” The Buddhists illustrate this with the metaphor of a complex tapestry. A young child enjoys the diverse sensory experiences, leaping with delight from one visual impression to another.

However, that is no longer how it is for us. We have lost the natural unfiltered awareness of a child. Instead, we superimpose memories, stories, and meanings onto the perceived images. We are constantly interpreting and commenting on the tapestry. Rather than experiencing the tapestry as it is we alter it, experiencing instead as a conceptual abstraction. And these mental elaborations rapidly take over from our brief but natural experience, affording little if any time to experience what’s actually there.

There is neither good nor bad here, but merely the observation that direct unfiltered awareness is our natural state. The problem is not that we acquire the capacity to add meaning and context but rather that we forget and lose the capacity to experience directly what is as is. We get meaning, context and perhaps functionality by superimposing existing patterns of perception, but lose the creativity, freshness, and possibilities of a beginner’s mind.

How does this happen? Early in childhood we lose touch with unfiltered awareness. It fades from view as we develop the sense of a personal identity. We are given a name and then fill that container with life experiences, which in time are formed into fixed patterns of perception – templates through which we see the world. Our world becomes narrower, familiar, fixed, and increasingly abstract. Simple awareness goes underground, as we develop a conditioned, selective, and preferential awareness.

A tree is no longer a simple sensory experience. It is a certain kind of tree with specific characteristics, uses, and preferences. Another person is no longer an unknown to experience and discover, but rather quickly categorized – liked or disliked. Nothing remains quite as it is. We create a fictitious world, no longer experiencing life as is, but rather what we have made of it with our conditioned mind. Our adult life is thus circumscribed and limited by the past. Seven billion people on our planet and seven billion worlds.

I would like to stop here and offer the words of 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.

In the same poem he offers us a more specific instruction:

In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.

What are we told? First, that what the seeker seeks is what we have always been from the very beginning, before the process of individuation and separation. Our journey, the end of our seeking, is a homecoming. To accomplish this return requires awareness of the process of individuation, its assets, and liabilities. We begin from the fragmented disconnection of our personal self, which still holds a subtle remembrance and longing for our natural essence, our wholeness. We become humble pilgrims walking the path that returns home, to the place from where we started.

The most insidious liability of individuation is our conditioning – the habits of perception and reactivity that unknowingly shape and influence all our experiences. We learn to acknowledge their presence with neutrality and detachment. We then let these ghosts of the past dissipate from lack of further attention or elaboration. The past, we observe is merely a mental pattern laid down long ago whose significance, if any at all, is long gone. So, what is it like to experience a natural and unconditioned awareness that is free of the past?

Consider the following. When you first awaken in the morning notice what enters your visual or auditory field. It is not yet named, valued, or in any way altered from its actual presentation to consciousness. It is simple unconditioned awareness of a sensory object. When absorbed in meditation you can similarly observe mental activity come and go without adding a mental commentary. This is unconditioned awareness of a mental object. It may only last a moment before your usual conditioned awareness takes over. Observe that as well, as it is essential that you come to know the entire process – how unfiltered awareness re-boots as conditioned awareness. 

Why is this glimpse of unfiltered awareness so important? It’s the beginning of a new freedom, or perhaps I should say an old freedom. We now have the choice of experiencing and responding to how things actually are rather than experiencing and reacting to a self and world shaped by our past. We are able to discern and observe our mental process and act free of the influences of the known.

The final step occurs when our attention shifts to awareness itself. We become self-aware rather than object-aware. Unlike the child we know our unconditioned awareness for the first time, as well as our conditioning. We are aware that mental and sensory objects appear in consciousness – we acknowledge all that arises in awareness – but we know them to be only transient appearances on an unchanging ground awareness. Our natural awareness, the ground of our being, does not come and go. It is ever-present now and always.

Challenges and difficult circumstances will continue. But they will be experienced by a stable and unmoving awareness. They will be held in a ground of serenity, peace, wisdom, and gentleness. No fear. No anxiety. No suffering. Just presence and being. Some say this is a passive state that’s incompatible with worldy life. This is not so. That is merely the statement of an ego caught in ordinary life. Those who touch beyond know better.

When action is necessary it spontaneously arises from the clear knowing of unconditioned awareness. That action will not be a reaction to our interpretation of an event, but rather a precise and accurate response to the experience at hand as it is. There is no thought process involved, just a natural knowing and natural responsiveness. We slowly gain trust and confidence in living from this center of our being. And we gain inspiration from knowing that those great ones, as well as ordinary individuals who have lived from heart and soul, are remembered for their lasting noble contributions to mankind

We will also discover that this simple awareness is the great healing elixir. The mental and sensory appearances that once seemed separate from awareness will be recognized as the dynamic expression of awareness – formlessness and form each an expression of consciousness. No longer a separation. No longer fragmentation. Finally, the knowing of wholeness, of oneness, of the sacred union. We return home and know it for the first time.

In the Western tradition the wise Oracle of Delphi expresses it this way:

Once you have touched it

There is no division:

No tearing your heart away

For it knows no separation.

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Glimpses of Beyond

 Glimpses of Beyond

We have all experienced glimpses of a larger consciousness that lies beyond our personal identity and day-to-day life. These glimpses are characterized by a sense of flow, ease, wholeness, peace, delight, and freedom. They are a welcome release from the day-to-day struggles of our usual self and life. We would, of course like, to know what causes these glimpses so that we can re-create them at will.

However, unlike ordinary experience these special moments have no cause. They unexpectedly and spontaneously reveal themselves when our personal self, with all of its habit patterns, reactivity and mind talk drops away, dissolves, disappears. Like the sun, clearly visible when the obscuring clouds move away, our essential self, always present, is seen in its natural luminosity when the obscuration of our personal identity dissipates.

There are however certain circumstances or events that may facilitate the dropping away of our personal identity. These may include an absorption in nature, beauty, dance, music, intimacy, art, meditation, or a religious experience. There is a common element in each of these. For a moment they draw attention away from our personal self and in that absence, when we are fortunate, our true nature spontaneously reveals itself for a glorious moment through the crack in the egg of our ordinary world. We are touched by a fresh known but unknown touch of aliveness and wholeness. Unfortunately, although we have all had that experience, we miss its meaning. What we mistakenly take and label a serendipitous pleasant experience is in actuality a profound window into our essential nature, our authentic self. That is the meaning we have missed. We touch the divine and experience it as mundane pleasure.

But there is more. Not only do we mistake that glimpse as another transient pleasurable experience, but we falsely attribute it to the immediate circumstance. We say its cause was being in nature, absorbed in art, and so on. The activity or circumstances does have a role, but not a causal one. For a moment, it dissolves our tenacious personal self with all its related mental activity. When this obstacle to experiencing our natural self is removed, what is spontaneously revealed is what is already and always within us, our essential self.

Our natural ever present self is neither created nor caused by the transient dissipation of our personal identity. When the veil of our personal identity is lifted, our true self is naturally and spontaneously revealed, as what it is and has always been at the core of our being. Consider an aquarium with silt. We would say the water is dirty. When the silt settles to the bottom, we would say the water is clear. But the water was always clear. It was only obscured by silt. The settling of the silt did not create clear water. It merely revealed what is there all the time.

Why is this distinction essential? First, if we do not recognize these glimpses as windows into who we are and have always been, we miss these special opportunities that unexpectedly reveal to us the nature of our true self. And second, if we take these glimpses as pleasurable moments caused by a particular activity or circumstance, we will seek to re-create that circumstance, and that is the beginning of an addiction. Too often we have the experience and miss the extraordinary meaning. Life goes on in its usual, ordinary, and limited way. We touch the sacred and divine and return empty handed.

All spiritual practices, meditation included, serve to quiet the ordinary mind and diminish the influence of our personal self and its tenacious conditioning. It is sort of like cleaning our room in preparation for a special visitor. Merely resting in the most subtle and still aspect of the personal mind is a healing antidote to the fears, anxieties, reactivity, and urgency of modern life. It enhances the quality of day-to-day life. But it does not take us beyond, to the essence of our self and its treasures.

With practice and understanding we slowly become less entangled in the dramas of daily life which promise much but fail to deliver. One drama leads to another and then another. There is no rest and no satisfaction. However, as we increasingly dwell in stillness these small islands of peace and clarity become larger land masses. We discover our personal self has been an unreliable and untrustworthy partner in the search for peace and happiness. Its influence softens and diminishes, and our interest turns inward towards a more trustworthy essential self.

 As we turn our attention inward, and if we are fortunate, now and then unexpectedly and spontaneously a sacred breeze will embrace us, and its grace will offer the sacred union with the one that we seek in our journey home. It may just be a glimpse, but if we continue to move the clouds, the obscurations of our personal self, we will increasingly live from this glorious and noble center of our being.

And if you are fortunate to glimpse what lies beyond you will know it to be who you truly are. Blessed, you will dwell in your true nature. To the one who is truly devoted to a precious human life these glimpses will become one’s life.

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