Notes From a Fellow Traveller

The Decisive Experience

We have all had moments when the tumult of life stops and clear and truthful insights arise from the depth of our being. We call them “aha” experiences. These moments of understanding are neither planned nor organized. They come unexpectedly and spontaneously. They are brief and carry with them a sense of truth, authenticity, and authority. We don’t know how or where they come from. We might not be able to explain these insights to others, but without question we know them to be our truth. They have a clear and decisive impact on our lives.

These spontaneous insights may be about concerns we’ve been struggling to understand or they may offer a glimpse into the great questions of life. Suddenly there is clarity. But what would it be like if we were able to have a decisive experience that fully and permanently resolved the essential questions of every human life – How can we find unchanging happiness and serenity in the midst of human life? What is our essential nature, our authentic unchanging larger self? What is the final truth of reality? There are many ways to ask these basic human questions, but I sense you know what I am aiming at. We all want to know what is the essence of human existence.

Throughout human history these are questions that philosophers, religious scholars, and mystics have sought to answer. Not surprisingly their answers have been much the same. For us their answers are instructive, but not transformative. Intellectual knowledge can inform but cannot shift one’s life towards truth. For that we each need to have a personal “decisive experience” that illuminates, in heart and spirit, the direct knowing of these truths. When it occurs, that experience is a blessing. It is grace.

When it occurs, the actual experience of life’s fundamental truths is spontaneous and unplanned, precisely because it is already and always present within each of us. However, it is densely covered over by our tenacious belief that we are our ego, our personal self. The resulting overactivity of our ego with its ruminations and doings obscures the basic ever present truth of our being.

Although we cannot, through the accumulation of knowledge or through any method or technique gain access to these revelations, we can clean up the “room” of our personal identity. We can clean up our runaway mental chatter, fixed beliefs, rigid habits, and so on – so that we can live a calmer more loving life. That increases the probability of a spontaneous breakthrough and realization, a decisive experience.

If we choose to use meditation as a tool for cleaning up our life and taking us to the near shore of the truth, we must choose carefully. Why, because meditation can be as much an obstacle as an aid. Meditation is generally taught as a technique or method to calm the mind with the aim of relaxation and stress reduction. This approach works within the scope of our ordinary mind to shift, at least temporarily, our mind and body towards greater balance and harmony. But these practices all remain within the context of the ordinary cognitive mind, the personal ego mind. To arrive at the answers to the great questions of life we must access a greater consciousness beyond the limitations of the ordinary mind.

If that is our aim, we begin at the end. We drop all of our notions about what meditation is, let go of methods and techniques, abandon hope, effort, or any goal. We simply drop into being, into presence, into awareness. That, you might say seems quite difficult. What do I do with my active mind? The answer is – nothing.

You simply observe mental activity, abiding in awareness, the witness. It’s OK for the mind to be active. The problem is our identification and attention to it. As we rest our attention in awareness and observing, the mind quiets down by itself. We are engaged in a “non-meditation” merely abiding in our true, simple, innocent, effortless, unconditioned and unfettered awareness.  

And that is who we are and as close as we can come to a decisive experience of our true nature and the source of our life. The rest is grace. We merely leave everything go, cease grasping onto mental movements, and just be and abide in awareness. If you get entangled in mind traffic simply abide again in the witness state of awareness. Do nothing. Just be. Trust the natural unfolding of this sacred space of presence and learn from the experience.

That is how we fertilize the ground, preparing it for the light to open, wisdom to arise, and a decisive experience arise naturally and spontaneously.

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Come to Me as a Child

Come to Me as a Child

A child is born with a clear, pure awareness. Not an awareness of this or that or an awareness accompanied by interpretations, commentary, judgments, or preferences. A simple clear awareness is experienced without labels and filled with a natural wonder, awe and curiosity. And that miracle of beingness is experienced, but at the time unknown to the infant.

We use the same terms – empty awareness, pure awareness, choiceless awareness, and timeless awareness – for both this natural foundational awareness of childhood and the re-discovered beingness touched later in life, if fortunate, by the spiritual seeker. Thus, the often-quoted words from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets:

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.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning ......

What happens that causes us to forget what we subsequently spend years and great effort trying to re-capture? The answer … Human life! That’s what happens. Human existence. To successfully navigate through the stages of human life we begin to collect skills, experiences, knowledge, preferences, patterns, perspectives, and protectiveness. We develop a personal self, an ego structure. And this mentally constructed ego self separates and disconnects from its source … natural presence, and that is the fundamental cause of human confusion and suffering.

If you are raising a child you can watch the necessary but poignant loss of the pristine self in service to the development of this functional ego and the capacity to live as an adult in culture. Years ago, I recall writing a letter to my young grandchild with the intention that it be delivered decades later by her parents. I wanted the letter to serve as a reminder to my granddaughter of her pure vital essence which I witnessed in her infancy but would soon be forgotten in the rush to “mature” into adult life.

All we really need from a personal self is the simple capacity to carry out the functions of human life – basic memory, work and relational skills, intellectual capacity, and so on. We don’t need the troublesome, but more complex aspects of the personal self. We don’t need excess individualism and its disconnectedness, self-cherishing and self-centeredness, protectiveness and defensiveness, the contortions required for social standing or accomplishment, or the loss of our simple natural self. These excesses turn a simple and carefree functional personal self into a complex seemingly separate self that makes our true nature increasingly inaccessible.

The spiritual journey is not about the reduction of stress and reactivity, although quieting the active mind is a valuable pre-requisite. It enhances the probability of re-discovering the joy of our natural self. The spiritual journey is much as Eliot informs us, returning home to our foundational simple presence and being and knowing it for the first time. To know our essence as an adult, which is impossible for the infant, is to desire, cherish, and devote oneself to living from the heart center of our being – from essence, spaciousness, infinite possibilities, joy, and yes, love.

Of course, our core self never leaves us, it is ever present although obscured by our complex lives. How do we begin the recovery process? First, there must first be a strong and natural desire to return to who we are and let go of who we are not. T.S. Eliot states it this way:

In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not.

What we are not now is presence, beingness, the natural self. In order to reveal this natural state, we must begin with what and where we are now – taken over and run by an out-of-control and endlessly busy personal “I.” We must turn that energy towards the journey home.

As mentioned before, we can begin with one of many quieting techniques (mindfulness, mantra recitation, guided imagery and so on) to quiet the course noise of our usual mind. However, there comes a time, early on, when we must cease utilizing quieting techniques and let go of meditation. It is then that we allow the natural stilling capacity of mind and body to bring us back home without effort.

Like the silt that natural settles to the bottom of an aquarium, sensory and mental activity left alone, that is not given attention, settle by themselves into the emptiness and presence of natural awareness. A word here about leaving mental activity alone. To use a Buddhist metaphor, we allow mental activity to enter the front door of the mind and exit the back door without serving it tea! No effort required. No interest shown.

Allowing the mind to naturally settle, we slowly experience, once again, the presence we lived so naturally in childhood. The more time we practice allowing our mind to naturally settle, in formal practice and during ordinary activities, the less importance we will attribute to the impermanent movements of the ordinary mind, and they will naturally dissipate and dissolve into the ever present background of still, clear, and simple awareness.

And then we shall once again reveal our home, joy, peace, and freedom. “Truly,” the bible says, “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

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.

These special moments, seeming  unexpected and spontaneous, reveal themselves when our personal self, with all of its habit patterns, reactivity and mind talk drops away, dissolves, disappears, and leaves a still gap. Like the sun, clearly visible when the obscuring clouds move away, ever-present essential self is seen in its natural luminosity when the obscuration of our personal identity dissipate.

There are however certain circumstances or events that may facilitate the unexpected 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 absorbed in nature, touched by art, and so on. The activity or circumstances does have a role, but not a causal one. What happens? For a moment, the experience draws out attention away from the 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 everpresent 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 simply experienced, 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, our faith in it 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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I Am You

                                                      I Am You

The following is spoken from your heart essence. 

I am your natural state of being. That is where you will find me. I am beyond your ordinary sense of self. I am the infinite and wholly perfected expanse of your existence. I am with you always. I have never forsaken you and never wil I.

It is you who have forsaken me. It is you that has forgotten who you are. You look outside for the fullness of life that is always within you. When you realize the truth of your being in its nobility and splendor, you will have no need for external remedies or reminders. 

I am not an approach. I am awareness and presence— uncontained and unconditioned existence itself. In me, all is one, all is whole, all is healthy, and all is healed. In me, there is no suffering or non-suffering, disease or non-dis- ease, birth, death, or time. There is naked existence in its vast spaciousness, awareness, wholeness, and ease. I am health and healing. I am the truth of who you are. 

I am speaking to you from a higher awareness. I am using words to describe your natural state. Yet, if you are listening from your mental experience, you cannot know me. You cannot know the distinction between serenity and relaxation, true happiness and transient pleasure, natural wisdom and learned knowledge. You cannot know the supreme state of well-being that endures untouched by outer experience. 

The path to me is not through your mind but through your higher self and open heart. When you find me, you will no longer search, as your search will be complete and perfected in me. You will live in the natural and unshak- able harmony of being. 

I do not exist in time. Only the conceptual mind exists in time. For me, there is no past, present, or future. I exist before your mental life, before your conceptual life, before time. I am with you right here and right now. Stop for a moment and recognize me. 

If you recognize me as your eternal essence, I will be present for you as a constant companion throughout the adversities of life. My qualities of peace, wisdom, hap- piness, wholeness, love, and compassion will similarly remain with you. The fullness of life will never leave you. 

Disease, aging, and death, as seen from the spiritual realm, are part of the seamless transformation of life’s forms. From this transcendent vista, there is neither birth nor death, beginning nor end. There is only the ongo- ing creation and re-creation of the miracle of existence. When your illusion-like ideas are replaced by ultimate wisdom, you will discover the enduring and perfected health—human flourishing—that is always present. 

Haven’t you seen an individual who lives through the adversities of life continuously sustained by my presence? Haven’t you seen the transition through aging, disease, and death accomplished with peace, grace, and insight? Surely you have seen the opposite. Surely you have seen great despair in many. What is the difference? When you recognize and live in your timeless essence, you will know and live the uninterrupted serenity and joy of the fullness of life. 

Although you have many theories and practices, some called conventional and others alternative, they are all limited in scope. They are limited from the beginning, as they place their allegiance in partial understandings and fail to see me as the source of an all-encompassing, boundless health and well-being. 

I am perfected health. I am as vast and spacious as the sky. I am a circle without a center or circumference. I have no boundaries. I am the expanse of pure awareness that is your being. I am immeasurable. I am who you are. Once you return home to the essence of your being, you will know me as your spacious mind and vast heart. You will immediately realize that I cannot be measured. Health befitting a human is immeasurable. Only matter is measurable. 

I am not outside of you. I am within. My qualities are not temporary. You do not have to hold me tightly for fear of losing me. I am like a shadow; I cannot be lost. I am abundant, ever renewing, and everpresent. 

For you, true health is a possibility for another time. Yet you are always near and dear to me. I am not a god. I am your unrecognized essence. Give health another mean- ing. Give health the name of harmony, peace, abundant and enduring happiness, wholeness, love, and compassion. Then you will recognize what is already and has always been at the center of your being. And this natural state of perfected health, beyond words and understanding, will transform your ordinary, imbalanced body and chattering mind into a perfected instrument of my divine presence. 

You’ve known me through the longing of your soul, your courageous and relentless striving for a larger life.  Come home to me now. Come home to perfected health now. Come home and rest in ease in your innate and indi- visible wholeness that heals all. Nothing need be given up. It is all there. Your being is perfected wholeness. 

I Am You.

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Consciousness: The Ground of All-Being

The word consciousness is well-used. However, we rarely give it much thought or reflection. As commonly used, we generally mean being awake and aware. But that is about as far as we can go in describing it. Consciousness is an experience that cannot be precisely defined. It is beyond the reach of cognition, beyond the reach of language.

Consciousness is not a “thing.” It has no form, shape, color, texture, weight, mass, contour, or location. These qualities refer to tangible objects with tangible characteristics that can be described and communicated through language. That is not so with consciousness. Although it is the central aspect of human life, in its full scope it defies the limited capacities of the spoken word.

Why is it so important that we “know” the nature and scope of consciousness? Consciousness is the ground of all being, of all experience. It is the essence of our existence. It is the field in which human suffering and distress come to an end and the qualities of human flourishing naturally reveal themselves. However, as vast and expansive as consciousness can be, in any individual it is largely contracted and limited. In the words of the writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley, it is as if our natural unbounded consciousness passed through a reducing valve as it made its way into our brain, into human existence.

To reach towards a larger life of well-being and vitality we must break through our limited experience of consciousness. We must break through a diminished experience that results from the contracting forces of family beliefs and values and educational and institutional imperatives – our social reducing valve. A larger more fully human life requires access to the largest possible consciousness. And that should be a priority for individuals and cultures. So how can we “know” our full consciousness?

Although consciousness cannot be fully conveyed through language, we can approach a deeper understanding through the practice of meditation and the use of metaphors. I have already discussed meditation as a means to direct experience, direct knowing. In short, we allow an effortless natural settling of the mind and its random mental activity. All mental activity is impermanent and naturally comes and goes. We let it settle on its own. We let it be without feeding it with our interest or attention. Thar natural settling, with practice experience, increasingly stills the mind. This allows a progressively clearer recognition of an open, unconditioned, naked consciousness. That glimpse of our natural and expansive consciousness is characterized by the absence of time, cognition, fixation, or grasping. In time we come to directly know our natural and full consciousness  –unmodified, unshaped, and uncontracted by mental activity or content.

Let’s consider a metaphor. The metaphor most often used is that of a mirror. I’ve listened to the description of mirror as metaphor many times. It keeps offering me more and more understanding over time. The essence of consciousness has three qualities. It is empty of any fixed content. It is aware, that is it is capable of knowing. And finally, it has the quality of clarity. Let me explain each of these qualities referring to the metaphor of the mirror, and over time you can verify this for yourself in meditation practice.

First, consciousness has no fixed mental content. On a mirror’s surface images arise and disappear one after another. Similarly, in the field of consciousness all mental appearances – thoughts, feelings, mental images, and sensory experiences  – arise, abide, and dissolve. Everything that arises on the surface of the mirror or in the field of consciousness is perishable, is temporary. As humans, we can mentally fix and hold an appearance for an extended period of time. But this effort at fixation and rumination is a cognitively imposed prolongation of what is otherwise a temporary appearance. Both the surface of a mirror and consciousness have no fixed content, or we can say that they are empty of fixed content. All experience comes and goes on its own. Like the surface of the mirror, consciousness itself, remains unchanged by mental activity and continuous in nature.

Second, consciousness is aware. Here the metaphor breaks down. The mirror is not conscious or aware of the activity on its surface, but human consciousness is aware of all that occurs within it. Consider this to be a miraculous mystery. We know that we are aware of life and of the phenomenon and experiences of life, but we don’t know quite how. We can’t fathom how electrical and chemical  activity in the brain morphs into awareness. And this special awareness not only knows the experiences that arise within it, it is self-knowing. It knows itself.

The third quality is “clarity,” which is also called luminosity. I’ve struggled with this term for a long time. I think that occurred because I’m so conditioned to thinking of clarity as a sort of transparency. Here the metaphor of the mirror has been very useful for me. We can say that the mirror has the capacity to show or reflect the images on its surface. A box, a carpet, a wooden or concrete floor doesn’t have that capacity. However, human consciousness does have the miraculous capacity to give rise to the clear experience of phenomenon that arise within it.  

It may take time, reflection, and meditation practice to grasp these three characteristics of consciousness. Of course, they are not really separate. They are the singular perfume of consciousness: empty of fixed content– aware – clear. To this may be added stillness. However, we must remember the words are not the experience. They merely point to what can only be known through direct experience.

Slowly, through self-observation the reducing valve will dissipate and you will gain a special knowledge of the intangible experience of consciousness that lies beyond the confines of our day-to-day mind. That will allow you to progressively abide in an expansive unconditioned consciousness and access the self-revealing qualities of human flourishing.

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The "Mere I"

We are not born with a name or personal sense of “I.” We are not born with habit patterns, perceptual templates, reactive tendencies, judgements, or a personal history. These are acquired over time from a cascading series of life experiences recorded in memory and mentally strung together to provide an illusory sense of continuity. In this manner our personal “I” develops over time in both content and complexity. Let’s look at these levels of development.

The most basic “I,” the mere “I,” is the simple and innocent awareness characteristic of the young child. This foundational identity is minimally developed yet it’s sufficient to navigate the basic aspects of a young child’s existence. The mere “I” lacks historical content or patterns of action and reaction. It functions in the present moment. It experiences and responds to what is as is, uncolored by interpretations and commentary.

The second level of ego development is the reified “I.” This shift is critical. It transforms the simple mere “I” into a seemingly solid ad independent entity, our personal self. This personal self progressively becomes the center of a mentally constructed individual self. Our natural self, a simple and pure moment-to-moment awareness, is covered over and recedes from view. We fabricate a separate, individual self that fosters disconnection and hyper-individualism.

The third level of ego development is the self-cherishing “I.” The perception of a distinct and individual “I” disconnects us from our original experience of oneness. We are separated from our natural inner self, other individuals, and our environment. This gives rise to a sense of “I and other” and “I and It.” We begin to cherish and care for this made-up separate “individual self,” as who we are. This shift is accompanied by a growing sense of aloneness, isolation, and insecurity, at times subtle and at times apparent.

This leads to the fourth level of development, the self-protective “I.”

As we increasingly experience our personal self as separate and distinct  and cherish our individual self, we seek to protect and defend it from perceived harm – from others or life’s difficult circumstances. This protectiveness and defensiveness diminishes an openness of heart, leading to further disconnection.

The fifth and final level of ego development is the “cultural I.” Having lost connection to our natural self, the heart center of our being, we are taught to turn towards the outer world to attain security, peace, and happiness, qualities that although forgotten are always and already present in our natural self. The “cultural I” learns to compete, achieve, and establish attitudes and behaviors that are socially and culturally rewarded.

That’s where we are, an individualized, disconnected, protective, and defensive ego structure. Long forgotten is the simple, easeful, and innocent “mere I,” which was once sufficient to navigate worldly life and enjoy it. Instead of upgrading the “mere “I” as needed to respond to a more demanding adult experience, we manufacture a multi-level, complex, seemingly solid and self-sustaining ego structure.

The five-level ego self is the default we use to navigate both the outer world and the complexities of the inner world. This self-cherishing protective self leads to an entirely new set of difficulties. Self-imposed anxiety, mood disorders, stress, isolation, and disturbed relationships are the result of this complex and confused personal “I.” It’s effort to control, organize, and manipulate people and circumstances seeks security, happiness, and safety. Such efforts may achieve temporary success, however these moments are time limited and perishable.

The ego cannot restore the peace, simplicity, ease, and happiness that was forgotten when we lost contact with our natural self, our inner home. Given this dilemma –a complex and unworkable sense of “I” – how do we find our way through this self-created conflict and confusion?

First, we must know what has happened, which begins by understanding the multi-level mental development of the personal “I.” Second, we must let go of the belief that we are that personal “I,”– the belief that this complex mental creation is who we truly are. Finally, we must re-assert our natural self as the center of our being.

As we become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the notion and consequences of a complex personal “I,” we can begin to deconstruct its more onerous elements, re-establish through meditation the presence of our true inner self, and progressively return to the mere “I” as a minimal persona that can help us navigate day-to-day life without the complexities and afflictions of a hyper-developed “I.” The mere “I” can be held lightly, upgraded as needed, and applied when appropriate to navigate daily life.

Try this in your own life. When navigating a conversation or circumstance drop the concerns and posturing of your social “I,” then your fear-based protective and defensive “I,” and finally your ego-cherishing “I.” What remains is your mere “I” that is informed by your deeper self. It is flexible, wise, and can navigate your circumstance swiftly and peacefully, and then dissolve back into your heart. You can also do this in meditation.

When you become fully aware of the five levels of the personal “I,” they will lose their solidity and tenacity and you will slowly return to your foundational true self, relying when needed only on the mere “I.” And there, in this natural spaciousness, you will find peace and a permanent end to suffering.

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The Dance of Subject and Object

The Dance of Subject and Object

Close your eyes and allow a mental object to arise – a thought, feeling, or sensory experience. Focus on it. Can the object continue to exist in consciousness without the simultaneous presence of your “I,” your ordinary self? Observe this until you are certain of the result. I think you will find an object cannot exist without a personal “I.” The object requires a perceiver. The “It” needs and “I.”

Now, try to imagine your usual “I” without the simultaneous presence of an object. Is it possible? Observe this for a period of time until the result is clear. I think you will find that your personal sense of “I” cannot exist without an object to cling to. It is either attached to an object or searching for one. An “I” needs a reference object. An “I” needs an “It.”

In these two mental experiments we discover that subject and object, “I” and “It,” are inseparable. They are as inseparable as wetness and water, or fire and heat. They need each other in order to exist. If you wish, close your eyes and observe that relationship once again to confirm this finding.

Now, try a third experiment. Close your eyes, still the mind. At some point an object and an “I” will arise. By withdrawing your attention allow your “I,” the object, or both to dissolve into consciousness. If you dissolve either one or the other will naturally dissolve as well. When neither is present notice what remains. Be still for a few moments in this nameless state devoid of subject and object. Let’s dive more deeply into these findings.

The personal “I” is not present at birth or early infancy. It comes into existence as the result of individuation and cultural conditioning. Early on this developing “I” is given a name, your name. That begins the installation in our psyche of a complex structure of beliefs, habits, reactions, fears, and hopes that shape and create our psychological self, replacing our natural self, over time, with a mentally constructed sense of self. Mistakenly and tragically, we come to believe that this fabricated self, this personal operating system, is who we truly are. We’ve replaced a simple natural awareness with an acquired and complex tapestry of memory, cognition, and sensory experience.

For a young child, before psychological development, the world is experienced through an innocent present moment awareness. In contrast, as adults, our world is experienced through memory, conceptuality, interpretations, and perceptual patterns. We no longer experience what is as is. The constructed world of “I” and object can never re-create the unchanging freedom, wholeness, and joy that is the perfume of our forgotten unconditioned simplicity – neither an “I” nor an “It.” Neither a subject or an object.

Unknown to our daily consciousness, we seek to re-experience this lost self in the transient and perishable objects of mind. The personal mind jumps from object to object, which is familiar to us as the busy non-stop mind. That is our usual life. What happens when the mind stops its relationship with mental objects, even for a moment? What happens when the mind becomes still? What happens when there is neither a subject or object, an “I” or It. That depends on your level of awareness.

There are two possibilities. If there is an unfamiliarity with the deeper self, the individual may experience a negative state of emptiness and nothingness. Our usual mental activity has ceased, there is neither subject nor object, and there seems to be a hollow nothingness. This void can be experienced as a painful abyss, one that motivates the arising, once again of a personal “I” and object as a mistaken antidote to psychological discomfort. This is the source of our constant grasping at objects.

The second possibility is quite different. If we have previously been introduced to or experienced the essential nature of mind, the still mind will be a treasure house of peace, serenity and the qualities of human flourishing. What is a disaster for those who are unaware of their true self is a boon for those who know the center of their being. These individuals welcome, cherish, and cultivate a still mind rather than running to the seeming antidote of objects and experiences. Here there is full freedom in contrast to the slavery to grasping and attachment.

I have shared these few words to enable you to reflect on and experience in contemplative practice the relationship between the personal “I” and an Object. We have discussed how the subject, our personal ego “I,” is constantly seeking objects/experiences to assure its security and avoid the seeming default groundlessness when subject and object disappear, even momentarily. What is most important is to recognize that what we, our “I,” truly seeks is the natural self, the effortless state of being and presence. We can say that what the seeker seeks is the source of the seeker and goal of all seeking – the true self.

When that is realized there is an end to outer seeking and clinging. Day-to-day experiences can be appreciated for their delight and connection without demanding of them what they can never deliver – a stable and sustained inner security, serenity, delight, wisdom, and freedom. Grounded in our inner truth we become masters of two worlds, inner and outer. We live our days from ultimate truth at the center of our being, allowing daily life to come and go as it will with in the spaciousness of wholeness and full presence.

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Wear the World Like a Loose Garment

While meditating we’ve all had the experience of a blissful moment of serenity, clarity, or realization, only to be pulled back into the stresses and strains of daily life. That can feel quite frustrating and even disempowering. We touch the glory of the sacred and are thrown back into the mundane. We think that our experience and insights will change our life, but too often they don’t. Know that you are not alone. These fallbacks are part of the journey. When they occur, it's most important to recognize them and to avoid dropping into disappointment, disillusionment, or failure.

These back and forths are important and unavoidable aspects of the movement toward a more awakened and conscious life. The ego structure, our personal self, with its capacities and limitations is tightly interwoven into our existence. It both assists us in navigating daily life yet, at the same time, its habitual patterns and limited knowledge force us to live in a contracted manner constrained by our past history. Our personal conditioned “I” is resilient, insistent, tenacious, and resistant to change. It may help us to survive and navigate daily life, but it does not help us to thrive. This limited consciousness becomes our default operating system, overriding our fundamental and essential self. That’s why we are pulled back to it so easily.

So how do we first soften the pull of our ego structure and then how do we replace this false sense of self with a return to our natural and foundational self. There are many practices that can help keep us in-touch with our deeper self. Our focus is meditation. When we establish a stable daily sitting practice, we find that the perfume of this practice subtly and somewhat mysteriously finds its way into daily life. Early on we find ourself calmer, less reactive, more patient, less judgmental, and more open and accepting. With time these qualities will become a new way life that is sourced by our deeper self. There will be less of a distinction between our formal practice and daily life.

We also deepen and stabilize our inner connection in the midst of daily life. We call this self-remembering. We practice multiple short (2-3 minute) mini-meditations throughout the day. We stop, let go of all thoughts and mental activity and drop into presence and beingness, as you do in your formal practice. Then return to your daily activities. Your will likely notice a shift to greater calmness and enhanced well being. Together, formal practice, mini-meditations, and continued study and support stabilize our natural stillness and clarity.

Finally, consider the words of St. Francis of Assisi:  Wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly.” We are instructed to take our worldly experience and personal identity lightly, neither attaching to nor identifying with it.

The Buddhist say it another way – regard all experiences like dreams. We awaken from a night dream only to recognize it was all a mental experience. We take off virtual reality goggles to realize the visual display was only a mental experience. In both instances it’s easier than awakening from our usual “wakeful” day-dream and realizing that it also is a mental experience. A night dream, visual reality goggles, our daily experience are all the same, inner displays within consciousness. They appear real yet are as unreal as an echo, night dream, or the mirage of water on the distant desert road. In short, don’t take things too seriously as they don’t actually exist in the way they appear.  We are told to wear our worldly experience lightly and loosely.

As we commit to formal practice and daily mini-meditations our understanding deepens, our perspectives shift and we find that we are increasingly living from the truth of our being.

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Meditation, Transcendence, and Psychedelics

Until you bite into a Mango, you cannot know its actual taste, regardless of the number of ways it’s been explained to you. It’s like that with the transcendent state of consciousness. Try as one can, it can only be known through direct personal experience. Explanations just won’t do.

However, let’s try as best we can to point towards it with words. The transcendent state of consciousness is a non-sensory experience. It is a non-ordinary experience. It can neither be experienced or known through our senses, nor through our usual intellectual capacities. It is an inner, personal, “invisible” experience. Words that point towards it include: transpersonal, timeless, infinite, wholeness, natural, all-embracing, essential being, pure perception, final truth, sacred, and divine. Although these words point towards a transcendent consciousness, they are not themselves the experience. So how do we move towards this pinnacle of human consciousness? Let’s consider three ancient, timeless, and reliable doorways – religion, meditation, and psychedelic botanicals.

When I speak about religion, I do so in the manner of two great contemporaries who lived in the late 19^th century – the physician and psychiatrist William James and the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. I refer my reader to James’ Varieties of Religious Experiences and to Tolstoy’s Confessions. James and Tolstoy sought to discover the common and unchanging essence of diverse religions. James called this essence the “religious mind.” Religious frameworks may differ, he noted, but the essential experience is the same. This transcendent, sacred, and “religious mind” replaces ego-centered identity as the natural foundation of moral guidance, universal love, and profound wisdom. It is the timeless and illusive “more to life.” It is the essence of our being. It is the truth of who we are.

Meditation is a series of methods that similarly points our attention inward towards that same “religious mind.” The first aim of meditation is to calm the overactive and mind and assist in cultivating a healthy human life. That is a progressive process that “cleans up” our usual egoic behavior, allowing for a more peaceful, happy, and fulfilling life, while simultaneously establishing a basis for its final aim. The second and final aim of meditation, which we are addressing here, takes us further. It points us towards and facilitates a personal and direct experience of the ultimate truth of self and reality. That special knowledge becomes the foundation and touchstone of a fully lived human life. It shows up in daily life as the attainment of the qualities of human flourishing – wisdom, serenity, happiness, love, and freedom. It is precisely what we have also called the transcendent “religious mind.”

The use of plant-based psychedelics, ingested with the right mindset and in the right setting, allows individuals to touch into this same transcendent state. Like meditation and religious practices, this is an age-old practice. Grounded in cultural values and communal support, the use of these botanicals has long served to connect day-to-day life to a deeper knowledge and related spiritual insights. These unique plant substances can facilitate a rapid dissolution of ego boundaries and the emergence of an unconditioned state of pure awareness and perception. That state of being, that deeper knowing, touches into the depths and profundities of the human experience and is accompanied by an undeniable sense of clarity and certainty. Once again, it’s a taste of the transcendent “religious mind.”

Although psychedelic-facilitated experiences rapidly open the door to transcendent states and spiritual knowledge, it is the ongoing attention to inner development that stabilizes and integrates these realizations. We recognize in our “quick taste” the limitations of an ego-based life, but, unless we engage in an ongoing process of self-growth and self-realization we will find great difficulty in avoiding the ego’s tenacious and gravitational pull. We may realize profound spiritual insights, such as the direct experience of oneness, wholeness, and universal love, but we will be unable to “spiritualize” our daily life without a continued effort towards self-growth. That continued effort is the role and place of meditation and is at the core of all great religious traditions. Without such ongoing support we may find great difficulty in sustaining the fullness of our precious transcendent realizations.

As mentioned, the transcendent spiritual experience can only be known through  personal experience. It is right there for you to experience! That is called first-person direct “knowing.” The knowledge thus gained is a result of spontaneous revelation, direct seeing – an “aha” experience of sorts. The most a teacher or learned writings can do is “point out” what is not truth. In this way, your curiosity and awareness can simultaneously be pointed towards ultimate truth.

As an example, consider the following pointing, “Close your eyes and “look” at the ego self, the ordinary self. Does it have a color, shape, form, size, mass, or sound? Look again, search again. Is it inside or outside? Does it have a location? Do you have one identity, or multiple identities? Is there one you or multiple selves? If after looking and looking you cannot find a specific personal “I,” rest in that non-finding and experience the nature of that experience.” That is one brief example of how the individual is pointed towards direct experience by dissembling the delusion of a permanent and findable “ego-I,” over and over again.

Aside from accessing the core of the “religious mind,” through the means we have discussed, there are many other ways to momentarily touch the grace of this state of being. These include: beauty, nature, music, dance, ritual, breathing exercises, sacred architecture, writings, prayer, touch, devotion, and so on. In each instance, when the thinking mind ceases, stillness ensues, and the openness and flow of a transcendent consciousness reveals itself. However, unless one realizes that what has been touched is our precious and ever-present natural human state – a state-of-being that is independent of the immediate stimulus – we will become attached to the stimulus and miss what it points towards. We will have had the experience, but missed its meaning.

Meditation as a “therapeutic” relaxation technique misses the mark. Psychedelics as recreational experiences miss the mark. Religion as a ritualized practice misses the mark. And, fleeting glimpses fail to recognize the significance of what has been experienced. When one touches a transcendent state of being, irrespective of the stimulus, we must pause, bring our awareness to the experience itself, rest in it, taste it, and directly “know it.” To integrate and sustain these experiences, we must create the life conditions that support this foundational state-of-being and undertake practices that assist us to access, stabilize, and integrate long term what has been momentarily revealed to us by Grace. Otherwise, it will fade into memory as just “one of those pleasant ephemeral moments.”

Why is it so important for us to aspire towards the state of simple being and presence which we have called the transcendent state, the “religious mind?” Why has this been essential for humanity across time and diverse cultures? Try as we may, we will discover, as have our ancestors, that reason alone cannot provide – through its science, philosophy, and organized traditions – an understanding of life that sustains and elevates itself through the challenges and sufferings of human life. Nor can reason provide direct and accurate guidance as to the character of a well lived life. And finally, reason alone is not a reliable basis for a joyful, serene, wise, and selfless life. Reason and rationality, we discover, are very valuable, but limited tools. They enable us to understand material life, organize it, and exert some level of control in an ever-changing world.

But to live with sustained meaning and joy that sustains itself through life’s challenges, we must know more. We most know something invisible to our senses. We must know something other. We must move beyond the limited consciousness and perceptual capacities that constitute our ordinary life. Only then can we learn from the full extent of our consciousness and deliberately use that extended awareness and knowledge to create a life and world deserving of our deepest humanity.  

For this, we look with faith toward an inner knowing – non-cognitive, non-linear, and invisible to the senses – which alone can reveal what reason cannot know. We turn inwards towards the invisible knowledge of heart and soul. We turn toward James’ “religious mind,” towards a transcendent aspect of consciousness. That deeper knowing and expansive consciousness can connect our finite life to the infinite, our separateness to the whole, and an unanswered existential uneasiness to a profound and stable serenity.

And if we are so connected, the worldly manifestation of this interconnected wholeness will show up as a deep concern for others, a simple kindness and care for other, as if other is oneself. With that wisdom, heart, and love we may finally find, as did our ancestors, that a direct knowledge of the simple truth of our being can transform our personal and collective lives. And, this alone can bring a certain end to individual distress, global strife, famine, and planetary destruction.

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From Person to Presence

Born with a mind and body, we are destined to develop a personal identity as a vehicle for living human life. It can be no other way. The personal self is an evolving compilation of our experiences, preferences, habits of perception, and modes of reaction that determine the character and course of our life. It’s an acquired mental structure that assists us in navigating daily life.

No personal identity is perfect. We mistakenly experience the personal self as an autonomous, separate, and independent entity that is distinct from others and the outer world. At its core nature it is self-cherishing, self-righteous, protective, and defensive. Regardless of our efforts and achievements at self-development and self-improvement these core elements of a personal self persist, with great subtlety even in the most evolved individuals. As we gain greater consciousness, we recognize the limitations and pitfalls of identifying with a personal self, as if it was our true self rather than a mental construction.

We are not born with a personal self. We are born into presence, a simple awareness. Our personal identity is acquired as we age and gain life experience. Simultaneous with the emergence of our personal self, our simple presence is slowly covered over and obscured by the investment and identification with this personal identity. It becomes who we believe we are and is supported and cultivated, throughout our lifetime, by individual effort and cultural practices. We gain a personal identity while losing touch with our deeper and more expansive essence. We mistake a fraction of consciousness for the whole. We gain day-to-day function at the cost of essence.

As we repeatedly collide with the pitfalls of our personal self, we increasingly remember, ever so subtly, our obscured fundamental nature. We know that there is more to life than our personal self can imagine. We have a vague sense of loss, of emptiness, of a time gone. As the poet Wordsworth says of “a moment of splendor in the grass.”

Time and aging teach us, if we are fortunate, about the futility of an outer search for what can only be found within. We progressively lose interest in the temporary “highs and lows” of ordinary life and increasingly seek an inner self that is stable and independent of the ever-changing mind/body and material world. When the frustration level is sufficient, we are finally ready to turn inward towards an authentic and sustaining self and life.

We turn away from grasping at unstable and exhausting outer satisfactions. We become disenchanted and bored by the usual activities, achievements, and material gain. We increasingly desire the great treasures of life – inner serenity, delight, wisdom, selfless love and compassion, and freedom from the known. Paradoxically, these great treasures are already and have always been within, waiting to be recognized and revealed when we sweep away the obscuration of the personal self and turn inward.

What has kept us from our true essence? Why have we not seen what is already there, complete and whole? We have been too busy chasing our desires outside with the encouragement and support of the institutions of culture. The tenacious and dysfunctional habit of mistakenly projecting our desires outward will end, when we realize that the true aim of all desire is the desire to return home to our center, to presence, and beingness. Desire seeks not “some thing,” but simply to be.

The turn inward is thus counter-cultural. The support must come from contemplative philosophies, teachings, and communities of spirit.

Meditation is simply a way of clearing the obstacles to recognizing our true nature. That is the only authentic aim of meditation. The most profound meditation is no more than directly experiencing the essence of our being. What is profound also turns out to be the most effortless, natural, and simple of all meditative approaches.

The only meditation instruction is “do nothing and don’t identify or grasp on to anything.” That’s it. It’s that easy. We drop into the present moment, experience an observing awareness – which is natural – and allow whatever arises in the mind to come and go on its own, as it will if you do not feed it with attention. Here the old Zen proverb is helpful, “allow all mental activity to come in the front door, go out the back door, and don’t serve it tea.”

Of course, this takes practice, as we have to overcome the long-practiced habit of chasing after everything that moves in our mind and feeding it with attention. We soon recognize that we are not our mental activity, that all mental activity is memory and when left alone is fleeting. To be precise a thought or emotion unelaborated by mental commentary has a lifespan of about 200 milli seconds. Left alone, it remains about as long as a line made with the finger on water. There is nothing we need to do except be aware and observe the natural flow of life.

Over my years as a physician and teacher my clients have taught me that mental techniques, aimed at calming the mind, although helpful at one level become obstacles to the true aim of meditation. These techniques or methods often solidify an endless struggle with the mind, cultivate feelings of failure, unknowingly stop our progress at lower levels of relaxation, and block entry to the profound treasures of the inner life.

When teaching meditation, I have learned to start at the end, with a state of presence and beingness and a correct relationship to the natural movements of the mind. The shift from Person to Presence begins not with a struggle with our false persona but rather with an immediate immersion into a simple, pure awareness. Properly guided at the onset, it is simple, effortless, profound and the true aim of meditation.

You may wonder how you can function in day-to-day life when you turn inward. The answer is – very well. It is not as if you need to give up your personal identity. What we give up is the belief that our personal self is who we are. When our authentic self reestablishes itself at the center of our life, we can effortlessly manifest and play with our identity in worldly life. Our true self remains in the background, pervading our day-to-day life with its wisdom, serenity, selfless love, and freedom from the known.

In this way our personal self becomes a tool with which to navigate life. But our center, the hub of our life is once again our essence, our heart, our spirit. That is the true perfection of health and well-being.

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The Hound of Heaven

I would like to share with you the opening lines of Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven.”

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 mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

I first heard these words years ago. They touched me deeply and have since taken residence in my mind. I sense it’s because they touch a truth that I too have fled from—an unanswered but persistent call from soul and spirit. That call to truth is likely familiar to you as well.

Perhaps it is disguised as a persistent discontentment or a subtle sense that there must be more to life, a subtle yearning for a deeper and more meaningful life. That calling has never left me and has increasingly motivated my interest in contemplative practice, much as it has for many others across millennia and diverse cultures.

I now realize that Thompson’s hound is a poetic metaphor for the irrepressible urge that quickens soul and spirit toward a recognition and reunion with our true self, our divine essence. It has taken time, detours, misplaced pursuits, personal dramas, and subtle resistance for the ripening to occur, a ripening that allowed that inner heaven to subtly reveal itself only in brief glimpses, at first.

Do you know you know your hound, that irrepressible urge and the heaven it points towards? Can you sense it chasing you, urging you deeper, urging you to go beyond, urging you toward passion and aliveness? Does it show up as a nagging sense that there is yet something more? Does it show-up as a disturbance of mood? Does it appear as a recognition that outer ambitions and pursuits can never satisfy this inner urge? Or, is an increasing disillusionment and disinterest in the offerings of worldly life< Can you sense the inner heaven it’s pointing toward?

Perhaps, at times, you catch a brief glimpse catalyzed by a moment in nature, beauty, dance, music, or intimacy. Look carefully at what happens in these moments. Notice that your usual personal self and its ceaseless commentary drop away, leaving in its absence an incomprehensible experience—a natural flow, pervasive serenity, and simple well-being. Are we fortunate enough, at these seemingly serendipitous moments, to recognize the significance of that glimpse of Self, and know it as our essential and immutable Self, our inner heaven?

And how have we learned to hide from our essence, our heaven? What things obscure and betray the unchanging presence of our true home? Make your own list. Here are some of mine: procrastination, distraction, meaningless entertainment, trivial conversations, transient pleasures, materialism, busyness, judgments, overindulging in numbing comforts, mental gymnastics, and finally an unquestioned and tenacious belief that I am my petty personal self and nothing beyond.

The poet goes further to say, “All things that betray my essence betray me. All things that betray me betray life.” That phrase shakes me. I don’t usually think of my accustomed and usual activities and attitudes as betraying me, betraying life. I usually consider them as worthwhile pleasures, human comforts, amusing moments, social pleasantries, or learned ways to relax. Are these self-betrayals, life-betrayals? What do you think?

Why do we spend a lifetime, individually and as a culture, inventing ways to avoid our true self, to betray our fundamental nature? Why is it that we fear that, without the reference point of an individual self and personal identity, we will be lost in a vast abyss of nothingness or worse? Will the richness of meditative experience reveal an empty psychological void or a sweet  expansive inner heaven?

Once again, consider what happens when our usual sense of “I” dissolves during meditation or when immersed in nature, astonished by beauty, moved by music or art, engaged in dance, or overcome by selfless love? Do we fall apart, or do we find our self in a space of flow, openness, ease, and delight? What are we hiding from, anyway?

We must know how and why we hide from our true self in order to stop hiding, be still, and drop into our true Self. We must trust the inner hound and its scent and follow its pointing to the center of our being. We must know and trust that this inner and larger self is our true self. And there, we will discover the great treasures of human life.

And that brings us to the noble contemplative tradition of meditation.

Meditation is an age-old contemplative practice that has two aims. The first is to improve the quality of day-to-day life through reduced stress, reactivity, distress, and suffering accompanied by a greater happiness, calm, and spaciousness. The second and most traditional aim is to support and enable us to go beyond the perspectives and conditioning of our ordinary mind and usual identity to a natural, unconditioned self that allows for the full actualization of the human possibility—that proverbial “more to life.”

The first aim is the lesser aim of meditation. The second is the noble and profound aim. It allows to reveal and re-acquaint ourself with the final truths of self, reality, and human existence. It is the peak of human possibility and the treasure house of the qualities of human flourishing.

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Podcast: Meditation and Beyond