Notes From a Fellow Traveller

Stillness

Stillness

When we become free from our habitually overactive mind, a profound natural stillness spontaneously reveals itself. But to permanently free ourself from this day-to-day mind, we must have a full and accurate understanding of how the ordinary mind works, so we no longer fall prey to its habits, reaction patterns, past history, and conditioned mental activity. Freed from the dominance of ceaseless mental activity, our usual sense of self dissolves, clarity arises, and a natural inner stillness appears, a stillness that is the ground of our being and is uninterrupted by the flow of life’s circumstances and challenges. And that natural stillness, as we shall see, is quite different from what we customarily call the calm or quiet mind

You might feel this to be a distant and unimaginable possibility - an unchanging stillness in the midst of everyday challenges? Yet, everyone has experienced a glimpse of this resilient natural stillness – a moment lost in nature, tender intimacy, art, beauty, dance, music, and at other times. Your chattering mind stops and in its place is an experience of stillness, serenity, presence and flow. Recall such a moment for yourself. We usually take this as a mere pleasant moment, failing to recognize its true significance. But if we stop in that moment and experience fully, we will notice the momentary absence of the personal self, which allows the stillness and flow of our true nature to reveal itself. You have each had this experience many times. I urge you not to lose its significance, not to lose its meaning, not to write it off as a mere pleasant reverie, but rather to recognize it is a profound preview of what is possible for an awakened human life.

The stillness I am speaking of is quite different than what we usually call the calm mind. The calm mind is always in relationship to the restlessness of our ordinary mind. A particular circumstance, activity, or method which relaxes and soothes the mind, shifts us momentarily towards the calmer end of the spectrum between calm and restless. However, the potential for restlessness always remains. Remove the circumstance, activity, or method and the restlessness re-appears. We all know what happens as the effect of a massage, a relaxation technique, or a calm day in nature slowly wears off. The active mind re-asserts itself.

The question is how to reveal this natural mental stillness and sustain this delight of freedom, ease, and simplicity in the midst of daily life. The answer is most certainly not more of the same - another technique, addiction to relaxation activities, or withdrawal from life’s movements. Only through the awakening of a truthful and complete understanding of our mind can we disable the underlying source and disturbance of mental restlessness and allow our natural nature to reveal itself. This requires a bit more effort than applying a temporary circumstance or method to the restless mind. But this understanding offers the only promise of a stable, harmonious, and serene body, mind, and spirit irrespective of life’s misfortunes.

For this we must understand the two fundamental wounds of the human experience that result in the restless and distress-prone mind. The first and foundational wound occurs, unknown to us, when our family names us, a seemingly natural and innocuous event. Before we knew our name, we were nameless. We were connected to the whole. There was no “I and Other,” no “I and It.” There is simply the moment-to-moment awareness, presence, and beingness. It is for the young child as the poet Wordsworth describes it:

                          The earth, and every common sight,

                          To me did seem

                          Apparelled in celestial light,

                          The glory and the freshness of a dream.

                           It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

                           Turn wheresoe'er I may,

                           By night or day.

                           The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Our given name becomes the container for our soon to be developed individuality, a necessary but nevertheless source of future distress. This personal sense of “I” is expanded and filled with the knowledge of approval and disapproval, right and wrong, and shoulds and shouldnt’s, footprints of past history, identities, patterns of perception, and habits of reactivity. Our expansive, unified, and connected world is slowly contracted to a an progressively acquired personal self, one which is invariably disconnected and separated from others, our planet, and most importantly our natural and authentic self. That is our first and primary wound – the mental creation of an individual personal self, accompanied by a firm belief that this personal self is our true self.

Once we have taken on the first human wound, the unquestioned belief in a personal “I,” this sense of self takes on numerous qualities that set-up the second great human wound. Our personal self, by its nature, is protective, defensive, and self-cherishing (“I”- centered.) This is the ground from which emerge a host of afflictive and disturbing emotions such as fear, anxiety, competitiveness, doubt, shame, anger, desire, and so on. These disturbing emotions arise and fall with life’s circumstances but are an invariable consequence of the belief in a personal self and the lost awareness of who and what we truly are. This is not to suggest that we do not live many sweet and pleasurable moments. We do. But the belief in an individual and personal self assures that we cannot avoid the recurrence of afflictive emotions.

Together, these two human wounds are the basis for the restless mind. Don’t be fooled by the moments of calm that arise in response to passing interactions, circumstances, or relaxation techniques. They are not stable and will quickly devolve into restlessness.  A stable stillness is not built into the personal “I.” It is not a capacity of the ordinary mind. We may become quite skilled at inducing mental calm through one approach or another, one circumstance or another, and that is great, but it will never be a stable and pervasive stillness that is immune to outer circumstances.

A stable and pervasive stillness is an unchanging quality of the natural self that comes before and, although hidden by the dominance of our personal “I,” is always present and uncontaminated by past experience and history. To reveal this innermost self requires the decision to turn inward through meditative/contemplative practices, progressively diminish the emphasis on your personal “I,” and establish a lifestyle conducive to inner practice. When the inner life becomes your focus and joy, you will come to know the stable stillness and peace that surpasses understanding. And with that, you will also come to know the other sacred qualities of human flourishing. That is the true aim of meditation. And that is not a meditation. It is life.

                           As the wise teacher says:

                           Not knowing that this state is within one self,

                           How amazing that one searches for it elsewhere!

                           How amazing that so few see it.

So for a moment stop seeking to calm your mind and seek what is beyond. Close your eyes and drop into the expansive field of awareness that is open, spacious, free, and serene. It is right there, right now. You know it by heart. Mental chatter may naturally arise but merely ignore it. Don’t feed it with your attention. Let it come and go on its own. Drop out of your mind, out of your past history, out of your attention to mental movements and rest in your heart. Rest in the serenity, feel the stillness, experience the flow and spaciousness and be fully awake and present. That is who you are. That is a human being. And that stillness is pervasive and permanent.

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Gone Beyond

The primary aim of meditation is to go beyond the narrow confines of our ordinary self and experience the immensity of life’s possibilities. It is to free ourself from the tenacious grip of individualism and be born again into our full humanity.

Individualism, with its accompanying habitual and limiting patterns of perception, afflictive and disturbing emotions, ruminating mental chatter, automated reactivity, and an unquestioned false belief that we are this “personal self,” imprisons us in a narrow and contracted life. This does not reject the necessary intellectual and cognitive skills that support and allow us to navigate day-to-day life. Rather it highlights the dilemma of our personal learned psychology which chained to the past and projected into an imaginary future traps us in a tenacious individualism, denying us access to our essential humanity.

Our mentally constructed personal self does not come with birth. We are born as humans, not as individuals. We are born without distinctive names, personalities, patterns of thought and action. That is all acquired, learned. It is who we become, not who we truly are. And try as we do, utilizing an endless array of self-development strategies the personal self - including the improved version - cannot bring us to the authentic and natural serenity, freedom, wholeness, and compassion that is already and always available in our fundamental humanity. We know this by heart. We know there is more to life than what appears on the surface.

Our choice is simple. Either we live a lifetime cultivating the illusion that we are merely this limited individual self - filled with self-doubt, anxiety, fear, and narrowness of thought and action – or we awaken to the resilient eternal truth that there is more to life than our ordinary self can imagine. That knowing provokes us, if fortunate, to go beyond to another dimension, to our natural self, to our humanity. The mantra of the ancient Buddhist Heart Sutra reminds us over and over:

Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasaṃgate, Bodhi Svaha

(Gone, Gone, Gone Utterly Beyond, Gone to the other Shore, Oh What an Awakening)

That “other” shore is our shore. The “otherness,” which lies beyond our recalcitrant individualism is our home, our true nature, our human being. Here we find our authentic and grace-giving self, which is seamlessly interwoven with serenity, joy, wisdom, love, and freedom. Beyond our fabricated man-made personal “I” lies the heart center of life.

In the western tradition The Oracle of Delphi conveys it as such:

                               Once you have touched it

                               There is no division:

                               No tearing your heart away

                               For it knows no separation.

How do we re-experience, sustain, and live our true and full humanity? How do we bring this “otherness” into daily life? First, we are told, become aware of your tenacious conditioning – your narrow habits of perception, learned reactivity, biased judgements, and interpretations, and then let go of this false learning. Do not feed these ghosts of times past with your attention. We are then asked to give up the clinging attachment to our constantly shifting identities and mental chatter. And finally, open our mind and heart to a clear and expansive perception/awareness, allowing the vitality of our essential truth, freedom, and “otherness” to be known, when you have disinvested from the unchallenged influence of your surface “I.” Then, rest in the stillness and all-knowing of your essential self, which is foundational and unchanging. Be satisfied with nothing less than who you are and have always been.

Is that difficult? Consider the words of Anais Nin:

                       And the day came

                       When the risk to remain tight in a bud

                       Was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

The alternative is indeed far more difficult. Enmeshed in daily existence, our vision turned outwards, we cannot observe the limitations of our personal “I.” The smaller cannot see the larger. Learned habits serve as thick veils obscuring truth. The cost to us is life itself. The imagined individual is “dead,” a mere reflection of the past. The human is a living thing.

Where do we begin. We begin at the end. We begin by simply and effortlessly dropping into our natural state of “flow,” presence, and being. There are many ways to accomplish this. We all know them through experience – an immersion in nature, selfless intimacy, uplifting art, beauty, music, dance, meditation, and so on. Each of these moments, however momentary, shares a similar dissolution of our personal self. These precious moments of selflessness, however fleeting, reveal the experience of our underlying natural self, flow, and basic humanity. For a precious moment we forget who we have become and experience who we have always been.

Rarely does one understand or recognize the total significance of these moments. It is essential not to take them as mere fleeting pleasures, serendipitous moments to grasp onto, possess, conceptualize, or merely relax into. That would be a costly error, an error that may be at the cost of your life. These fleeting glimpses are intimations of the “other,” of your natural self. When you drop into these moments stop, rest with awareness of this experience of flow and “otherness,” sense it, feel it, know it, and trust it as your essence. But don’t stop there.

If you recognize and cherish these spontaneous experiences as intimations of your authentic self, they may serve as a signpost or reminder, directing you towards time-tested approaches to re-claiming, stabilizing, and owning your essential human beingness. If you are fortunate in your deepest yearnings, these will no longer be mere fleeting pleasures. They will progressively endure as the unchanging essence of who you are.

So we rest in these moments when they naturally and spontaneously occur, recognizing them as our true self and devoting ourself to overcoming our individual self and re-experiencing ourself as a human being. We acknowledge the inner dialogue of our personal self that wants to pull us back to the old ways. “It is not possible to live from this space of beingness and presence.” “It is just a passing moment.” “Get back down to earth.” That’s our old voice, which is unwilling to surrender its authority to that which is greater. So we may need some mentoring, approaches, and practices that will slowly create accessibility, trust, and stability of our natural self.

We begin by cleaning up our psychological room. We become aware of our conditioning, our patterns, our reactivity, our afflictive emotions, and our ego-centricity, and progressively act from kindness, discernment, virtue, and stillness. Cleaning up your “room” will not take you to the “other,” but it will allow more of an opportunity to live with inner stillness, less conditioning, greater peace, and heart. And this ground will progressively open the possibility that moments of otherness will spontaneously appear and in time coalesce into a more sustained experience.

We explore this more intensively in formal meditation and progressively integrate it into daily life. We remember the precious glimpses, drop into them for moments here and there, bring clear awareness to the present experience, abandon what encourages your old life, and cultivate what supports your essential self, and finally - open your heart. Fallbacks will occur, but just get up, dust yourself off, and continue.

Slowly, or perhaps quite quickly, a time will surely come when what you have become will fade in importance and you will have gone beyond, far beyond, to the other shore, an awakening which is irreversible.

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Do Not Believe You Are Who You Think You Are

Do Not Believe You Are Who You Think You Are   You are the imperishable, unchanging, timeless, and nameless essence of being. That experiential truth, however simple when touched, is unreachable by reason, knowledge, or the efforts of our ordinary “I.” It is thickly obscured by the deeply conditioned belief in our familiar ego-self. In actuality, the person we believe we are is a made-up mental construction stored in memory - an accumulation of past experiences, beliefs, habitual patterns, and conditioned reactivity. We are not born with this individual separate self. We are born as human “beings.” The personal self develops later and obscures who and what we truly are. The tenacious belief in a personal self is a disaster to our soul, spirit, communal life, and planet.   However obscured our true self may be, we all know that there is more to life than our day-to-experience. We’ve tasted it. We’ve had glimpses. We know it by heart. That is why we are seekers, seekers searching for a seemingly lost treasure that is none other than our authentic self. If we did not remember, in our most silent and sublime moments, we would not be seeking the serenity, joy, ease, and peace of a simple carefree presence and beingness – our essential unchanging self.   The problem is that we search in the wrong place. Cut off from the inner essence and source of our natural self, modern culture mistakenly points our search towards outer experiences – fame, name, success, materialism, sterile “spirituality,” sexuality, and so on. We are told that we can find what we are seeking in the world of “things” and “doings.” That can easily consume, and often does, a lifetime of searching. Searching in the wrong place the search is never over - just exhausting and disappointing. And the mantra of this futile outer search is “try harder,” “it’s around the corner.” But it's all to no avail. There are certainly moments of happiness and pleasure in this outer search, but like all other outer experiences, they are transient and destined to be lost. The unchanging essence we seek remains unrealized.   However, we can awaken to the recognition of our authentic self and bring an end to the personal distress that is an invariable part of our ordinary self. But for this, we must first look in the correct place, within. When the false belief that we are our personal self begins to fade and we catch increasing glimpses of an expansive, natural, and more serene self, we are ripe for transformation.   Then, meditation becomes quite simple. We spend a bit of time, if necessary, quieting and withdrawing our attention from random mental activity and settle into inner silence – an experience of awareness, observation, being, and presence. We don’t seek to suppress mental active, we merely cease to “log in” or “subscribe” to mental movements. We allow the movements of the mind to come and go, without comment, without attention, without elaboration.   The easeful stillness of awareness and presence is a transitional state between our personal self and natural self. It is not an end in itself. As we increasingly rest in a mere beingness and awareness, we gain increasing access to our authentic self, which is effortless, easeful, and natural. We can begin to observe its qualities and the absence of the usual mental disturbances and afflictions. It is a serene self, a state of unchanging well-being, wisdom, contentment, and true freedom.   Try this small experiment. Close your eyes, drop everything, and quiet your mind. Then ask yourself, without trying to answer with your usual mind, “Who AM I?” Let that question sit with you. You will find that this phrase is like a Zen Koan. You may go through various identities, gender, roles, and so on. But quickly you will notice that you are neither this or that, nor this or that. Stay with the question, “Who Am I?” When your conceptual mind exhausts itself,uselessly trying to find the true self, your mind will go silent. Stop, be present, and there it is. “Who Am I? I AM.” That’s it.   Of course the usual mind will seek to reassert its dominance. You know its voice, “This is only a meditation,” or “How can I live and relate from this space,” and so on. Observe that voice and let it go as well. Remember that all of the great spiritual and wise teachers lived from the inside, and far from their lives being passive, they greatly enhanced the human experience. True presence is a wise experience and profound healer.   So, I ask you to consider dropping the belief that you are your ordinary personal “I,” and look within for the one you have always been, the one that promises to be the gold you seek. This unchanging self will be a resilient self that will accompany you through all of the challenges of daily life, never losing touch with the oneness and sacredness of the whole of life. www.elliottdacher.org Aware, Awake Alive on Amazon

How to do a Retreat

How to Create a Retreat

In these challenging times, fortunate individuals have an unexpected opportunity to turn their attention inward and listen in silence to life’s inner callings. For those who seek larger understandings, it is customary to routinely retreat from outer activity and mental clutter. Perhaps it is a short daily meditation, a longer silent retreat, related reading, or a vision quest. It is at such moments that we can mindfully listen and receive guidance from the natural rhythms and wisdom of life. It is how wise teachers and religious figures chose to align themselves with sacred harmony and deeper knowledge. It is in that inner silence that truth and wholeness are finally revealed to the earnest seeker.

Staying in one place and slowing down one’s “doings” is a consistent requirement of retreat. Although traditionally motivated by a personal longing for meaning and essence, today we are further enabled by a virus-forced mandate. That is where we are, and where we will be for a time to come. So why not grasp this opportunity?

To assist you in using this time well, I would like to share with you three types of retreat: outer, inner, and innermost. I hope this information will motivate you to create an in-home retreat, right where you are, right now. You can begin after reading these few words.

Outer Retreat

An outer retreat occurs when we establish the external conditions that are conducive to an inner and innermost retreat. As a result of the current restrictions that now shape daily life, creating an outer retreat is a bit easier. We are already set-off from the usual activities and distractions of daily life. So we begin by resisting the habit of filling newly found “free time” with more “stuff,” recreating our usual busyness. That’s a familiar pattern that runs deep in our psyche. Be aware of this mental habit when it arises. Watch it and let it go. There are deeper and more important longings and possibilities to now attend to.

Next, as best you can, bring harmony into your outer life. Your living space should be inviting to your soul and spirit, heart-warming, soft, and facilitate inner time. Meals can be prepared in peace and solitude. Harmony can prevail in relationships. Consider creating a special “sacred space” in your house for meditation and self-reflection. Some set-up a small table in a spare room upon which to place important photos, candles, or objects of a spiritual nature. That can bring a special sense of stillness and inspiration. Think of the energy, sweetness, and peace of nature, a religious space, or a meditation room. The cultivation of that essence is how we create an outer retreat that facilitates harmony of body, mind, and spirit.

Inner Retreat

Inner retreat is the formal time we use for daily meditation practice, as well as the informal time we are in a meditative space during daily activities. The aim of inner retreat is to rest in the stillness of mind rather than the usual mental commentary. Our formal sessions begin, particularly in times such as this, by giving rise to compassion and care for those who are suffering in difficult circumstances. I suggest as one possibility reciting the Bodhissattva Prayer written by Shantideva in the 900s. I will offer a link below. However, you can cultivate a compassionate attitude in whatever manner most suits you.

The next step in inner retreat is calming the mind. We begin with calming methods, using what you already know that works for you. I am linking below a 10-session audio recording that might assist you. The first 3 sessions focus on approaches to calming the mind. It doesn’t so much matter how you calm the mind, but that you calm it and then rest in the stillness that underlies mental chatter. Mind-talk will inevitably arise, but that doesn’t mean you cannot stay calm in the midst of background noise. You can. Disregard the pull of your usual mind. Allow mental activity to come and go on its own. Allow the usual mental commentary to play itself out. But you, you, remember who you are. The one who is aware, who observes, is still, and fully aware. You are not your thoughts, beliefs, and mental commentary.

What is the aim of an inner retreat? The aim is to empty our mind of afflictive/disturbing emotions, experience the peace and serenity of a calm mind, cultivate the capacity to remain emotionally stable in challenging circumstances, and allow an open space for new insights regarding self, reality, and life directions to naturally and spontaneously arise. As we continue this daily inner retreat, we will recognize its value and realize that even in the midst of outer turbulence there can be inner stability and strength. That is the essence of an inner retreat, we retreat into a calm, clear, alert, and peaceful mind.

Innermost Retreat

The final stage of retreat is an innermost retreat. I am sorry to say that this is the most difficult to convey in words, as to know it, you must experience it directly. Much as you cannot know the actual taste of a Mango by merely listening to a description of it, you cannot know the actual nature of an innermost experience without tasting the center of your being. However, I’ll do the best I can to point you in that direction.

There is an experience, an experience of the innermost and most expansive ground of our being, that we can call spirit, essence, natural self, true self, empty-awareness, or any one of the many names that refer to it. It contains and gives rise to all other levels of experience. One can say it is the ground of our being, a place of isness, thatness, beingness, or pure presence. It just is. When great teachers are asked what it is, they mysteriously answer “It is that.” That’s not much of an answer, because there isn’t an answer. When you experience it, you will know.

Yet, the good news is that we have all experienced our innermost being at one time or another. Whenever we experience the loss of a sense of personal self and its preoccupations, we experience life in that moment as an easy flow. We taste the expansiveness and pervasiveness of peace, and joy. We can catch a glimpse during when we “lose” our usual self in dance, music, art, meditation, yoga, exercise, nature, intimacy, and so on. These moments are usually considered lovely serendipitous experiences. They come and go with a smile. In contrast, what we seek in retreat is an intentional and increasingly stable meeting with our innermost self.

There is no particular effort or practice you can use to directly access this innermost presence. The best you can do is to remove the obstacles, experience a longing and desire to return to your inner home, and allow for grace. So you don’t “do” an innermost retreat, you let go and allow it to happen. Your efforts towards inner development enhance the probability that you will touch this natural self. And let’s remember, we are not visitors to this innermost place. It is who we are. Resting in the ground of our being is the innermost retreat.

So we begin retreat with an intention and commitment based on the understanding that outer experiences as well as mental experiences are transient. We realize the fatigue of a life spent searching for our self in perishable experiences. Increasingly, we trust that the only sustaining experience is the unchanging nature of our true self, our true nature. We cultivate a harmonious outer environment that supports retreat. That is followed by calming the mind through meditation practice and resting in stillness and serenity. This inner retreat can at any time spontaneously open into an innermost retreat, revealing the essential nature of our natural essence and self – the truth of our existence. If not, we feel blessed and enriched with what we have learned and experienced.

Some final words - start simply, be patient, do not attach to expectations, and appreciate the here and now of meditation practice and retreat. And add a dash of discipline.

I do hope that this short description of the three aspects of retreat allows you to wisely use this in-between time. Perhaps you will then find the precious gold that is often most accessible at times of great adversity.

                                        Free 10-Session Audio Meditation Training

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