A reality based truth about life is that it’s always at square one, all the time, no matter what relative changes are perceived. When you deeply realize this truth about life it will unequivocally burst any bubble of extra-ordinariness that you might be holding on to, about yourself, about others, about a future event or about life in general. All growth is relative, while maintaining the absolute state of always being at square one. So why grow? Because it’s what you feel like moving towards, that’s all. You are inherently always at square one irrespective of your growth – your level of awareness may change, which can change the way you experience life (compared to your past), but ultimately you now deal with the challenges/growth-potential of your present level of awareness, growth is never ending and hence you always feel/know that you are at square one.
It’s very similar to going up the levels in a video-game. I remember playing pac-man as a kid, at level-1 the speed of the game is slow, but since you are new to playing the game your expertise is also “low”, and so it’s all a match. After playing level-1 for a while, you start getting good at it and you finally win it. When you win level-1 you can enjoy a deluded sense of joy imagining that some end-point has been achieved, but soon you see that you, now, desire to play level-2 because level-1 is no longer interesting. Now, at level-2 the game is slightly faster, you feel challenged again, and there is a need for “growth” in your expertise, you are back to square one. You play level-2 for a while, gain expertise in it, and win it, only to be graduated to level-3 where the speed is higher and challenges are stronger than level-2, but your expertise is such that you can deal with it, but you need to “grow” in order to win it, only to be graduated to level-4. This is how it continues, so you see that you are always at square one even if you have moved into higher levels.
The only reason you move up the levels is because the lower level is no longer interesting to you, it’s no longer challenging enough, that’s all. In essence, you are not better off than someone playing at level-1. This realization will happen at some point, and it’s a realization that will remove any sense of deluded joy that you associated with winning (which is similar to graduating a level), but that does not prevent you from wanting to win and wanting to grow, that’s the deal of life.
Inevitable growth
You can’t avoid/deny/suppress growth, it’s totally inevitable. At one point, your understanding of life reaches a clarity where you know that growth is inherently your nature and it’s going to be unending and eternal. The “leveling point”, however, is that, to have this realization you need to have a deeper awareness of life, and this realization is needed for you to be mature enough to handle life at this level of awareness – so basically you are at square one. So, basically you don’t become superior in any sense, like in the example I gave above of the game of pac-man, no matter what level you reach you are not better off than someone at level-1, in essence. If you have a sense of superiority, it’s just naïve thinking. This is a pretty staggering realization when you really get it, and it can burst a lot of deluded ideas you might have been holding about extra-ordinariness of some form, either about yourself or about some person, event or situation. This realization is a great leveler, and it does take you to a new level of maturity with respect to life (and this level obviously is just a new level of experience with its own challenges).
Let’s say you’ve reached a certain level of awareness where you are no longer fearful of the mind. Now you look back at your past, and recall how deeply lost you were in the mind, how you lived rooted in fear – and from a relative perspective you realize that you’ve grown to a “better” level. But if you look deeper you will sense that in your past, your level of awareness was low, and fear, of the mind, was the challenge you faced at that point, and your desire was for a growth towards being fearless of the mind – that was your level of play. Now, with your higher awareness you’ve reached that desire and you are no longer fearful of the mind, but you now have the challenges/responsibilities that come with this higher level of awareness – as they say, with greater power comes greater responsibility, but the term “greater” does not mean you’ve become “superior”, you sense that inherently that you are always at square one. This is the paradox of life, however it’s not really a paradox, it’s simply that since life is all there is, it cannot ever become more than it is – so all forms of life are always at square one, nothing is more or less than anything.
You can see this in the structure of creation, the smallest is the replica of the largest, the micro and the macro are inherently the same structure, just a difference in levels of magnitude. This understanding will keep you “grounded”, it will prevent you from becoming arrogant or becoming a fanatic. You don’t look at yourself as being more superior to others, neither do you scorn someone for being at a lower level of awareness, neither do you have a deluded imagination that you are beating them at a race to reach some destination where you will be handed more goodies. If this realization feels a bit depressing, it would just indicate that your motivation towards growth was rooted in some form of delusion, and not rooted in the reality of life. The simple truth is that that growth is inevitable but it’s always relative, the only reason you grow is because you feel the desire for it as your very nature. If at any point you feel that you are “better off” than someone else, you are already entering the state of deluded thinking – it’s like thinking that just because you are at level-10 of pac-mac you are better than someone who is playing at level-1, you have your growth to deal with at level-10 and that person has his/her growth to deal with at level-1, inherently no-one is better off.
A growth towards inner wholeness
The process of moving towards an inner wholeness/balance, and a deeper understanding of life, as a human being, is a growth process that some (or many) are going through at this point and the pointers on this blog are towards assisting with that growth. If you are going through this growth phase, you can relate to these pointers and they may assist in getting you up to the required understanding to allow this growth. However, the only reason you even feel like reading these pointers is because it’s what you feel impelled towards at this point in your growth – this is not something extra-ordinary, it’s just a phase of growth that you are presently dealing with. This growth towards inner wholeness will shift your reality, and your personality, but it would be similar to moving up a level and this level will have its own challenges – it’s just that you now have the level of awareness, understanding, and thus ability, to handle this new level of reality and you inherently wouldn’t want to go back to a past level of living.
You can see this play of ordinariness in your desires also. When a desire feels too extra-ordinary to you, it doesn’t manifest in your reality because you are not at a level where you can “handle” the manifestation – it will over-whelm you if it manifested at this current level in your maturity. As you grow in your maturity/understanding, you will reach a point where you become a match to this desire, in that the desire simply feels like the ordinary next step. Just like when your expertise reaches a point where you can navigate level-1 of a game comfortably, and it feels ordinary for you to win it, that’s when you are ready to graduate to level-2. A desire that feels important to you is usually just an invitation to the next level, and to reach that level you need to grow to match that level. Of course, when you reach that level there will be another level waiting for you – so let go of this deluded sense of reaching an end point.
This realization of the ordinariness of life removes any sense of deluded excitement (Read the post – the resistance of over-excitement) and this maturity is needed to deal with the realities you will be privy to in this higher awareness. When you sense the bursting of the bubble of imagination, you had, about some extra-ordinary state, it can leave you feeling a little cheated or starkly disappointed, but what has been removed is just a delusion that was never part of reality of life, and as you allow these feelings of disappointment you will sense the freedom of this ordinariness, it liberates you of this idea that you have to get to some endpoint – you may no longer be able to experience the states of over-excitement, or deluded joy, that you experienced before (because you’ve seen through it) but now you’ve graduated into a new level of living, with a new experience/expression of life awaiting you – there is no need to be disappointed about saying good-bye to a past level that was so much a part of you, which you had been playing, for so long, and there is no need to be over-elated about this new level that you are entering, you are always at square one, that’s the inherent balance of life, its natural wholeness.
so amazing
Sen, it is possible for others (from your past/present) to perceive you as “better off” as you come to a place of wholeness, correct?
If so, is it natural to feel a sense of pride about this?
Rah, yeah, others can look at you can think you are better off, but eventually they are on their journey and you are on your journey, and you’ve come to any endpoint, it’s just eternal growth. A sense of pride is just deluded thinking, but you can enjoy it if you want, but as you grow deeper in your understanding of life your mind will no longer have a tendency to be prideful about anything.
Sen, how do you truly get rid of anger, judgement and dislike of other individuals?
Iz, the bottom-line is to find inner balance/wholeness, in which case you will not move from any imbalanced stand point about yourself or others. Find inner wholeness requires understanding of life, understanding of self (self-realization) and a willingness to allow a release of past momentum. This whole blog is about this growth towards inner wholeness, some of the articles you can start with are
http://www.calmdownmind.com/reducing-mind-momentum-is-the-key/
http://www.calmdownmind.com/the-space-of-being/
http://www.calmdownmind.com/dissolving-the-resistance-of-ego/
Very interesting.
Sen,
What a fantastic blog and wake up call.
life changing or rather i should say life saving teachings and website
Hi Sen,
This blog has really changed a lot of things for me.. thanks for sharing your awareness and growth!
Regards,
Ketan
Ketan, thanks for sharing
Sen, I must ask about what you mean by greater challenges of having higher awareness. Challenges like what? Since gaining awareness and letting go/staying in a state of being cause the fuel of the mind’s negativity to run out 99.9% of all suffering, what greater challenges could there be? All I could think of would be those that anyone else deals with, such as work and finance or relationships.
Tyler, there is a difference between “problems” and “challenges” – there will always be challenges, but problems are only present in a state of imbalance. So it’s true that in a state of balance you don’t have to deal with the presence of problems (“problem” could also be the resistance that you add to your natural challenges, or the negative perspective you bring to certain required challenges), rather you are just focused on the challenges and enjoying the growth potential they provide. If you understand the pac-man game analogy I used in this post, it just refers to the fact that when you clear a level you reach another level, and for you that level will have its challenges – challenges doesn’t mean negative, they just mean a challenge to your potential which causes you to “evolve”. Evolution is eternal, you will never reach point where you won’t feel the desire for growth within, and your desire for growth causes you to move into expressions that are a challenge to your current potential thus causing you to grow. When you have low awareness, the emotional suffering may be your challenge. Through higher awareness you let go of the emotional momentum and are free of its grip, but now you will have the challenge of living from this place of freedom, it brings new choices, it brings new perspectives, it brings new responsibilities – one can look at the lives of some enlightened people in the past and know that their life was not lacking of challenge. Challenge does not mean something negative, it’s just a natural directive towards a higher growth. The point in this post is that “growth” never stops, so there is no real end point to reach as such, but there are levels of growth that you keep completing by dealing with a challenge like finishing a level of a pac-man game and moving to the next level. A person playing level 2 may feel that a guy at level 12 is an expert and hence has no “challenges” to deal with, but the guy at level 12 is playing at level 12 and level 12 has challenges that are a match to his/her potential for new growth. They say with greater power comes greater responsibility, and it’s true that it happens that way – but “greater” is a relative term, I would say that your responsibility matches your potential while also providing for an avenue of growth. For example, if you read the story of Jesus, he was an enlightened person but he had his challenges in terms of staying true to a certain responsibility that he felt towards his fellow men. Every level has its own challenges. You can also read the post – light and dark nature of conscious living – for some more insight on your question
It’s true that the state of imbalance is a resistance to living your nature of growth (or dealing with challenges) in a smooth manner, and one needs to grow out of the imbalance towards a conscious balance to really start enjoying the deal of life including the challenges (or adventure) that come as a path towards growth/evolution. Dealing with imbalance while dealing with life (along with your nature for growth) can be “problematic”. In a state of balance you feel fully equipped to enjoy your challenges or expressions of growth, so a challenge is not “problematic”.
Dear Sen,
If someone sees someone else greater than him/her because of love, and the extra-ordinariness is not about being awakened, like I realize that I see my partner with this extraordinary feeling like she is pretty, the best that I have ever met, so I have this kind of belief that she shouldnt be like this or that and she must be like this or that, so everytime i discover certain facts, it triggers my negative thoughts. It’s like i worship her, I am not seeing her as a normal woman. I also realized that she is full with joy on the outside and sometimes she uses joy to cover the sadness or hurt inside her, but what triggers my negative thoughts strongly is she is absolutely okay with what happened with her in the past, my mind cant accept this reality. So it creates a lot of resistance in me, it feels so intense most of the time when I am releasing it. Sen, is this perception can be included as false sense in extra-ordinariness? Can this false sense be dissolved with allowing? Or i just need to understand that this is all is just a false sense of the mind?
Thank you Sen.