All experiences have an infinite “depth” to them and it totally depends on your level of consciousness as to how much of its depth is accessible to you. A human being who has very little depth of awareness in him/her is usually only at the “surface” of an experience and hence misses out on really savoring the deeper dimensions available in every experience. This is one reason why “awareness” is likened to “aliveness”, the more the depth of awareness in you the more “alive” life feels to you.
People who are restless and always want to get to the “next thing” are usually the ones who are living on the “surface” without ever experiencing the depth of each moment. There is so much depth to explore in every “Now” moment that there is hardly any possibility of feeling bored – I don’t know what boredom is anymore because there is so much aliveness and depth even in the most ordinary moments – in the senses, in the mind, in the thoughts, in the feelings, in the sensations and in the “beingness”. But there was a time, when I had very little depth in my awareness, and I was highly restless constantly focused on getting to the next thing.
Get out of the “waiting” mode
Most humans are perpetually hinged on “waiting” for the next thing to happen in their life, for them all moments become a means to an end – an end which never arrives, and thus keeps them constantly in a restless and stressed out mode. When they are alone they want a relationship, when they have a relationship they want to be alone, when they are free they want some work, when they have work they want to be free – there is never any time when they really savor what “is” but are always focused on what should be. It’s fine to project into the future and desire scenarios that you wish to experience, it’s part of the mind’s job to do this – but if there is no part of you that is “aware” of accessing the depth of whatever “arises” in this moment, your whole life just becomes a movement on the “surface” with no real dimension of depth in it, making you feel empty all the time with rare moments of aliveness.
If you are constantly restless, frustrated and feeling “empty” it’s an indication that you are missing out on the depth of this moment and are looking for “something” (which you can’t figure out yourself) that you think is missing. If you access the wholeness of this moment as it is, you will know that nothing is missing – every moment has a beauty of its own, even those moments that feel “negative” to the mind have a dimension of beauty in them if you are can bring your “awareness” to its depth. Awareness allows you to bring the wholeness of your being into each experience instead of just the “narrow” presence of the judging mind.
Stop waiting for some “chocolate flavored” moments to arrive, when they do arrive enjoy them, but don’t live your life out waiting for these moments alone. Life is mostly very ordinary, and there’s beauty to this ordinariness when you are willing to access the aliveness and depth that’s present in every single moment.
Living on the surface vs living in the depth of life
When you read some books you can sense the depth in the way “reality” is described, and in some other books you get a sense that it’s just a surface-level treatise of reality. When you listen to some music you can sense a depth in its movement, whereas in some other music you may not get the same experience of depth. One painting can evoke a sense of surreal depth, while another painting just leaves you cold. A certain movie can evoke deep emotions in you while another movie would just feel empty. The depth present in the composer of the words, music and art, is what gets reflected in their expression – it can evoke a sense of depth even in an observer who is not aligned with his/her depth.
Someone who is living on the surface, with very little depth of awareness, does not have access to the deeper dimensions present in their reality, hence their experiences are surface level, and their expression lacks a dimension of “depth” too. Three common traits that mark the experience of a person living on the surface are – boredom, restlessness and irritation. They feel a sense of “emptiness” no matter what reality gets manifested around them. They can hardly sense the depth in the nature, in materials, in their energy or in the “presence” of another person or living being. They are constantly looking, for what they are missing, in the “horizontal movement” without realizing that the wholeness they are seeking is in the “vertical” moment, in the deepening of awareness into the depth of their being – which allows them to access the depth in the external reality also.
There are people who go to visit spiritual teachers, not because they get to hear anything new, but because they enjoy the experience of feeling the depth that emanates from the words and expressions of this teacher. The truth is that there is no end to our depth and our awareness can keep moving into deeper and deeper depths of our being – there is no end point to the depth that can be allowed in our awareness. It’s an infinite exploration.
There is so much to explore if you start looking at each movement from the dimension of depth rather than from the dimension of “surface-level”. When you watch, when you walk, when you eat, when you kiss, when you touch, when you are enjoying a sexual activity, when you read, when you rest, when you talk, when you listen, when sensations arise in you, when you are in pain or pleasure, allow a part of you to bring an element of awareness to the moment – this awareness will keep getting deeper as you allow it, and the deeper it gets the more colors and dimensions become revealed in each moment, the more you can sense the beauty that each experience affords and the more you connect with your own depth – life is whole each moment, this is who you essentially are, and you can sense this “wholeness” on a moment to moment basis when you allow awareness to move deeper and deeper in you.
i love to read ur stuff! : )
Depth of life is generally replaced by accomplishing targets only.That may create restlessness and doubts in ones mind.But sometimes i feel isolated by observing things in depth .Why
The bottom line is that any negative feeling (like the feeling of isolation that you talk about) arises from the mind’s interpretations of the moment. However, the mind is not at fault because it’s natural for the mind to have fears of isolation and deprivation. Don’t try to resist this movement of the mind, rather just bring a field of open awareness to these thoughts in the mind, allow yourself to observe it’s thinking patterns while staying as a field of passive awareness. The mind can seem to get bored, it can feel lonely and depressed all of a sudden, and it can contemplate that ordinariness of your existence – allow it the freedom to go deeper into this contemplation of life, this allows the mind a “depth” in its understanding of reality. It’s not required that the mind be cheerful all the time, that’s not the point.
As you allow the mind the freedom to stay with these feelings of isolation, it will gain deeper insights on life and about its own reality – this allows for a mind that’s receptive to depth of physical life rather than just be focused on surface-level movements of entertainment. Just stay as a space of awareness and allow the mind to go deeper into any feeling/thought that arises. The contemplation of the negative feelings is what allows for freedom from its influence – in fact negative and positive are just two faces of the same coin as far as “physical” is concerned, one cannot exist without the other, the body will always have its highs and lows – but you can find a permanence in the peace that’s present in your being (as this silent space of awareness) no matter what happens on the surface. All feelings and thoughts are like ripples/waves on the surface of the ocean, the depth is always at peace. Stay as this depth and allow the movement of physical feelings/thoughts without resistance, this allows for a wisdom and harmony to operate in your life.
Love it!
i simply love what you write! beautiful 🙂
you truly are a genius… how long did it take you to discover this information, and then to apply it to your life succesfully?
Once we start becoming stable in our awareness, so that we are not totally pulled into the mind’s momentum, it start’s the journey towards dis-identifying with the negative momentum that has accumulated over the years. So basically deepening in the power of awareness is the bottom-line of this whole process of becoming free of the imprisonment of negativity and thus coming to rest the wholeness of your being. It took me close to year and a half to come to a stability in my awareness(I started on this path when I was 27 and now I am 29), during this time I was privy to all the doubts, questions, insecurities and curiosity of knowing the truth of the being that I am – the more rooted in awareness I stayed the more available I was to the insights from within and from outside that started clearing away the resistances in the mind towards letting go of the negativity. Presently I find myself in a deep stability and spaciousness in my being where the momentum of negativity has ebbed away to the point that it no longer has any hold or influence over my vibration. I just write these posts out of an inspiration within to write, it’s just an effortless flow of insights that come through.
So it really didn’t take you that long at all…? I have always thought that enlightenment or whatever you want to call it was a life long process. So what helped u to speed through this process? Lots of meditation?
Enlightenment simply means to understand/know (or be enlightened) who you really are (your non-physical and physical natures). To allow this understanding to be the pointer that connects us with our wholeness is what “enlightened living”, or conscious living, is (or what I call living in alignment with your life-stream). The very definition of “meditation” is to “meditate” (or contemplate) the nature of reality of life – it’s a scientific inquiry into seeing through the limitations of conditioning by questioning them with a intense curiosity for the truth of life as opposed to just living on the basis on some conditioned beliefs. A lot of people misunderstand the very purpose, or meaning, of meditation and start using it as a “technique” (like breathing techniques and practices like that) to suppress the mind rather that allow its questions, doubts and insecurities to be the “catalyst” that guides us to our true understanding. This is why my pointer is to not fear your mind, but to become “aware” of it’s movement, allowing its fear/questions/doubts to touch your being and thus allowing a clarity to come through, in this clarity you automatically start letting go of identifying with the negative momentum and thus start aligning with your wholeness or natural vibration of joy/love. When one misunderstands what enlightenment is, and goes about in a “vague” manner of using techniques to suppress the mind, they spend a lifetime trying to get to some “transcendental” state of being – usually becoming “drop outs” trying to detach from physicality. When you truly come to a full understanding of your “being”, you will no longer be in the movement of “seeking” but would come to a rest in your wholeness and experience physicality from this place, you enjoy the physical realm (which is changeful and fleeting) from the place of permanent wholeness in your being – this allows for a harmonious expression of physicality, you become aligned with your natural/creative expression as this human form expressing yourself in your full potential and experiencing the flavors of physicality.
Well there was a time in my life a couple years ago I became very successful with meditation and actually had a very deep and life changing experience with it. Unfortunately I have ruined it(through reasons I would rather not reveal) and for the past couple years have tried on and off to achieve it again. For some reason now I find it very difficult to see any constant progression with it like I did in the past. I think that maybe its because I have expectations of the the way it should feel and the way it should happen, unlike when I first experimented with it I had no expectations of it and just let what happen happen, thus I saw constant progression and started to feel the magic in life. I want to achieve this freedom from the ego, and discover my true self. I pray every night for help with finding my soul, and discovering my true happiness. I believe fiinding your website is literally an answer to my prayers. Anything you say I am listening to with an open heart and ears.
Meditation, when used as a practice to detach from the mind, can give you a “taste” of your wholeness because you will achieve moments of “no thought” (or no mind) that allows you to sense the aliveness and joy of your being. But the mind will return, it’s part of physicality, and thus thoughts will return, and then it becomes a “fight” to constantly want to get back to that state of “no thought” and thus we start trying to get rid of the mind which we “think” is the block to us attaining the bliss that we tasted through meditation. Meditation techniques can give you a “taste” of your wholeness but it would only be a fleeting taste – it can last for a few weeks or even a few months, but it will pass away and the mind will return, because you are in this physical realm and you cannot avoid the physical realm by getting into the cave of meditation. True freedom does not come out of techniques, but out of “understanding” the truth of existence of who you are. Every technique only makes you a prisoner to it eventually, like it happened in your case that you spend 2 years trying to re-create that “taste” that you had when you first meditated – so unconsciously you’ve become no different from an addict who wants to get back to that bliss that he got from the drug, in your case the drug becomes meditation. But if you are really honest with yourself, you will know that you are trying to “escape” the mind, you want to escape its noise, its insecurities, its conflicts – and you are hoping that meditation would somehow take you to some place that keeps you away from the mind. This is exactly the mindset of most people who become stuck in “spiritual practices” without ever truly experiencing the freedom of their being for a lifetime.
The first step for you would be to stop running away from the mind and bring your awareness “into” it. The mind is not your enemy, and the only reason its agitated is because it does not have clarity about life. The mind, or your physical being, wants to manifest certain desires, and that’s the creative expression of your physical form – but it doesn’t know how to manifest it so it tries to “escape” it, using techniques to suppress its movement. The more you suppress the mind, the more suffering you endure because you are opposing the very movement of your life force. There are several posts on this blog relating to understanding your potential as a creator of realities, the science of creation, identifying the momentum of negativity in you (in all forms) and thus letting go of it, aligning with your life-stream and allowing your natural expression to unfold as this human being. The “taste” of wholeness that you had when you first meditated, will return back to you as the permanent state of being when you let go of the negativity of the mind, not by escaping it, but by dissolving it through understanding and self-realization.
So when you say to bring my awareness into the mind, do u mean that when thoughts come and go you just accept them the way they are? Thats alot easier said then done. Because when negative thoughts come, even though I’m hardly putting my attention to them, they still take a stranglehold and manage to ruin my mood. I’m definitely not an overly negative person by any means, but I feel my fair share of it to the point that at I can’t say I love life. What are some of the daily practices you used to achieve freedom from your ego?
When I say bring awareness into your mind, it’s about “understanding” the mind’s movement deeply – it’s not to be used as a “technique” or practice to ignore or deny the mind. Awareness allows you to stand in a place of wisdom and understand the mind’s movement (in an attitude of curiosity and inspection), irrespective of whether they are negative thoughts or positive thoughts, in a bid to get to know your mind, to bring the intelligence of life to the space of your mind – don’t take this as some technique to keep distance from the mind, trying to shut it up or trying to run away from it. The pointer is to bring a unconditional awareness to the mind rather than sit in fear of the mind. When you mentioned that the negative thoughts of the mind spoil your mood, it’s because you “identified” with them rather than staying as a space of awareness that’s trying to understand the dynamics of why the mind is producing the negative thoughts in the first place – your attitude should be one of “curiosity” rather than being so sensitive to its interpretations and perceptions. Understand that since you can watch your mind, you are “before” the mind, who you are is the aware energy focused in this physical body, you must understand that this body/mind is a very temporary aspect and will soon dissolve, it’s not who you are “permanently”, it’s just a vehicle that you are using presently to experience physicality – if you become totally attached/identified with the body/mind alone, you will forget your true wholeness, you true nature as this open aware energy (whose natural vibration is joy/love). These are all pointers, just try to see if it resonates within, because something in you already knows this truth about who you are.
I don’t recommend “practices” or techniques, because all techniques are “escapist” mechanisms rooted in “fear”. What is of value is “understanding”, only through understanding can there be clarity in your being about life (about yourself), and only in the space of clarity can you live with freedom. What I recommend is that you bring a fearless awareness into the mind, an unconditional awareness with the explicit purpose of getting to know all the nuances of your mind. Contrary to what people think, a human mind has very limited dimensions and when you bring a steady awareness, introspection, into your mind on daily basis you will get to know all the dimensions of your mind – you will understand the natural make-up of your mind, its natural inclinations, desires, skill-sets and “personality”. When you truly understand the personality of your mind and align with it, you will no longer need to hide behind any false “personas” in a bid to fit in. Enlightened living has as much to do with understanding your physical nature as it has to do with understanding your non-physical nature.
The only reason people attach to practices and techniques is because they want to “escape” the mind’s domain, but anything you try to escape will keep you a prisoner to it because of your fear of it. True freedom is when you realize that you don’t need to get freedom from anything. The whole notion that you need to be free of the ego is what keeps you shackled to negativity. You don’t need freedom from Ego, you just need to be free of negativity – not by trying to escape negativity but by understanding the dynamics of negativity and bringing a wisdom into it, so that you are not influenced by it and are able to dissolve it as it arises. If you try to escape the negative thoughts, you will be constantly a prisoner to it. “Understand” the reasons why the mind is feeling negative, inquire into it, bring an open awareness it, get to the core rather than just looking at the surface of thoughts. If you try to escape the mind, you will never be able to look at its core patterns, you will always just be in fear of it. Enlightenment has nothing to do with escaping the mind or ego, it’s about bringing wisdom/understanding/wholeness into the mind and the ego, dissolving aspects of negativity in it and becoming aligned with your natural expression as this human being (thus allowing the manifestation of your desired realities and creative expression). The ego is a required thought structure in the mind to have a meaningful experience of physicality.
I sometimes give the practice of staying as a “detached” awareness of the mind, this is only a temporary practice that I would recommend to someone who is just waking up from mind identification. This practice allows one to grow in the strength of their awareness. However, you’ve already been meditating for quite a while so this practice is not needed for you. What’s needed is that you bring an unconditional understanding of the workings of your mind, get to know its movements, get to know its insecurities, fears, resentments, questions and doubts – and allow yourself to stay allowing to life to bring you the answers and insights. They will either arise from within or you will be guided towards some external source to get the answer and solutions. It’s all about opening up to the wisdom of your wholeness and the only way you can do it is by bringing an unconditional, open awareness to the mind which comes from a place of love rather than from a place of fear.
Hi Sen!
Sometimes I find myself “indifferent” with life and my mind produces thoughts like “What’s the point of doing all this inner work and growth and experiencing the growing pains for the mere “ordinariness ” that is life??” Yeah there are good times in life, but there are “bad” times too – and times that are downright dull and sometimes it feels as if I am just trying to “get through” my days/weeks. I know this is just a mechanism of my mind and I need to just allow it without attaching to it – but there really is no inherent “point” to life – so sometimes the “pain” that accompanies physical life or just merely trying to “get through the day” doesn’t seem worth it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suicidal or anything – I just get complacent. Does that make sense….?? Have you ever experienced this?
Thank you for helping us all 🙂
I really do appreciate you..
Jenny, it’s very natural to reach this phase where the brain (with its ego structure) sees through the ordinariness of life so fully that it’s no longer holding on to any “delusions”, or fantasies, about reality. This just means that you’ve come really deep in your journey of awareness and have now been able to see through all the delusions, all the unreal perceptions, that your brain was holding onto (which was defining its personal expectations and meaning). The path forward is to allow this sense of meaninglessness to be there fully, don’t try to suppress it by using some distractions. Allow this feeling of total meaninglessness to arise fully in your brain, in your ego, and you will see that it shakes loose some subtle resistances you had towards allowing your natural expression (your life-stream) fully. Once this resistance is gone, you will be able to merge fully with the pull of your life-stream and hence start becoming an expression of your life’s intent (the intent that created you).
Everything is born in an intention in the wholeness of life, and the natural makeup of your mind is a product of this intention, and there is a natural expression that you are born to live. That’s the meaning of your presence from life’s perspective (which is the perspective of totality, or universal perspective). The brain (the ego structure) feels meaningless because it doesn’t have it deluded perceptions anymore, but now this allows the opportunity to fully let go into the pull of life (since you are no longer holding on to any personal expectations). When you let go so fully, a different force takes over, the force of your life-stream, which is way different than the force of ego. When this force of your life-stream takes over, you just start living out your natural expression freely and hence live out the inherent purpose of your creation.
It’s funny – I was thinking exactly the same thing last night around the same time- about the meaningless of life. I’d experienced this meaningless intensely about one and a half years ago – deep feeling of what’s the point of life, but I guess i still had many delusions to let go of.
This time, it feels almost like apathy, like giving up, like “whatever”, like you describe Jenny. I no longer feel that any travel experience, work, relationship etc is going to fulfil me for long, even achieving/getting things that I’ve desired. I feel almost dull. I thought I was regressing,.Thank you Sen for your response.
Thanks Sen! I am definitely getting to know my “brain” better these days. One thing my brain tends to do is question everything haha – (aka why this? why that?) It’s fun to just allow my brain to do what it wants without attaching much to it – I should have “known” that I need to allow the complacency as well. Thanks so much for all your help!
So grateful for this page at this moment. I did knew mind was unnecessary worried (normally) for feeling meaningless, but this just helped so much. Thanks for post and comments.
I too can relate at this moment. Its like nvibes states – have the confidence that desired reality will manifest, but lost interest in manifestation or desiring. Does not seem like anything can be fulfilling. Like Sen says, allowing this too