If there is no space in you beyond the perspective of ego, it makes you a very shallow person with no depth in your view of life. All forms of racism, intolerance, abuse, superiority complex and inferiority complex arises from a total identification with the ego’s point of view without any connection with the space of life. The brain’s perspective is what I call the ego’s perspective, the brain creates a structure of ego based on its sense of self and its surroundings – your name, gender, culture, country, family, history, possessions, status, physical looks, mental ability, can all become the identities used to build your ego structure in the brain.
You can imagine how narrow the brain’s perspective can be when it is has so many “idea based”, or label based, identities/beliefs – most of it is just external conditioning. Of course, the brain’s perspective has a value, and it also serves a practical purpose of giving a structure to your life (it’s important to have a physical sense of identity in this world, which makes it convenient to organize things) – however, if the brain’s perspective is all you have, it constitutes a shallow experience of life, and eventually does lead to some intense suffering.
Most of your psychological suffering can be traced back to the fact that you are holding on to some narrow egoic view by believing some deluded, and misguided, perceptions/interpretations of the brain. The brain is good for practical purpose, it’s a useful tool, it has capacity for mechanical intelligence, and memory, which serve a very important role in engaging in physical life. But if you are dependent on your brain to give you a sense of security and wholeness, you are totally looking in the wrong place. The brain is not the place you look for wholeness – the wholeness comes from your connection with your space of being. Of course, the brain also does come into a balance, when you connect with your being. When I say “connect with the space of your being”, it’s simply a pointer, and something in you can easily recognize what it means if you don’t try to over-analyze it.
You can’t know what’s right for you
The brain has several ideas about what’s right for you based on its limited vision. When you don’t get what your brain felt was the “right thing” to happen, you start feeling angry towards life. This is why most of your suffering comes from being identified with the brain’s perspective alone. If you can develop the maturity to realize that the brain does not really have the bigger picture, and hence can never know what’s the best deal for you, there is a sense of trust in life and an openness to allowing life to orchestrate the events rather than clinging to a narrow view of the ego/brain of “what should be happening”. The brain can create desires, visions and preferences, but there also needs to be a space in you to allow for a “leeway” in life to bring forth the realities which are truly harmonious for you in sync with the totality – it’s all about being in sync with the wholeness of life rather than just being rooted in a narrow egoic perspective.
You can look at the brain’s desires/preferences as the “blue print” which it passes on to life, this blueprint is not the “final copy”. The final copy is prepared from the wholistic vision of your life-stream which is in sync with the totality, and hence has the bigger picture. The final copy created in your life-stream is always way better, and way more harmonious, than the blueprint created by the brain. If you stay in a place of openness, without judging the events that happen, you will soon see the “order”, and harmony, inherent to life-stream which always functions from a deeper wisdom – life is not chaotic, it’s only the brain in its limited vision that imagines it to be so. The ego, in its arrogance, feels that it knows what’s right for it but there needs to be some openness to realize that it’s not possible for your brain to know beyond a limited vision (mostly created out of conditioning or some past experiences). So don’t be too hasty in believing the ego’s perspective; allow for it to be there but don’t be too identified with it.
The attitude of openness
When you are questioning “why is this happening or why did this happen”, it has a value if you use this inquiry to look within for patterns of resistance/conflict in you, but if you use this inquiry to blame life or to feel that it screwed up in some way, it just increases your resistances and negativity. Life is always trying to give you the best deal, for your growth/maturity/expansion, the only problem is that many of us are too resistant to allow it – we hinder our own well-being by developing huge resistances within us through identification with negativity.
You don’t really need to “try” and remove the negativity, because the brain which created the negativity hardly has the intelligence to remove the negativity – rather if you can just stay in a place of allowing by becoming fully open to what arises in/around you (the emotions, the thoughts and the events) soon you automatically start coming into a harmony. Scientifically, this happens because the natural pull of life is towards wholeness (which is its natural vibration) and hence when you let go, and stay open, you easily get pulled into this wholeness – it’s like releasing the hold on a rubber band, it automatically comes to a non-stressful state.
Staying in a place of “letting go” feels like losing control but in truth it brings you to a place of true control where you are no longer being pulled around by the vacillating perspectives of your ego/brain. You are no longer a prisoner to your ego – this is when you realize what true freedom is.
Sen, are you saying that we do not have a choice as to this awareness till we lose shallow living? Am I to understand that there was no way I could have learned this awareness sooner in life because I didn’t suffer enough earlier in life? Sure I’m elated that I am learning now and becoming a stronger being but I just seem to go in and out of understanding when I try to walk back into reality. It just doesn’t seem my surroundings are enlightened and part of me just doesn’t want to interact because I feel that sense of resistance and lack around ppl. At the same time I want to help ppl too, like you are doing but I don’t know how that works? People come to you with questions so it’s easy for you to help. I enjoyed the post about expression and experience so much but my creativity has still not kicked in and I feel I’m getting ahead of myself sometimes? Anyways back to the timing of my awareness and/or lack there of i’m sure I’m still in phase 3. do I need to just wait and keep learning? I guess I need a refresher on speeding up the process with balance and how to share with simplicity and tact? I know I learned the hard way with lots of suffering and time………should we help other suffer more to create their space? Help!?!?
Treeter, being unconsciously lost in the brain/ego does lead to suffering, it’s logical because the ego is a structure based in lack. So sooner or later, life experiences, cause us to start waking up from total identification wit the ego as we develop some power of awareness. When you have no capacity for awareness it’s not possible to see through the dysfunction of living in a purely ego-identified manner. For example, a child does not have a lot of capacity for awareness (that’s why we can’t remember much of our first 10-15 years, they just feel like a daze) and hence our childhood phase is mostly unconscious and is purely dependent on the conditioning and environment that’s influencing the brain. As we grow up our brain develops the capacity to observe more keenly, and reason, which is what I mean by the capacity for awareness, and hence has the “possibility” of waking out of the negativity created through total ego-identification. So anyone who has some awareness in themselves, who have the receptivity to bring some awareness into their behavior, are well capable of waking out of the unconscious negativity.
Obviously, suffering is a good teacher because it’s mostly during our suffering that we try to look within or try to look for a better way of living. But it’s not needed to reach desperate situations, or circumstances, in order to wake out of negativity and make a choice to live a life of alignment. One can wake up quite easily if one is just willing to “observe” the negativity of ego-identified behavior in them or around them, the capacity to observe and reason out is basically all that’s needed to wake out of an unconscious loop of negativity – not everyone has this receptivity because a lot of people are just totally lost in the mind and would be unwilling to want to observe their own negativity, and would rather prefer to live blaming the outside. Such people are not ready for waking up, and it’s totally fine because they will when they are ready. Your job is to bring stability within yourself first and align with your lifestream, so that your natural expression can come through – the only way you can be of help to the external reality is when you are fully aligned with yourself first.
Dear Sen
If one goes with complete openness, and just allows and accepts situations and events. Does this also take away from the inspiration and enthusiasm of doing new things. Doesn’t one feel so relaxed that he does not want to struggle for anything anymore?
Ritu, it’s the other way round, when you become fully allowing you become resistance-free and thus become receptive to the moment to moment inspiration of your life-stream which cause you to indulge in activities/actions that are aligned towards manifesting your desired reality, plus you feel joyful/effortless/inspired which doing them instead of feeling a sense of strain/struggle. When you are aligned with your life-stream (which automatically happens when you become fully allowing) you only let go of things that were toxic to your well-being, or those that were inducing you to live a mediocre life, you will not have the energy/willingness to do activities that are not really aligned with your natural make-up – you just purely become one with your natural expression.
Thanks Sen. I am yet to feel that insipiration, I am feeling more dettached than anything else
Ritu, for now be fully allowing of this sense of meaninglessness or detached feeling and soon it dissolve to give way to a sense of deeper inspiration towards engaging with physical life in your expression. You can read the comment by Jenny and my response to it on this post – awareness deepens your experience – where she talks about the same (the comment is towards the end).
Thank you Sen
Sen, a quick question:
Where does instinct come from? Many times I sense things, or I have a “gut feeling” about things, and whenever I listen to that “inner voice”, it always guides me very well. Of course, some people have stronger instinct than others.
Does instinct come from a place of Being, or is it merely part of the mind’s genetic make up?
Instinct, and inspiration, always comes from your inner space (your connection with your life-stream, which has the bigger picture). This instinct can be translated by the brain in many ways depending on its vibration, when the brain is rooted in negativity it can easily ignore or misunderstand the instinct. Whereas a brain that’s rooted in stability can be receptive to the inner guidance/instinct in a clear way.
Dear Sen, I’ve been dealing with a situation that’s brought about much self hate….you see I have too much of a self righteous nature. If i know someone else is wrong and no matter what I say that other person wouldn’t change I still can’t prevent myself from rebuking the other person, though i know that the other person’s reaction due to my action would make the situation worse, I still do it…this brings nothing but hurt, can you suggest to me how to stop at the moment and just let go?
Sen
I just want to say that you have really saved me from the drudgery i was continuously feeling from past 3 years.. i adamantly refused to the changes life brought me.. and was(still am but progressing) totally engulfed in the Brain’s perspective of life.. i want to thank you from the core of my heart for the wonderful insight you have shared with the world.. i cant even imagine what you must have gone through that forced you to do such an intense research on life.. i religiously follow your insights and have made them a way for leading life.. keep spreading the joy. May god bless you..