Tag Archives: Surrender

Dark Night of the Soul

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Spiritual awakening doesn’t happen because you master some spiritual technique. There are lots of skillful meditators who are not awake. Awakening happens when you stop bullshitting yourself into continual nonawakening. It’s very easy to use disciplines to avoid reality rather than to encounter it. A true spirituality will have you continually facing your illusions and all the ways you avoid reality. Spiritual practice may be an important means of confronting yourself, or it may be a means of avoiding yourself; it all depends on your attitude and intention. -Adyashanti

Three years ago I had a shift of consciousness. It was not a sudden opening and it didn’t really feel like a big deal at that time. All that really happened is that I read Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now, and it made complete sense to me, whereas on previous readings it had not.

With the shift, I started exploring, mostly through reading.  I went through a period of high-energy and ecstasy. Life was eventful, fun and easy.  Just to be and breathe was delicious. Decisions came to me pre-made. Life was living itself, experiencing, in peaceful flow. I traveled. I wrote. I was engaged with family and friends and living.

I was also dealing with feelings of deep longing for someone. This was a little bizarre, because I had ended the relationship two years before. I was surprised that there were feelings that I had not been conscious of, and was really surprised at the intensity of the feelings.

After about a year and half, life slowed down. The ecstasy waned. Agony waxed.

The feelings of longing and what I had thought was unrequited love continued, and even intensified, to the point where I sometimes felt it was unhealthily obsessive.

There was anxiety, and this was a shocking disappointment. How could I feel anxiety, when I thought I had awakened out of depression and anxiety and the rest of the mess?

I have written about releasing anxiety, and releasing compulsive thoughts, and how to reconcile the feelings of longing.

Edvard Munch: The Scream

Even with this releasing though, what remained was not fun. For a long period I felt apathetic and detached and alone. There was no zest to life.

This depression is different from clinical depression.  In depressive episodes in the past, I had felt a deep sense of nihilistic futility and unhappiness. This spiritual depression was not unhappy or nihilistic. It was apathetic and inactive and indecisive.

I’ve heard this described as spiritual depression or the “dark night of the soul.”

Why agony

Consciousness is more conscious but embodied patterns continue.

The mind loves to run through its grooves of conditioning. My conditioning includes patterns of depression and withdrawal. For me the dark night shows up as ennui. It may be different for you. Old patterns die hard.

The agony of awakening is often exacerbated by expectation. We have certain ideas of awakening, usually very romantic ones. We’ve heard about oneness and bliss. The ego wants in on this, and it creates ideas of an enlightened future where we’ll be super-spiritual, super-effective, super-happy—essentially super-human.

So when old-habits re-emerge, it’s quite a let-down.

I think many people are even reluctant to talk about it, since they have set the expectation in themselves and others that they had permanently shifted to some sort of a blissed-out dimension.

We may feel that we are not fitting in. We feel inadequate and alienated. We’re in the middle stages somewhere with this awakening thing, and we may feel that there are people who seem be able to completely embrace awakening. Their lives, seemingly, are flowing and easy and directed, and yet here we are, somewhat opened up, and yet dragging the heavy burdens of old tendencies, unable to let go.

And the old drivers are no longer helpful. In the past, we may have been able to “power through”, by setting goals, and by positive thinking, and with self-discipline and effort. We now have the intuition that this sort of self-forcing cannot be sustained.

Friends and family may be concerned, and may try to help, but at this point we realize that nobody can really help us. It has to all come from inside.

We may find that our concepts are no longer of much help. We’ve probably at this stage left behind the need to intellectually dissect and understand. We find though that even spiritual concepts are of no help. We read about karma and compassion and acceptance and letting go, and yet these concepts no longer help in any real way. There is a continual checking back—what is it that I don’t know, what is it that I’m not doing, what is it that I’m doing wrong? Where is the damned flow that people love to talk about? Where is the freaking joy and peace that everyone vehemently shouts about?

And these times seem never-ending. Will I really see the light? Is there really a light to see? Or is this all some complicated play of the emperor’s clothes, illusions within illusions within illusions?

We can’t even go back to our old pretend-lives. We can’t muster up the old pretenses and drivers and make ourselves a conventional life in the sleepy auto-pilot mode, giving only bare attention to what’s going on inside us. Once there has been a willingness to see, there is no turning back.

Nothing seems to help. Certainly no thought or emotion or belief can help us for long. We don’t want to pretend any more. We don’t want the temporary solutions of discipline and re-arranging beliefs. Where do we turn? What do we do?

What to do

Well, I don’t have an earth-shattering answer.

This was not a satisfying article to write. I have presented a case for spiritual depression. I don’t know that everyone who is awakening goes through it, but there are enough references out there to suggest that many of us do.

Adyashanti talks about it here. What was striking to me here was the voice of the questioner.  Her despair and uncertainty come right through.

Whatever agony is showing up in us has always existed in us. It’s nothing new. It’s showing up now, a little differently and more acutely, because we are waking up. At some point, we recognize this, and we stop resisting. At some point, we realize that the only problem there ever is, is resistance.

And this may be it. The purpose of these agonizing states may be the opportunity to surrender. The answer may be in the very problem. The answer is in the questions we ask ourselves: where do we turn, what do we do.

It is not what we do. It is what we stop doing. We stop resisting.

In the next few articles I will consider this further.

Have you experienced this ebb and flow? What do you do about it?

Acceptance is not something we do; it is something we stop doing

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Rock Flow

photo credit: the_tahoe_guy

We sometimes have trouble understanding concepts like awareness, release, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, non-attachment, surrender and so on. I suppose these can be called ‘spiritual’ concepts but ‘spirituality’ is word that gets caught in my throat. It really doesn’t want to come out cleanly. It’s like God—it’s so filled up with assumptions that it’s a dead end.

The trouble is of course that we try to understand these as concepts. If we learn to let go, we realize a strange revelation that all of this seemingly-complicated stuff is really all about letting go.

Acceptance

As a concept, we think acceptance is tolerance or resignation or passivity. So the question that come up is how can I accept something I don’t like? If someone is beating me over the head should I accept that? If you tolerate someone beating you over the head–that is not acceptance. That is insanity.

Acceptance is not something we do. It is something we stop doing.

Acceptance happens when we let go of the inner resistance to what is happening anyway.

Notice that the ego always wants to resist. The ego thinks that by resisting it can muster up motivation and energy to change something. The ego feels if it does not resist, then things will never change.

Acceptance is simply letting go of the mind’s lurching and resisting to what is happening anyway and then we find that the energy we put into resisting is available for easy action, if that’s what we want to do.

Forgiveness

This is an important path for many. Forgiveness in my experience happens when the need to forgive or be forgiven is let go of. When we realize that everyone—everyone—does the best they possibly can under the circumstances of conditioning, there is no need to forgive or be forgiven. Forgiveness is the letting go of the need to forgive.

Gratitude

Gratitude is quite fashionable these days, made into a designer spiritual concept around the Law of Attraction, something like “ok I’m grateful already, now give me more.”  It’s reminiscent of the ancients who tossed virgins into volcanoes to show gratitude to harvest gods. That’s rather wasteful of virgins.

When we can let go of all the rubbish, what remains is the easy love of life, and that is gratitude.

Non-attachment

This is a beautiful Buddhist concept which brings up visceral resistance. What do you mean let go of attachment? Attachment is the very thing that I love, it is love.

Non-attachment is not the purposeful suppression of compassion or love or sex or music or anything else that makes up living. It is simply a detachment from the drama of the ego. It is the easy knowing that everything is simply a point of view in awareness, and when we are awareness, and not wrapped up in any particular pattern in awareness, we can see that everything is equal.

Compassion

Love-joy-peace-compassion is not easy to describe because it’s not a thought or an emotion. It’s just being. We could say it is our most basic state  when the rubbish is let go of. Rumi said it best when he said compassion is as the Sun loves the Earth. There is no particular expectation or direction, and yet compassion happens.

Awareness

When we can let go of the attachment to thinking, we can see the whole. This is Awareness.

As we let go of our attachment to thought and beliefs, more and more we experience warmth, a creative outlook, compassion, and ease. We can call this wisdom or intuition. It is a broadening of perspective, by which we can easily see that all points of view are contained in the whole. It is an intelligence which is free of beliefs and time and the stale structures of conditioning. And we find, with some surprise, that it is much easier to float in Awareness than to be caught in the thinking mind.

It is letting go of the attachment to thinking to see the whole.

Release

In the beginning it may take some practice and effort to release, but we soon see that letting go is not something we do; instead it is something we stop doing. We stop the madness of holding on. Most of us are not able to see this right away so a practice can help us be still enough to remember, and when we remember, it is no longer a practice.

Effort and Practice

When you read about personal development or spirituality these days there is often advice given on the virtues of seriousness. We must be serious, we must want success, we must be courageous, passionate, purposeful, disciplined, strong, smart. We must learn and understand, we must persevere, we must not procrastinate, and we must work hard.

If your instinct has told you that the answer is not in these virtuous words, that’s immensely good news.

Awakening does not ask us to create and re-arrange beliefs so we can continue to run around in mad circles.

Awakening asks only for self-acceptance. If you feel beaten down, mediocre, ineffective, depressed, anxious, failed, miserable, tired of the cycles of madness and struggle, welcome, because you are ready-people. All you have to do is realize that whatever you have become is a perfect adaptation to what’s happened in your inner world. It could not be any other way. There is nobody and nothing to blame, inside or outside. Accept. And then the play of awareness and release begins.

I talk about the practice of Awareness and Release here. These practices, like any other practice, can feel like effort in the beginning. At some point we understand what it means to let go of effort, and we let go of effort, and we let go of practice, and this is gloriously freeing. Then it is just effortless noticing, and perhaps the event or enlightenment happens, or it doesn’t happen, but it doesn’t matter, because this flow of awakening deepens on its own, and all that we struggled with before–all the seeking and clinging and chasing and learning and explaining–are seen as simply points of view in awareness, one no more or no less equal to the rest. It’s just Awareness, and everything else, including this mind and body, are points of view in Awareness.

What to do

There are many practices to help us get started. The ones that I like are ones that are easy to integrate into daily living and do not require jumping through the hoops of learning and memorizing concepts or sitting down in a lotus position at prescribed times for a prescribed amount of time.

“Observing thought” is a one such practice. Simply be a passive witness to your thoughts. Watch the voice in the head. Don’t analyze or interpret or interfere. Simply watch, and the gaps of no-thought will become apparent and expand.

Many of us come awakening when we are miserable, and so for this I suggest a release practice, like this one.

Everyone’s journey is unique and meanders in the way it will. One thing that I’ve found very helpful is to develop a gentle inquisitiveness, a gentle honesty.

Banish the ANGST of the Law of Attraction

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The Law of Attraction is not wrong. It’s just upside down.

The Law of Attraction does work–Patanjali mentioned it two thousand years ago in the Yoga Sutra, and the ACIM says thoughts can move mountains, and the Buddha said everything we are, we have thought. The Bible says “Ask and ye shall receive.”

The problem is wanting. In our dualistic minds, we have come to fervently believe that there is no getting without wanting. We have also come to intimately believe in substitute desires. We replace the desire to be complete (more accurately to stop the continual effort of resisting the completeness which we already are) with many other substitute desires, for money, for the perfect partner, for status, power, control, security and so on.

The LOA is very much a part of this insanity. Whether the LAO works or not is not important. What’s important is to look at this gnawing desire we have to want that the LOA to work, even in the face of contradiction.

The people who use the LOA or believe in it, most likely live in a western country, and belong to the approximately 10% of humanity which is disproportionately blessed. The LOA does not seem to work for 90% of humanity which struggles for bare subsistence, water, food, shelter, safety and basic rights.  It does not work for victims of genocide and war. It does not work for victims of fate and the accident of geography. It does not work for starving children.Yet, some of the 10% incredibly blessed are able to say that, yes the LOA may not work for truly unfortunate, but it damned well better give me money or the perfect partner because that’s what I want.

Joe Vitale was one of the original pushers of the LOA in The Secret and today he has reversed himself. He says LOA intentions are actually limiting. LOA intentions are narcissistic and egotistical; it cannot be any other way, and they obfuscate divine inspiration.

There is truth to LOA but it’s not at all what the cluttered, dualistic mind believes it to be.

The LOA’s promise is not much different from religion’s promise of heaven in the future, or science’s promise of a high-tech utopia in the future, or the hidden colonial promise of a beautiful, mono-culture world. The LOA is possibly more unabashedly materialistic than the other promises. The important underlying theme in all promises is that they are all about the future.

If you’re using the LOA or ‘master-minding’ or visualizing or a similar spiritual practice, you are limiting yourself. You are a billionaire begging in the streets because you don’t realize you are a billionaire. Your limitations are your desires. In the cluttered mind, you hear the noise of egoic desires, and are deaf to true intuition and inspiration. What are your desires? Power—do you want money? Approval and security—do you want the perfect partner to walk into your door? Better health? You want to be more attractive? Maybe you want to save the world from itself? Whatever the desires are, can you look at emotional aspects around the desire?

If you look at your desires in awareness, you see that all desires come from the need for approval, control, security, or avoidance of the fear of separation, and, interestingly, their opposites. I find it easier to generalize and say that desires arise from the need for power or the fear of powerlessness. It’s difficult to thwart or release desires. It’s not necessary to thwart or release or rationalize. See if you can release the surrounding aspects—the emotional needs around desires. Does the desire arise from the wanting of approval, security, control, or is from avoidance of fear? More simply, does the desire stem from the wanting of power, or the fear of being powerless? Can the emotional aspects be released? The desires may vanish; if they remain they are inspiration, not egoic desires.

What do you think? Have you been using the LOA? Has it worked?

Update:

Namaste Gentle readers,

A reader asked where Joe Vitale recants. Here are two links where he talks about inspiration versus intention.

http://blog.mrfire.com/secret/why-i-gave-up-intentions/

http://blog.mrfire.com/loa/the-truth-about-intentions/

But really, does it matter what Joe Vitale says? The intellect cannot contain the Truth of reality. We are of course free to take on other people’s beliefs and words, but the only truth we can count on is direct experience, not beliefs, and certainly not beliefs we desperately want to believe. My experience is that egoic desires manifest if we put a great deal of effort and struggle behind them, because  focusing on egoic intentions energizes the limiting beliefs around them. True inspiration comes from Awareness. It is far more powerful, and needs no motivation, discipline, or beliefs.

To an extent the LOA is even an obstacle to awakening for many. The problem is that these practices (the LOA, positive thinking, the call for optimism, etc) are really based on denial. Even when we can get away from the unabashed materialism of the LOA, the problem is that the LOA and similar practices are based on focusing on the positive, which can only be done by denying and suppressing what we consider the negative. The suppressed negative does not go away; indeed, negativity festers, and this is why the LOA and positive thinking do not work for most people. True transformation happens when we can completely face up to who we are, accept what is, without judging it positive or negative, and let it go.

Awaken first, and experience truth for yourself.

Update July 30:

A quotation from Gina Lake:

However, the subject of positive thinking is complicated by the fact that some positive thinking is definitely ego-based. Some positive thoughts are just more of the ego’s stories or lies and simply reflect its fantasies and desires and, therefore, only continue to keep us out of the present moment and in its unreal, made-up world, rather than free us from it. A lot of the thoughts that attempt to “manifest your reality” are of this nature. They are imagining a future the ego wants and trying to make that happen. That’s just what egos do. Egos also imagine negative futures, and those teaching manifesting are just teaching people to try to create a more positive one. These positive thoughts and imaginations may be useful if they are aligned with Essence’s intentions for your life. But if they aren’t, they just cause more suffering because you still won’t get what you want—and now you’ll blame yourself for it. The idea that we manifest our reality is leaving a lot of people feeling bad about themselves. They believe that they should be able to create the reality they (the ego) want. But—guess what—nobody consistently succeeds at that because there is something much bigger than your ego here, and it is orchestrating your life and everyone else’s for the wellbeing of the Whole, and not necessarily catering to your ego’s particular desires and preferences. Although your will is a factor in creating life and certainly in your experience of life, your will doesn’t determine what happens (although the ego would like to think so).

Some people have succeeded at manifesting something they wanted because it was Essence’s intention to give it to them anyway. They thought they created it with their will, but Essence created it or allowed it. Sometimes our negative thinking interferes with receiving the opportunities or abundance that Essence intends for us, and when that is the case, positive thinking can help remove the blocks to receiving that. However, what isn’t acknowledged by those teaching manifesting is that sometimes limitation is the experience Essence intends for us for the time being because a great deal can be learned from it. If that is the case, all the positive thinking in the world won’t bring abundance until Essence is ready to allow that. This Intelligence that we are is very wise in bringing us exactly the experience we need to evolve us, that is, to make us more wise and loving.

Another problem with positive thinking is that it may be used to deny feelings. If sadness is present, for instance, it isn’t helpful to declare “I’m happy.” Positive thoughts can be used to neutralize the negative thought that created the feeling, but if negative feelings are present, then being present to them is what is needed. Being present means allowing whatever is. If a negative feeling is there, you say okay to it and let yourself experience it (without feeding it with more negative thoughts). Just let it be there and see what you can discover about it. Being present to a feeling with compassion and acceptance will reveal the negative belief that caused it, and once you see that, that is often enough to release or dissolve the feeling. At that point, bringing in a positive thought to neutralize the negative one might be helpful. For instance, if you discover that you are feeling sad because you are believing the thought “I will never be loved,” you can counteract that with the truth (which happens to be positive): Love is abundant in the universe and in me. Love is available to me now and in every moment when I choose to recognize it and express it.

The kind of positive thoughts that are most helpful are those that reflect Essence’s viewpoint, or Truth, which is essentially that life is good, life is trustworthy, and you are divinely loved and treasured, as is all of life, and you are having exactly the experience you need for now. All is well and in good hands. Rest, allow, love, and be.

Acceptance – 7th Awakening is Simple book excerpt

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“Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally” -Tolle

Acceptance is hard.

The mind thinks acceptance is defeat, resignation, stoic tolerance. The mind thinks acceptance is locking in a reality it doesn’t like. The mind thinks acceptance is giving up hope.

It’s actually just the opposite. Change happens only after complete acceptance.

We believe that time heals. Time does not heal. Acceptance heals, but acceptance is a delicate thing. It’s not a resignation. It is not a forced accptance that says I don’t like accepting but I will because that’s what I should do. It is a complete acceptance of what is, without grasping or running away from the present. And then, miraculously, life knows what to do.

Look at the moment-to-moment grasping that the mind does. Look at it with Awareness. Be completely still, and fall back into the Now, and you will see that even in this stillness, there is the jumpiness of grasping. We are in a constant process of becoming. Can we release this movement, this becoming, this ‘shoulding’ and just be, right here, right now?

This is Acceptance.

Acceptance is internalizing the rightness of here and now. Acceptance is a loving allowing.

Stop all delays, all seeking and all striving. Put down your concepts, ideas and beliefs. For one instant be still and directly encounter the silent unknown core of your being. In that instant Freedom will embrace you and reveal the Awakening that you are.  -Adyashanti

You read something like this, and you will nod your head and say, yes, this makes sense. I will accept what is. The next time something “bad” happens, guess what? It will be hard for you to accept, perhaps even harder than before because your attention is on trying to accept. But the time after that, it will be a little easier. And again, it will be easier. It keeps getting progressively easier.

If you have a hard time with acceptance, or don’t quite understand it, don’t worry about it. It develops naturally with deepening Awareness and Release.

What is your experience? Can you think of something that was difficult to accept? What is it that allowed you to accept it?

The Paradox of Effort

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Once there was a man who hated his own shadow.
When he walked and found that his shadow was close behind him,
he began to walk faster and faster.
But the faster he moved, the closer his shadow came.
So he ran like a madman.. and in the end, he dropped dead.
Those who do not understand the Dao are just like the man
who hated his shadow. It is actually very easy to be rid
of one’s shadow — just rest under a tree. Just rest.”
-Zhuang Zhou

There’s a Zen story about an eager young monk who checks into a monastery and is rearing to go get this thing called enlightenment. “How long will it take?” he asks the abbot.

“Ten years,” replies the abbot.

“That long! Why so long?” exclaims the horrified young monk.

“Did I say ten? I meant twenty.”

“Twenty?”

“So sorry, I think it will take you thirty years.”

paradox effort Buddha
photo credit: frostnova

Asking “How long?” will get you ten. Three strikes will get you thirty.

As soon as the expectation or imagery of awakening pops up, you get thirty years.

You may have heard that you have to want Awakening as much as a drowning person wants air. And you may have heard you are already enlightened, it takes no effort. Or perhaps, that effort itself is an obstacle.

Which is it? Effort? No Effort?

Here’s a small taste of no-effort. Close your eyes. Listen to the sounds around you. Hear a sound without labeling or interpreting. All you are doing is sensing the sound. Meet the perception half-way. See that there is no time-delay between hearing and sensing the sound. There is only a time-delay if there is interpreting or labeling or figuring out the sound. When sensing and hearing are one, there no delay and no effort.

The mind knows effort. The mind knows struggle. The mind knows how set a goal and take steps with effort and discipline to get what it wants. Awakening, however, is a very different process.

To live a flowing life, there is nothing to get and nowhere to go and nothing to learn. The mind in fact has nothing to do with this process. We want a realization of what is obvious, right in front of us, here and now, and something we have always known. Effort takes us further away from this realization.

The mind of course rebels at this. The mind will create all sorts of images and models of what flow is, and it will struggle towards that. The mind will think that to even have a small chance at success, we must struggle and understand and strive. This is why religions and spiritual traditions are full of effort-ful knowledge-seeking and rituals and methods. The mind loves methods and practices and knowledge—even spiritual knowledge.

No-effort is an utter relaxation of the mind so that the natural functions of Awareness can do the job. No-effort is not the same as laziness or giving up. Giving up, in fact, is a lot of effort. It is the effort of pitting beliefs against beliefs until the whole thing collapses.

The mind will not understand what no-effort is. If we could surrender the craving for happiness, surrender the constant need for change, surrender the struggle, surrender the moment-to-moment fleeing, and surrender to Awareness, we would awaken instantly. Awakening does not take time or space. It isn’t an accomplishment or an achievement; it’s just very natural, simple and ordinary.

The simplicity of this dazzles the mind.

So what can we do? We can practice until, through direct experience, we know what it means to give up effort and struggle. It is important the practice be very simple. It is important the practice is effort-less. The practice of Release and the practice of Awareness both go in the same direction. Release removes painful resistance and the painful past. Awareness accesses our innate non-thinking intelligence.

As we release and access awareness, we understand the nature of struggle and effort, and at some point, with huge relief, we are comfortable giving up the need to understand and the need for accumulating more knowledge. We began to trust our innate intelligence. Some very basic assumptions that we have always taken for granted begin to unravel. This does not take effort or thinking. Assumptions that we have made about the nature of time, the nature of craving-struggles, the nature of intelligence, the function of emotions and thought, and the nature of beliefs and desires begin to dissolve. We see that awakening is the most relaxing thing we can do. If we meditate or do yoga, we begin to see that meditation and yoga are not a means to some goal, instead they simply are about being utterly present and effortless. We see that living is simply being utterly present to experience. When we are relaxed into presence, we free up a great deal of energy that previously went to craving and grasping, and paradoxically, we find that life flows.

In its rise effort is inspiring, in its release, gloriously freeing!

It’s just Awareness and Release. Is that effort?

Flow…In a Few Words

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flow2It’s all about accessing our natural ability to be in flow. When we are in flow, living improves without effort on our part. Flow is happy, non-resitant living in the Now. It is so very natural that when we “arrive” it’s hard to remember how or why we ever lived a life of struggle.

Where is happiness to be found?

We look for joy outside, in power, relationships, accumulation and many other things that make up living, when joy is already shining inside us. Consciousness, uncluttered with mind-stuff, is an an unlimited source of joy and peace and flow. It is what makes life flow, without the friction of struggle.You already have direct experience with this. Whenever you have experienced joy or flow, it could only have come from inside. You may have thought it was related to an external event, it could only have been internal experience-an experience available to us at anytime.

What is flow?

It is our natural state, where living is without struggle. When we are aware, right here, right now, without the burden of mind-stuff, without the burden of past emotional baggage, we find that life simply knows how live in a natural, effortless flow, with joy, peace, intelligence, compassion, and all that we consider good. You may have experienced momentary flow during times of falling in love, absorbed in a creative activity, playing a sport, or a in a joyful event. Flow has nothing to do with the event; it is our natural being.

What is the obstacle to experiencing flow?

The deep identification with our mind is what keeps us in struggle. Mind is thought in all its forms: thought, emotion, ego and conditioning. We are so deeply identified with thought that thought has become compulsive and absorbing, and it is difficult to see that consciousness can be free of thought. Awareness is silent, peaceful, joyful, vast and utterly present.

How do I flow?

There are many methods. What works for me is the effortless two-step dance of Awareness and Release. All awareness techniques come down to being effortlessly aware of what’s going on inside of us right now, right here. All Release techniques come down to letting go of resistance, including letting go of past emotional baggage. It does not take effort or self-discipline or knowledge or ascetic practices or spirituality. It is about letting go of analysis, judgment, beliefs, cravings, aversions, and fears. Most of us cannot instantly surrender the mind. What we can do is to simply be aware and release, effortlessly.


What are the best techniques?

The ones that work for you effortlessly are the best.

For me, a two-step dance of Awareness and Release techniques works very well.

The Release technique (similar to the Sedona Method) is the easiest. Releasing emotional grooves and conditioning is easy and natural for us; we have just forgotten how to do it.

Awareness is gently shifting attention from thinking to Awareness. “Inner Stop, Momentary Awareness” may be a good one to start with. In the end, all techniques lead to being Aware in the present, without effort or technique.

The two-dance practice of Awareness and Release is effective, and both techniques are easy to incorporate into daily living. With practice, you will know what resonates with you, and determination will build without effort. Play around.

Why the emphasis on effortless? How can we get anything without effort?

The mind knows effort and struggle. Flow is very natural to us and flowing happens when the mind can release the very familiar cycle of struggle and effort. The mind will have the tendency to make flow into the usual process of achievement. It will set it up as a goal, try to understand it, accumulate knowledge and techniques, measure it, and make an effort towards the goal. That is the opposite of flow. To get into flow is much simpler. All it takes is effortless Awareness and Release. In the beginning, it may take a little effort to get used to the techniques and reverse the constant effort the mind is familiar with.

What else can I do?

It can help if we decide to rely only on direct experience rather than beliefs and concepts. It can help to understand the workings of the mind, such as thought, emotion, conditioning and the ego. It can help to understand the nature of intention and attention. It can help to learn to accept what is, right here, right now. Acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, Big Love, Imperturbability, attention on action not outcome…these are all heart techniques that lead to a feeling of joy. It can help to drop all demands of the universe (or God, or the world, or anyone). It can help to understand and release desires and fears. It can help to remain present with what is.

Flow…A Few More Words

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flow

Is flow the same as awakening?

Yes. We can think of ourselves as varying degrees of consciousnesses and unconsciousness, dreaming and awakening, illusion and awareness, and resistance and flow.

What are the obstacles to waking up to flow?

The first obstacle is the deep identification to thought. We are so addicted to thinking that it is hard to see another possibility. Once we have this insight, another obstacle is that mind will look at awakening as it does everything else—something to attain. It can show up as the attachment to particular practices, beliefs, effort and struggle. The ego can become “spiritualized,” and it will love to absorb beautiful and delaying concepts. It’s important to understand that flow and awakening are not something gained, but instead they are resistance lost. Another obstacle is the fear of awakening. This is the mind’s resistance. It is the ego’s fear of its own end. This can show up as “I will become emotion-less?” or “I will lose the ability to reason” or “I need to understand more before I can practice.” The antidote is simply to start practicing.

What’s the difference between Awareness and Release techniques?

Awareness techniques are about shifting attention from mind to the awaring presence; Release techniques are about letting go of the mind’s resistance. In my experience, Release techniques are soothing, and so if you start with just one technique, a Release technique may be easier.

Do I need to meditate?

No. You can if you want to, and sit-down meditation does help with awareness and release, and has far-reaching physiological benefits. The same goes for Hatha Yoga, exericise, getting enough sleep, good nutrition, and community.

Is getting into flow hard?

You simply start with practicing Awareness and Release. This will have immediate benefits to living. Don’t worry about when the Awakening event happens in linear time. This process is unlike processes the mind is used to. This is natural and effortless, though sometimes there is effort to overcome the mind’s resistance, and sometimes there is effort until the nature of effort is understood. There is nothing you need to change in your daily life. You can go about your usual activities, only with more presence and awareness and less resistance. Your interest and intention will naturally increase. The benefits are immediate and cummulative.

Do I have to give up desires?

No. It is best to accept everything about yourself just as is, including desires. Release the emotional baggage around desires. This is removing the clingingness of cravings. Sometimes in this process desires may vanish. What remains are true intentions, and intention-action is living.

How long will it take?

It can be instant, or it may take a lifetime, or somewhere in between, or all of these. It doesn’t matter, because the benefits of practicing Awareness/Release are immediate.  Don’t worry about the Awakening event or when it happens in linear time or even if such a thing is real. This is an effortless,  life-long, ever-deepening process. In my experience, the release techniques work right away and improve life and living immediately.

What do you mean by mind?

Here, by ‘mind’ I mean the mental framework of thought, emotion, conditioning, and ego. We know what thought is. Thoughts have become highly significant for us, when they are in reality transient and insignificant. Emotions are highly energized patterns of body sensation and thought-stories. Conditioning is the store of past reactions, which the mind uses to determine attitude, behavior, preferences, dislikes, cravings, aversions, and judgments. The ego refers to ego-stories, our definition of ourselves in the mind. The attributes that we consider good, like intelligence, love, joy and peace arise in consciousness, not in mind.

What is the nature of intention?

Attention is the spotlight of Awareness, and intention is the direction in which attention is pointing. Intentions are very powerful. We do not know this because in our noisy minds, it is difficult to recognize an uncluttered intention. The nature of intention becomes clear as awareness expands.

What is the nature of attention?

Attention is the spotlight of Awareness. Whatever attention shines on will expand. However, it is also true that what we resist, festers. Our attention is usually wrapped up in thought-stories, and so the stories expand. When we shift attention slightly to witness thought, the momentum of thought diminishes. Our attention is frequently absorbed in the stories of ‘negative’ emotion. When we shift attention so we can see the whole mechanism of emotion, the negativity is released. It is a mistake to force attention only on what you consider the ‘positive.’ Negative-positive is a judgment in the dualistic mind, and the outer world and inner world are intertwined, so forcing attention on the ‘positive’ is cutting off half of reality from Awareness. The nature of attention becomes clear as Awareness expands.

What is the nature of time?

Our only experience of time is the Now. Our experience of the past is memory which we experience Now. Our experience of the future is imagination which we experience Now.  The experience of Now is true and undeniable; anything else we may think or feel about time is based on superstitious concepts of time. Without thought, there is no sense of time. Without a sense of time, there is no thought.

Another way to see this is realize that everything we feel, think, are, and do, is influenced heavily by our past—by conditioning and memory. We can imagine that if we had no past, our actions and feeling of well-being would be very different. We certainly would not be haunted by recurring thoughts, obsessions, addictions, and fears. The fact is, we actually do not have a past that can be experienced. It is only memory and conditioning. When we can release the conditioning, or rise above it, flow is natural and inevitable.

Do we have free will?

When we are caught in the mind, conditioning (samskara) heavily influences our thoughts, choices and actions (karma). There can be no free will in the mind. However, the choice to expand awareness is a fundamental choice available to all of us at any time.

I know acceptance is important but it is very difficult for me to accept my circumstances right now.

Acceptance is indeed important; no true change can happen until we have completely accepted and owned up to who we are, right now, right here. The mind sees acceptance as tolerance of a bad situation, or resignation, or a stoic sort of “I don’t like it but I will bear it” thing. The mind is also afraid that in accepting, it is locking in a reality it doesn’t like.

Acceptance is the absence of resistance to the present. With many of these things, it is only with direct experience that we can truly understand. Release techniques are a great help.

Acceptance, gratitude, “don’t mind what happens,” surrender, metta (lovingkindness), forgiveness, and others are all ‘heart’ techniques can help dissolve resistance and open us up. Understanding of these deepens naturally with practicing Awareness and Release.

All this stuff is fine, but life is full of problems. How will this help me get a job, pay the bills, deal with divorce, deal with death of loved one, loneliness, health, emotional pain, and all the other problems in life?

Life is our best teacher. Anytime is a good time to make the choice to awaken. I can say that when we are the awaring presence, there are never any problems in life. The only problem with living is that we carry the enormous weight of the past with us in each moment. If we could simply look at each moment, in the present, without the burden of past beliefs, concepts, delusions and stored reactions, we can easily imagine that we would glide through living with effortless effectiveness. There are no problems; there are only situations to deal with in the present, and nothing in life can affect our true and constant nature; however, all this will be meaningless to you right now. No answer will satisfy the mind. The answer is to see for yourself. Awareness and Release techniques will have immediate benefits in daily living.

What about the Law of Attraction?

This is a matter of putting the clichéd horse before the cart. Intentions and thoughts are certainly creative, but at the level of mind, it is difficult to hold an uncluttered intention. Desires and beliefs arise from associative memory and conditioning, and they can exist only in the context of their negatives. You may have the desire that the perfect partner will walk in the door for you, but along with that you have many negative beliefs, such as that you are not good enough to love, you will never find anyone compatible, and so on. Some New Age methods suggest we replace negative beliefs with positive beliefs, or get rid of limiting beliefs. What I suggest is that there is no need to rationalize, and you don’t need an external authority to tell you whether to have desires or how to have desires. What you directly experience in Awareness is your only truth. I suggest that if we want to give the Law of Attraction or similar beliefs an honest try, let’s do it at ‘higher’ level of consciousness, where there is less clutter in the mind. I also suggest let’s look into the compulsion to be attracted to these ‘fast-food’ spiritual and self-improvement methods that promise to easily manifest our cravings, and let’s release aspects around this tendency.

Do I need a teacher?

I learn from reading; however, I recognize there is great benefit in belonging to a community with similar interests. There is great benefit in sharing experience. My experience is that a teacher or teaching should be more conscious than I am, and the teaching has to resonate, and that it does not require a lot of effort, it is easy to integerate into daily living, and that it does not come from a ‘spirtualized’ ego.

Some say we can never awaken, or that it takes no effort and we are already awakened, and “call off the search.” If we can’t awaken why practice? If it takes no effort, isn’t practice itself effort?

Yes, it can be confusing. The mind or ego is what decides to awaken and decides to practice. The mind or ego can never awaken, just as a character in a night dream cannot wake up. The reason to practice is so we can flow and we can enjoy immediate benefits in living, and so we can see reality just as it is, and not because we are trying to attain a big-bang event called “awakening” or “enlightenment.” Practice is about letting go, including letting go of effort and struggle. Often these paradoxes are confusing and frustrating to the mind, but sometimes, at the right time, they are exactly what we need to hear. Sometimes these paradoxes jostle the “spiritual seeker” who is trapped in seeking an awakening event in the future. Rely only on direct experience, and use others’ words and experiences only as signposts.

Will this help me with depression?

Awareness and Release have helped me with depression and anxiety. Depression can be anger and hurt turned inward. It can help to learn to release these emotions rather than turn them inward, and there are techniques available to help us do that. In depression, it is sometimes difficult to feel the emotions at all. If we can’t feel, we cannot release. This can make depression a difficult affliction. Awareness and meditation can sometimes increase our sensitivity to emotions. These techniques can help, and they have helped me, but of course nothing I say should or can replace medical advice.

What is Karma?

Karma is action that arises out of our conditioned past. Samskara is the conditioned past in us. Your conditioned past will determine the actions you take in the present. Of course, you can simply choose to live in Awareness and not by your conditioned past.

In the west, we think of Karma, as payback. I don’t see much use for this concept.