|
*Brian Wilcox 'The Unfurling of a Hidden Beauty - Peony'
Our work is to cross a threshold into emptiness and stillness. It is like entering an empty room that proves to hold a great presence. The apparent emptiness of simple presence is richer than the crowded experience of ordinary personality. We can either be empty with Spirit or full of ourselves.
*Kabir Edmund Helminski. Living Presence. Rev.
* * *
To assist in reading the following, I begin with a snapshot of "levels" of Being, which I have dealt with at length elsewhere on this site. The movement is from more gross to more subtle. Spirit moves by ascent and descent. Of course, we speak in metaphors - ascent, descent. Likewise, these levels are fluid and flow into each other, as well as domains, such as psychology, spirituality, and so forth. This is a broad-spectrum, and there are much more complex and detailed maps of Being. I prefer a broad outline to keep things more simple.
1) Matter - energy; physics.
2) Body - physical, form of things; biology.
3) Mind - mental; capacity for thought, thinking, reasoning; psychology.
4) Soul (Psychic) - essence of self, connecting point of spirit (soul) in the self and transcendent Spirit; dualistic religion and spirituality; philosophy. Sufism teaches the soul grows or does not in each person. I teach the soul is the one Spirit manifesting in each being - not only human -; the essence, or essential Self, is the one soul of all beings. Hence, the soul cannot grow; the self, however, can grow into alignment with soul, so through soul with Spirit. Growth does not apply to the soul, for it is the particularization in time-space of the universal-timeless Spirit. Though particularized in the self, the soul shares the universality-timelessness of Spirit. Hence, the soul is particularized universality.
5) Spirit - Presence, the Mystery, the Ineffable, the Tao, Being, God, Pure Spirit, the Father, the Mother, the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal, the One, Oneness; nondual religion and spirituality; transpersonal psychology; integral yoga. Often, I refer to Spirit as the Silence, Grace, or Life.
* * *
Distractions are part of spiritual Contemplation, with various mind-body dispositions, not all favorable to harmony with the Silence. In themselves, thoughts and body-mind states are not a problem. Still, learning to work with them - not fight against them - is required to steer the mind toward increasing order and clarity. Time in Silence is a way to retrain the mind, including to calm and lean it toward its natural purity and luminosity.
* * *
In Silence, the mind may be so moving one fails to relax into the inner rest. Dzogchen in Buddhism recommends the syllable "Phat!" said suddenly and loudly to cheer and clear the mind. With "Phat!," the mind empties and becomes transparent. One can use other means to welcome in lucidness and centering - among them a sudden opening and closing of the eyes, a single deep breath in-and-out. I call this cheering up the mind. It is, also, cheering up the body. For the body and mind share a single state typically: if the mind is at unrest, so is the body, if the body is sluggish, so is the mind.
* * *
Below, we will share a humorous incident from Anam Thubten, Buddhist teacher, and, then, we will explore the three energy-dispositions of the mind. Looking at these mind-states guides in recognizing dispositions in time set aside for the Quiet and outside it. With this knowledge, one can know when and how to assist in bringing the mind into its natural posture of lucid calm.
First, however, what is this mind? The mind is linked with the body and brain. We, for example, know the brain and heart communicate. The heart, also, has neurons. There is coordination body (with heart), brain, mind. The mind is a unity with the physical and vital, or the body and emotions.
In my work, when using "mind," context determines the implication. I may use "mind" in the Western sense, which tends to equate mind with thought. I most often mean "mind" as a capacity of the self-system, making possible deliberate thinking and spontaneous thought. The mind, then, is the ground from which thought arises and returns. Thought is mind minding. "Consciousness" is a suitable word for this ground and avoids the confusion of assigning mind as a "something," rather than a capacity.
No one can find a mind, yet we can observe the working of mind - thinking, thoughts. We can trace the flow of thought in brain patterns. Is, however, the brain the mind? I would say not. And NDEs, or Near Death Experiences, would agree with Buddhism and Hinduism, that consciousness can act free of the body. Hence, the mind cooperates with the body and brain, yet the mind cannot be equated with either.
When we say something like, "I can't control my mind," we mean thoughts are out-of-control - mental agitation accompanied by bodily unrest. This same applies to, "My mind is calm." We mean thoughts are not rushing through the mind.
When persons say they cannot meditate, for they cannot empty the mind, they are referring to negating thought. They are saying, "I cannot make thoughts stop." Making thoughts stop is futile. The Silence welcomes the flow of thought in the spaciousness of consciousness, with its innate calm and lucidness. No one need stop thoughts for the mind to be clear; the mind is always clear, as the sky is clear, when clouds or fog or smog pass through it. If we say, "The sky is unclear," we mean, "The clarity of sky is darkened by ...." The mind is naturally spacious and luminous.
Also, we need to distinguish between "thought" and "thinking." Thinking is a volitional activity of the will. One, to think, must choose to think. If one is in silent contemplation and thought is arising and dissolving spontaneously, this is not thinking. Thinking is a purposeful activity. In Silence, one can witness thoughts and know she is not thinking. Thought is occurring, and this thought is an expression of the potency of Spirit, through the True Self, or soul.
In fact, all below Spirit is an expression of the potential inhering in Spirit in completeness, manifesting in varied degrees from subtle to physical. We could say that all below Spirit are capacities of Spirit, including the body.
Hence, concluding this treatment of defining the mind - "Mind" is the capacity of thought, therefore of thinking, linked bodily with the brain and more subtle aspects of soul and Spirit. Yet, the mind-capacity appears not to be innate to the body, but of the more subtle aspects, for the mind functions beyond the body-life. One may find it better to use "consciousness" for the mind, to avoid confusion.
* * *
Anam Thubten -
One time in the city of Seoul, South Korea, a few people were riding with me to the hall where the weekend meditation retreat was happening. The woman who gave me a ride said that when she was young, now and then she would worry and be quite upset. Then she would stuff herself with chili sauce. It was so hot that it burned her whole body, and her train of thought stopped right there. She had found her own method to find inner freedom. Shouting Phat! is a lot easier in that sense.
*A Sacred Compass.
Fortunately, again, when we understand the nature of thought, we do not have to go to extreme measures to attack the thoughts. We do not try to calm the mind. We can welcome thoughts to slow down and their energy to sink back into the ground - consciousness.
* * *
So, we proceed to the three dispositions of mind, or play of consciousness. These are traditionally called in Sanskrit - Rajasic, Tamasic, Sattvic. I will give words descriptive of each.
1) Rajasic - Over-active, jumpy, racing, agitated, turbulent, over-eager, pushy, effortful. Pleasant or unpleasant thoughts apply. Metaphorically, over-bright.
2) Tamasic - Lazy, sleepy, downcast, depressed, despairing, overly passive. Metaphorically, dark.
3) Sattvic - Clear, lucid, tranquil, positive, balance between effort and passivity. Metaphorically, luminous.
In the early stage of meditation, the intent is to train the body-mind to be calm. With time, thoughts slow down, and one can remain restful and still longer in the Quiet. Mahayana Buddhists refer to this as samatha, "calm abiding." This retraining of the body-mind can be a major challenge for many, partly because most of us today are overstimulated mentally and physically compared to prior eras and cultures with less technology and information flow. For most of us, to attain this calm abiding in this lifetime would be a huge gift to ourselves, even if we did not evolve beyond that early phase. And this early phase is vital, for it is the ground of all additional development.
With the establishment of calm abiding, lucidity and wideness can arise and expand, even beyond sattvic. And sattvic does not mean one will not have times of rajasic or tamasic. Yet, with time, the sattvic disposition becomes more and more the norm.
Now, as to the reference to "wideness." Wideness is -
[T]he expansion of consciousness that comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out toward the universal; it is felt as a great substantial vastness giving the sense of oneness free and infinite.
*Sri Aurobindo. Integral Yoga.
Another term for this "wideness," and one I often use, following the work of Ken Wilber, is "embrace." To the extent that the self is free of compulsive, egoic thought and feeling, the heart, or soul, extends outward, more and more unconstricted by the egoic tendencies. One best moves in this direction with a single-pointed devotion to the Beloved: Spirit in whatever form one finds most helpful.
However, consciousness is beyond the three states, or movements - the states are movements, for thought is dynamic, not stable. Our true nature is state-less; rajasic, tamasic, sattvic are descriptive of the body-mind, with thoughts and feelings.
Finally, one experiences Presence that enfolds in itself whatever disposition that arises, neither needing to reject nor adjust it. Presence can witness thoughts dispassionately, with their respective feeling-states. Hence, the calm abiding sets the stage for the disempowering of feeling-states, corresponding to thought that captures the self-system and holds it captive, being pulled back and forth between aversion and attraction.
* * *
Initially, one has to be more involved in the process toward the Harmony. Over time, as one is drawn more into the Harmony, one progressively becomes less involved, more in a posture of alertness, openness, and receptivity. Aspiration and consent remain vital throughout, and this includes patience.
Hence, surrender becomes more central to the process, and surrender can take the form of the three thought dispositions. Yet, surrender appears different in the three mind-states. A tamasic surrender would be laziness in the Work, abdicating it alone to Life - "Here, you do it." A rajasic surrender is being overly-involved in "helping" Spirit, surrender itself being an effort. A sattvic surrender is a consequence of cooperating through less and less involvement in the process. A tamasic and sattvic surrender look much the same. Still, the latter is quite different, for the inner life has been ripened for a readiness to have self widened by the inner Work of Grace, now more than minimal involvement being a detraction. Surrender, then, in a spiritual sense and way of life, is true only with sattvic and beyond. Prior to sattvic, surrender cannot be sustained, for either over-effort or under-effort dominate, or alternate. Sattvic is the point of transcending even sattvic, where action and non-action become absorbed in the Harmony.
* * *
Hence, while Buddhism speaks of resting in the nature of Mind, I say to rest in the soul, heart, essence, True Self, Self, spirit, ... Buddhism does not believe, so it says, in anything corresponding to the "soul" of Christianity and Islam or "Self" of Hinduism - yet, I find Buddhism to be inconsistent on this matter, using language that often betrays its inability to dispose of an eternal Substance and eternality - eternality it, also, denies, and inconsistently.
In my teaching - yet reflective of much spiritual teaching -, we are not resting in the mind or Mind, unless we understand Mind as a capacity expressive of the soul-in-God, or in the Ineffable. "God" in this sense is Intelligence, and, hence, the mind-capacity is how the Infinite enters the self through thought. That is, to use traditional language, the self provides a system - most importantly the brain - for the grounding of the Mind of God in Nature. All phenomena, to varying degrees, reflect and express this Mind.
* * *
In conclusion, over time in Silence, the mind-body calms, introducing the sattvic state. This provides the grounding for the further descent of Spirit, or Presence, through the soul and its lifting of the self to an equanimity wherein the changing movements in the body, thought, and feeling are motions in Serenity. Ironically, this calm abiding is not the absence of conflict or disturbance, rather it is the True Self that in the Absolute can observe the movements associated with the physical and mental and feeling domains from the non-state of Stillness.
* * *
*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
|
