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#3892 - Friday, May 14, 2010 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
The Fundamental Secret
by Colin
Drake
The movie ‘The Secret’ proposes that one
can get one wants by applying ‘the law of attraction’.
‘Ask, believe and receive’ is the motto of those that
wish to create abundance by applying the power of their mind and
positive thinking. However there is a much more fundamental
secret by which one can realize that one is, at the deepest
level, totally abundant and lacking nothing … even if it
appears this is not the case at the surface level of body/mind.
When this realization kicks in one finds that ‘each moment
is enough, or perfect, in itself’ and this leaves one truly
‘wanting nothing’, in both senses of the phrase! Then
‘asking, believing and receiving’ is truly too much
effort, and even the thought of ‘positive thinking’
seems positively exhausting!
This ‘deeper level’ is always present, for
it is within this that the body/mind appear, and can be readily
discovered by direct investigation into one’s moment to
moment experience:
1. Consider the following statement: ‘Life,
for each of us, is just a series of moment-to-moment experiences’.
These experiences start when we are born and continue until we
die, rushing headlong after each other, so that they seem to
merge into a whole that we call ‘my life’. However, if
we stop to look we can readily see that, for each of us, every
moment is just an experience.
2. Any moment of experience has only three elements:
thoughts (including all mental images), sensations (everything
sensed by the body and its sense organs) and awareness of these
thoughts and sensations. Emotions and feelings are a combination
of thought and sensation.
3. Thoughts and sensations are ephemeral, that is
they come and go, and are objects, i.e. ‘things’ that
are perceived.
4. Awareness is the constant subject, the ‘perceiver’
of thoughts and sensations and that which is always present. Even
during sleep there is awareness of dreams and of the quality of
that sleep; and there is also awareness of sensations; if a
sensation becomes strong enough, such as a sound or uncomfortable
sensation, one will wake up.
5. All thoughts and sensations appear in awareness,
exist in awareness, and subside back into awareness. Before
any particular thought or sensation there is effortless
awareness of ‘what is’: the sum of all thoughts and
sensations occurring at any given instant. During
the thought or sensation in question there is effortless
awareness of it within ‘what is’. Then when it has
gone there is still effortless awareness of ‘what is’.
6. So the body/mind is experienced as a flow of
ephemeral objects appearing in this awareness, the ever present
subject. For each of us any external object or thing is
experienced as a combination of thought and sensation, i.e. you
may see it, touch it, know what it is called, and so on. The
point is that for us to be aware of anything, real or imaginary,
requires thought about and/or sensation of that thing and it is
awareness of these thoughts and sensations that constitutes our
experience.
7. Therefore this awareness is the constant
substratum in which all things appear to arise, exist and
subside. In addition, all living things rely on awareness of
their environment to exist and their behaviour is directly
affected by this. At the level of living cells and above this is
self-evident, but it has been shown that even electrons change
their behaviour when (aware of) being observed! Thus this
awareness exists at a deeper level than body/mind (and
matter/energy[1]) and we are this awareness!
8. This does not mean that at a surface level we are
not the mind and body, for they arise in, are perceived by and
subside back into awareness, which is the deepest and most
fundamental level of our being. However, if we choose to identify
with this deepest level – awareness - (the perceiver) rather
than the surface level, mind/body (the perceived), then thoughts
and sensations are seen for what they truly are, just ephemeral
objects which come and go, leaving awareness itself totally
unaffected.[2]
This awareness is always present, for without it we
would not be aware of our own thoughts and sensations. Once we
see this, and can identify with this deeper level of awareness,
then it can be readily realised that ‘each moment is enough,
or perfect, in itself’, for awareness just witnesses ‘what
is’ at any given moment without wishing to achieve or change
anything. Then this ‘each moment is enough’ becomes a
powerful tool to overcome boredom, insomnia, mental restlessness,
mind created suffering etc… For awareness itself is never
afflicted by these problems, and identification with this gives
perfect peace for awareness is always still and silent, which is
perfect peace.
I have found that ‘each moment is enough’,
and identification with this deeper level, is a marvellous way to
overcome boredom whilst on long flights, as the time seems to
pass miraculously and boredom completely vanishes for awareness
itself is never bored. In fact boredom is a property of the mind
caused by it judging every moment and seeking to change ‘what
is’ to suit its own preferences, whereas awareness itself is
always content and at peace.
This ‘each moment is enough’ is also a
great way to overcome insomnia, for once the mind identifies with
awareness it stops worrying about sleeplessness. When this occurs
sleep automatically takes over if the mind is tired, and if not
the peace provided by identifying with awareness provides
refreshment and relaxation.
So for me ‘each moment is enough’, which
implies identification with the pure awareness that one already
is at the deepest level, is the fundamental secret. This leaves
one ‘wanting no thing’ and ‘being nothing’
for awareness is not a thing, but is the constant conscious field
of subjectivity which sees, or witnesses, everything appearing in
it.
In fact ‘each moment is enough’ can be a
‘magic bullet’ to remove all mental anxiety and
agitation. If these do occur then they too can be a wake up call
to the fact that we have stopped identifying at the deeper level
and are back at the surface level of body/mind.
Beyond the Separate Self aims to provide a framework in which one can investigate directly the nature of Reality, through considering one's moment-to-moment experience. Once the discovery of the deeper level of pure awareness has occurred then one can replace ‘ask, believe and receive’ with ‘investigate, realize and relax’!
Find out more about Beyond the Separate Self at
http://nonduality.com/btss.htm
[1] The theory of relativity, and string
theory, show that matter and energy are synonymous.
[2] C. Drake, Beyond The Separate Self, 2009,
Halifax, p.18-20