Trying to Simplify Your Life With a Complicated Mind?
Posted: Monday, September 21, 2009
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
"Mind is the forerunner of all things," a wise person once said, and this is very true. If your mind is filled with all kinds of words, thoughts, emotions, possessions, worries and concerns, and you fill it even more by trying to figure out how to simplify your life, then what happens is you find yourself being disingenuous, and not sincerely simplifying your life at all.
It's likened to the spiritual seeker who gives everything away, all his or her possessions, and leaves everything behind to find the truth, thinking that this will somehow instill wisdom and saintliness. The spiritual seeker, however, takes his or her busy mind along, and what happens is that after a certain amount of time, if a shift in consciousness, or how their mind looks at things, doesn't occur, then, just as water seeks its own level, the seeker returns to his or her old comfort zones and no progress is made.
Once the mind, however, really "sees" the damage one can possibly do to oneself with a complicated, busy mind that plays out as stress and uncertainty, then that very "seeing" promotes a permanent change where life automatically simplifies. The complications magically and painlessly fall away without any austerities at all.
So how does one begin to see in this special insightful way? Again, the busy mind cannot decide to "see!" Seeing is not a conscious decision. Seeing, in this special, life changing modality involves an emptying of mind. Therefore, mind can make a conscious decision to empty itself, but not to "see." Seeing is a result of something else (an empty, alert, alive, creative mind) and not a direct involvement. Mind must not practice "seeing," but instead practice "emptying," the ingrained habit patterns that automatically engage and make the mind and body react as robots.
Only an empty mind can truly "see." A filled mind can only interpret and react from dead computer files (which is the past). Seeing "what is," in this present moment, involves removing all the armor and protective layers of the defense mechanisms we have developed during our lifetimes, thinking that we needed them in order to make it in an aggressive and ambitious world. We have programmed ourselves from an early age to be competitive and aggressive, even in school, because in the world those things seem necessary in order to survive.
But here we are not talking about the world, which admittedly must be lived in, but are talking about a realm or state of consciousness quite different from the world, and which can be touched when the mind is simplified and still. This could be called the spiritual realm, and is a place that, once truly touched, will change your life immensely.
This is true simplifying. Once a life is simplified in this manner, i.e. when mind is emptied of all its garbage, then a brand new world opens up. And even a glimpse of this world, one time, is enough to convince one that life on earth is not what a deluded mind believes it to be. Life on earth is a kind of hell.
John.12:25 "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
Buddhism basically said the same thing 550 years before Christ when The Buddha had realized Enlightenment. He was at a loss to convey such inexpressible truth, but was eventually persuaded that there were those with "but little dust in their eyes" who might understand his teachings. So his first teaching was the Four Noble Truths, of which the First Noble Truth stated that life indeed involves suffering.
Of course, a deluded mind sees life as something different from that, and only when the mind is reminded that it is deluded, usually by a tragic event that the mind cannot cope with or figure out, does mind begin to see with a little insight. Many people have had brushes with death and have come out on the other side a changed person, simplifying his or her life.
Or to put in more succinctly, their life simplifies automatically because there was a shift in consciousness that occurred when the mind lost all its footing during a brief moment of trauma and became empty of all its conclusions, logic, and thoughts. And for a brief moment, there was true insight as the conceit and smugness of a mind, thinking that it was in control and knew everything, found out that it wasnt . . and didnt!
But it doesn't require a tragic event or great trauma to bring about insight. It can be accomplished with a practice, which is non-denominational and non - threatening to one's religious beliefs, which is called "meditation."
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