investigation of inner self
Daily Reality You Cannot Deny
The world is an illusion, life is like a dream, nothing exists but you. So what?
You look your daily life, the bills still waiting you to be paid.
You still anticipate about a reason why your back screams with a real pain,
what a diagnosis may be? You hear drops in the kitchen, it is a leaking
faucet begging to be replaced. The worry about another expense hits you like a wave. An honest
question arises in you head, if all of this is an illusion, why is so much
trouble around you?
The first step of awakening
This is a valid question. You are caught between a profound truth of
nonexistence and your daily reality you cannot deny.
The world is a dream, true. Nevertheless, the mosquito in the dream can bite you,
and it may suck your blood and it will itch you. You have to play your part in
the dream. Think about it. If you dream that someone threw a stone at you, you
quickly move to avoid being hit. You don't stop in the and meditate on the
illusory nature of the stone. You act. You respond to the rules of the
dream.
The same in life. You act. There are two actions you may perform: necessary
and unnecessary. The bill arrives, you pay it. The body gets sick, you see a doctor. Someone
cuts you off in traffic, you hit the brakes. Spirituality was never meant to
fix daily problems. Freedom is found in activity. Freedom is
understanding that as you act, there is no actor, there is just action.
Your life, with all its celebrations and joys, sorrows and suffering,
successes and failures, is indeed an imagination. An epic, complex movie. Sometimes
beautiful, sometimes terrifying. The body you inhabit, the personality you've
built, the name you answer to, all that is part of the grand stage of life.
And you are completely absorbed in the story. You believe with every atom of
your soul that you are an actor.
So when the suffering comes, you suffer. When the body ages, you fear death.
When the actor is betrayed, you feel the pain. That is walking sleep, a
psychological state of dreaming. Awakening is seeing through imagination by avoiding
unnecessary.
The steady resistance against the unnecessary is the
secret of happy life
There is no good and no evil. In every concrete situation there is
only the necessary and the unnecessary. The needful, what has to be done, is right, the
needless is wrong. The situation decides the action and the outcome. Every situation is a challenge
which demands the right response. When the response is right, the challenge is met and the problem
ceases. If the response is wrong, the challenge is not met and the problem remains unsolved.
Sum total of all unsolved problems is what constitutes your life. Solve them rightly and be free.
The world problems are created by numberless people like you, each full of his own desires
and fears. People may be stupid, selfish and cruel but also people may be wise, affectionate and
kind. It all depends of circumstances, the needful is good and the needless is evil but the world
is driven by a notion that the pleasant is good and the painful is evil. That is a grievous mistake.
Welcome to awareness!
When you watch a movie you may notice that all is a play of light produced by
fast projection of millions of pictures onto screen. The screen does not care about the plot of
the movie. In your life you have something that resembles the movie screen, it is the your
feeling of presence, your I AM sense.
The presence doesn't care about the events of the world. It simply allows all
worldly images to pass into presence, unaffected, without judgment, without
resistance let them to be there.
The bill you need to pay is an image in your movie, the pain and the doctor's
diagnosis is a scene. They are real for the character, but they cannot touch,
stain, or harm the presence that is your I AM sense.
Okay, you might ask. I understand the metaphor, but how does this help me on
Monday morning when I have to go to work and deal with a difficult boss?
It all depends from your attitude
You can pay the bill with a knot in your stomach. Your mind may be screaming,
"I don't have enough money! Why are things so expensive? What's going to
happen next month?" You are suffering and your action is steeped in a time, in
regret for the past and fear for the future.
Or you may be fully consciousness of the presence and you look at the amount, you make the transfer.
The action is the same. But internally, there is silence. You deal with the reality of the moment.
The action is done with a clarity and peace. This is action without an actor.
It is the doing that flows from the presence.
You will forget these words, the worldly events are compelling, and you are playing a role you
have played for a lifetime, the great forgetfulness will catch you. That's the reason you
must do meditation. By meditation I mean intentionally staying into the presence and making the
I AM sense the place of all your actions. Your only practice is a gentle, compassionate act of
self-remembering, again and again.
Each time you remember, you will find that the world, which once seemed so strange, so big,
solid and threatening, is actually harmless emptiness, the meaningless nothing.
