“… only if it was that easy to wait/observe and not act when your Mind is racing @ lightening speed… Isn’t observing and waiting for a change not a thought in itself?
What lesson is life teaching if someone does not even have basic necessities to survive, abused physically/mentally? – will be hard to develop acceptance and trust.
Love to see your response.”
If your shoelaces come undone, it is because it was done.
Thank you for your question for the common good.
If you make a knot while tying your shoelaces, sooner or later that knot will need to be dealt with. That is Life. There is a process to get there and a process to get out.
Who is the observer?
If it is the “I,” that is not an observer. That is a doer. That “I” is the one trying to figure things out through methods, beliefs and pressure from others, how to untie the knot.
There is an “I” and there is “no-I.”
The “I” is the one known by most. Who is waiting? The “I.” The “I” is observing from a self centered personality while separated from everything else.
“MY mind is racing at lightening speed. What is the method to stop it? Perhaps “I” should “observe it” and “wait” to see if that method works for ME… Hey, I just came up with a thought… It is “my” thought even though “I” did not willingly think about it…This change should be “natural,” I wonder why is not “natural” to Me yet?”
The above is one interpretation of what Ahnanda is trying to explain, but it is far from what Ahnanda means.
If we are only using our minds to make intellectual sense of this, we are wasting our time.
That is not “bad” at all, for it is part of our process. So even that misunderstanding is completely “good.”
How could I express “no-self” through English words structured to use “I,” “you,” “him,” “her” at every corner?
Your mind wants an answer to “resolve the problem” of experiencing the “misery” of “racing thoughts.” Right?
Ahnanda says: Open your heart, your feelings…
“But how?”
All I can share is my experience which is not a “method.” Go to Nature. Not once in awhile, but BE there for you are THAT. “There” your feelings will open up, your heart will breathe and your mind will calm itself “naturally.”
“OK. I will try that. I will spend a year in the wild…”
No my friend. If you are just going there because “you” want to achieve something, you may achieve many things in that experience, but not the “goal” of calming your mind.
If in your process you do not feel the need to be in Nature, if you force yourself to do it, just to achieve something like “peace of mind,” you will be sorely disappointed… but that is not “bad” either. It is part of your process. All is “good.”
The “I” wants to achieve. “No-I,” cannot exist there.
However, if there is a natural need in you to spend your time outdoors as much as possible, to observe Nature not because you want to achieve something for yourself, but just for the heck of it, just because you have infinite love for Nature… then, according to your process, you are naturally ready to experience what is like for the mind to slow down.
Do you see the process? It needs to be natural, it cannot be forced.
“But I want to achieve no-mind NOW!”
Can you force an unripe fruit to be ripe “now” just because you decided to “make effort” to be ripe, because you have the “goal” of going to “heaven” or another “objective” such as peace, happiness, joy, etc.? :-)
Now, into your second question:
“What lesson is life teaching if some one does not even have basic necessities to survive, abused physically/mentally? – will be hard to develop acceptance and trust.”
Life lessons… are only lessons for the one who is aware. For the one who is not, their position in Life could be of suffering.
Is suffering “bad”? Any other way to dismantle the “ego” “naturally”?
Two things to keep “in mind”:
1. Our perception of someone’s suffering could be enhanced if we compare with them. “Look I can go to the toilet everyday… but those poor things do not even have toilet paper.”
I have seen those “poor things” smiling from the heart in their day-to-day life. That gift stopped, once they started comparing with “others.” This is not meant to say that social inequalities are OK. This is meant to say that our perception could be tinted with greater suffering than what is actually experienced by the one going through the experience in Life.
2. If you are going through some experience in Life, you are equipped to go through it. If “you” tied up your shoes, “you” must experience the process of untying them. The process is not the same for everyone.
Acceptance and Trust is needed for the one who has gone through the extreme of experiences of rejection and distrust. When your life is colored with distrust and rejection, then the process will shift, to arrive into trust and acceptance. The “I” will fight to keep things safe for “him” despite the imminent change. Trust is not something for the “I” to “develop,” it happens if the “I” allows it. If the “I” does not, there will be further suffering. See the game? :-)
Someone who in your perspective has been abused mentally, physically and is living without the basics, may not necessarily experience distrust and rejection towards Life. Again, it depends on the process that this person is experiencing in Life, his “location.”
That “terrible” experience for you, may not be the drop that spills the water from the glass, for that person.
That is why, to feel for someone has a much greater accuracy than to think or analyze their “situation.”
Empathy is a feeling which will naturally tell you “how to act” without thinking about it. How someone became the personification of empathy in Life?
By having experienced its opposite… naturally…That process is not necessarily of a single Life time.
If you don’t have empathy naturally, then a method will be needed to make you believe that you “have it.” :-)
All the best!
Filed under: Questions Tagged: acceptance, awareness, consciousness, empathy, experience, life, method, naturally, Nature, perspective, spiritulaity, trust
