From the moment we are born, and even before that, we become masters at the art of seeking. We seek for comfort, for food, for nourishment, for confirmation, for love, for appreciation…As needs and desires become apparent, consciously or unconsciously, we develop skills in hope that they will bring us towards the fulfillment of those needs.
And so we participate, heroes of our own myth, in the “Great Marathon”: a colorful journey of longing, lack and fulfillment that eventually translates itself into the magnificent dance of life, where the seeker ultimately never fulfills its purpose. And how could it be? If the seeker should reach its goal, would the seeker be needed at all? If the intention of the seeker would be achieved, what would then be its purpose in this vastly engaging universe? Would the artist paint? Would the musician play? Would the lovers dwell?
And so the seeker goes on, focused on its constantly changing goals, seemingly unaware of the magnificent ripple effects of its actions, creating a fabulous web of interconnectedness of cause and effect, action-reaction, emission-reception…infinitely fueled by lack and longing. In Buddhist terms, this is the cycle of samsara, where the seeker experiences a world of dualities and hence pain and pleasure, satisfaction and dissatisfaction in equal measure. This is a world of relative reality and relative truth created by the doubting capacity of the mind, that which presents us with dual possibilities in order to make choices.
And how does this happen? By presenting us with dual concepts such as right and wrong, good and evil, left or right, warm or cold. In this dual reality, we engage on and on our divine will into eternity.
And miraculously, by an inexplicable jolt of the heart, as human seekers we may become aware of the unsatisfying role we have been assuming, the role of the eternal looser in a cosmic joke. And we may ask, is this all? The seeker starts to awaken from its dull sleep.
Against all odds, as if the river could ever tire of its endless flow, so the seeker reflects: Can this wondrous creation be confined only to an infinite cycle of cause and effect?, Without choice?, Eternally condemned to long for the impossible attainment of timeless peace and satisfaction?
Spiritual masters from most traditions would say no. A new choice appears when the seeker is ready to hear.
Even though content seemed to bring with it the false promise of satisfaction, masters would say that only the realization of who we are in essence will bring the seeker in us to the peaceful end of its journey. Paradoxically, they would say that it is not the attainment of the content itself but ´finding who I am´ that is the true driving force behind every one of our actions.
So as innocent children we assume our birth given roles of godlike creators and on and on we manifest the most wondrous of material creations and subconsciously we ask, am I there? And propelled by a tireless fear of death we go on to experience the highest and the lowest of life and still we ask, am I there?
And on and on we search, turning every stone on our path, am I there? Peeling the skin of every experience, am I there? Scratching the surface of our relationships, am I there?
And as adding content had been the driving force in the life of the seeker so far, it is during the painful process of the stripping away of content that the seeker may start finding the answers.
The initially absurd world of duality has hence served its purpose: to present the seeker with enough pleasure and pain for the right answers to emerge in time, as well as the rise of a profoundly intimate determination: I no longer want to live in suffering and relative contentedness. I want endless joy, endless happiness, and endless satisfaction.
If this creation is allowing me to long for eternal joy, then there must be such! How else could I long for that which does not exist?
The importance of the experience of suffering must be acknowledged; the genius of the perfection of this whole manifestation. We may bow in awe at the supreme intelligence that supports our journey, where every piece of the puzzle is engaged in a loving conspiracy to awaken each one of us, in time, to our true self.
And so it is during moments when strong roles are stripped away, or loved ones part, or ideals and beliefs fall, that we may ask, who am I without this experience? And as we realize that every experience comes and goes without attaining a conclusion, we may ask, what is the nature of the experiencer? As I observe the futility of every experience, I may also observe the futile nature of every one of my thoughts and I may ask, what is the nature of the observer?
In this marvelous moment when the seeker is slowly awakening from its sleep, unconsciously or consciously, naturally some sacrifices are made. And once the train of awakening has departed, there is no way back to sleep and ignorance. Only the conscious recognition of the ultimate nature of the seeker will hold its attention. The seeker may try to fight against this impulse and be derailed for a while by those that fear this process or are unconscious themselves. But it is too painful to consciously choose ignorance, and hence, sooner or later, the seeker will have to retake its path.
Only a sense of absolute wonder and despair can describe this moment. The utter helplessness and sense of awe and frustration may drive the seeker into a sincere plead for guidance towards the path of liberation. Masters say that we may not seek for the Guru, but that the Guru will appear when the seeker is ripe. Sooner or later, the Guru, or bringer of light, the dispeller of ignorance, will undoubtedly present itself as a teaching and a competent teacher.
You are Brahman! You are joy itself! You are one without a second, you are all accomplished facts, you ARE happiness, happening every second, you are sadness, you are all emotions at once, you are the creator, at one with your creation, you ARE the creation itself! You are the cause of this universe, you are the manifest and unmanifest, you are pure potential, you ARE the total! You are self-evident, You are the seeker and the sought. All accomplishments have already been achieved!
So what then is the ultimate error? Why can’t we simply realize our grandiose nature on a day to day basis? Vedic texts would present a problem of cognition, where we look with limited tools into the nature of who we are.
Humanity has cycled for hundreds of thousands of years in a wheel of confusion ignited by a level of consciousness way inferior to our full capacity as human beings. Why this has come to be so, we may never know, although there are some fascinating theories that could be discussed on other posts.
This inferior level of consciousness is reined by the mind, and its limited means of knowledge for gaining understanding: perception and ignorance. The Vedas claim to have not been born out of the human intellect and was shown to the seers 5000 years ago in order to awaken humanity from its dark ages. They were therefore presented as an external means of knowledge, in the form of a vast work of literature that addresses every aspect of life; both materially and spiritually.
As well as sacred texts, other teachings and practices aim at enlightening us into this process of recognition. Either through the path of listening and understanding or through the path of experience; such as the tantric path, where human levels of consciousness may actively be engineered to expand in the hope that an experience of such mental transcendence will be attained that, naturally, the understanding of our true nature will instantly be gained.
These two paths have grown exponentially in parallel, in some ways in contradiction to each other. It is not my intention in this page to discuss the differences or personal preferences among them. That, we can explore together at a later stage.
Most traditions, however, agree that to start walking the path of liberation, one must start disassociating with the mind and its byproducts (perceptions of reality and emotions that drive our individual choices).
This is one of the primary goals of meditation; the observation of the flow of thoughts, sensations and emotions that rise up as content in the always peaceful, spacious presence of the observer.
The subtle space between the in breath and the out breath, the twilight zone between the sleep state and awakening, the peaceful interval between thought waves, the silence between the musical notes of a melody, the almost imperceptible experience of the NOW between thoughts that project into the future or dwell in the past; all these point at our transcendental nature as the peaceful, uninvolved observer: our Shiva nature in Hinduism, our nature as the void in Buddhism.
And when one speaks of transcendental, one speaks of that which transcends the ordinary mind and the sense of small self created by it, also called the ego in Jungian psychology.
Identifying oneself with the observer repetitively creates a pillar of serenity where one may return to again and again, developing a detached relationship to experiences; where contents retain its beauty but no longer have a hold on us. As we realize ourselves beyond content, we may experience pleasure and pain but we no longer look for our true nature in the experience; we have possessions, but they no longer possess us. Where attachment to content is released, so are the strongly binding desires and aversions.
Reactions are minimized. In a sense we have become liberated, free from the world of content.
From the point of the observer, believes appear as devoid of weight as the innocent journey of a feather in midair.
The objective person is witnessing the fundamental problem without reaction. The madness of the human condition is understood: the slavery to the binding beliefs, desires and aversions that culminate in wars and other indirect actions. These cause temporal satisfaction at the expense of the suffering of others; turning a blind eye to the violent reality of misery amongst a world created in abundance for all.
I hope you are following me up until here.
According to this stage in meditation we would live in a dual world, where observer and the observed (the experience and the experiencer) are eternally separate from each other. Hence we would become increasingly detached from the world, aloof, separated and, again, alienated.
However, masters have spoken over millennia about the existence of oneness with all manifestation, where observer and the observed blend creating a non-dual masterpiece. Even now in recent times we have scientific proof through Quantum Physics that the observer and the observed are intrinsically related; two sides of the same coin.
Seeker! You are the sought! You are happiness itself! All concepts must fall, also the observer must be dropped!
The masters would say that in the same way as the ocean and the wave are made of H20, so are the experience and the experiencer made of pure consciousness. The witness awareness, pure potential, pure creativity that is in and through all manifestation and the unmanifest that rests as seed from. THAT we are!
Of course, for this to become a truly transformative realization, which may transform every cell in our body; guidance, practice, devotion, faith and determination are needed. Or else, this would become a mere intellectual pursuit and yet another accumulation of concepts; yet one more creation of the mind and another trip of the egoic self in pursuit of power and recognition.
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In this caleidoscopic exposition of this wondrous manifestation, each one of us arises as the protagonist of the show, a concretization of our own existence into form, intrinsically part of the total, but so deceivingly dramatic in appearance that we become absorbed in the illusion of separation.
In recognizing our expansive transcendental nature, the reactive attitude that the constricted sense of self creates towards life dissolves and gives way to a participative attitude; a participator in life that peacefully responds through choice, in full trust, rather than reacting from fear and desire.
To me, to live in a state of harmony is to live in a way that compassionately understands the limitations of our minds, which fail to realize the non-dual nature of our existence, thus causing separation, confusion and suffering. To live in harmony is to live in awe at the upmost mystery of our essence as the all-pervading pure consciousness.
As we walk this paradoxical pathless path, a growing clarity undoubtedly emerges organically. In a growing state of fullness and happiness without a reason, we may go on and experience ourselves as godlike creators, eternally splashing our personal touch of color in infinite ways on the blank canvas of manifestation.
I love you all.
“What you seek is seeking you”
- Rumi
* I would like to dedicate this page to my revered teacher Swami Vaguishananda Saraswati and his lineage, as well as my dear lover and mentor Johan F Svanborg.
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Further Inspirations:
- Youtube, Echkart Tolle, What Is Meditation?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bAXwBbCtHg&feature=fvst
- Youtube, Mooji, What Are You Afraid Of?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCFPgFixvcY
- Youtube, Kathy from Great Freedom, Nothing Affects Skylike Awareness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRJw_14FsdI
- Youtube, SN Goenka, Walk The Talk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7pIDzGWUnE
- Youtube, SN Goenka, SN Goenka in UN Peace Summit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ak5K4M3X2c
- Youtube; James Schwartz: Vedanta, the Really Big Treasure Hunt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27hdup-Fk_U
-Youtube; Gregg Braden: The Language of the Divine Matrix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JiYLR0tSp4
- Website, Shining World by James Schwartz
http://www.shiningworld.com/top/
