We See What We Are By Seeing What We Aren't

We need to learn to get out of our own way. In other words. Observe dispassionately the small self with all its desires, aversions, identifications and nonidentifications (duality) until we truly percieve the filmy transparency that is our "self-concept". Once we get ourselves out of the way we can observe our inner process in much more detail. Once we’ve stopped defending ourselves each time we discover an unflattering wart in our make up we can sit still long enough to see the seams of pure consciousness shining in between the thoughts. We see that the thoughts themselves are not those bolts from the True Blue that is our essense.

The thoughts that make up our self-concept are merely electro-chemical discharges in our brain that project an image of the world. It's shaped by input from outside stimuli, our particular nervous systems, biochemistry, and previous habits of thought. That’s it. That’s “us” the terrestrial self…those ephemeral sparks between the dendrites and there attendant sensual/emotional thought events. Once we've gotten that, it becomes easier to acknowledge that there’s really nothing and no one to defend, nor anyone there that should be feeling superior, inferior, guilty or innocent. Then we can more fully devote our attention to the prime directive— the most sacred of acts: the watching…the deep witnessing of Creation (and of the content of our consciousnesses that make up a vital part of that creation). Watching your own reaction to an insult or innuendo, to praise or intimidation gives vital insight into the make up of the processes and reactions of the surface self. And insight is power.

Much of our watching will be of our own little ego world because by seeing how its perceptions and manipulations construct its universe, we begin to separate ourselves from that entity that separates us from everything. Soon the almighty thought construction called “self” with all its distracted need-charged agendas, loses its credibility and its once-powerful ability to seduce us into paying homage to its drama queen self-absorbtion.

We have to watch it as it builds its little house of notions, emotions, grudges, nostalgias, hurts and dreams. We need to notice how wispy and translucent the structure looks when the light shines through it. Then we don’t have this urge to avert our eyes when we look at “ourselves” because we’ve finally realized that the small self is no more “us” than the flora a botonist observes in the field.

But, then again, we are the “lilies of the fields” and we are the self. We are everything… and everything is in flux. We can nurture or poison ourselves depending on what we include within our own "skin". The wise person knows that what is in the skin is merely a subset of the systems that comprise one's existence. We are also the sky. Don't think so? I’d like to see how long you’d last without the air that makes up the sky or how compromised your life would be if you filled your oxygen supply with sulfuric oxide from unregulated industry. We are the river that supplies the water project that supplies our cells with the H2O of which they are mostly composed. Our circulatory system encompasses the entire planet. We are the sky. We are the river. Just because you can’t feel it at the moment, doesn’t mean it’s not a vital part of you. You can't feel your liver and you consider it a part of you. The nutrients that make up the cells of that liver are just as much a part of you as the filtering system we call a liver. What isn't you? ...the notion of "you" as opposed to everything else. What is you? Everything else.

Ah, yes! when the light shines in, what a picture it is. Miracle heaped upon miracle until it boggles the senses. A million koans per square inch. The body, a spacesuit fit for a god with its immune systems, nervous systems, skeletal systems, digestive systems converting plant pulp into energy, flesh and bone, muscles, movement, perceptions, dreams, eros, entire universes of sensation and thought.

We are the world and we are the world-wide witness watching the small self trying to convince us that it alone is the only world that has any true relevance to us. The small self is a part of us but no more a part than the rest of the world. Just watch closely and it will lose its hypnotic sway over your life, Let its gauzy curtains lift like a moody haze and evaporate into the growing warmth of an ever-clearing sky-blue-mind.

And that’s just inside our skins . What about our extended body, our biosphere. What about the system of marketing and distribution that determines what foods are available to you? And the system of values that determine which foods you will choose to build you body from? Think about it, your local food store is pulsing through your blood stream at this very instant. “Daddy? What are little girls made of? Well, Li’l Missy, after that second Oscar Meyer Wiener you had for lunch, I don’t think you really want to know.”

But she does want to know. I like the phrase, “healthy curiousity.” We need to be more curious if we’re going to survive at all (let alone be healthy). May the enlivening elixir of wonder warm us from the inside out, healing us and freeing us from any delusion that we have anything here but a full-throttle, smack-you-in- the face, explosion of a universe! If only.

If only we’d open up to it, let it in, and let it do it’s stuff, If only we wouldn’t keep forgetting to listen to our own miraculous life-giving breath. Feel the pavement under our feet, if only we could find ourselves once and for all, reflected in the eyes of every being we‘ve ever encountered.

We’d count our blessings then. We’d dance in the streets, laughing loudly at nothing in particular, spout poetry to the moon, hug ourselves like we were the whole of creation stopping for one small moment (or millinia) to give itself a very heartfelt, humongous caress.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t fight the feeling. Love is in the air. Let the tingle of being, bubble away your blues. Sense that faint fizz of blissful existence that overlays every sound you’ll ever hear. Listen. Watch. And count your countless blissings.

The Way of Wat Ching

What is Wat Ching? A Tai
wanese marshal art? A recently discovered sacred text? A meditation technique? A secret cult? Actually, it’s just my little joke. And a reminder. Wat Ching is a mischievous mystification of the word “watching.” It is a reminder that all methods, writings and sects are merely fingers pointing at the moon, not the moon itself. The witnessing of the whole enchilada being cooked up before our eyes right now and now and now...that’s the moon. It’s all about deep watching. The Silent Witness. Seeing as the essence of being.

All the words, concepts, and pearls of wisdom gleaned from all the sages of antiquity are about as precise as a screeching pack of monkeys when it comes to articulating the cognitive transformation produced naturally by one’s own moment-to-moment attention to one’s inner and outer worlds. Sooner or later we’ve got to put down the books and just watch what’s happening without judgement, without preconception, with every fiber of our being.

God is in the details. And the details of your life -- down to the silliest craving for pralines and cream or the most absurd hissy fit directed at that road hog SOB poking along in front of you -- are more important than the greatest architechural achievements, the latest Olympic records, or the most glorious battle ever fought for king and country.

Dig your life! Not the one that's built of happy abstractions. No, dig the one that’s right in front of you — that post-modern take on a Monet interior, rising up from behind your iBook screen, that world where a Norwegian Forest Cat is sprawled out on the butcher block table staring out a glass door at a black-and-white Tabby lolling in a garden tableau on a spring day by the bay. It’s all there. The colors and the flavors, the bright afternoon light and the cool marine breezes, the freeway noise, and the dainty white butterfly flickering through the roses..

Every abstraction pales by comparison to a totally committed emersion in the minutia of your own existence. So go for it. Go for an emersion that is so complete that duality itself washes off you like so much road dust. So complete that there is no experiencer experiencing the experienced. There is only the whirling, swirling dance of Seeing-and-Being …being its own big, beautiful Self.

Consciousness itself is the ultimate reality, if your unconscious self only knew it. It can know it, if it will allow itself to learn from its Self. It can become free… from Samsara, from the veil of notions… largely by watching those notions come and go, noting their effect without getting involved, and skirting the slip knots and tape loops that trail behind those notions, trying to catch us unawares,

Seeing (with all our senses) is simple and arduous at the same time. Deep seeing requires a quality of attention so complete that great passion and commitment and energy are needed. It’s not only attention to the outer world, it’s attention to the thought formations that steal our attention away from the bigger picture and drown us in endless stories, melodramas, and scenarios. Including stories like “This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless…", to one day be (fill in blank) Rich? Famous? Enlightened?

We need to watch these processes diligently, not so we can learn something and become better people but because the watching itself fosters the state of grace that nurtures wisdom. When you attend intently, you are getting in touch with a powerful essence. The heart blood of the Cosmos — the curious and sensuous eye of the All — consciousness itself. Complete that circuit as often as possible and your confusion will be vaporized merely by the electrical exchange that is a standard feature of cognizance. Feel the mysterious power of the Wat Ching!

The Mind's Reset Button

Nirvana, bliss, atunement, grace— they’re never far away. As children most of us felt it many times a day. Not having much experience with the roller coaster of our emotional states, having no sophistication about what actually constitutes a setback, we were easily knocked off our bliss track by small things. But one of the beauties of a child’s heart is that it doesn’t immerse itself in "water under the bridge" for long.

One moment a youngster may be full of rage, the next she’s ready to enjoy the very person that made her mad. Why do we struggle so hard to maintain some attitude of upset— all to justify some previous emotional reaction? Defending reactions all day long is exhausting and crazy-making. Children know this instinctively.

Unlike many of us, a child has no interest in identifying with the supposed injustices done to her. Why pick at old hurts when there are good times to be had? So, even though many children are knocked off kilter easily, they also push their attitudinal reset buttons early and often and get on with their lives. Soon they are completely absorbed by a ladybug crawling up a geranium stem– even though their cheeks are still streaked with tears. No problem. Stuff happens but wonder reigns supreme.

By contrast our "grown-up" minds are always so busy reassessing our current status on the path toward a hundred arbitrary goals and scurrying from various dreaded outcomes that we make ourselves tired, old and disillusioned before our time. We'll enjoy ourselves when we're rich. Though the traffic may be moving smoothly and the car purring like a kitten and the morning beautiful and the coffee in our to-go cups delicious, we're not allowed to feel blissful because the workday hasn’t even begun yet and the weekend is days away.

It’s like that line from Annie Hall, when the woman at the party says, “It’s not that I can’t have an orgasm, it’s just that my analyst says it’s the wrong kind.” If there is even a smidgen of a chance that events aren’t going to go perfectly (a given), happiness gets put on hold. Of course, such mental habits guarantee a lifetime of anxiety and frustration. Still, who has the time and energy to gain the emotional skills that would eliminate such problems? That’s why Prozac was invented, right?

We’ve nurtured the downside of childhood (lack of perspective) and forgotten the upside (the bliss state reset button). It’s not that you’re incapable of having a wonderful morning, it’s just that your inner analyst says that this state of happiness you’re tempted to indulge is the wrong kind. It’s not the guaranteed lifetime warranty kind.

Whatever happened to grace under pressure? Sensitivity is good, but not like the princess and the pea— more like the sages in the Tao Te Ching that see the nature of the problem so well they see right through it. Like it wasn't even there.