What's In Your Mind?

Learning to live more consciously

My friend Kathrin asks me what I am doing with my days, now that I stopped working. I answer:

"Days go by very fast! I read, I meditate, I do email, I talk to people, I run, I swim… I’m training to live at a higher level of consciousness, quite simply, i.e. to be fully conscious of every thought, every feeling, and every sensation that passes through me."

Same idea, to Richard:

"I am training to live at a higher level of consciousness, i.e. to become conscious of every thought, every feeling, every sensation. It is nothing more than a habit to take, a few tricks here and there. It is the most important and most ambitious project on which I’ve ever worked.

It is also the secret of a profound and stable feeling of happiness :-) (…) It is not easy – some people have gotten lost in this quest, they got scared and turned around.

I now know for example that if I had had a higher level of consciousness when we were together, our relationship would not have been a downward spiral. I was purely unconscious in our relationship. Or that with my parents.

I hope you’ll forgive my enthusiasm at wanting to share this. You know that, when I see a beautiful sunrise, I want to share this also :-).

I know that you are probably skeptical of all I am saying."

The challenge of communicating the spiritual message

Email to my friend A.:

"What is described in that book Power of Now – the shift in consciousness – is what has been happening to me. It makes you see things not from your own perspective but from a much wider perspective. You see things from all angles. You see every situation from much higher, you UNDERSTAND, you are not caught in your ego anymore, there is no more ego. You are just a manifestation of Life itself (God, etc, whatever you call it). 

You understand that you are eternal because Life is eternal and you are just a manifestation of it. You know it. It causes immense bliss.

You need to learn a whole new way to communicate with people who are caught in their egos otherwise they will not understand you (and, typically, think that your ego is too large – they do not see that you do not speak from your ego anymore). Or think that you have turned crazy. 

It is possible, but it takes a little time to adjust.

This is where smarts help a LOT. We can learn this new way to communicate. Eckhart Tolle does a phenomenal job at communicating from there (this higher consciousness I'm talking about) to here (people caught in their egos). This is why I want to listen to him again, and again. To absorb this whole new way of communicating. 

A friend told me today that I scared him now, that he thought I was crazy now. This is what happens sometimes, so one has to be very careful with all that stuff – you run the risk of turning people off any time, – very careful on how you communicate things. I have turned a bunch of people off lately; it is hard to communicate when you find yourself suddenly on that new plane of consciousness."

The spiritual desert

This difficulty to communicate can turn into the feeling of being in a desert sometimes. It is a known phenomenon, as it has been labeled "the spiritual desert"! Letter to my friend Doug that expresses this:

"I am still caught in some uncomfortable side effects of "spiritual awakening", advancing alone in the spiritual desert, feeling such a distance with people sometimes – such a strong desire to bring them where I am because it is so much brighter – but they do not want to hear anything at all.

I'm going this week-end to a Buddhist retreat – never done this before. Not even sure I will find like-minded people?

It is hard to meet people "looking for enlightenment" when you feel you are "already there" or somewhere around – because they get jealous!

Then you want to tell them that it is BECAUSE of this jealousy that they are not quite there yet and then they hate you! Then you want to tell them that they are getting even farther...

It is not easy. I am starting to learn to live with this.

People are in fear. I have no job, no boyfriend, no project, no future, no desire. It scares people.

When I say that I feel profoundly happy they say they do not believe me. Or that I am mad now and that they are worried for me.

Etc. It is a tough sea to navigate. Especially without a teacher (I'm pretty much all alone).

Do you know what I am talking about, this "spiritual desert"?

Life will never be the same."

Mystic experience and two modes of consciousness

I stumbled today on an article explaining quite well what the mystic experience is all about. What I like especially about that article is that, instead of suggesting that the mode of consciousness of the mystics is "higher" than our ordinary mode of consciousness, it simply suggests that having access to both modes is superior to having access to only one. Abstract:

"Deikman, an academic medical researcher, proposes that mystic experience is a psychological phenomenon that largely has been ignored by contemporary scientists. This situation is understandable. Scientists have waged a long battle to obtain freedom from religious control, and mystical experiences are usually described within a religious idiom. It is natural that things mystical should be suspect and categorized as part of organized religion. In addition, the content and form of some types of mystical experience seem to give clear evidence of psychopathology. For this reason, the scientist may be tempted to dismiss all such reports as some type of hysteria or madness.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, to study the mystic experience requires participation on the part of the scientist so that he can stand outside of his customary mode of thought long enough to experience the different mode of consciousness involved in these phenomena. Such participant observation is not a part of the experimental model of contemporary science. Psychologists, in particular, have tended to model themselves after the eighteenth century physicist, who believed he could be "objective" in observing the world. He proposes that it is time to depart from this attitude, and concludes that the broad terrain of mystical phenomena contains within it lawful processes pertaining to a mode of consciousness as mature and vitally practical as the one to which we are accustomed.

Our ordinary and habitual mode of consciousness can be called the action mode, organized to manipulate the environment and featuring an acute consciousness of past and future time. Its basic reference point is the experience of a separate, personal self. In contrast, we have the capacity for a different organization -- the receptive mode -- oriented towards the present, in which the personal self as a preoccupying orientation fades away and the world tends to be experienced as more unified and satisfying. As the action mode is used for problem solving and manipulating the environment, the receptive mode is used for receiving, for providing nutrition and satisfaction.

Which mode is better? Deikman proposes that if we think in such terms, we are missing the point. His claim is that we gain nothing by restricting our functions to one mode or the other. Rather, we need the capacity to function in both modes, as may suit the occasion.

What stands in the way? Deikman points out that the first barrier is a cultural bias that tells us that "mystical states" are unreal, pathological, crazy, or regressive. Without knowing it, under the banner of the scientific method, our thinking has been constricted. He proposes that we have been indoctrinated to avoid looking closely at these realms, but that it is time to make the receptive mode, and the experience which it engenders, a legitimate option for ourselves and for science. If we do so, we will be able to see more clearly the psychodynamic barriers that limit this option: defenses aginst reliquishing conscious control, defenses against the unexpected and the unknown, defenses against the blurring and loss of boundaries defining the self. We will be able to discriminate those instances in which the pathological or regressive are indeed present, but we will not miss seeing and exploring those phenomena that are truly mature and life promoting.

Deikman speculates that our survival as a species may depend on being able to utilize our receptive-mode function so that we can experience the basis for humanitarian values. The action mode that pervades our civilization does not support selflessness; the receptive mode, ordinarily the specialty of mystics, does. From this point of view, mystics have been the guardians of a potentiality that has been ours and that it is now time for us to reclaim. We can integrate this realm with our present knowledge, making it less exotic and less alien. By doing so, we can explore and regain a functional capacity that we may now need for our very preservation. "

Re-discovering the "receptive mode"

Email to Kathrin:

"I feel that my calling is this (I was calling this "spiritual teacher" before but it sounds scary): contributing to helping our civilization re-discover and re-invest en masse the "receptive mode" the article talks about – i.e. that the lay person in our Western civilization understands:
- the huge value in doing so (less suffering, more happiness, etc)
- the tools readily available for getting there.

This implies removing the obscurations in people's minds such as all the mix-ups re: religion, God, etc. It implies truly extracting the mystical awareness (awareness of Spirit, we are all one, etc) from religion – what Eckhart Tolle does an amazing job at. But I even feel we can go one step further and extract it from concepts like spirituality, enlightenment, etc.

What is needed is to forcefully destroy people's concepts about these things. I feel I'm on the right track with this article. Key is to bridge the action mode and the receptive mode, THAT'S IT!!!!

It was easy for me – it should be easy for others."

And you burst with the joy that has no opposite

My statement that "I want to dedicate my life to helping show the world its own beauty, by being a mirror of it" seems to have stirred something in Marco, as he replies quite profusely. In summary (my summary of his words):
- "Help the world"??? What about your "sense of proportion"?
- How do we know what is good for the world? We cannot judge, e.g. did Jesus make the world any better?
- As the final output is unpredictable (and just a matter of perspective), then why bother?
- All we can do is help ourselves.
- Why do you live in a dream of helping others? Do you need that to be fulfilled?
- In the end, we are just passing time, doing this or that.

My attempt at addressing these issues and questions:

"On "the world" and a sense of proportion, to me the world is whatever is around me, whatever I touch and touches me, it is nothing that is away from me. The world is one, there is only one thing and I am just a part of it, there is no separation between me and the rest. This is the premise.

I do see that with a "higher" consciousness such as I experience now (actually the very ability to throw your consciousness outside of yourself to the confines of the universe and of time – let's say, being "awakened", as I can clearly see how there are 2 phases in my life, before and after the awakening) you can actually see the consequences of your actions quite clearly, know whether you do good or bad. More, you CANNOT DO BAD anymore. Think more about Jesus. He did not do bad – he did the best he could with where/when he was. He could have done nothing else, no better (the concept of choice does fade away when you awaken) It was not possible to do any better given the circumstances. Same with Gandhi for example – 2 awakened people.

Are you trying to weigh pros and cons to judge if Jesus did good or bad? You can't. Knowing what is good or bad CANNOT be experienced at the intellectual level, it just can't. But there comes a point in life where you are able to be in the world and keep your activities free of any negativity, effortlessly.

I do not live in a dream of helping. I was not able to help much before. I wanted to, I guess, but would inevitably bump into the wall of my own obscurations and contradictions. Now I am actually often able to see what is going on and, sometimes, I am even able to help. I said "help show the world", not "help the world" by the way. Help the people I touch see things as they are –and as a result feel better in their lives.

As you rightly point out, there is only one place to conduct the work: within oneself! This is the place to be and to act from. The "world" as we see it, our reality, is nothing else but a mirror of your consciousness. You see what you are. There is no reality. I know this kind of statement sounds insane seen from the dualistic mind, yet we all very well KNOW that, say, your reality and my reality are totally different, that if we walk together in Paris we will see/experience completely different things. We know that. Because what we experience is really in our minds, nowhere outside. As soon as we operate from the non-dualistic mind – the space that contains the objects we were discussing the other day – we know that very well, because our consciousness is no more confined to our ego (ego disappears): we can see reality from a myriad of angles, everything comes in many many dimensions – not just four.

I would prefer to look in your eyes to tell you these things because you would see where they come from, you would see that they don't come from my thoughts but from my (and your) essence. And I think that while looking into my eyes you would know exactly what I mean.

We do not make the world better, the world is not to be improved in any way, it is PERFECT AS IT IS, it is a miracle impossible to put into words, CAN YOU SEE THIS? Nothing is to be made better, there is no better world, there is one world, it is perfect and we are of it. I don't want to help the world, the world needs no help, I want to help people SEE the world. See its beauty and perfection. I want to help "clean" the consciousness (the inner mirror of the world) of as many people as I possibly can. This is a calling.

My existence needs not be fulfilled by any mirage, it is fulfilled, it is complete, it is more than fulfilled: I have a lot of surplus for others. My joy is leaking, I cannot contain it :-)

You see good/bad, matter/antimatter, positive/negative, etc (your words). This is because you are operating from your dualistic mind, the one I described to you, where objects are endlessly classified and judged. When you start operating from your non-dualistic mind, there is no more good/bad, plus/minus etc. There just IS what IS. And you see the myriad of possibilities inbetween what you labelled good and bad and positive and negative, and you get a taste of the infinite and the eternal, and you can hardly believe it, and you burst with the joy which has no opposite. There is the waves, up, down, up, down, but now you are the ocean and you just see the waves. There is the flickering candle, on, off, on, off, but now the shutters are open and there is sunshine.

On time: there is no time management because there is no time. THERE IS NO TIME. All there is is a succession of NOW. Living in the now and not thinking happen to go hand in hand. No thinking, no time.

How about energy management? If there is something to manage, it is this: energy. Time is one object in the box – one dimension to organize some other objects in the box. When you operate from the box and not from the level of the objects in it, there is no time. You see time, you have time, but there is no time. You are above it. You operate from the timeless. This is my (and countless others') experience. Energy... is what the box is made of, at the end of the day. Energy management is key."

On love and being of flesh

Marco says he likes what I wrote :-). He says there are two topics we have not covered yet:
- We are beings of flesh: no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape.
- Where is love in all this?
My reply:

"On being of flesh. I like to think of the manifested vs the unmanifested. I see now (and I suspected before, and I think everyone has glimpses of it) that there is more to life than what meets the eye, what is manifested as form: objects, bodies, places, etc. In a way, the outside world that we perceive is a reflection of our consciousness: when you use only your object-consciousness (i.e. operate from the level of thoughts, emotions, etc, the objects in your consciousness) you see only the objects in the world. You see the world's physical manifestation (or some aspects of it, at least). When you start operating from what we could call space-consciousness (or receptive mode, or from the level of the box itself, or whatever) you see the space inbetween the objects and the world looks very different. Lots of was previously unmanifested manifests, you see plenty of things you didn't see before. Even your perception of the physical world is greatly enhanced and changed. The objects you saw before (and thought you knew fully) appear to be not nearly as solid as you once thought... and what you used to label "limitation" (because you turned a perception – e.g. backache – into a solid object) tends to disappear... Life becomes quite "magical" – I have plenty of examples in my recent life, with my body for example, I can tell you about it when we talk next. How our body is not nearly as solid as we think it is! (it is actually, even when described in physical terms, composed of about 99.999% emptiness, remember?). You also realize that there is no limit to the intensity with which you can feel a pleasure, contrary of what you may have experienced when you operated solely from the object-consciousness. Finally, lots of things that are "unexplained" in the manifested world have an easy explanation once more of the unmanifested manifests to you... science is catching up on all this... slowly (e.g. research on meditation, human energy field, eastern medicine, extra sensory perception, etc).

Love. Yes, the love I had twice in my life was before my "awakening" and it was very human love, love from the object-consciousness level, and yes there was still an ego so it had to do with it (which caused trouble and, eventually, unsurprisingly, failure). I think falling in love, passion etc, are glimpses into the unmanifested, a door that opens momentarily to show us the bigger thing (falling in love sweeps us away, right?), but often we pass on that opportunity, we do not understand, we let the door shut, and we fall out of love and bliss. We are sad, we think "Who can make love stay?", our heart breaks and we write songs that air on the radio, for others to hear the sadness of lost love. We do not get it. Now, yes, I guess the door opened again for me into the unmanifested, and I stepped in, and I have one foot firmly there, and there is no coming back, and I see that indeed love is all there is to experience in this world, that it is the glue that binds molecules together, that it is what reminds the manifestations of Life that we humans are that we are, in fact, just facets of one larger thing, that there is, in fact, no separation between us. That when I look into your eyes, it is my soul that I see there. That when I meet someone, it is in fact me that I am meeting. This is love. I do not have desire for love and relationships, I see that there is nothing else than love and relationships, this is all there is to life. There is One Life and it manifests through the plenty, and the plenty feels the One Life through love. The other and me are one and the same, so all I can do is help whoever crosses my path. This is all there is to do.

Love with ego is trouble, sooner or later. Have you noticed? Love is egoless or isn't, by definition. Whether I get married and/or bear beings to this world does not matter to me, if this is what you allude to. When you operate from space-consciousness, lots of things happen. One of them is that the notion of choice fades away – when you feel one with the universe, and not separated from it, what there is to do strikes you with the clarity of a thousand suns – and the more you surrender, the less you struggle against Life, the easier/happier/clearer things appear :-) well this is my experience..."

The manifested world

Here is an excerpt from Conversations with God 2 that I quite like. "God" explains the manifested world in one elegant paragraph:

"I devised a way for you to create anew, and Know, Who You Are in your experience. I did this by providing you with:
1. Relativity - a system wherein you could exist as a thing in relationship to something else
2. Forgetfulness - a process by which you willingly submit to total amnesia, so that you can not know that relativity is merely a trick, and that you are All of It
3. Consciousness - a state of Being in which you grow until you reach full awareness, then becoming a True and Living God, creating and experiencing your own reality, expanding and exploring that reality, changing and re-creating that reality as you stretch your consciousness to new limits - or shall we say, to no limit.
In this paradigm, Consciousness is everything."

What you fear is what you will draw to you

Here is another quote that I love from Conversations with God. Looks innocuous, but it is actually quite profound...

"What you think is what you get.
What you fear is what you will draw to you.
What you resist, persists.
What you look at disappears - giving you a chance to recreate it all over again, if you wish, or banish it forever from your experience.
What you choose, you experience."

What the BLEEP do we know? and spiritual cinema

I went to see a "spiritual movie" that just came out: What the BLEEP do we know? It tries to point to what is at the intersection between science and mysticism. This movie is a paradigm shift, first movie of its kind. It is also a total commercial success! I highly recommend the movie for another taste of the texture of life… Check out their website, it is full of interesting material.

I predict that spiritual movie-making is coming (a bit like we're having the controversial documentary movie-making wave a la Michael Moore), and that there will be plenty more such "inspiring" movies. A few related sites here, and here.