Beyond

  In my earlier post "stepping out of the bubble" I wrote about allowing the mind to rest completely free of thought for just a few moments at regular intervals through out the day as a means to experience the peaceful essence of life when it is not obscured by a wall of thoughts. I would like to briefly highlight that this practice can take us out of our comfort zone to the extent that we may have taken our thoughts to be our identity for so long, that when we begin to experience life more and more as the presence of life itself without it being tainted or coloured through a filter of thought, there can arise a sense of urgency to grasp back into the security of the thinking mind, thought is acting as a sort of security blanket and as this blanket is pulled away we may feel vulnerable, of course it seems natural that letting go of or losing our identity will evoke insecurity, but the reality of this practice is not about losing our identity, and it's certainly not about being forever thought free, though it will take us to being free from the confines of thought. Thought free presence is about tuning into our true identity.

 "Security and happiness cannot be found in anything that comes and goes. Find whatever it is in your experience that doesn’t appear, move, change or disappear..., and invest your identity, security and happiness in that alone."

~Rupert Spira

 When it comes to placing our identity in the changing thoughts that run through our minds, it seems it would be equally reasonable to place our identity in the changing stream of objects, shapes and colours that we see before our eyes, or the flow of different sounds that continuously come and go. Try quiet the mind and just listen to the sounds around you for a while, now imagine these sounds are just as equally you as your thoughts are, look around at your surroundings and imagine that all that you can see is just as equally you as your thoughts are. We can notice anything in our present experience and notice "I am that (I am) ", yet paradoxically one way to a felt realisation of intimate oneness as the whole is through a form of self inquiry where we notice what we are not, for example, I am not my body because I am that which is aware of my body. I am not my thoughts because I am that which is aware of my thoughts, again looking at anything in our direct experience and noticing we are not anything that we can be aware of, a process of elimination that brings us to understanding we can only be awareness itself, this leads us to a sort of expansion of being with the realisation that awareness is a vast open space that includes anything we can be aware of,  for example, if we look at a tree in the distance and bring awareness to the space around the tree and the space between us and the tree, we can notice the space of our inner body, and notice the space of our body and all the space in which the tree appears share the same quality, also the space of the mind shares all the space of which we are aware, thought arises in this space, sounds arise in this space, trees in the distance arise in this space, the space itself never changes , we are this space. If we close our eyes and look to see if we can find the edges of our mind,  the boundary between the mind and the world, we may find a conceptual boundary of the skull with the sense that the mind is inside the skull,  but just look and see if you are aware of space outside of the skull,  if you are aware of the space outside of the skull then is the mind extended beyond the brain into the space that surrounds you? with your eyes closed can you find where the space of which you are aware ceases to be? Close your eyes, empty your mind and feel into your body, now feel out from your body as deep into the space around you as you can, this is the same space in which the tree in the distance appears.

  This post was originally intended to be about noticing how emotions arise as thought coupled with a movement of energy or a contraction in the body and how we can free ourselves up from heavy emotions by bringing awareness fully into the contraction and allowing it to be as it is, just sitting with it breathing into it,  allowing it to be and allowing it to pass.  I went off on a bit of a tangent but it can be very interesting to investigate how existence is experienced, and look for what it is that is experiencing. Of course the real joy is beyond our intellect in the simplest experience of just being.

  I will write further into noticing how contractions in the body are essentially what gives power to our emotions, and how bringing awareness into the movements of energy in the body can assist in helping us be at our best in relation to others and bring about better resolve in dealing with undesirable emotions. It's the art of turning inwards that opens our heart to the world around us.