Expriment N°3: Nothing

Some meditation techniques, especially the Zazen in Zen Buddhism, work towards a state of nothingness. A state of the mind in which no thoughts circulate, nothing pops up or in, there is just serene silence of thought.

One can compare it in the following way. Imagine a choppy sea, with white foaming waves crashing into each other noisily. Everything is in turmoil, up or down. The little boat of the mind is thrust back and forth, a clear path denied by buffeting winds. This is the normal mind, working and mulling over thoughts and inspirations.

In comparison the empty mind is a clear lake, not a ripple curles across the water. In its middle lies the boat of the mind, peacefully at ease, with no need to move, drifting along without care. The drifting clouds reflect in the still water and an absolute silence lies over the scene.

This state may seem absolutely unachievable if you think you know your mind as popping up with random thoughts here and there taking you on to long and winding journeys. However if you have managed to master to extract language from your thinking for a while and then even the imagery of concepts you may be closer than you think.

Entering the mind into this state of nothingness is admittedly a difficult task. Worries may lay on it. You may be in a hurry. Or any other matter may be bothering you. And yet with practice you will achieve the sense of nothingness. Give yourself a specific amount of time. Don't hurry. Eliminate all distractions. And start concentrating. Consciously feel your breath move in and out of your lungs. Feel your chest move in and out. If a thought enters and steals your mind away, notice it and return to concentration again. And move on, cutting back on thoughtprocesses.
Cut back on language, and finally on ideas until finally you reach the point where nothing is in your mind. No idea of nothingness, no image of nothingness, just nothing. There are days when you may hardly ever achieve this, on others it could be the easiest thing in the world. Like all things the only way to reach that point of stripping away the self is by trying.

And what use is this you could ask?
If you are stressed, worried or under pressure, returning to the state of clarity, emptiness simply stops everything. It interrupts thought processes, it lifts anything off your mind and may allow you to see it for a clearer viewpoint when you start afresh.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon.

The Effect of Releasing the Shackles

What really happens with the release of thoughts? The unshackling of the mind from language and structures such as grammar. We now stand in from of the mind as a possibility. There are no rules or regulations as to what thoughts, what ideas can be interlinked or can follow or precede each other. The rules have been swept away and with it all restrictions.

Without these, there is an utter freedom. A freedom that should not be new to you in any way. Because each and every one of us has felt it and experienced it before. For if you have managed to release yourself from controlled thought processes you have returned to the possibilities of a child's mind. Gone are the worries of future and past. Gone are monetary valuations or analyses of other people's behaviour. No more calculating people's reactions to your own actions. All that remains is pure and true thought.

It is a feeling like finally going on holiday after years of hard work and regimented free time. It is this sudden influx of freedom that may allow you to find your true self beneath all the imposed images and influences. In that realm you can discover the meanings you are looking for. And for one single reason this is the case. Because none of the nurtured constructs obstruct your view on to the essence of what we are any longer. This is the state in which you can analyse objectively. This is the state in which you can mold yourself into what you want to be and not simply what has become of you. It is simply the state of the world. The state of possibility.

Experiment N° 2: Your thoughts and their mind

If you have tried thinking without words, you may want to try a further step. If you analyse each and every of your thoughts, without the constriction of language you may realise that every concept that you know is actually founded in a specific feeling, a sense that you perceive in your mind. For example, imagine the colour blue. Not the word blue or an object that may be blue, but simply imagine the colour blue. Now concentrating on it remember what "feeling" is present in your mind. Then imagine the colour red. Just the colour and the feeling that it conveys within you. You should find that both "feelings" are distinctively different. There is no similarity in them, linking them as the language concept of colour would. These two feelings are completely separate.

If you have not actually thought the words "red" and "blue" but actually imagined the colour
and felt what feeling these provoke in you, you may be inching closer to discovering how the thought process works. Every concept that we have, may it be "table", "red" or "memory" is far more than just a differently sounding word, or an abstract idea. Each of these concepts is saved in our nervous system under a specific feeling. These feelings put together create a story or a description of a scene, which we can thus recreate in our mind. Think of "the red apple was juicy and sweet". But ignoring the words, just picture that scene in your mind. Each of these concepts is linked to a specific feeling that springs forth from your memory.

Hence, the next level of discovering your mind is to think without words or concepts but just in these feelings.It is quite reveiling as it shows how much our thought processes are governed by the past and our language. Practicing to eliminate these "shackles" can give a grand new way of thinking, releasing the thoughts into infinite possibility.

It is certainly an effective way of learning how to concentrate deeply and of how to be in control of your thoughts and feelings instead of letting them control you.

The reemergence of distraction

Thrust back into everyday life of study, earning money, personal projects and social commitments it has become increasingly obvious how maintaining an ordered, clear and structure basis for the mind is difficult.

The last month has become busy again. And the first indication of that is, when things are done not for the sake of doing them but because they have to be done or because it is for the outcome. Instead of being able to enjoy a proper meal including its preparation and digestion, foot is only ingested in order to curb hunger.

It is so easy to lose focus when once is reingulfed into the hustle and bustle of one’s life. Yet there in lies the challenge. Once a person can stay in equilibrium while the human made world is bulging with pressure, that is when one has mastered the truly free lifestyle and sense of being.

I for one still struggle but at the same time improve, hopefully every day.

Experiment N°1: Your mind and its thoughts

When you think, how do you think? What actually enters your mind? What do your thoughts actually consist of?
Try and analyse it.

Chances are that if you know how to speak a language (I would hope you do if you are actually reading this) your thoughts will actually consist of words. You look at a table and you think “table”. You look at the clear sky and see that it is “blue”. This is much more the case however if you think of things that are not right before you. If you think that chores still need to be done, you will most likely be telling yourself silently in your head “I still need to clean the bathroom”. As we express our thoughts to others in words it is not strange that we would learn to do this to our selves.

This fact really interlinks with the differences between cultures and the languages that they are based on. There are plenty of words in different languages that just simply can not be translated directly. Accordingly it is not suprising that people think differently in different cultures with different languages. Even in the same society a different vocabulary may even be the reason for different ways of thinking e.g. thinking positive thoughts or negative ones.

Generally speaking one may thus say that language influences our mind very deeply. We are locked in to ways of thinking through the language that we speak or that we think in. Especially multicultural people will there for find it easier to be open minded and understand foreign cultures or their languages.

However, even if one is only proficient in only one language one can still manage to open one’s mind, or release the mind from the constraints of having to think in that language. Similarly even if people know many languages and understand their underlying cultures, they may still be locked into different ways of thinking depending on what language they are using.

A simple way to train the mind, both in concentration and in breaking that mould is by settling down and making an effort not to think in words. Try and replace the words that would normally course through your mind with only the images. Don’t think “book” when you think about reading one, just use the image to think about it. When you think you must wipe the table. Don’t sound the words in your head, just picture yourself cleaning the table.

Try and train this regularly. At first it may be very hard to keep focused and not actually use words while you think. With practice however, it will become easier and easier and you may even notice a difference in the way you feel or perceive the world around you.

A thought on the human issue

Humanity prides itself in its achievements in technology, knowledge and culture. It sees itself as the pinnacle of both biological and physical evolution.
And yet where are we really? We have replaced the struggle for survival with the struggle for materialistic achievement.
We live in a time and place of such vast and plentiful possibilities. For all the negativism concerning the western world it has given us back some of the possibility of shaping our own destiny. You have inconceivable amounts of information at the end of your finger tips. You have an incredible amount of pathways you can choose from in your life. Restrictions and boundaries have fallen away. However one thing has always stayed with us over the whole time of social and economical changes and upheavals. Human depravity and ignorance are as consistent as ever and are reflected in the reasons for the financial crisis and other catastrophes such as the Iraq conflict.

And nobody should fool themselves that freedom is really theirs as the for instance American government loves to profess. It is far too important for powerful economical entities to control the multitude that we are. It may seem to some that we live in freedom, but needing credit cards to pay for airplane tickets, bank accounts to earn money, loans to study and credit checks to even get a phone line paint a very different picture. Where is freedom really when governments can detain so called suspects without reason or evidence for more than even a minute? Politicians may say that terrorists are attacking our freedom with their bombs, but so are the politician’s new laws. The thing that should worry anybody is that few people realise that more and more people are losing the rights they would so vigorously have defended were there no enemy that seems to be lurking just around every corner. Whether true social, economical freedom is really possible is more than debatable. And yet the accepting nature of people around the world to these cutting changes, their fear of the enemy that supposedly wants to destroy them personally is the real issue at hand.

All that this situation portrays in reality is the inherent lack of freedom that is found in every human society. And yet every person in our society imposes this prison upon themselves. We chose to live in a world where we want the newest computer, the bigger TV, the cooler refrigerator and the nicer car. We haven’t gained freedom from the struggle of survival over our millions of years of evolution. We have merely transferred the shackles of this struggle for survival from the need to produce food and keep warm to the need of social acceptance, of becoming rich and of escaping the fear of having to face the image of our own true self.

Every day, your thoughts revolve around all these worldly matters, the objectively seen inconsequential and superficial issues in life. Have you ever taken time off from this hustling and bustling rush of ever changing demands upon your intellect to turn it towards a real sense of self exploration? All our lives we sail on the rough and choppy seas of our mind without having a true peek below the crashing waves.

That is where true freedom is to be found. When one lives from the indestructible foundations of true understanding. When one stands stabily in the stormy ocean of life and sees the many million opportunities that every day offers, especially in a time of curtailed freedom but endless choice. When this happens one does not have to abide by so many unconsciously imposed rules on our life. One can chose to aim for the stars. One can decide to grasp for most ridiculous seeming goal and still achieve it. The limits one’s own thoughts and social conditioning set are the only inhibitions for the great mind that inside all of us. Dare to dream and bridge the chasm of opportunity. Stop procrastinating and take action. Be responsible for your choices, your goals and your life. Do it NOW.

…and once you’ve set yourself in motion, instead of consistently flooding your intelligence with mind numbing consumer products and information, take some time out to explore what only few in the world have experienced. Your self, the world inside you and the world around you. Open your eyes and play the main role in your own life.

The same old day once again?

Just how many people are there in the world? And out of those, how many do not need to struggle every minute of the day to survive? And out of those how many people do not need to spend every waking second working to ensure they can support themselves? All those people left over still amount to a vast multitude. As you are reading this, you are most likely one of them, or maybe you should get back to earning a living if you aren’t.

Each of these individual lives is fascinating as to its nuances and the differences in subtle experiences and workings. But you pass by dozens or maybe hundreds or even thousands of people every day and time and time again you aren’t even bothered to acknowledge that somebody is there on the sidewalk beside you. There is just too much information floating around, too many people, too many friends to stay in contact with, you just can’t afford to take the time for one more.
But why not?

What do you have to lose more than time? A thing that you waste worrying about inconsequential matters already. A thing that you spend, by just sitting on the bus or driving in your car to work or shopping. Why not spend 5 of the precious 1440 minutes you have every one day, listening to what somebody has to say. You could learn a great deal, you could find the solution to your most dire problem, you may find the love of your life or you may just have an amiable but slightly boring chat.

The question is really, why do so many people chose to live in their cocoon like lives, categorically denying the existence of other people or even living beings. Naturally, you can not be everybody’s friend. You can not know everybody, but why not try to make yours and everybody else’s “mundane” life just a bit more exciting. Why is everybody so scared that they may meet somebody dangerous instead of being excited that they could meet somebody great?

It is this mediocracy of living that so many people seem to experience and that pervades every facet of life. It seems that everybody’s paths are set in stone. This is the career they chose, there is no way to break away from it so they just accept it. It is this acceptance that establishes a barrier between the truly ordinary and the people that strive for more. Boundaries are there to push them outward. Traditions are there to be broken. And narrow-mindedness may just be there to be opened and expanded. Nothing is set in stone. Nothing is meant to be. Nothing is a specific way because that is the way it has to be. Everything is a matter of choice. Stop ignoring the choices that are too radical to even enter a blind mind. Just break out of the mold, tear down some barriers in your life. Your experience will be so much richer and more rewarding.

An easy way to start is to just look up, from your deep and troubling thoughts to the world around you and see what is happening right NOW. Maybe chat to somebody new?

A year has gone by...

A new home, a new lifestyle and new experiences very much shift the outlook.
This year of not writing here, very much represents a year of being engulfed in the worldly woes and worries of the mundane and normal.
It has been a year of experience. The stress and business of dead lines and earning money does eat up ones mind but to find time for reflection even only for a brief moment allows one to see what has become of one's mind, ideas and thoughts.

Life is an ever unfolding experience which must be constantly shaped and directed to reach one's goals. Over the last year I must admit I lost track and sight of the values of mental freedom and things you may call enlightenment. And as with anything it is merely practice that makes one better at things. So I have caught myself in midfall and resurrected the tumbling fundaments of the mind that started this blog.
Perhaps a year wiser in the worldly issues of day to day life I will now be more capable of pointing a direction for any reader to search for peace.

The mind is an interesting and complex construct. An ever changing mass of thoughts and emotions intermingling to shape decisions and actions on a day to day basis.
Some mornings you wake up and must hurry to make it to an appointment. No time for reflection, no time for finding your self. All that counts as soon as you wake up is to keep in the monotonous beat of time. Shower, dress, breakfast, travel. And all too quickly you get lost in the never ending cycle of what needs to be done and what is still on your itinerary.
But why? have you ever asked yourself this question? And I mean truly! Not just in passing.
Try this once, when you are in a rush. Just stop! Stop dead at what you are doing, sit down and think. What would actually happen if you failed to fulfil the requirements that you have set for yourself or that somebody else has set for you.
Would it be that life changing if you did? Are you actually in control? Why don't you try and take control for once. Stop letting the outside influence you and try to influence the outside.

If you walk down a busy street, stop in your track and just watch the people passing by, their downcast gazes, deep in thought. "Ive got to get this done, I had better hurry up to catch that bus, I need to go shopping quickly."

Everybody is so caught up in what they need to do for the future that they forget that living is an activity done in the present. Try every day to be aware of what you are doing. Live in the NOW for once and blend out all those thoughts about the future. It will alter your perspective dramatically. It will give you an indication at where you stand against your aspirations. It will show you whether you are actually happy with what you are doing. Try it.