The Great Escape

This is a common scenario for most of us. It is a new day. You have just arisen from a night's sleep. You are ready to meet the world of life again, hopefully refreshed and renewed. After your morning rituals of bathing, eating, working out, perhaps some religious or meditative things as well, you begin to relate to the world around you. You meet people, you interact, thoughts come, situations arise and then BANG! Something happens that causes you dismay, anger, hurt, rejection or fear. This could be the words of someone, a look, a gesture or even a simple thought of some problem unresolved. The agitation increases the more you ponder the incident. It is almost diabolical to you that you are feeling this. There may even be blind rage brewing. Suddenly and without seeming consent you either lash back, if it's a person, or you want to do something to cover this over to block it out of the way. You may even want to run away, perhaps pretend that this incident did not happen. You may suddenly feel very indifferent, very stolid in your mind. In any case the immediate reaction happens and then what? Thoughts roll in by the thousands. Thoughts like," how could they have said that to me, or done that to me" or "why is this happening?" Then to quell the thoughts, to stop the process we feel we must "do" something else. We try to change the texture of things; we seek an alternative to the situation. We may turn to religion, to a god, a teaching, a philosophy or to some spiritual technique, or we might just spend our day suppressing all this and pretending it never occurred or worse yet we may feel extremes of guilt and remorse which burn us alive. This is what I call "The Great Escape."

This is an insidious thing and the cause for much of our daily hurt and suffering. It is this escape mechanism which leads many people to addiction, to drugs, to violence, to religious ritual and to the psychological problems of anxiety and depression among others. And all of this happens continuously, rapidly and seemingly without end. The question is, is there anything that can be done to alleviate this so that we do not have to go through it at all? Because if we could find a way to allow situations or thoughts to occur without being bullied , provoked or manipulated by them, then we would retain a sense of orderly peacefulness in our lives. We would be compassionate people. We would be able to see things as they are and realize that humans make mistakes, problems occur and life constantly changes. We can continue to live a full, meaningful and stable life.

The only way I have found is Pure Silence. In that very moment that an incident begins to occur, if you can see it as merely an incident or better as a form arising from nothing which will return to nothing, you will find much freedom. When you observe life happening and something negative presents itself and you begin to feel some emotion, or some thought arising in reaction to the event, simply be aware of it all as it is. Stop at that moment, turn your attention to the silence before, between and after and see what is there. Who is reacting? What is the reaction? The "who" is the mind conditioned to believe it is something important; that it is being attacked, that there is a defense that needs to occur or some escaping to do. The "what" is a thought which has arisen in the mind because of conditioned memory. And memory, the banks of billions of CPUs in the brain, begins to look for something in the past which has resolved negative incidents like this one before. If, out of the fresh silent awareness of the moment occuring you can see this, you will find a remarkable thing. You will find that you have never moved. You may have felt something negative, but it has had no grasp over you, no need for you to be provoked or seek to escape. In other words, you will be able to just deal, calmly, lovingly and without any sense of fear, remorse, guilt or the blind need to run.

Attend to the Pure Silence of right now with 100% attention and you will find an incredible stability which will carry you through all the events of life as a humble witness imbued with simple joy and love.

By:Mark Mccloskey

The Past doesn't Exist

What is that which we have called the past or before or yesterday? It is simply a memory, an activity of brain cells which retains that which we have experienced, heard, read or felt. That is the only existence of the past: in our brain. The past has no existence in the reality of now except in the mind . Therefore the past is simply a thought. Why then do we let memory or thought influence us so much? Why are we so afraid of this moment of now, of letting now be without the control, without the measuring, without the conditioning of the past?

You must know this, the past in reality, does not exist! It's dead, gone, finished and unalterable. It is a corpse of what was or could have been but it is not real. It cannot harm you. It cannot control you. It is merely a shadow on the ground. And as you know shadows are only places where the light is blocked from full bright shining. The light is there, the ground is there, remove the blockage and there is no more shadow. This blockage is your own conditioning to believe that there is something in the past that you need to redo or undo. Forget it dude! "Let the dead bury the dead." You are now; your life is now and in the pure silence of now there is the freedom to know all this, to realize that the past is nothing.

To live fully, freely and in this moment you must let go of the past completely. And seeing that the past is just a memory, which is simply a thought, all you need do is recognize the pure silence of this moment now which is without thought or without memory. You have nothing to fear and nothing to lose, except maybe a shadow blocking the light. Try it. Try it now and the light will blind you with its joy. In this still and gentle attention to right now, this moment, the past is not.

This is your choice. Do you want to live in the shadows of thoughts and memory plagued by guilt and fear or do you want to live a life that is complete, alive, fresh and filled with wonders, the likes of which you will not believe?

Stop everything right now and breath the next breath in, in the present loving stillness of you. You are this moment. Enjoy it!

By Mark Mccloskey

Teaching

Do you really know what you want most in life? Even if you have all the success, fame and money you want, and the good health to enjoy it – are you happy and fulfilled? Why is it that we all find ourselves seeking something more from life – all the time? Ramesh pointed out that each one of us, at some time or the other, has a taste of what that is: an uninterrupted experience of peace and harmony. He showed the way to this constant repose in our ordinary, hectic, daily living. This is what the seeking – most evidently, the spiritual seeking – is all about.

A simple examination of one's personal experience will reveal that what usually disrupts the peace and harmony in life is a thought about something we think we – or someone else – should or shouldn't have done. Hence, a massive load of guilt and shame for oneself, or hatred and malice for the other, is perpetuated. Without a lot of arduous effort – work, discipline, sacrifice, sadhana – without outside assistance, but simply by investigating one's own experience, it is possible to get relief from this bondage. What mystics have said for ages, is viewed from the perspective of modern living: that actions are 'happenings' and not something done by someone. This understanding is what actually contributes to and helps us in discovering the state of equanimity and peace which we most ardently seek.

"What is the Ultimate Understanding?" Ramesh would ask, and answered it by saying, "That there is no one to understand anything." He emphasized that everything he said was a concept and, moreover, it did not matter whether the concept was accepted or not. "Whether the acceptance happens or not is the Will of God, and the destiny of the individual concerned." According to Ramesh, many spiritual Masters instruct their disciples to "kill the ego" which results in a lot of confusion. In striking contrast, the point of his teaching was that it 'converts' the ego. With this teaching it can be observed, from one's own personal experience, the simple truth as enunciated by the Buddha that "Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer thereof."

Ramesh further pointed out that the main confusion arose with the question, "Who seeks what? What is the ego and what is the ego seeking?" The ego wants self-realization and the ego can only be satisfied with something that can be understood and appreciated in this life. Self-realization is simply the realization by the ego that the ego itself is not a separate doer, that the doing is merely a happening through a human mechanism or instrument. This understanding annihilates the guilt and shame, pride and arrogance that accompany the sense of personal doership. The result is an enormous sense of freedom, of peace and harmony.

The teachings that emanated from Ramesh are pure Advaita: 'Consciousness is all there is'. The impact of the teachings is fuelled with the force of his 'Total Understanding'. From his own life experiences, Ramesh made the teachings relevant - for the here and now.

From: www.rameshbalsekar.com