Life Beyond the Image

As I write this, I am sitting in a room that is filled with clocks. They are all ticking at different moments; precise moments. There is no space that is free from this sound. Does the mind work in the same way? The mind is filled with noise, and the slow death of psychological time.

Constantly, every moment in the mind is filled with something we think we need, or something we think we should become. Or perhaps, “This event happened, but it shouldn’t have.” It is within these projections, this ticking of time, that we spend our lives.

There is time that we can see by the calendar. There is yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We can make appointments, learn where it is we need to go, and make the necessary travel arrangements. All of this is necessary.

If I am going to fly to Boston, I need a plan to make it happen. I have to be at the airport in time for the check-in and for the flight. This is all very simple and easy to understand.

There is also something else we perceive as time; the space between where we are, and what we think we should be. “I am this, but it would be better if i were that.” It instantly causes a separation.

We cannot reconcile, for whatever reason, with what is real. So to give a sense of being better than we are, we project a future that is more to our liking. Instead of seeing the reality of what exists within, we run away and project something “better.” Reality is destroyed by thought in that process.

Being something “better” gives us false hope, because we think we are becoming something that is better than what we are. But really, we are always what we are. There is no becoming and nothing better. We fool ourselves into thinking that we are somehow transitory, and moving toward the better takes us away from what is now.

Again, I am not saying don’t make a plan. If someone is extremely over-weight, and they want to have a better chance of living a longer life, then make a plan and lose weight. Go to a doctor that specializes in these things, or go to a specialist in nutrition or a personal trainer. Whatever it is, see a solution and take action. But if you are extremely over-weight, why would you ever think you shouldn’t be that way.

“I am fat, but I should be thin.” Really? Are you thin? No? Then you shouldn’t be thin. Why shouldn’t you be? Because you are not.

Once you say that reality shouldn’t be the way it is, you shatter your mind. You create another fragment. Why do you think it should be any different from what it is? “So if I am fat, I should just tell myself I am fat, and live with it?” No. If you are fat, whatever that means for you, and if that is a fact, then that is all there is. If you could see it for what it is, you would not say one thing about it. Why should you?

If the sun is overhead, blazing in the sky, why should you think about it? It is there, and that is all. “But what if it is hot?” Then go inside. Make an adjustment. Why must we waste so much energy over these things? If something needs to be done, then proper action will be taken. But proper action can only come from seeing what is really there; not your projection of it.

It is only possible to be what we are, from moment to moment. And since the moment is all there is, there cannot possibly be a projection into the future.

I am not talking about visualization, or any other technique involved in goal-setting or physical performance. Those are valid methods of physical progression. I am talking about the idea of a projected future, covering up what is real. In the physical world, changes take time, but in the mental world, there is no time needed.

Have you experienced this within? Have you seen precisely what is there, without running away from it? Why do we have such a fear of what is there? We refuse to see the greed and the hate, the selfishness and the violence. We can point it out in others in a split second, but we cannot sit with it in ourselves for even a moment.

The only meaningful change in life, is change on an individual level. By “individual,” I mean from person to person. There is no change through becoming. Change requires no time, and “becoming” requires all of it.

It is like turning on a light; the change is instantaneous. But you might say, “I have a light that gradually becomes brighter. Every time you click the knob, it gets one level brighter.” There is no “gradually becoming”. True, every time you click the knob, it might change, but that change is the “now”. There is no level; there is only the brightness that is there. You cannot see it, because you only focus on an imaginary “maximum brightness” that is not there.

There are no levels of anything in the mind. It can only be as it is from moment to moment. If you want to learn something, attaining knowledge, then go out and learn it. Find a reliable resource, and take action. But if you want to learn to free your mind, or to be “enlightened,” then forget it. It is hopeless.

If you try to free your mind, what exactly are you freeing it from? Or you want to be enlightened? Enlightened to what? Enlightenment implies a state that is somehow different from others; the enlightened person has “it,” and the others don’t. The very term enlightenment is a separation. The moment you search for it, you have separated yourself from others.

You assume there is some other state to be had. But there is only the state you are in, and nothing more. There isn’t even a state, there is just being.

Why would you ever go anywhere else to have that?

As I sit here, writing these words, everything is still. The letters arrive in their own perfect time.

I pause, I type. Repeat. The physical movements are mechanical, and all else is quiet.

I am a poor typist, but I have internalized a second-rate, hunt and peck method of typing. It is not smooth, and there is no system to it, so gaps appear in my knowledge. I type quickly until I hit a word that I do not usually type. For example: alphanumeric. It might have been years since I last wrote that word. When I typed that word, a gap appeared in the mechanical process.

I slow down as thought comes in to help me out. Time enters into the situation. The mind searches its resources for the solution. It remembers where those particular letters are, and slowly, trying to catch up, the fingers follow. After the solution has been manifested physically, thought retreats to its proper place.

I could be a faster typist if I studied an efficient way to do it. I have not done that. But quick or slow, efficient or incompetent, the letters always arrive at the perfect time.

Even though thought is involved in this process, there is no element of psychological time. By that I mean, no thought that says something should be different from what it is; a thought that says I should be better at what I am doing, or I shouldn’t be so lazy about learning to type. I am just typing, and the letters arrive, no matter what I think should happen.

Human beings put a great deal of energy into becoming something. I will be this. Someday I will be free. I will have a higher level of consciousness. I will be good. Ad nauseam. Does anything come of this thinking? Can it? We might lead a more pleasant life, but does that life have any meaning? There is some comfort in the idea of attaining, because eventually we will be something great. But all the time you are becoming, you are not being.

I  am not saying that you can’t make a plan. Go ahead and do whatever you want. Set whatever goal you want to achieve. Get the knowledge you need, and take action. That is all very simple. But while you are doing that, you can still be in the moment, every moment. You can make better decisions without the crutch of thought spilling into areas where it doesn’t belong.

Everything happens as it should. Nothing is ever early or late. No matter what you think, everything happens in its own perfect time.

If you resist, your life will be full of pain.

Even though I speak English, and the readers of my blog speak English (even if it isn’t a first language), there are some difficulties with communicating thoroughly. Some people might think I am crazy about semantics, or maybe I just like to nit-pick. But that is not the case.

Let’s take a seemingly simple question like: “Do you believe in God?“, and I’ll imagine it is posed to me.

As I sit here, an answer does not come. The only thing in my mind is, I don’t really understand the question. What is meant by believe and God? I am not saying I do not know the literal meanings of the words; I can look them up in a dictionary, after all. But it doesn’t really help me.

First of all, if I say yes or no, what is it that is telling me the answer is yes or no? Is it through an idea that I read about, or and idea that was handed down through generations? Do I say yes because that is what is expected of me? Do I say yes because everyone else says it? Do I say no because I want to rebel? Do I say no because I have an idea that tells me the answer is no?

Questions like this (Do you believe in God?) create conflict. If a religious person asks me this question and I say yes, what happens in the mind of the person that asks? If I say no, what happens? If I say yes, I am a brother. If I say no, I am an athiest. But why should I be anything to them, other than what I am? If someone thinks I am an athiest, isn’t it true that the idea of what an athiest is infects all of their interactions with me? Is there a tendency to hold me at arms length, or perhaps an urge to help me see what is “true”?

If I say I believe the same faith as the questioner, then what happens? If I disagree, what happens? Think it over and go into it. You are devoutly religious (in this example) and you ask me if I believe in god. I say no, I vehemently deny it saying it is false. How does it affect you? Or you ask, and I say I do completely believe, and in fact, I am the exact same faith as you. Now what happens?

Do you see any inherent danger in the question? I am not saying it is true/false/right/wrong, or whatever. But what is it that is there? Is answering yes or no really a difference? If I say yes, it is my belief. If I say no, it is also my belief. So what is the difference?

When one questions oneself, there can be no conclusions. It sounds difficult to grasp. But isn’t it true that if you question yourself with a conclusion in mind, you are just looking for answers to justify your conclusions? And if that is the case, aren’t the questions coming from the answers you already have?

If someone asks me, “Does God Exist?“, do they really want to know, or are they looking for me to justify the answers they already have? Also, if someone really wanted to know the answer to that question, would they ask someone else to give them the answer? If I want someone else to give it to me, am I really serious about it? Or maybe I am just playing around with it?

These are just questions I had in mind this morning.

I am a bit behind on some other work, so I will post the conclusion to the Question and Question Part Three tomorrow.

I have been away from this site for two weeks, but I am still living.

I have received some questions from a nice person named Hampton on the Steve Pavlina.com forums. Now that I have a regular connection to the internet, I am more than happy to go into whatever questions are placed in front of me. That is not to say that I have an answer, or that what I say is right or wrong. But it is interesting, at least for me, to think over questions or statements placed in front of me.

This might turn into Question and Question, and not Question and Answer.

I hope you do not mind if I copy and paste your message, Hampton!  If you’d rather I don’t/didn’t, just let me know and I will remove anything you might find objectionable.

Here we go:

Hello Takuin, I have been reading your blog for some time now and find it very interesting and helpful. It’s not often that there’s an opportunity to communicate directly with someone who has experienced what you have. I would have emailed you, but I couldn’t find a link to do that on your blog.

There is now a contact page, but I am not entirely sure if it works. If you send a message and get no response at all, send me a comment and let me know. Or send an e-mail to Takuin(at)gmail(dot)com.

I have been trying to fix some of the errors, and it is taking me longer than I thought. I am not a professional, so fixing website errors tends to take a bit of time for me. (You may have noticed some strange changes in the wordpress theme, too.)

Thanks for your kind words, and I am happy to talk to anyone on this subject. Just don’t expect me to give an answer that you may agree with (if there even are any answers to be given, which I would question).

I wonder if you could help me to further understand what it like to be “enlightened”. Because the way one thinks of perceives the world changes so dramatically, I am a bit scared to jump into it and be willing to have the realization you had. At the same time, I think I understand to some degree what you and folks who live without thought experience even though I haven’t experienced it yet.

I have thought about this paragraph for some time. It would be very easy for me to give you an esoteric answer like, “There is no understanding in enlightenment,” or “Experience and No Thought cannot exist simultaneously,” or something like that.

Even though I can see for myself that those statements are true, it doesn’t really help you at all. I could tell you that there is nothing to be free from, that there is no state to attain, and nothing psychological that is worth achieving, but unless you have gone into it for yourself, taking it step by step, seeing what is really in you through your own questioning, then it all has little meaning. (When I say step by step, I don’t mean using some system or method other than whatever way you tend to question yourself.)

I have also been thinking of the term, no thought. (Haha…thinking of no thought!) Is it true that there is no thought inside of this organism? Is it true that Takuin has no thought? I must think to type these words, or to fix my website, or to read a book. So there is, of course, thought here. I have used the term no thought before, but it is not really true. When thought no longer interferes, it is essentially not there, but it is not gone forever. It still has its functioning, and still has its usefulness. Perhaps Quiet Mind would be a more appropriate term to use?

Thought does have its place. It functions in a mechanical sort of way, and without it we would have no technology to speak of, and no means of ensuring our survival. Perhaps we would live as sponges? I don’t know, but thought is useful and I think that no one questions that.

The danger arises, however, when thought spills beyond its field of usefulness and starts inserting itself where it doesn’t belong. When thought enters into the psychological realm is when the trouble begins. And by psychological I mean, thinking you have to become something other than what you are; thinking that things should be different from what is real (or thinking in shoulds at all, for that matter); the whole idea of becoming, as in, I will be a better person, I will be enlightened, I will be something in the future; seeing things or people through our beliefs and through what we have been taught, as opposed to seeing them, or reality, for what they/it is.

If you and I are talking, and I am thinking of who you are in relation to my own belief of what is right or wrong, or I am thinking of how I can help you, or if I am thinking that you have been nice to me so I will listen, or you have been mean to me so I will be cautious, then I am not there with you at all. I am just having a conversation with my thoughts of you. I cannot be compassionate or loving, and I can not truly listen or try to understand you. I am just having a fantasy on my own.

If you and I meet somewhere, I am not interested in thinking about you. I am interested in meeting with you, seeing you, exploring some subject or listening to you. If I want to think of you or see you through my beliefs (you or anyone else), why not just stay home and do that? It doesn’t make any sense to me that I will meet someone just to impose my thoughts on them. There can be no connection or expresion, if that is the case.

For the purposes of discussion I am going to use the idea of becoming enlightened. I realize that one is always enlightened, however it seems that until one has the true realization that he is creating his illusions, he will continue to do so.

The language can be difficult here. I just want to be sure what we mean. The idea of becoming puts it into the future, and if it is there, it can never be here. I think we both realize this, but there are limitations in using language to describe something that is, essentially, beyond thought. We’ll just have to do our best, won’t we?

The realization seems to be essential. Everyone that has undergone a fundamental change usually mentions some realization they have had or experienced. But failure comes in trying to force it. I nearly drove myself mad trying to have a realization as an experience. As if it were something to be had like having sex. I wanted to possess it and have it, like so many other things I might have wanted to control. But let me tell you something: when it comes, it will happen when you least expect it, and most likely, it will be a realization you have never considered. I don’t think that I would have realized anything if I desperately wanted to have it.

We have a tendency to think of what could be realizations beforehand. We hang onto them and store them, as if we are memorizing a phone number. But once a realization, or rather something we hope could be a realization, is stored into memory as something to be used, it loses its usefulness. It becomes as important as our grandmother’s recipe for cooking potatoes. Actually less important than that. You can cook the potatoes, eat them, and be satisfied. But if you desperately cling to the idea of the realization, you’ll always be hungry.

Questioning points in the direction of freedom, but there are no guarantees. And the questions themselves are not important. So don’t store them with the idea that you can use them like a formula to achieve the result you are after. You can use a system of questions to help see what is real and what is a fantasy. But that does not necessarily mean that it will bring about the ultimate realization, whatever that might be.

Keep questioning your thoughts. An unquestioned thought is the most dangerous thing in this world.

Coming Tomorrow: Part Two