The starting point in your journey to behaving with SI is to try to see and understand the real nature of your existence. All that exists including all human beings , all life and all matter are part of one integrated system. To believe that you are looking out on the world is a delusion-you are part of a flowing river of existence. Life on this planet is an ever changing soup that is in an endless cycle. You must see yourself as part of that. An aid to a more real visualisation of your position in the universe is to see yourself as one of a massive flock of birds all flying in convoy in the sky . You will have seen that they will twist and turn in a giant formation as if they are controlled and have a leader-but they do not. Each bird flies and moves following rules which have evolved over millions of years which enable it to be part of the flock as if the flock as a whole was a single entity.
This is a really important concept because to attain insight and awareness you have to be free from the notion of self and the ‘Self, Me, I’ perspective. Who and what you are is the product of countless generations of Mothers and Fathers who have contributed to and helped develop and evolve YOU. What a privilege! Yes you are an individual and ‘alone’ in one sense but also you are absolutely an integrated part of the soup of life on this planet in more ways than you could ever know. You do not think those birds are alone do you? You can be connected to people all around who love, support and cherish you and who you can in return love, support and cherish.
Happiness is a state of inner fulfilment, a deep state of well being, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things. In fact happiness can only ever come from within-and ultimately from purely being i.e. existing.
It is fundamental to this journey that you now start to practise meditation. This will enable you to start to turn off the continuous clatter of life and take time to quietly listen to your thoughts and look inside yourself to find peace and calmness. In the next section I will give you some guidance on how to begin practising meditation.
You should not look for happiness from life’s events since sooner or later life’s events will disappoint or involve suffering. Understand that our desires are boundless. It is one thing to get pleasure from material possessions but do not be dependent on them and know that we can never be content from having all the good things in life. Material wealth, comfort and security will not satisfy us. Happiness does NOT depend on outward conditions. It depends only on inner conditions. Shakespeare-Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Abraham Lincoln-Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Meditation is a fundamental ingredient of practising spiritual behaviour. Meditate regularly as this is essential for developing and maintaining inner peace, tranquillity, calmness and serenity. Without a calm mind, insight cannot occur.
Meditation is simply a deeper state of thought and relaxation than we normally achieve .But this is not to be regarded as another job or chore to be fitted into your busy schedule! On the contrary-meditation when you get the hang of it is pleasurable. It can be like having your head stroked by a loving parent as a child , or the emotional equivalent of having a massage or relaxing in a hot tub! You will definitely find it actually makes you feel better and has an effect that endures afterwards.
You must take time out on a regular basis to listen to your thoughts , not to pursue them but rather the opposite-to observe them-and not pursue them . Instead the skill is to be able to just let them go , without following them or worrying about them and thereby learning how to not be a slave to the endless clatter of thoughts that invade the mind. You understand that thoughts form and can dissolve away like wavelets on the sea and you do not have to seize each one and process it . Meditation is essential training for developing your ability to live in the moment , and to be able to accept or reject your thoughts.
As you gain experience with meditation you will begin to be able to cease the endless desire, and anxiety that can pervade normal life. The thought process that endlessly generates the ego comes to a stop. There is then a window within meditation that there is no thought creating self , and no self concern. Insight arises through meditation when we have abandoned desire and anxiety.
Meditation is not a religious practise, is not prayer , and is not hypnosis. It is however widely promoted and recommended by most personal transformation methods and for the very good reason that it works. People often meditate in groups because the discipline of attending a group can help in making the time to do it, and that is fine. But essentially meditation is a personal and individual experience and can be done anywhere anytime.
Here is a brief guide on how to meditate:
Start by relaxing your physical body. Try to get comfortable sitting in an upright position perhaps with your hands on your lap. Concentrate on relaxing your neck, legs, arms, in turn but then try to let them go. Be aware of background noise in the room or wherever you are but try to let that go too and not be distracted by it. It is important that you do not drift off to sleep when you are meditating so the perceived wisdom is that you should keep your eyes half open but personally I prefer to close mine. If you find ritual such as having a Buddha figure in the room or burning incense conducive to creating conditions that assist your meditation then there is nothing wrong with using such aids.
Now as your meditation begins quietly and calmly observe your thoughts but then let them go. Instead try to just concentrate on your breathing, and specifically the in breath and then the out breath and so on. Each time a thought comes in to your mind, try to let it go calmly but practise returning your concentration to just the in breath and the out breath. A widely used breathing technique is to breathe in deeply but normally but to extend the out breath for longer than usual. You are trying to just concentrate on being aware of your very existence and just being- just being alive –and breathing. You are trying through meditation to get to know and make friends with your inner self! After a while the predictability of your mundane thoughts may even start to amuse you! Learn through meditation that you can accept or reject your thoughts and that they are only thoughts and have no power over you. It is believed that just concentrating on your breathing is a good discipline because if you can train your mind to do this, then you are on the way to being able to control your mind and thoughts during normal life when you are not meditating.
Being able to meditate takes a bit of practice and is a skill but you will quickly acquire it so please do not be put off if on the first couple of occasions that mundane thoughts and worries keep invading your mind; this is the very reason you need to keep going because you absolutely will get better at it. And I can assure you that the inner peace , and serenity that meditation bestows will equip and empower you to start to change how you see the world.
Understand we are all more alike and in the same boat than you might think. Everybody is seeking happiness. Our basic needs are to be loved and to find our own purpose and meaningful connections in life. Everybody wants to love and be loved. Everybody wants to feel important and appreciated. Know that when you strip away the armour of their outward togetherness everyone is really a little bit of a fiasco.
Everybody is dependent on a vast number of other people for so many things e.g.
· Farmers to grow their food.
· Retailers to operate the shops where they buy food and other goods.
· Oil production and refining, and distribution for transport, goods distribution and a myriad of other products.
· Generation and distribution of electricity. Anyone who has ever endured a power cut that has lasted more than 24 hours will know how quickly everything else degenerates without electricity.
· Medicine, doctors , nurses, hospitals and paramedics.
· Storage, purification and distribution of water which is essential for life.
· Police who maintain law and order to keep you safe and free. There are many examples of how when natural disasters disrupt policing , then civil disorder, mass looting and worse set in within a few hours.
· Artists who work in the movie industry, television or sport to entertain us.
Understand that if you are successful and a high achiever it is because you are merely standing on the shoulders of those that gone before you in your field or business. You personally have invented very little of the knowledge and skills that you have and apply. The river of human knowledge and human ingenuity is merely flowing through you during your brief life. If you are for example a great musician you owe so much to the people before you who have created the music, to the people who have educated and encouraged you, and to the people who have made your instruments, and to your audience or customers who finance your lifestyle and enable you to follow your chosen field. You owe everything to the people who have worked in your field before, and to your parents who have given you the example and role models, love and encouragement to learn and facilitated and provided your education. I cannot put this into any better words than the totally insightful and unforgettable words of Michelle Obama who when addressing a group of school girls said “I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by the people around them”. And finally a spiritual high achieving person does not feel the need to bully or belittle others below them; they do not feel smug and elite, rather they use their position of power or privilege to inspire and encourage others and to give something back.
The world that we see is merely a construct of the mind. We are reminded of this when we have a lucid dream in which people and places all appear just as they do when we are awake.
Everything that exists is essentially only energy. In fact everything in the universe is connected. It is just one energy field. Our minds have evolved an extremely advanced set of ways of representing the energy that is presented to us very analogous to holograms. But make no mistake sound, colour, heat, cold, taste are only really models in our brains and are merely interpretive ways of representing energy and are ways that have conferred evolutionary and survival advantage to earlier forms of life. Our advanced and very clever brains present a very sophisticated ‘show’ of colour, sound, and smell to us to enable us to navigate our environment.
But however they work we have evolved the most fantastic senses that enable us to SEE and enjoy the most exquisite beauty. How fantastic for example can be the breathtaking beauty and pleasure of a sunset or a face. All that beauty is in ourselves and the way we perceive the world and the universe.
The illusion of sight is arguably the ultimate magic. All those ‘frames’ are processed and presented to us in full colour for our entire lives. And it is all only an illusion really based on the different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. We take so much for granted when we do not SEE the magic of our existence moment by moment.
And what about hearing and sound for another example? Just different wavelengths of vibrations of air. All another illusion. That sound is not really ‘there’ if we are not there to interpret it. But what a miracle that we have brains that can process it and distinguish between millions of ‘sounds’ and thereby enable us to enjoy the exquisite pleasure of music be it pop or a full orchestral symphony. Again all that beauty is within us and some people take it all for granted.
To be philosophical for a moment, we are both the creators of the beauty of the universe (in our minds), and the beholders who appreciate and enjoy the beauty.
I make no apologies for repeating the following statement more than once in this guide. Consciousness is a mystery and a miracle and it is a travesty that people take it so for granted rather than really seeing that just 1 second of consciousness is the greatest most exquisite and precious possession of all in the entire universe.