Can you give some more examples of ordinary unconsciousness?
See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought,
about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say,
your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain
is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an
unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself
into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change
the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or
possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
Ordinary unconsciousness is always linked in some way with denial of
the Now. The Now, of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting
your here and now? Some people would always rather be somewhere
else. Their “here” is never good enough. Through self-observation,
find out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there
totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you
unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation,
change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for
your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must
choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No
negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.
If you take any action — leaving or changing your situation — drop
the negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into
what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity.
Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been
stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at
least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If
you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from
taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into
it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and
your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power
of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.
If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now,
and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your
here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false,
unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself
can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not
weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has
spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the
situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any
effort on your part. In any case, you are free.
Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing it?
Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity,
laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it
fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully
and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t.
Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity.
Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the
present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by
being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but
wanting to be in the future. It’s a split that tears you apart inside. To
create and live with such an inner split is insane. The fact that
everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it any less insane. If you have
to, you can move fast, work fast, or even run, without projecting
yourself into the future and without resisting the present. As you
move, work, run — do it totally. Enjoy the flow of energy, the high
energy of that moment. Now you are no longer stressed, no longer
splitting yourself in two. Just moving, running, working — and
enjoying it. Or you can drop the whole thing and sit on a park bench.
But when you do, watch your mind. It may say: “You should be
working. You are wasting time.” Observe the mind. Smile at it.
Does the past take up a great deal of your attention? Do you
frequently talk and think about it, either positively or negatively? The
great things that you have achieved, your adventures or experiences,
or your victim story and the dreadful things that were done to you, or
maybe what you did to someone else? Are your thought processes
creating guilt, pride, resentment, anger, regret, or self-pity? Then you
are not only reinforcing a false sense of self but also helping to
accelerate your body’s aging process by creating an accumulation of
past in your psyche. Verify this for yourself by observing those around
you who have a strong tendency to hold on to the past.
Die to the past every moment. You don’t need it. Only refer to it when
it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment
and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.
Are you worried? Do you have many “what if” thoughts? You are
identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary
future situation and creating fear. There is no way that you can cope
with such a situation, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a mental phantom.
You can stop this health-and life-corroding insanity simply by
acknowledging the present moment. Become aware of your breathing.
Feel the air flowing in and out of your body. Feel your inner energy
field. All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life — as
opposed to imaginary mind projections — is this moment. Ask yourself
what “problem” you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five
minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment? You can always
cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future — nor do
you have to. The answer, the strength, the right action or the
resource will be there when you need it, not before, not after.
“One day I’ll make it.” Is your goal taking up so much of your
attention that you reduce the present moment to a means to an end?
Is it taking the joy out of your doing? Are you waiting to start living? If
you develop such a mind pattern, no matter what you achieve or get,
the present will never be good enough; the future will always seem
better. A perfect recipe for permanent dissatisfaction and
nonfulfillment, don’t you agree?
Are you a habitual “waiter”? How much of your life do you spend
waiting? What I call “small-scale waiting” is waiting in line at the post
office, in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive,
to finish work, and so on. “Large-scale waiting” is waiting for the next
vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly
meaningful relationship, for success, to make money, to be important,
to become enlightened. It is not uncommon for people to spend their
whole life waiting to start living.
Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the
future; you don’t want the present. You don’t want what you’ve got,
and you want what you haven’t got. With every kind of waiting, you
unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where
you don’t want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be.
This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the
present.
There is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation.
You can improve your life situation, but you cannot improve your life.
Life is primary. Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole,
complete, perfect. Your life situation consists of your circumstances
and your experiences. There is nothing wrong with setting goals and
striving to achieve things. The mistake lies in using it as a substitute
for the feeling of life, for Being. The only point of access for that is the
Now. You are then like an architect who pays no attention to the
foundation of a building but spends a lot of time working on the
superstructure.
For example, many people are waiting for prosperity. It cannot come
in the future. When you honor, acknowledge, and fully accept your
present reality — where you are, who you are, what you are doing
right now — when you fully accept what you have got, you are
grateful for what you have got, grateful for what is, grateful for Being.
Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is true
prosperity. It cannot come in the future. Then, in time, that prosperity
manifests for you in various ways.
If you are dissatisfied with what you have got, or even frustrated or
angry about your present lack, that may motivate you to become rich,
but even if you do make millions, you will continue to experience the
inner condition of lack, and deep down you will continue to feel
unfulfilled. You may have many exciting experiences that money can
buy, but they will come and go and always leave you with an empty
feeling and the need for further physical or psychological gratification.
You won’t abide in Being and so feel the fullness of life now that alone
is true prosperity.
So give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself
slipping into waiting . . . snap out of it. Come into the present
moment. Just be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never
any need for you to wait for anything. So next time somebody says,
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” you can reply, “That’s all right, I
wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself — in joy in
my self.”
These are just a few of the habitual mind strategies for denying the
present moment that are part of ordinary unconsciousness. They are
easy to overlook because they are so much a part of normal living:
the background static of perpetual discontent. But the more you
practice monitoring your inner mental-emotional state, the easier it
will be to know when you have been trapped in past or future, which
is to say unconscious, and to awaken out of the dream of time into
the present. But beware: The false, unhappy self, based on mind
identification, lives on time. It knows that the present moment is its
own death and so feels very threatened by it. It will do all it can to
take you out of it. It will try to keep you trapped in time.