Nothing stands in the way of our liberation. It can happen here now. We are just more interested in other things – Nisargadatta Maharaj
To use the metaphor of a spiderweb, finding Self is about extricating ourselves from the web, loosening our attachment to the mental web of delusion and expectation. A mentor described it once in these words: ‘It is in the sticky sense a brainf*ck arena.’ This attachment keeps us denser, vibrating at a lower rate. We walk heavily on the web and get stuck in it as a result, caught up in the strands of the illusion. Once stuck, we do best not to wrestle. Just like prey caught in the spider’s web, any struggle to break free will just tighten the strands.
So what to do? Expectation is merely the mind fixated on an idea. We get it out of its groove by denying it attention, not by fighting it. When we fight, we invite a fight. When we do not resist, we meet with no resistance. When we refuse to play the game, we are out of it.
Don’t attempt to recondition, change, or eliminate the mind. Simply leave it alone and don’t go along with it. Thoughts dominate you only because you’re interested in them – Nisargadatta Maharaj
It is the mind that tells us that the mind is there
All the endless arguments about the mind are produced by the mind itself, for its own protection, continuation and expansion. We move beyond it by blankly refusing to consider its convolutions and convulsions.
To extricate ourselves from the mental web, we either need to change, accept or leave any challenging situation we may find ourselves in. We cannot destroy the false by engaging with it. When we identify it and go beyond it, its momentousness diminishes. Once we see the web for what it is, we return to our lightness naturally. We dance lightly on its strands, not paying anything along the way more than fleeting attention.
Mind happens as long as we are interested in it, as long as we pay it attention. Emotional reactions keep recreating the same patterns. We de-magnetize the pattern by diverting our attention away from it. This way, we stop feeding our energy back into the matrix. If we take attention away, the mental illusion collapses. We can stop the movie at any point.
When I stop focussing on problems, they often resolve themselves. When I stop hounding people to return my mails and messages, they tend to reply of their own accord and help often appears in perfect timing as I need it.
In practice, this is a gradual process of taking our thoughts and emotions less and less seriously until we detach completely and anchor in Self. We step out of the mind into dispassionate awareness. Here, there is ease, spaciousness, light and freedom. This is the reality we come from and to which we will return. We recognize it by its utter peace and clarity. When I am in this space, everything suddenly feels right and I can’t understand why a moment ago, I was fighting it tooth and nail.
Thinking mind never applies
Think about it: In working mind, you are focussed on the task at hand. In thinking mind, however, you are in the mental future or past or elsewhere in the present. It is not ‘Here Now’ and therefore not useful or appropriate. There are no degrees of importance of its contents. No matter how grave the situation appears to be, the thinking mind, its story and it’s worrying never apply. Thinking mind is error.
I felt so empowered and free once I realized this, once I understood that I don’t need to take my mind and its emotions seriously. Ever. I am in control, they are not.
Waking up from the dream
Mind-created reality is a dream. Our desires and their fulfillments, our fears and their escapes, are our dream world, completely unrelated to reality. Only once we awaken, do we realize this.
Have you ever dreamt of a formula that would bring about a huge scientific breakthrough? You realize that you’re dreaming and try hard to remember it for when you wake up. If you do manage to do so, 10 to 1 what seemed so significant in the dream, is utter gobbledigoop in the light of day?
A dream may make perfect sense to us while we are dreaming it. Once we wake up from it, the logic ceases. In the same way, our reaction pattern fits nothing but our own assumptions. The ‘I’ is dreaming through the mind. Remove the mind and it becomes aware of itself as the canvas against which the dream is projected.
As long as we give reality to our dreams. we are their slaves. When we realize we are dreaming, we can choose to wake up. We need not bring our dream to a definite conclusion. Waking up from the dream is serene and simple. Without our attention to strengthen it, the dream fades away without a trace.
Forget not who you are in the moment of your encirclement by that which you are not – Neale Donald Walsh
When we lose ourselves in the world, confusion, anger and conflict arise because we forget who we are. Being locked into an ego battle and fixation is like a trance. We are not available to the more subtle vibrations guiding us forward at all. The dreams we regard as beautiful, hold us back as much as as our nighmares do, because they equally lack truth.
A dream within a dream
At the basic level, we dream that we are awake, and we dream that we are asleep. These are mere varietions of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream, liberates. What we accept as reality on one level, turns into a dream once we awaken on the next level. Then we realize that this level too, was merely another dream, another projection. Every dream is reality as long as we believe it to be real. The only final reality, however, is Self.
I used to think that I need to be like grass with very tenacious roots that cannot be pulled out. I prized valiantly overcoming the emotional drama and resultant physical chaos that I had actually I created for myself. I now know that ultimate power lies in being able to let go of the dream at any point and wake up into Self. Better still, not to lose consciousness in the first place.
Do you need my help in extricating yourself from the sticky web? Contact me here.