I recently did a post on the facebook page that read, “We should be in our bodies, not our minds. We should profoundly feel reality around us. We should note how our thoughts can make our bodies appear lighter or heavier. We should note how much less we spill or drop when we focus on the present rather than thinking a layer of before or later over top of a semi-automated present. Our consciousness needs to be filled with something. Fill it with the present rather than with thought.”
Following that post, a long time reader responded that she found staying conscious a “constant struggle,” which in turn has lead to this post, as I also know many of you who go through the classes experience this stage so it makes sense that others reading the blog will as well.
Your consciousness can do two things. It can be focused on the present, or it can think a reality into being for your ego to experience. Each action in the present or thought-triggered reality from the ego will incite various biological reactions that we experience as the chemistry of the brain and the feeling of our emotions.
When we notice our ego most is when it generates pain, but the pain itself often causes us to delve into the past and wonder why we allowed the negative feels to be conjured rather than staying focused on own role in the present regarding how we feel. That means we then add to the problem by chastising ourselves for having gone the route of ego, which just creates more thought-based suffering when what we needed was less.
We don’t need a solution, we need understanding.
The path we seek is defined by where the path is not. What defines the path is its not-path borders. So the ‘struggle’ we feel in bouncing into the underbrush isn’t us failing, it is simply us allowing our consciousness to drift through a lack of active awareness. In turn, our painful emotional reactions to events in turn signal us to return to the awareness and that leads us back onto the path. Without that there would be no path at all.
That “struggle” is not a failure, it is really just the normal oscillation of a soul from spirit to ego and back again. But again; without not-path there is no path, so that is why spirituality is a practice and not a degree. That’s the point behind yin and yang. We can’t have just one. They work together to create reality. That’s why the Buddha said that the end of suffering is the acceptance of suffering, and it’s also why Rumi said, the road home is home.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.