"First and Foremost Be Clear on Your True Nature"
These times we live in are amazing, as humans being today we have access to so much information that our minds and thinking can be likened to a little child in a lolly shop, we just get overwhelmed. We live in a culture that is run by the kings of consumption and we have our insecurities flaunted at us so we keep looking to buy the latest and greatest and to fuel the desire for more and more from outside to try to end the sense of lack - which is basically because we haven't been encouraged to understand our own natural being undivided from all nature.
Messages in the mass media promote fear and mistrust and uncertainty of our fellow humans of insecure life and the degradation of the environment, we feel the stress of having to keep up with the demands of what we are taught is expected from us by our family, friends, society and government. Mostly we experience life built on unexamined assumptions about who we really are.
The seeking journey began for me, Peggy, in my teens and continued unrelenting into my fifties. I gathered alot of knowledge and opinions. I meditated, I read self help and spiritual books voraciously, I did seminars, webinars, workshops, learned healing modalities and continued to write and sing music all about these insights feeling one day, one day, I would find what I was looking for, but I wasn’t sure how. I became addicted to the search, addicted to the play of the mind and believed that I would find the answer in the mind, that someone would teach me. That is how we are encouraged to finding answers outside of ourselves.
There is nothing in life that can go truly wrong and so much is in the perspective and interpretation of events but ultimately circumstances we face where we may feel so "out of control" or out of our comfort zone is life itself giving us a chance to give up on the habits, patterns and thinking and let go of what is no longer working.
I faced a healing crisis in my late twenties that caused me to abandon what to many seemed a flourishing music career and began in earnest to go within. Reason being I had a mysterious condition, stabbing stomach pains, nausea, couldn’t keep food down. I had suffered high stress being unable to deal with the demands of a commercial music agenda, being the lead singer of a folk pop band with a newly signed record deal and album to promote nationally. The unknown disease which would onset anytime the band had a tour to undertake and me and all who depended on me were in frustration. I felt like I could no longer trust this normally very healthy body. Conventional medicine could not give me an answer or treatment, nor did I find any lasting solution in complimentary or alternative healing therapies. I thought I had some psychological disorder, that the disease was psycho-somatic. I went default directly to the spiritual search and went into self imposed exile from the limelight. I did two ten day silent meditation retreats back to back and went to see spiritual mediums, did past life regression and later on learned reiki, thought field therapy, quantum touch, healing codes, matrix energetics and kept reading being most attracted to the subject of consciousness technology as it may be termed.
Paradoxically from listening, watching youtube videos and reading Sailor Bob Adamson a direct student of Nisargardatta in the hindu Advaita tradition, and his student, John Wheeler and I knew finally got the pointing and the recognition I was after. From here almost twenty five years later, I very quickly realised from direct enquiry and taking a look myself that I am not this body and that the answers are not in the mind..
Now I see why once we are clear on who we really are, the rest falls into place. Like John Wheeler says, "stay with the basics and the context becomes clear."
Our minds want answers in words, ideas and concepts, yet our true being is this pure presence awareness which is able to be sensed but is non conceptual. It has always been here since we first felt we were a "someone" and taught we had a name and lived in a body. We are all so familiar with this sense, its so close, so much with us all the time that we don't think it so special, yet, this basic awareness, this knowing that we are aware is the foundation for all. You see we are so used to listening to the rational mind. We believe the mind is who we are, we identify with the accomplishment and the sense of "me" has been falsely given to the intellectual thinking process. This is a fundamental misidentification. No one can correct this fundamental misidentification but you. You must do this for yourself by taking a look and feeling, sensing and most importantly continually returning to this sense of being presence. The being is what underlies all.
This formless being is who you are.
But don't take anyone's word for it...You are the only one who can look and explore for yourself. Do it NOW, Look and see and feel experiencially what this is...Go no further until you actually do the looking...this is fundamental to all.
We can continue on and do what is required to balance the body and the mind. Continue to do what we are called to do to look after the physical, mental emotional but of paramount importance is to see very clearly that the mind which is the thinking process has a role, has a mechanical momentum and that it is not to believed when it comes to emotional and spiritual issues. The mind is the false master, it is the good servant however and serves us very well when it comes to practical and mechanical problems. It is used to solving problems but will invent problems where they do no exist when it comes to the nature of being, it has no clue. The bottom line is, the mind or thinking tells us we are a separate being, yet our nature is not concrete. It is formless being which to mind is no "thing" and cannot be grasped or known.
So Stop looking in the mind.
So that's that. Our common sense of presence or awareness of being alive is what we are. Too simple for the mind and it doesnt know what to do with it. Yet stay with it, as the ancients say, abide in this awareness and it will show you more. This consciousness or spacious intelligence is what underpins all. Three aspects of the one are omniscience (all knowing) omnipotence (all powerful) and omnipresence.
For more please visit my blog and music page here http://peggyvanzalm.net
