Your Sacred Self Page 14

Knowing constancy is insight.

  Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.

  Knowing constancy, the mind is open.

  With an open mind, you will be openhearted.

  Being openhearted, you will act royally.

  Being royal, you will attain the divine.

  Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.

  Being at one with the Tao is eternal.

  And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.

  —LAO-TZU

  The more I listen, the more profound the silence becomes.

  Those who measure such things estimate that our minds have sixty thousand thoughts during the waking hours of every day. Sixty thousand times each day something called a new thought enters our consciousness and then exits, while another thought enters.

  The problem with this is not the enormity of that number but that today we will have essentially the same sixty thousand thoughts that we had yesterday and the day before that. Our inner worlds are a frenetic beehive of activity with the same thoughts endlessly repeating themselves.

  This inner frenzy I call the inner dialogue. It is an omnipresent buzz in the form of silent thoughts. Most of this inner dialogue is a personal inventory of beliefs we’ve been trained to accept by others. Those thoughts include all of your beliefs about everything you can possibly imagine. No limits here. Family, relationships, sex, politics, history, your environment, criminals, God, everything. The thoughts come and go, day in and day out in a repetitive interplay of beliefs.

  You may remember what I wrote earlier about beliefs. I explained that they are laced with doubt because you got them from others. Therefore, your inner dialogue is a perpetual experience of reinforcing doubt. Doubt about yourself, your ability to create miracles, your ability to manifest divine relationships, to heal yourself, to materialize prosperity, and finally doubt about your ability to know the bliss of inner peace.

  The way to get to this place of inner peace and consequently to experience higher awareness is to shut down the internal frenzy.

  INNER PEACE AND YOUR INNER DIALOGUE

  The Chinese sage Seng T’san gave us the following piece of wisdom: “Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. Return to the root and you will find meaning. Look inward, and in a flash you will conquer the apparent and the void.” He is counseling us to simply stop talking and stop thinking. This is the third key to the sense of peacefulness that is a part of the way of the sacred quest.

  I want to make it clear that peace is not the absence of conflict. There will always be conflict because there will always be others who want you to behave as they dictate. If you have a strong sense of your self as a unique individual, you will constantly be given the opportunity to strengthen that knowledge of your self. Conflict will still happen when you practice shutting down the inner dialogue and quieting your mind.

  Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the experience of the presence of God. As you learn to shut down your inner dialogue and become more peaceful, you will begin to know the presence of God in your life. That presence will be felt in both your body and your inner world. Beliefs are removed. Believing is replaced with knowing.

  While I was preparing to write this book, I read the New Testament and came across something written by Saint Paul that was exceedingly important for me. He wrote in Philippians 2:5,6:

  Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

  The reason this held so much value for me is that Jesus’ primary disciple, Paul, dispels the notion of God as separate from man. It seems to me he refutes the accusation of those who believe it is blasphemous to speak of God being within or a part of us. When you shut down the inner dialogue you are in direct contact with the loving presence of God. “Let this mind be within you…. God resides within you.”

  In response to how to begin to do this, the Melville quote earlier in this book is so appropriate that I’ll repeat it: “Silence is the only Voice of our God.” But this silence is only as worthy as what we bring back from it. The ability to go within, meet God and bring back something of value in the form of higher awareness is available when you begin shutting down the inner dialogue. Peace is what you will bring back.

  At different times in my past, both alcohol and other substances were a part of my life path. Through meditation I was able to leave alcohol behind, and I have never touched it since. But with other substances, I believed I could use them when I chose to for an energizing effect beyond anything I had ever experienced. I was able to use them, enjoy increased energy and then leave them alone for long periods of time. But eventually I found myself going more frequently to this external source of energy. A time came when I knew I was making foolish and nonspiritual choices connected with seeking out these insidious substances.

  My personal challenge became to rid myself of this addiction. I tried reading my way out of it. But I went back. I tried acupuncture, discussions with experts and herbal cures. But I went back. I was determined that I would no longer play around with this substance. But I went back. Then I had what I call a holy instant, which was for me a divine experience.

  At 4:05 on a January morning I was meditating. In the still, quiet of that meditation, the thought of never again using the substance became real. It was my first absolutely direct experience of God. I became “openhearted,” as Lao-tzu described in the display quotation at the beginning of this chapter.

  My entire inner screen of awareness became a bright luminescence as I heard a voice say, “You have tried everything else, why not try me.” I have never in my life known such peace and certainty that God was within me and around me. I felt overwhelmed by the bliss I experienced.

  I thought perhaps that I was dying at that moment, and I didn’t care because the bliss was so all-encompassing. I could see my body from a distance, like people have described in near-death experiences. Then I saw a window that was the clearest thing I have ever seen. It was like someone had cleaned the glass with a magic potion that allowed me to see thousands and thousands of miles into eternity.

  I have never been so certain of anything in my life as I was that morning. It felt like I truly understood the meaning of “Being openhearted you will act royally. Being royal, you will attain the divine.” I knew that my desire to reach for anything outside of myself would disappear from my life. No substance had ever given me this kind of “high.”

  I listened to that voice, felt the presence of God and have not since experienced the slightest desire to go back to any substance. This is what I brought back from the inner silence. The ability to free myself from an insidious addiction and the absolute knowing that “this mind in you, which was also in Jesus Christ: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” I had attained that mind.

  It came to me when I had shut down all dialogue and given up on all other methods to send that evil monster out of my life. This is why I can write with conviction that inner peace is not the only thing you will gain from shutting down the inner dialogue. Perhaps more significant is what you bring back from that experience.

  Lao-tzu further tells us that “being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.” Tao is his word for God. So, we become one with God as we practice higher awareness.

  I have debated with myself about putting this very personal story in this book. That is, my ego self debated with my higher self. It was from my higher self—while I was experiencing my divine holy instant, feeling the bliss of God as a part of me—that I knew. What I knew was that my experience with chemical substances also involved helping others to look within instead of outside of themselves for both the excitement and the peace their higher self has for them.

  Millions of people are playing with fire when they toy with these substances, which are showing up in record numbers, threatening our children and the fabric of life. It is robbing us of our spiritual e
ssence and “eating our bones.” If, in my telling this story, one person who experiments with any substance and knows that it is out of control decides to shut down the inner turmoil and seek the help of their loving presence, then it will have been worth it.

  You needn’t have the challenge of getting off drugs to find value applying this third key to higher awareness. It works the same way for every experience you are ready to transcend: getting to silence and then having God be your personal knowing presence. Getting to silence requires conscious effort on your part. Knowing how your mind works as you begin practicing shutting down the dialogue can be helpful.

  THE STEPS TO “NO MORE DIALOGUE”

  As I discussed in the previous chapter, thoughts flow in and out of your mind all day, and you are able to witness those thoughts in lieu of identifying with them. However, you need to remember that the thoughts originate with you. No one else puts your thoughts into your mind.

  In order to understand my mind, I use the metaphor of a pond with a limitless depth. I do not call this metaphor or the practice of it “meditation” because there are countless methods of meditation practice. I prefer to think of this as a simple and effective way of shutting down the inner dialogue. There are five levels to this pond.

  Level One: The Surface

  On the surface of the pond are all the disturbances. It is here on the surface that the wind will churn up the water, the rain will come down and pelt it, the cold temperatures will freeze the surface and the warm temperatures will thaw it back to liquid. Severe storms will cause the surface to become violent. Peaceful weather will return the surface to a smooth and glassy calm. Leaves and dirt litter the surface, people toss rocks disrupting the calm and all disturbances are visible here.

  The surface of your mind is also where you note all of the disturbances. This is what I call the “chatter” level. Here is where a multitude of thoughts are constantly breezing across the surface of your mind.

  The chatter is of finances, deadlines, health, children, appointments, shopping lists, retirement, vacation choices, violence in the Middle East, conflicts at work, last night’s love-making, the book you are reading, the traffic, car repairs, your headache, your mother’s flu, things you are afraid to say to your boss, a dialogue with your spouse in which you are the martyr. I could fill a thousand pages with these fleeting thoughts. This is the way of your daily mental life. Many disturbances are buzzing around on the surface of your mind involving virtually everything you encounter.

  The storms of your life become the violence of your mind. The winds in your life create mild disturbances. These are all in the form of thoughts. Your mind becomes littered with all that drops into it from every corner of your life.

  This kind of daily living at the surface level is exhausting. But more than simply tiring you out, this level keeps you from experiencing higher awareness. Unfortunately, this is probably how you have become accustomed to using your mind. It may even be true that you believe that your mind is supposed to be nothing more than the receptacle for all those thoughts.

  Or you may believe that you think the way you do because you inherited that style. Until you explore other possibilities you may believe that thoughts come and go as they will and there really isn’t much you can do about them. If your mind is busy, then so be it.

  I encourage you to reconsider your position. Give attention to both the ecology of the surface level of your mind and to the significance of that level in relation to your mind’s depth and breadth, as you would do if you were responsible for the environmental health of a pond. The surface of a pond violently whipped about by a storm is not an indication of what is happening to the entire pond. Some surface litter does not make a pond impure.

  Level Two: Just Below the Surface

  Disturbances on the surface have very little impact just below the surface. A storm is still observable from below the surface, but its presence is not felt in the same way as it is when you are in the middle of it.

  Likewise, when you are able to go below the surface of your mind, you leave the stormy chatter behind. Here, the constant entering and exiting of thoughts is replaced with a different kind of thinking. You have more control of the thinking process though you are still a long way from silence.

  The activity is, however, now more focused. You sit still and find that your thoughts are now on analyzing. This is akin to intellectual violence. It is here that you search for reasons for everything. You tear apart every thought and try to find out why this happened, or that failed to happen. Mock dialogues are engaged in with the people in your life whom you believe are not supportive in the way that you judge they should be.

  At a rapid pace, just below the surface, the analyzing goes on. You may catch yourself analyzing something and make an effort to stop, but at this level there is a continual movement of analyzing.

  Think of a pebble that has been dropped on the surface of the pond as it sinks toward the bottom. It has broken through the chatter level and is passing through the analyzing part just below the surface. Exercise the witnessing activity you learned about in the previous chapter. Watch the pebble drop and observe the analyzing thoughts.

  Analyzing is the mental activity we are involved in when we automatically are making silent comments to ourselves about everyone and everything. Those silent comments will insist on analyzing your progress or lack of it even as you proceed with this meditative practice.

  The difficulty is in thinking that there is something other than this moment and analyzing how to get to a place of peace and bliss. This is all to be expected. Do not judge it or become frustrated about it. Allow your mind to analyze, and know that the pebble will eventually drop right through on its way to the field of bliss. As the pebble drops, you will leave analysis behind and arrive at the third level.

  Level Three: Well Below the Surface

  The pebble is now well below the surface of your mind. The chatter is lessening and so is the need to analyze everything. You are allowing your mind to see the flow of how things are all connected and held together. To synthesize means to bring together; to analyze means to take apart.

  At this level you are experiencing more of your spiritual nature. You can feel the flow of gratitude, joy and acceptance. You know that you are connected to all of life and you are using your mind to try to understand your place in the pond.

  With the pebble passing through synthesis, you are still using your mind. However, you are no longer using it in a way that victimizes you. You have learned how to control the thoughts that enter and exit and you have left the chatter level.

  At this level you accept that people are unique and that you cannot understand how and why everyone behaves as they do, including yourself. You are surrendering and floating into a deeper level of awareness. Here you will sense the divine flowing through everything and everyone rather than trying to figure it out. You are becoming more peaceful.

  The pebble falls ever so slowly below the surface. You are beginning to know the depth of who you are without your mind having to understand for it to be personally meaningful. Until now, you have been convinced that enlightenment involves you as a seeker who must find something. Now you realize that it is not like that at all.

  You surrender to not understanding and begin experiencing enlightenment. You know that God is both within you and outside of you at the same time. The pebble drops deeper into the center of your being, past that annoying chatter, past analyzing everything, beyond synthesizing, to the fourth level.

  Level Four: Stillness in Bliss

  You are now getting to the place where you are actually experiencing the joy of shutting down the inner dialogue. In this space, you begin to block thoughts and sink into awareness. You notice the silence of awareness, as fewer thoughts swim through.

  As your mind becomes quieter, joy begins to sparkle in the depths of the fourth level. Joy is a sign of the presence of God. Joy is a particularly noteworthy feature of the sacred quest because its
presence confirms that you have found your path. If you are using your mind to gain superiority over others through your emerging spirituality, you have not found your path.

  The basic substance of life is joy, which pours forth from the spontaneous movement of the present moment in your life. With this spontaneity comes freedom from self-absorption and from judgment of yourself and others. This quiet mind is a peaceful mind floating in a sea of bliss. I love this passage from Tara Singh’s A Gift for All Mankind:

  I think the most essential thing in one’s life is silence. What is silence? We think if we are quiet, we are silent. But we must come to silence without desire and wanting; otherwise we are not silent…. Move toward discrimination and the simplicity of not wanting anything. Step out of stimulation. That would be the right thing to do.

  This quieting of the mind becomes an intensely personal thing. You know the joy of not having the endless chatter and not needing anyone to confirm to you that you are or are not on the correct path. The quietness is an inner confirmation that you are experiencing a higher part of yourself.

  As you grow accustomed to the stillness, you will find yourself seeking it out regularly. You will know that there is a presence with you. After a short time, the pebble will drop rather rapidly from all of that chatter to this place of quiet.

  An old proverb states: “When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.” This is the state of mind that level four takes you to—a blissful forgetting of that which doesn’t fit, because the mind is at peace.

  Level Five: The Field of All Possibilities

  This is the final resting place deep within the mind. This is beyond quieting the mind. Here is the place within, where you empty your mind of all thoughts and experience the still-point. It is impossible to describe with words. The best description I have ever read of this level comes from the Native American Black Elk. He put it this way:

  The first peace, which is most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.