The Return Home

When thought moves, what remains constant? When identities change, what remains constant? When emotions arise and disappear, what remains constant? When even the personality shifts, what remains constant?

 

Something is still there isn't it? Something that is aware of what is happening. This something remains untouched by experience, it is just there, and it is silently aware. When you go inwards you can experience this quality. Many names are given, consciousness, awareness, stillness, presence, being, no-mind etc., but these can only point towards this quality. This is beyond name and form. Direct experience of this quality requires a certain kind of stillness within yourself. 

 

What happens when you start to experience life through this quality? 

 

When this dimension opens up you are able to see life just the way it is. Now life can become a conscious process. You are not unconsciously influenced by identification anymore. This is very liberating. For many seekers it also signals the start of a new journey. Awareness shows how much the system has become out of balance. Many years of unconscious identification moves the human system in all kinds of directions. Now life has finally become a conscious process, the seeker is able to pick up the pieces and move back towards wholeness. This is the return home. 

 

How then can we arrive at this deeper quality that turns life into a conscious process? 

 

Let's explore this dimension together. 

 

One way to look at this is that the empty mind is the deeper mind. It is in this place where you simply experience life the way it is. This quality is accessible to everyone. It is just that many years of compulsive thinking can make this state a little hard to reach and maintain. The intellectual mind likes to keep control and there is no need to fight it. This could only lead to repression. As long as you identify yourself beyond body and mind there is no need to do anything. You can simply observe the commentary of your mind with a silent smile and not take it seriously. It is just the intellectual mind that has carefully created a personality that is giving everything color. You can give it space and in time you will see that the mind will lose its compulsive power. You then start to experience more and more no-mind until this quality can become your dominant state. Thoughts will still be there, but they are infrequent and few. You are starting to let go of your personality.

 

One very powerful way to go beyond the intellectual mind is to anchor yourself into the present moment. When you are intensely present you are simply here and you simply perceive what is there. The moment the intellectual mind comes in to label your experience you have lost it. 

 

Letting go of your personality is a process. In the beginning you will see that the intellectual mind keeps jumping in when you are simply trying to anchor yourself into the present moment. This is fine, it’s a natural reaction of the mind that is trying to keep control. What is needed is your conscious awareness that this is happening. By directly perceiving your intellect stepping in you are reinforcing your anchor into the present moment. 

 

Another way to go beyond the intellectual mind is called self-inquiry. When you do this you are basically utilizing the intellectual mind to go beyond the intellectual mind. This method was taught by the Indian Sage called Sri Ramana Maharshi. The essence of this teaching can be summarized in three words: who am I? The intellectual mind cannot conceive the answer to this question, so you naturally go beyond it and move towards no-mind. He only taught this teaching to seekers that could not understand what he considered the highest teaching: silence. 

 

When people would come for his guidance, he would simply sit in silence. In the state of absolute stillness you are beyond the intellectual mind. Simply by talking less you can greatly increase your ability to move beyond the intellectual mind.

 

Then there is meditation. Seekers meditate to quiet the mind and move towards this quality. Basically what they are doing is that they are shutting down the senses. The functioning of the intellectual mind relies on the 5 senses, especially vision, which is very dominant in human beings. By shutting your eyes and creating as little movement in the body as possible you naturally bring the mind to stillness. This is the main benefit of meditation practices, but real meditation happens when stillness becomes your quality. When you are actively and intensely involved with life, yet utterly still within yourself.

 

Meditators often focus the mind on one point. Like the breath, a mantra or a visual form. This is concentration instead of meditation. There is great benefit in this practice. Single pointed concentration prevents the massive wastage of energy on scattered and conflicting thoughts. You are basically making your intellect very sharp and pointing it in one direction. When your energy and consciousness are also pointing in that direction you are generating enormous willpower and clarity. This is the basis for conscious creation. Whatever consistently receives your absolute attention gradually starts shaping your experience of life.

 

Interestingly this practice also leads to deeper states of meditation, because by pointing your body, mind, and life energies in one direction you are naturally moving beyond the friction of a scattered intellectual mind. Naturally you are more meditative. 

 

The present moment, self-inquiry, silence and meditation are powerful ways to root yourself in this quality that turns life into a conscious process. Now the possibility of transformation is there, but many seekers initially underestimate what is required. Returning home is not easy, it requires sincere consistent daily spiritual effort.