In most people, these impacts upon your central self are mostly felt as our own feelings and desires, but yet they are a huge changing kaleidoscope of impressions, urges and beliefs.

It becomes obvious that our ‘I’, our personality as it dreams, makes decisions and acts upon them depicts all of these things as outside of us in nearly all that we experience. Even our own internal urges to love or make love may be shown as external creatures, so we have a multitude of ways of relating to these aspects of self. Therefore, their depiction of you is not simple. So, try standing in the middle with awareness of what each impulse does to your sense of self.

If you think about a friend, ask yourself, ‘Is this thought my friend?’ If you have feelings about the friend, ask yourself, “Are these feelings an actual representation of my friend?” No they are not, but are simply your own thoughts and feelings. You cannot conjure your friend into existence by thinking about him or her. Thoughts and emotions are copies of things, just as a photo is a copy of something. They are never the people or things they attempt to copy. They are never reality.

Also your name, however many times you change it, it is never you, simply a label that is useful in daily dealings. It is a way that we use to gain a sense of ourselves. But like all the things we are told and believe like, “I am a failure” – “I am successful” – “I am sexually attractive” – “I am a mechanic” and on and on,they are not you, simply attempts to know you, the mystery of Life. 

But words are simply sounds or images we have ceated as a means of communication – they are never what the sound indicates.

So PLEASE remember this when you build your opinion of yourself with thoughts, urges or emotions.

Meditation Without Seed

You can slowly bring your thoughts and emotions under control by daily sitting for twenty minutes and stare at a blank wall or sitting in the middle of that circles and observe what images, feelings, fantasies and emotions you are witnessing. Can you see that your awareness is  an amazing living screen upon which the story of your life is projected.

I know this is so different to where people meditate on a beautiful light, or on a god or God, or spirit animals and many other such things. That is basically shifting your beliefs to something more enjoyable, but if you doing such meditations you are still not in control of all the images you are subject to.

Staring at a blank wall you will meet many different distractions – the out of control kaleidoscope  of your mind, emotions and beliefs. You may start to think that the practise is ridiculous, pointless (that’s right, it doesn’t have a fixed point and is meditation without seed – see Meditation With Seed)

Or if it is the screen of your mind you are looking at, can you see they are passing things that in themselves are the creators of a great deal of human misery.

It faces you with everything that actually disappears as something new arises. As the forms drop away, what we are left with is life without its clothing. We meet the essence of what gives us life, what gives the people around us existence, what exists in animals and plants, what animates and informs the children and people we love. Then we know we have met Life in every moment.

Example: The many different paths to the one great ocean of Life can be summarised in a simple way because they all have a common factor. It, like dancing or meditating for extended periods, quietens your normal way of thinking and looking at the world. In a meditation seminar I attended that lasted for several days I observed this with great clarity. After three days of meditation I saw my thinking mind faint. It could no longer sustain the continued concentrated pursuit of the question we were asking. In the moment of my rational thinking mind fainting there was an experience of divine Life knowing itself as this man people call B. In that state I knew connection with all the people around me, and the birds, trees and earth. For they and I shared the same spirit. I had arrived home at the source of things. I felt I was in the Garden of Eden, and that we had never left it. That experience, as ephemeral as it may sound, has given me something that strengthened me to pass through big life changes, and travel joyfully into old age.