Who Are We Really? (Beyond Body, Thoughts, Emotions and Personality)

The Mysteries of our Body

Our sensory organs tell us that our body is solid and permanent. In reality, however, our body changes permanently, like the currents of a river.

Upon taking a breath, over 1.000.000.000. 000.000.000.000 atoms arrive into our body, they are incorporated into our cells, and the same amount leaves our body when we breathe out. 98% of the atoms of our body is replaced in a period shorter than a year: the liver is completely renewed in 6 weeks, the skin in days, the bones are fully replaced in 3 months, and the DNA is renewed in 6 weeks. The atoms of your body as it existed a year ago are now all outside of your present body: in the atmosphere, in the soil or incorporated into other living organisms, grass and trees... that is how the entire planet recycles itself in a perpetual cycle. We live in close interconnection and interaction with all other things, everything is in the state of a constant change and transformation. 

The only permanent thing is change. We still tend to experience the permanence of our Self.. Is it possible that we are not identical with our body?

Tomorrow Never Comes.. (It Is Always Now!)

Have you ever considered that only the moment of Now exists truly?

There is no past, only memories, and there is no future either, only imaginations – the past and future are just concepts. Still, we tend to ponder over the remains of the past, or worry about times to come. We are wandering in the past and future, yet we are only unconsciously present at where we really are: here and now!

Oh, how marvelous of a feeling it is to go hiking on your day off after an exhausting week of work. You play volleyball, football, stir and taste the soup, your face is caressed gently by the warm sunshine, the lawn is soft and smooth, the birds are chirping, everything is wonderful. You are carefree, you enjoy the moments of existence. You don’t ruminate on the past, don’t picture the future, but you are there, you live, you are shining with joy. But what pain it is, when the Sun sets, you arrive home and the beautiful experience ends. Your head is buzzing and filled again with innumerable duties and problems – the magic is gone.

The Source of Happiness: The Present Moment

Who is not longing for happiness? For undisturbed peace, tranquility, carefree ecstasy, when everything looks bright, our heart burst out singing, and we love the entire world?  Most of the time –however- it is not granted to us. We yearn for happiness, we crave for it, and we tend to think of it as some state to be achieved some time in the future. "I will be happy when I have realized this or that dream of mine." "When I am rich and have no financial problems, I will be happy." "When everybody loves me the way I like it, I will be happy."–these are the obstacles in my way towards happiness.
You set up an objective, and you say: "When I have achieved that objective, I will be fully happy." You drive and you strive, you do your best to be successful; and when you have finally arrived at your goal at the price of a lot of hard work, toiling and suffering, you are happy for a brief period: "Success! I have finally done it! I have accomplished it". You are pleased, you allow yourself to enjoy the success.

You notice the sparkling sunshine, you hear the call of the birds, enjoy the beauty of the colorful flowers, you fully rejoice about the beauty of life. "Oh, how wonderful things are now!," you tell yourself. This state of undisturbed pleasure, however, does not last long. Doubt arises: "Oh, isn’t it going to go wrong soon? This pleasure will be over one day… What if..?" And the machinery of the mind starts working again. You think, you are afraid, or you set up new objectives. The sweet pleasure is gone, and you are in the state of suffering again.

Through The Eyes Of Consciousness

I am now talking to you in a different language from the one I used to speak. I am now speaking in a language that you can easily understand, if you listen to the message. You will understand this language if you read slowly. You will understand it if you insert a brief pause after each sentence, and allow the message to reach your intellect or, what is more, the realm beyond your intellect: the dimension of Consciousness. 

Now, it is not the “lot of cleverness” accumulated in me who wants to talk to the “lot of cleverness” accumulated in you. Now it is not the mind, wishing to initiate a mind game with another mind. We now avoid all the cleverness, wittiness, beliefs and dogmas, and the spirit living in me is going to address the spirit living in you. Consciousness is talking to the Consciousness in you. 

These are the words of the living spirit hiding inside you, contacting the living spirit hiding in you. Read it therefore slowly and understand my message.

Greetings to the Spirit Living in You!

There is a wonderful greeting in the sub-continent of India. You meet somebody, look deep into his eyes, and recognize the mysterious spiritual essence hiding in him. Then you put your palms to each other in front of your breast, bow and say, with great sincerity, ”I respectfully greet the spirit living in you!” This is the impressive Namaste-ritual: awe and respect to the mysterious consciousness recognized in the other person. You recognize and realize that you and him are the same: transcendental spirit, an unique  blossoming of the Consciousness.

We, members of the human race, are peculiar creatures. We are created on this beautiful planet, so rich in living things, as manifestations of life. On this planet everything is a great miracle, as its very existence is a miracle in itself. The existence of a thing is not an unavoidable necessity. Still, things do exist: a rose with its unique scent, a graceful blade of grass, a wood in the forest with its rich foliage, a singing bird. Oh, what a wealth of unique beauty! And they are all alive, rooted in the Self, they are all incarnations and manifestations of life.

As children, innocent toddlers, we experience this unique magic, but when we are grown up, ”we know what the different things are.” Our mind categorizes the manifestations of the miracle: this is just a rose, a common, boring rose–that is what we think. We cut it off to inhale its unique scent, without recognizing that all such things are the wonderful expressions of life.

There is something in us, completely incomprehensible for the Mind: that is Life, something that science is only able to describe as ”complexity,” complicatedness. The miracle is therefore placed into a category, but has the unique miracle of life been thus explained? No, we have only invented a word for it. A concept has been invented, but it kills the miraculous nature of life. Life is, in fact, a great miracle: a mysterious existence as an indivisible unity, a complete Self.

Gratitude - Escape from the Prison of Ego

Really, we can be thankful for so many things… but still, we are not.We deprive ourselves from the open, happy feeling of gratefulness. Because we think we have nothing to be thankful for. This moment is not quite how I would like it to be.

“I will be grateful when I manage to set my life on tracks! I will be thankful when I get my wage rise! I will be thankful when… sometime… sometime… I will be thankful, when my life circumstances will be like this and that.”

You will never be satisfied, and thus: you will never be grateful.

When you reached the goal you have targeted, you may go out for a while and then you celebrate your success with an awesome sex-party after a few glasses of red wine. But maybe you do this in a more moderate way: you go home, have a beer, watch a football match in the television – while you sit back and enjoy the taste of success, which happens in the present: “This is so good. I reached this. I calmed down. I am thankful, because this worked out!”

Everything You Wanted to Know about Enlightenment Part #1

 

Q: Is there “enlightenment”? What is that?

A: Enlightenment is a notion, or if you like: a concept.

Numerous concepts are connected to the notion of enlightenment. Some believe this is some sort of a “sacred” thing, an aura surrounds you, similar to those depicted on the medieval paintings of saints. You need to earn it, you are obliged to do all kinds of strange things for it.

This is not enlightenment. What we think about enlightenment is by no means what it really is.

All the ideas we have about enlightenment are only created by the mind, but not what it REALLY is.

 You do not need to earn enlightenment, you do not need to add more to yourself (information, knowledge, suffering), you just need to recognize what you really have. The consciousness is already in you, it has always been and will be in you. It is the one reading and understanding these lines – it is the soul of the “machine”, which is your body.

All you have to do is to focus inwards and recognize the consciousness behind the thoughts. Who thinks your thoughts? Who feels your emotions? Who experiences the world through your body?

Who are you really?

Creativity: The Art of Doing and Not Doing

We want to be creative so much, though it is only rarely given to us.

Only when we are not under the pressure to perform and when we can freely let out the creative spark within us: it then goes on a rampage, the creative fire comes alive and prepares to explode and with feverish excitement, we begin to make our vision real.

You may have a brilliant idea. You see the idea crystal clear, you know where you want to get, what you want to make real. You know, you feel what you have to do, how you need to do it in order to realize and manifest your plan. “Oh, this is a really great idea. If I implement this plan, then I will surely help others, and secure my living at the same time.”, the excitement bursts out from you.

The only extremely unpleasant thing is, that these peaks of feverish creativeness occur rather rarely. As your enthusiasm decreases, moderates, countless concerns fill you: “Oh, I am sure I am not able to do this. I am not good enough or skillful enough for this. I am afraid that I will fail.” – this is what you think and your dreams, which seemed to be so refreshing, exciting and radiant, begin to fade. What you thought was great, very important, now it just does not seem like that anymore. In fact, doubt gradually conquers you: “I am sure I cannot accomplish this!”.

Why You Should Follow Your Heart? (Rather Than Your Mind)

The mind creates strategies, executes calculations, only seeks its own (maybe even only short-term) benefits, and cannot feel empathy, understanding or love towards others as a feeling-thinking human could.

When you deeply realize, that the same human soul shines behind our eyes, you understand, that we are all the same.

We rejoice and sorrow as humans the same way, we are enthusiastic or depressed, we laugh or cry – we experience a wide and colorful scale of emotions.

Whenever you have the feeling that someone mistreated you, hurt you and you cannot forgive them, you need to realize that their action was – to their best knowledge - the only thing possible on their level of consciousness at that given time. If you had the same life experiences and shared their point of view of the world, you would act similarly.

Let them be forgiven, and then embrace this other, differently dressed form of the human soul.

During a conversation with someone, disregard the urge to instantly compose and polish your answer, you should rather take in and accept your fellow with all your attention: together with their soul, speech, and personality.

Alertness: Learn to Pay Attention!

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In Persian mythology, the Zend Avesta, there is a rooster, Paroderes, who yells the following each morning: 

“Cockadoodledoo! Wake now, because if you do not wake up now, then never will! The demon of coma comes and drags you away.” This rooster introduced the principle of alertness – just like Buddha did.

We have lost the ability to observe, to direct our attention. It is a known fact that we can focus our minds on one thing for 5-7 seconds only. 

Our alertness decreases after a few seconds of close attention, then the thoughts appear; our eyes still see the object, but we do not know about it. We completely identify with the world of our thoughts.

You and your world become what you focus on!

How to Build Conscious Relationships?

 

Nothing else may cause us as many troubles as our social relations.

We imagine how our ideal, favorable selves would look like, and we create a mask (or as the specialists of the soul say: a Persona) from the features, which we find nice. The mask of the perfect husband, wife, family dad, family mom, ideal friend or colleague.

Driven from our beliefs and firmly held opinions, we build an image of ourselves and we present it to our surroundings: “I am a God-fearing family man or woman, I go to church every Sunday.”, “I am an exemplary absentee of work, my boss handles me exceptionally”, “I am so clever”, “I am well informed, because I know what happened today in politics.”

We censure our features, which oppose our (ideal) images of ourselves: “I cannot feel or think this way, because it is not right – it goes against my convictions”, “I cannot do this, because it would not correspond with the image created about me” – and we entirely exile them into our shadows: all my features, which I regard with disgust and loath, disappear in my “shadow-personality”.

Flow With Life, Flow Like Water!

Do you remember those days when you were completely happy and another success followed a success? 

When everything was so easy, liquid and worked so well? And then – when you almost thought that happiness and luck are on your side – everything vanished all of a sudden: a problem appeared, which seemed to find no solution for itself, you fell back into depression and anxiety.

Life is very interesting. Everything is related to every other thing, everything is living, flowing and transforming in a complex web of connections. When you breathe in, 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 atoms enter your body and build into it, and when you breathe out, the same amount of them leaves your body, to be absorbed in other living organisms: to recycle themselves in grass, trees, your human fellows. 

Life is like a giant wavy ocean, in which nothing is stationary, everything is in motion: transforming from something into some other thing. And during floating or drowning in the water of the ocean, it is not advisable to write scripts of mind strategies, or fight against the sinking – it is much better to swim together with the waves.

What is Your Life Goal?

You are unparalleled and unique.

No one, who has the same knowledge-wisdom-experience package as you do, has ever existed and will exist. Your life experience is only yours, it is unique, and your knowledge is only yours. Your wisdom, gained from experience, is also one of its kinds.

If you find your life goal or goals that fill you with excitement and joy, if you do what really makes you happy, then your actions and the fruits they produce are the greatest gifts you can give to yourself and to humanity.

You are a unique blossom of life. Just like we all are.

The world becomes more beautiful and better with you.

You pass on your unequalled creations, as gifts, to humanity.

Who Are You? (Discover The “I AM” Consciousness!)

 

The only true statement you can make is: “I am”.

You exist, it is undeniable.

Everything else is related to the “I am this and that”, which is actually an identification with a social rank, role, life story, on which our identities are often based on: “I am an office employee, a 28-year-old woman, mother of two” – and so on.

Of course, if I were not an office employee and the mother of two, I would still exist. My life path, my current life would be different; nevertheless, I would still exist. That “something” in me that knows-feels that “I am” remain unchanged in time: “I” perceived my existence as a child, free from social roles the same way as an adult, who “turned into someone”.

Do Not Judge! (..Or You Too Will Be Judged By Your Mind!)

 

We tend to judge and tag, categorize too easily. Since Adam and Eve began to name every single thing in the Paradise, we fell in love with the complex web of tagging, categorizing and labeling.

The ego, the little, constricted “me” in us, work this way. It is only satisfied if it is more beautiful, better, and more than someone else. Whoever it meets, it measures them, observes their clothing, and gets curious to know more about their economic welfare – so that in the end, it lowers their self-esteem: you are uglier than me, worse, poorer. And since I am more beautiful, better and richer than you, my value is higher than yours. I mean more than you, I am more important.

When it forgets about the similarities that are inside us and notices the differences instead, then it compares, draws parallels, and the equation of this process is:

Me ≠ You.   Me > You

And now he is completely satisfied.

Everything Is Now, Always Is Now..

In reality, there is nothing else than the present moment – up until eternity. And the present moment is not a sequence made up of many tiny time units, but a moment of constantly existing now.

Only the moment of endless present exists. 

The past is only a dead memory, which was also now, the “present moment”, when it happened. The future is just a trick of the mind, a visualization, a projection of desires and fears – and the mind does it in the current moment: now.

The only reality, in which everything is happening: the moment of present. Nothing ever happened in the “past” and does not happen in the future, only now.

Every existing thing exists now. We see the flashbacks of the past and the created images of the future now, in the present moment. This is why we embrace the present moment. Because everything takes place in this infinite “now”. Everything that has ever been is compressed into this present moment.

The Magic of Presence

The happy, joyful moments spent in the present usually are interrupted by an unexpected event: something seemingly unpleasant happens. “This should not have happened. This should not be like this” – you feel bitterly. The mind judges easily: it can label an event, a process either “good” or “bad” through the glasses of its belief systems.

But we cannot be sure at all, whether the mind is not wrong. Because perhaps the event we rated as “bad” today, tomorrow will turn “good”, or you may even notice, that this “negative” event was necessary for the “good” consequence to follow.

You acknowledge the events, but do not judge them. Because you know: Universe created this moment to be the way it is. This moment was shaped to be like it is by uncountable processes and “effects”. Everything changes: what seemed to be good today will have a bad shade tomorrow, what seems bad now, will soon turn good. Sunshine follows rain and rain follows sunshine – this is the natural way of things.

Only A Cup of Water

Your body is here, but your soul wanders in time

You set off to the store to buy flour. Two hours later you drag your full shopping cart to your car and at home it hits you how many things you bought, except for that one item you went shopping for. You went to the store for that only one thing and you bought a ton of other stuff, but only the important one is missing.

You are walking on a road across a field. You are lost in your thoughts: “Well, how could I solve this difficult situation?” And while you are trying to figure this out in yourself, all of a sudden you hear a loud bang followed immediately by an even more shocking, striking pain. You wake up after a little while, you look around and realize that you stepped on a hoe left on the ground and this hit you in the head with such an enormous force. You were walking with your eyes open, but did not see the hoe lying ahead of you.

We could say: there was no one in your body. Your mind was somewhere in a misty, distant dimension, trying to solve a really “important problem”, and thus it was blind to the reality around you, to the only existing reality.

There is a beautiful, yet surprising story for this:

The Great Recognitions

Who or what is afraid in us?

According to a story, a disciple said to his master:

“Master, I really crave for enlightenment. I want to reach it here and now.”

The master grabbed the disciple’s neck without saying any words, he dragged him to a nearby barrel filled with water and pushed the disciple’s head into it. And the master only pulled the disciple’s head out of the water when he started fighting for his life. The master let him soothe his lungs with vitalizing air. And then he said:

“When your craving for enlightenment is as strong as your need for air was, you will reach it.”

This story may seem quite harsh and violent, but like all Zen stories, this one also points something out. Something that could not be shown in any other way, only in such an aggressive style.

It shows that we can only be really free if we thoroughly wish to reach freedom.

Face your fears, because if you discover their true nature, they vanish without a trace. They may still appear as a passing emotion, but as soon as you realize that the troublemaker has arrived, it goes away… turns into nothing. If you set your sights on your inner demons, you discover that they are nothing more than phantoms.

Be the Spectator of Your Life!

A weekday passes with work, social connections and it may often occur that the memories that remain from the day are not the most pleasant ones:

“My job was boring. I made a mistake at my workplace. I was not a patient enough partner and I did not care enough about my children. I got into an unnecessary quarrel with my neighbor.”

In some situations of life, we get caught in the webs of our thoughts, our emotions carry us away and when we recover from the inner storm of thoughts and emotions, we feel shipwrecked: “This day has also passed and I would do everything differently if I could repeat it!”

“It is not worth living an inattentive life” -said Socrates wisely, and how right he was! Our attention gets lost in all the thoughts and feelings, we keep repeating the same mistakes without learning from them, we do not remember certain parts of our lives, when we are stressed and nervous. But what we do remember quite well and in detail, are those moments when we could enjoy our presence, our existence – when we were in the flow of life.

The first step on the path to consciousness is when we realize our ability to observe.