Make Up Your Mind. Choose, Decide, Practice.
The ability and capacity to decide is a key aspect of freedom. We must choose a particular way to live or otherwise face being blown about by our body, feelings, perceptions, impulses, and the dormant and active formations in the mind.
We forget that the disciplines to set us free are less painful than the winds of striving to do, to get, to have. and to keep. This forgetfulness is part of our ignorance. We are unaware of our impending death of the body, and we avoid contemplating it.
Instead, we seek stuff – a person, a place, a thing, thinking and believing getting something will lead to happiness. Unfortunately, happiness is not the aim of life. Whatever happiness gained will disappear. It, like all the things in the material realm, is part of the fleeting mirage.
Deep sleep, the sleep we often exclaim as “I slept like a log.” is bliss. It is a brief period when the mind and body drop off everything except for this unimaginable, highly sought after deep sleep. Deep sleep is rare. It is a time when we get a taste of liberation. It is our closest experience of bliss. There is nothing there except for the part of us that knows the taste of liberation.
The liberation of deep sleep is akin to liberation of suffering. This taste points us in the direction of being free of the waves in the mind and the aches and pains of the body.
Consciousness is experienced as pure in deep sleep. We feel the power of pure consciousness but are unable to capture it with the things of the material realm. Deep sleep is a gift. A rare gift. A taste of our true nature, which is calm, peaceful, blissful.
It is an encouragement and a taste of our true nature.
When we wake up from deep sleep, we still know the “I” that fell into deep sleep is still existent. We know who we are – and have a sense of knowing existence. But we know we cannot control deep sleep. It comes unbidden.
What keeps us from knowing the bliss of existence are thoughts, feelings, form, perceptions, impulses, and self-consciousness. Bliss comes when we empty the mind and body. When we stop seeking and striving for one thing or another, when we stop identifying ourselves as something or another in the material world.
We stop taking up the identities as in the children’s rhyme: Tinker. Tailor. Rich man. Poor man. Beggar man. Thief. Striving, wanting, doing, getting, having, keeping are the characteristics of suffering. Being something or somebody.
We, each one of us, choose to strive after the stuff of the fleeting world or stop and take a backward step towards the Source of existence. To turn away from the fleeting world and surrender.
This requires work.
We do well to make a commitment like from hereafter, I seek to remove my ignorance regarding the world and all the world promises and does not fulfill.
Our mistaken commitment to seek fulfillment from the world of things is a commitment to a roller coaster ride of suffering. This is not new. We know the fallacious propaganda of the 24-hour media is about profit, what we fail to see is how it influences our interior life. There are must-have pushes to get things that promise satisfaction and happiness. When we see things promoted as FREE, we become more convinced of wanting and getting whatever the free thing is.
There is an ancient story that helps us consider and contemplate the effects of the impurities of ignorance and how we entangle ourselves in the material realm. First, the story, then a commentary.
It was a dark night in the countryside. Only a partial moon lit the sky. A single traveler on foot approached a house where the lights were on. He was tired. Exhausted by his journey, but relieved to see the house. As he approached the house, he noticed a row of bushes along the path to the front entrance. The light from the house was not strong enough for the traveler to see clearly as he slowly headed toward the front door. In his weariness he saw the shadow of something curled up along the path ahead of him. He stopped and looked carefully, the darkness of the night and weariness of his mind and body hid the thing that was curled up. The traveler screamed, “It’s a snake. It’s a snake.” The resident of the house ran for a shotgun, turned on the porch light and threw open the front door. Taking aim, he readied to shoot and kill the snake when he realized that the traveler had seen a coil of old rope to be a snake.
This is the nature of ignorance. We mistake the plentiful things of the world to be real when they are not real. We mistake materialism for a guarantee and a promise when materialism may be convenient but unreliable. There are no guarantees.
Ignorance is the darkness of the mind and a fleeting happiness we hope to find.in the three categories of existence: nature, others, and our ego-self. Each one appears to be that which takes away suffering – and yet, if we look carefully, we see that each thing is a fleeting mirage of false promises. Momentary relief is the best that these fleeting things offer.
Materialism flaunts and peddles get it, have it and keep it. Yet, we all know we get nothing, have nothing, and keep nothing. Peddling and getting things is not a path of liberation but a path of bondage.
We have a choice between the material world and the transcendent. Each one must choose. We choose between what we know as fleeting and what we must come to know as real – that which is unborn, undying, immutable.
And then…
We MAKE UP OUR MIND.
and decide for ourselves…to study
whether there is just this impermanent material stuff
or
whether there is a transcendent reality that is unchanging.
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The Fundamental Point - Beginning of Novel