Finding Your Original Face: Understanding I-AMness

"Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born." - Zen Koan

How can we understand this Zen koan and find our fundamental I-AMness? The koan is meant to be understood directly rather than metaphorically, which makes it even more challenging. You cannot retreat into your imagination to visualize what it might mean. Nor can you think of an arrow of time going back into the past and imagine what you could have been like without a body. The meaning of the koan is to be found right here in every moment of lived experience. That's what we are going to explore in this post.

Embracing the whole of experience.

Appreciation Transforms The Ordinary Into Perfection

Compared to our not-so-distant past, we are all incredibly wealthy. Imagine for a moment a life without absolutely any possessions. You are out there in nature without any clothes, tools or shelter, left alone to find enough calories and protection from the elements every day of your rather short life. Today we are equipped with a lot more tools, possessions and wealth, yet we are also becoming more depressed than ever before. 

Appreciates having nothing

Lack Of Financial Knowledge Causes Fear

Have you noticed how people at your workplace are fearful? We hide it quite well though but I have certainly noticed it. And I think we have become fearful because we are too immediately dependent on a complex social structure we don't understand. Think about it, how many of the things that we use and consume on a daily basis can we really provide fully for ourselves. Probably very few. And if we are living in a city, maybe even none. May this undermine the trust we have in ourselves and the world?

Developing Equanimity

Equanimity is one of three qualities of mind that we want to develop if spiritual enlightenment is our goal. The other two are focus and clarity. Equanimity as a quality of mind is helpful not only for meditation and insight but also for life satisfaction in general. With equanimity, we remain in a peaceful state regardless of the experiences we have at the moment. When pain arises, we are not swept away by our stories around it and remain aware of the sensations that arise and pass from moment to moment. 

Awakening Into Life

The term awakening is often used in spiritual language to describe an experience of utter clarity about the nature of reality. The experience is usually the result of a lot of deliberate practice and is even the final goal of some spiritual paths. 

The term awakening can be a bit misleading though. Awakening to the truth of what you are at your core does not mean, as the work implies, waking up from life to something else. Instead, it is the recognition that all of reality is a self-created experience with literally nothing "outside" of it. In other words, it has no objectively true ground to it, that is different from your very experience of life, right now and that you can wake up to. 

How do you wake up?

Better ways to think about meaning

Maybe you have been asking yourself the question: "What does all of this actually mean?" Is there a fundamental true meaning to life?

Maybe this deep question was triggered by great loss or by having had a dream shattered despite the investment of money, time, and effort. Whichever way you arrived at this that life seems to lack inherent meaning, in this article we are going to explore how what we think about the metaphysics of meaning directly influences what feel and how we act. 

Asking a question many times implies that there must be a concrete answer. In the case of meaning any absolute statement about it is going to be inadequate in most circumstances. To start this exploration, the question has to be reframed so that we can actually find worthwhile answers. 

The Awakened Mind

How can I attain awakening?

It's in the simple process of discovering how everything is Mind. Look in your experience how everything has awareness as its basis. It's not the discovery of something new. It is seeing clearly after the lenses of perception have been cleansed. Cleansed of what? 

The suffering of others

Question: 

I finally woke up through a period of egoic suffering. A dark night of the soul, so to speak. Since, I have felt almost nothing but effortless and profound peace. I see so much suffering around me, almost no physical suffering, but the same mental anguish that finally dissolved the illusion for me.

A question that I have; given that suffering can be (and was for me) such a profound teacher, how do you decide when to try to help and do something about it? With physical suffering it's easy, I intervene without hesitation. Egoic anguish however, I'm hesitant to help.

The Difference Between Real and True

We all know what is real, right? But do we know if that is also true? And do we even recognize the difference between the two? Read on to get clarity on what these words are pointing to and why it is so important to know the difference. It might help you in understanding yourself and your relationship to reality better.

Form And Happiness

Do you chase experience in the hope of lasting happiness? Form never has the power to make us happy or unhappy. But unconsciously we often give it that power. No person, thing or experience makes us happy in and of itself. It's only our interpretation that makes it appear that way.

The World appears in infinite forms