Almost everybody is looking for some sort of help. Let’s face it, being a person isn’t easy. There’s plenty that can go wrong. You can get sick, or injured. You can fail to make (or keep) friends and end up feeling lonely. You can make a mistake and lose money, or not make any in the first place. No matter who you are, you’re going to feel bad at least some of the time. Sometimes you have to put up with people who are annoying or hostile and who certainly don’t have your best interests at heart. You try to get what you want, but sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get what you don’t want. And even if you get what you want, you can lose it, it changes, or it falls apart. Or, you consume it and it’s gone.
I’m not saying that life doesn’t have its joys, because it does, but everyone at some time feels helpless, alone, and confused in an unpredictable world with a lot of problems and plenty of suffering. We wonder, then, what we can do about this Problem of Life?–which, to make matters worse, includes death, since the fact that we’re going to eventually fall apart is inevitable, not only for ourselves but for those we love.
So what are we going to do? Is there any way to master this situation?
Well, there are a number of ways people try to escape from this human predicament–that of being a lonely, isolated separate self in an unpredictable world full of problems and suffering.
You could try to beat the game on a material basis by becoming wealthy or powerful. As they say, “It’s easier to be rich and miserable than poor and miserable–at least you can arrive at your problems in style.”
Or, we can resort to technology to make life easier. We can take advantage of labor-saving devices, medical miracles, and so forth, to reduce our suffering and at least put off the inevitability of death and sickness. In that sense we’re certainly better off than people were a hundred hears ago, or a thousand years ago.
Even if we do succeed in accumulating money or power, or when we take advantage of modern medicine or use technology to make life easier, we still aren’t satisfied. If you increase your income, for instance, you feel better for a few weeks or months, perhaps, but then (as you know if this has happened to you) the feeling wears off. You may stop worrying about paying your debts but you may start worrying about getting sick. If you get a better car, it’s fun for a while, but pretty soon it’s just transportation, and you instead worry about repair bills, the cost of gasoline, or something else.
In fact, if you solve any particular problem or challenge, it’s soon replaced by another one. Have you noticed that? There’s always something to worry about. If you’re wealthy or powerful you still worry about sickness and death, but you might also worry about revolution or financial collapse (which seems to be more than just a worry right now), and whether the IRS will catch you cheating on your taxes and take away your wealth. Or, you worry that somehow, through some sort of ill luck, the authorities will put you in prison for no reason. You can always find something to worry about regarding your health, your relationships, your children, your parents, your money–or something.
So, eventually, if you really go into this, you start to think that maybe your problem isn’t in your external situation, since you find yourself worrying no matter what that is, and you begin to suspect that your problem might be something in you. Maybe you could stop all this worrying if you learned to control your mind. You decide to “think positive thoughts,” to “be peaceful”–as Alan Watts once said, “To breathe slowly and hum gently,” and get yourself into a peaceful state of mind. There is an entire culture today (what most people would call the New Age culture) that assumes that positive thinking and controlling your mind is the solution to your problems.
But as anyone who has tried this knows, it doesn’t always work, because you still have this nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you’re just whistling in the dark. While you’re thinking positive thoughts, a part of you is still asking, “What if this happens? What if that happens?” I get many letters from people who wonder why their life is still full of problems even though they are spending time visualizing what they want, saying affirmations, and “putting it [what they want] out to the universe.”
After a while you realize that soothing your troubled mind is no easy undertaking. At least part of the problem, you discover, is that underneath the conscious part of your mind is a lot of unconscious stuff that affects you by coming out in unpredictable and uninvited ways. What are you going to do about that?
So, you look into various approaches for sorting out the unconscious–psychoanalysis, for instance, or getting involved with some sort of spiritual teacher. In other words, you look for someone who can act as a mirror for those unconscious aspects of yourself that you can’t otherwise get at.
Now we’re getting somewhere, you think. But as you go into becoming aware of and changing the unconscious, at some point you begin to realize that this process of getting at yourself, of improving yourself, of changing yourself, is very much like trying to bite your own teeth, or look into your own eyes, or taste your own tongue. In a very real sense you’re trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Let me put it this way: if you’re the one who needs improvement, you’re also the one who’s going to have to make it happen, and how are you going to do that? Even with the help of a teacher, it’s you who’ll have to implement his or her instructions and suggestions, and if you’re messed up in some way, how will you do that? I go into this problem quite deeply in my second online course. (I encourage you to take these online courses, which I call my Life Principles Integration Process. You can take a free preview lesson at www.centerpointe.com/life/preview.)
But I digress. This problem–how to change yourself when the one needing the change is also the one who must bring it about–has been around for thousands of years. The problem could be stated in this way: can change really be self-generated, or–as some religions say–is it a matter of grace? There are adherents to both points of view.
Grace is supposedly freely offered to all, but some people seem to “get it” while others don’t. Why is that, you wonder? Perhaps some people resist grace. The question becomes, then, ”How do I get grace? And, if I’m resisting grace, how do I stop doing that?” If, however, there was some method you could follow in order to experience grace, or to stop resisting it, it wouldn’t be grace.
Certain things in life are innately spontaneous, by definition. It’s like saying to someone, “You MUST relax. You MUST be peaceful.” Relaxing, or being peaceful, by definition, can’t happen by force of will. Exerting your will is the opposite of relaxing or being peaceful. Or, someone might say to you, “Please be spontaneous. Be totally un-self-conscious, right now.” But how can you intend to be spontaneous?
So let’s take this a little further. Can you intend to love someone? Love, if it’s really love, is a spontaneous happening. In fact, many, if not all, highly valued human sentiments are real and valuable only if they happen without intention, without will. Being spontaneous, loving, or relaxed either happen or they don’t. One of the reasons we’re so charmed by children is that, up to a certain age at least, they are spontaneous and un-self-conscious.
So changing yourself is a lot like trying to do something that only has value if it happens without trying. It’s like the old joke: sincerity is the most important thing, and once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
Everyone has had the experience of wanting to be a certain way but somehow being unable to pull it off. “I try to be kind, but I get angry anyway.” “I try to motivate myself, but I end up playing video games instead.” “I want to feel close to my children, but for some reason I just don’t feel it a lot of the time.”
So what do we do? If the changer is the one who must be changed, we end up chasing our own tail. So who changes the changer? This has been the unacknowledged elephant in the room in spiritual and personal growth for several thousand years. And, it’s been a problem for such a long time because it’s an insoluble problem, along the same lines as “Who guards the guards?” or “Who governs the government?”
In some types of yoga, Eastern philosophy, or New Age thinking, this problem is approached by saying that there is a lower self, often called the ego, and a higher, or spiritual, self. The job of the higher self, then, is to transform the lower self. Sometimes this transformation happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. So, we wonder, why do some people’s higher selves fail to get through to their naughty lower selves? Are some peoples’ lower selves too strong? If so, who will weaken these too-strong lower selves? Or, maybe it’s that some peoples’ higher selves are too weak, and again we can ask, who will strengthen them? This has been a problem of spiritual awakening and self improvement since time immemorial.
So, here we are, trying to get better, seeking the positive, the good, and the desirable in ourselves, and trying to get away from the negative, the evil, and the undesirable. (And, since I’ve written about this extensively in other posts, I’m not even going to get into the fact that good and evil, positive and negative, desirable and undesirable are all mental, not real, distinctions–which means they aren’t intrinsic to the things and situations we assign them to–and each side of these polarities only makes sense in terms of each other. What’s more, it’s impossible to get rid of one side of the polarity–for instance, get rid of “bad”–without getting rid of the other side.)
Let me approach this problem in still another way. You meet a Buddhist teacher, and he tells you about Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. The first Noble Truth is that all life is suffering. This is really what I was describing in the beginning of this article. Life is full of frustrations and problems, and even if we solve some of them, others pop up to take their place. We get what we don’t want, we don’t get what we do want, and even if we get what we want it eventually goes away or falls apart.
The second Noble Truth is that this suffering, this chronic frustration, is caused by clinging, or desire. And, the third Noble Truth is that suffering can be ended by giving up desire. (The fourth is the Buddhist method, which I’m going to skip for now.) So the teacher tells you to work on giving up your desires. Do that and you’ll end your suffering and your frustrations about life.
So, you go off to work on ending desire. When later on the teacher asks you how it’s going you tell him that getting rid of desire is turning out to be more difficult than you thought. Then the teacher really throws you a curve. “I’m just curious,” he says. “Isn’t your wanting to get rid of desire another desire?”
Uh oh. Now what? How do you get rid of desire when wanting to get rid of it is just another desire? This is just like trying to be spontaneous on command, or willing yourself to love someone–or, trying to change yourself. It’s also like trying to get good to win over evil, heads to win over tails, or desirable to win over undesirable–or to get any side of a polarity to win over the other side.
These are examples of the double-bind of life, my friends, and what are we going to do about it? No matter where you turn, it seems that when you really get down to it, there’s nothing you can do! I once heard Alan Watts describe this dilemma by saying, “It’s as if someone put molasses in one of your hands and feathers in the other, clapped them together, and then said, ‘Now, pick off the feathers.’”
“So, Bill,” you say, “are you telling me that there’s nothing I can do to change myself or improve myself? That’s pretty negative. Maybe I’ll just go to someone who’ll be more encouraging.”
But I’m here to tell you that it’s not negative, and you don’t need to be discouraged by it. And, of course you’re welcome to go to someone who will tell you what you want to hear. In fact, you probably will, until you’ve exhausted every possibility. By going into this, I’m trying to save you the trouble of doing that.
Let’s review.
I described the problem: We suffer, we worry, we get old, we die. I described some of the ways we try to solve the problem: We try to solve it on the material level, with money, power, or technology. When that doesn’t really solve the problem, we try to control our mind in order to stop worrying about everything. But that doesn’t always work, either, so we try to get at the unconscious part of us, hoping that if we fix that we’ll be okay.
Finally we begin to realize that our biggest problem is that the one who is trying to fix things needs fixing, and that this is a real bind. We’re trapped, like a stupid person trying to teach himself how to be smart.
So this sounds pretty discouraging. There’s nothing you can do to change yourself. But, you see, this doesn’t mean that change can’t happen. Change obviously happens all the time–all you have to do is look around. It does, however, mean that you can’t bring it about.
So why is this true? The reason YOU can’t change yourself is that YOU don’t exist. “You” is an idea, a concept, an abstraction–despite the feeling we have that there is a “you”–and just as “3″ (another concept) can’t do anything, or the border between the US and Canada can’t do anything, “you” can’t doing anything.
You could say it this way: doing happens, but there is no doer, or at least no individual doer. The real doer is the whole, the entire going on of it all. It just seems as if there are lots of separate doers who could take independent action (action independent of the infinite matrix of connections that include the whole) and therefore change themselves. The separate self is just a way of thinking, not a solid reality–in the same way that the border between the US and Canada is a way of thinking, but not a tangible, real line. It’s just that we are so used to this way of thinking that independent separate things and doers seem incredibly real.
But here’s the most amazing thing about all of this: the fact that you can’t do anything is GOOD news, not bad. The truth is that the realization that what you thought was “you” is a hallucination–and therefore can’t do anything–creates incredible freedom and peace. That realization is the spiritual awakening everyone is searching for–except that when it happens, part of the realization is that there’s no separate self there to have it!
Thinking about this idea that there’s no separate doer gives us a weird feeling. “What do you mean, there’s no me? I can feel it!” But the existence of a separate self is completely unsupported by the facts of nature. Not only is there no separate you, there’s no separate anything. Nothing has any separate essence, by itself.
Why am I making this outrageous assertion? What do I mean?
If you really look around, you can see that nothing exists separately. Everything exists in relation to its environment, and you can’t describe a thing unless you also describe its environment. Bees need flowers, and flowers need bees. They’re really one interconnected system. And both of them need a certain kind of atmosphere containing certain gases. They also need certain minerals and microorganisms in the soil. They also need a certain temperature, caused by being a certain distance from a certain kind of star, in a certain kind of galaxy, in a certain kind of universe. And, pretty soon you realize that to adequately describe a flower or a bee, you’ve included EVERYTHING.
There really is no way to describe anything, including yourself, without describing, at the same time, the environment. And all of these aspects of the environment act together, as a unit, in the same way that all the water molecules in a river flow together, or all the parts of a mobile hanging above a child’s crib move in response whenever one of the parts is touched.
There’s no getting around it: everything is connected. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything, taken together, constitutes what scientists would call a unified field, an integrated, interconnected system. In Chinese thought they would say that the universe behaves as a single organism. The truth is that you go with your environment in the same way that your head goes with your body.
Most people, though, don’t see themselves this way–or rather, they don’t feel themselves this way. Most of us feel separate from the world. We feel at odds with the environment, and think we have to conquer it or control it in some way. The poet A.E. Houseman described it this way: “I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.”
We say that we “came into the world,” as if we were that stranger, popped into an alien world, when really, if you think about it, people come out of the world, in the same way that apples come out of apple trees. We’re an expression of the universe, and therefore a part of it. In fact, not only is everything an expression of the universe, it’s also true that everything depends upon everything else. The entire universe depends upon you. Even before you were born, the universe depended upon the fact that you would someday be here, and after you’re gone, it will still depend upon the fact that you once were here.
Given that everything is really one thing, one process, “you” is just a way of thinking. And it’s a way of thinking we’re so familiar with that if feels strange to contemplate that it’s nothing more than that, but still, “you” is an idea. And, like all ideas, it can’t do anything. The universe is flowing along, changing all the time, and many of these changes seem as if “you” are initiating them, but this is an illusion created by identification with the mind.
So a great part of the reason we don’t feel that it’s all one thing is that we experience the universe to a large degree through our rational mind. That mind, though, is very limited in the way it perceives things. Our linear mind is a kind of scanning device, where we tend to look at things in lines (which is why they call it the linear mind), one part at a time, kind of like moving the beam of a flashlight around a darkened room, where we see one part of the room at a time. This is why it takes so long to “become educated”–we have to scan miles and miles of lines of information, which takes years.
But the world doesn’t come at us in lines, one thing at a time. It comes at us all at once in a multi-dimensional way. Our limited minds, though, can’t take all of this in, so we bite off one piece at a time (or, at most, a few pieces) and in doing so we find it difficult to see how everything goes together. (There is another part of the mind that does this, but it is obscured by the linear mind until something happens that gets the linear mind out of the way.)
This failure to see how everything goes together makes different aspects of the whole appear to be separate items, with their own individual essence, when in truth they all go together, in the same way that up and down go together, or two ends of a stick go together.
Then, seeing ourselves as one of those separate items, we feel, as Houseman said, “A stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.” In this kind of world (a product of the mind dividing everything into separate things and events) it’s difficult to relax. It’s difficult to feel at peace.
When your perspective shifts, however, to one where you see how everything goes together, everything changes (notice that I didn’t say, “When you shift your perspective.”). From this new perspective, this new way of looking, you feel integrated with the rest of the universe (since you are). You stop worrying about how this or that might “get you.”
The sensation, if I can call it that, of being it all, is one of being an aperture through which the whole looks out on itself. But let me clarify something. This doesn’t mean you don’t still have a separate self, because you do. It’s just that it’s now quite obvious that this separate self is an idea, a way of thinking. Instead of being fooled by your mind into thinking that you are a separate self, you now have a separate self, in the same way you could have an idea, or a theory, or a plan to do something.
Ideas, theories, and plans are strictly mental events. In that sense you have ideas, theories, or representations about reality (and especially about who you are), but there’s nothing solid about them. You can’t touch them or put them in a wheelbarrow. And they can’t DO anything. They’re a handy way to navigate around, but these ideas and representations about reality and about who you are aren’t the same as the realities they represent.
Seeing this, you also see that what you thought was going around doing things (the separate doer), is really a multidimensional doing, a response to and an interaction with everything else. When this happens you stop feeling as if your center is inside the body. Instead, it feels as if it is everywhere.
There’s still another reason why the problems we discussed at the beginning of this article can’t be solved, and it has to do with the fact that everything in this universe is impermanent. As the universe changes, things and events continually come into being and then eventually pass away. There’s nothing anyone can do to change this.
So when the mind chops the universe into separate things, it’s an attempt to freeze things the way they are–a vain attempt to stop impermanence. We take something that is a continual, ever-changing flow and try to make it into a collection of solid, unchanging things. And, of course, the main impermanent “thing” we’re concerned about making into a solid thing is “me” (and, secondarily, those things or persons we’re attached to). Since what you think of as you is just as impermanent as everything else, if you think of yourself (and, feel yourself) as that separate self, you’ll see impermanence as a threat. Then you feel anxious and afraid.
But if you see–and feel–that you’re the going on of it all, what is there to worry about? What difference does it make what form the whole takes?
So what does this have to do with all the problems I outlined at the beginning of this article? Certainly all of them still can happen, but who, then, are they happening to? If the separate self is just an idea, they must be happening to the whole. And they must be a doing of the whole. In fact, all the attempts to “solve” them are also a doing of the whole.
An awakened person has two perspectives. One is that of the being the whole. The other is the separate-self perspective created by the linear mind. The linear mind’s job is to divide the universe into separate things and events, and to make representations of reality. And, though this isn’t reality, it’s a handy thing to do. Inches and centimeters aren’t reality, either (you can’t hand me a couple of centimeters, or tie up a package with them), but they are very useful. The awakened person knows that in an ultimate sense the separate self is a game and the representations of reality created by the mind are, though useful, just ideas.
On the other hand, unless you play this game, life is pretty boring. To a great extent, life IS this game, so the awakened person plays but also knows that the playing isn’t serious. Paradoxically, though, the more you really play, the more juice there is to life. So in an awakened person these two perspectives are integrated. Ken Wilber would say that the awakened person has transcended and included both.
So the awakened person still has problems, but he (or she) doesn’t take them with the same grim seriousness as other people. He also doesn’t dismiss them as illusory, either. In other words, this transcending and including contains the fact that living from both perspectives, yet neither, is a paradox. It’s a mystery. It’s ungraspable and unexplainable (yet here I am, doing my best to explain it).
The one big difference is that the awakened person, as I have said before, chooses how he will play this game. He choose what aspects of life to become attached to. He sees the consequences of attachment and of playing as a separate self, and enters into life knowing the consequences. He plays at being separate, while knowing he isn’t, because as long as the mind is one of our main interfaces with the rest of the universe, the sensation of being a separate self will be there.
On the other hand, the unawake person’s attachment to certain things or events–and his experience of being a separate self–happens unconsciously, without choice. He isn’t playing when he becomes attached to people, things, and events being a certain way, or when he resists impermanence.
So, here you are, using Holosync, and possibly many of the other methods I described above, in an attempt to solve your problems. Am I saying that it’s useless, and why bother? No. I’m merely saying that “you” aren’t the one that is “deciding” to do these things, even though it feels that way. When you do these things, that decision isn’t an impulse coming from a separate agentic being, deciding in isolation. It’s an impulse coming from all the interactions “you” have with the rest of the universe. Though it seems like an impulse from you, it’s really an impulse of the whole. It feels like an individual impulse, an individual doing, but that is an illusion created by the mind.
So change may happen to the supposed separate self you’ve always thought you were, but that change is really a happening of the whole. This goes back to the grace versus self-change paradox. Some “parts” of the whole end up “awake” while others don’t. Why? This is like asking why some water molecules in the ocean end up near Russia while others end up near Mexico and still others end up in a sludgy puddle. That’s just what happens.
So when the mind inside your organism relaxes because of the multidimensional influences of the rest of the whole (which may appear as “you” meditating with Holosync, or doing some other spiritual practice), that part of the universe feels better. It stops resisting impermanence, and it stops feeling separate and alone. And even if it does feel separate and alone from time to time (since that’s what the mind creates), it just flows with it and lets it be the way it is.
So the secret to the Problem of Life isn’t in somehow solving it. The awakened person hasn’t solved anything (the ultimate cosmic joke is that there’s nothing to solve). And though the play of trying to solve The Problem of Life can be fun–just as being chased in a dream can be fun–the secret is in treating life as play. When you see all attempts to solve the Problem of Life as non-serious, you can still work on solving it, as if that could be accomplished, but you play the problem-solving game with a deep sense of peace–and know that any solution is temporary. You surrender to the way things are, knowing that everything eventually passes away.
I realize that from a “common sense” perspective this doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s a paradox, a mystery–a mystery that will never be solved. And, that Mystery is who you are.
***
Now, before you go, I have a few recommendations that may interest you.
First of all, my good friend Stewart Emery, who is known as one of THE fathers of the human potential movement and is one of the most amazing thinkers and teachers I know, has a new book, and I think you might want to get a copy. This book is getting rave reviews. It’s called Do You Matter? Stewart wrote this book with Apple Computer’s former industrial design manager, Robert Brunner (instigator of many of the cool design ideas built into Apple’s products, and their relationship with Apple users).
Though Do You Matter? was written as a way of helping businesses design not only their products, but also their relationship with customers, many people are saying (as I did when I read it) that everything in it applies to how a person designs his or her life, including how to design your relationships with others, your career, your goals, and a lot more. This makes the book of great benefit to anyone. Many people have been saying that it’s too bad this book has to go in the business section in the bookstore.
I’ll just say that if you knew Stewart the way I do (he was the best man at my wedding), you would immediately go to Amazon and buy this book. I highly recommend it. Here are the Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble links to read about and get this cool book;
or
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Do-You-Matter/Robert-Brunner/e/9780137142446/?itm=1
Next, I was recently a guest on a podcast called The New Man: Beyond the Macho Jerk and the New Age Wimp, and I think you might enjoy checking them out. First of all, to hear my contribution, just click here: http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/238-the-new-man
Then, scroll down and you’ll see “Latest Podcast Episodes,” and I am #30.
This podcast was created by some Intergral Institute/Ken Wilber types, and targets 20 and 30-something men, though they tell me that quite a few women listen, too. I think they do a great job of looking at a lot of issues that people of that age face, from an integral perspective. These guys are pretty together, so go check it out. There are quite a lot of other podcasts, on all kinds of subjects, on this same site, so take a look:
http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/238-the-new-man
So, with that, I’ll say goodbye, and be well.
What if there's nothing you can do to change yourself? [35:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7368)
It’s sitting at the table, looking at the screen,
hands together, thumb bitten,
a thought flashes, for a moment leaving the world of judger, and
just being in the world of perceiver,
the thought says, this image, I will write, it’s a woman, her name is Jane, and in Jane’s brain is a picture of Jane, wearing a yellow blouse with a green skirt,
she is standing in a building, a skyscraper
if there is no me to be me,
then me is just part of all that is everything, a connected part of everything,
it’s not me sitting here typing,
the universe is typing, the universe is experiencing it’s self and thinking that it is Micah
like Jane is the universe thinking it is Jane,
we are both the universe Jane and I, and that’s all there is, just us, just what is,
I am the computer, and the table that the man types on,
I am all of it,
the whole going on of it all….
and that folks is like liberation,
not a liberation from reality, but a liberation from the idea that this local reality matters,
I don’t care if my locality is here now, I’m all of it anyways, and when I die it makes not a drop of difference,
because in the sense that I am the universe, I cannot live or die anyways, people can die I mean, but that’s not real anyways.
it’s just me changing form,
which is just the same when people are born…
Hey Bill, I LOVE your articles, but I’m having a little trouble with something… You said….
“What I’d really like you to do is to go from believing a theory to having an experience of it. One of the main points in everything I’m sharing with you is to go from IDEAS about reality to a direct experience of reality.”
But how does something like this actually happen to a person? I mean how exactly is the bridge gapped, or maybe a better question is, where is the actual connection between KNOWING that your idea’s and beliefs being only and exactly that, and actually HAVING a more direct experience of it??
FROM BILL: How have you gone from your ideas about what sex is (before you ever had any) to having a more direct experience of sex? You have an IDEA of who you are. That idea, however, doesn’t include much if anything about how you digest your food, how you circulate your blood, how your neurons fire, and how your cells divide. It doesn’t include much if anything about all the interrelationships you have with, ultimately, the entire universe. It doesn’t include more than a tiny fraction of the ongoing stream of sensory input you have in each moment.
Your idea of yourself is a caricature of the real thing. Like most people, you’re confusing this idea for the real thing (in fact, your idea of ANYTHING is just a fragment of the real thing). The real thing includes everything, but that experience only happens when you get the idea of who you are out of the way. In other words, when the mind stops, or when the part of the mind that creates an idea, a map, a representation of everything simultaneously with it’s experience, and then confuses the idea with the reality. That’s why we meditate or do other spiritual practices–because it quiets the mind and allows you to get out of the narrow slice of reality the mind is capable of capturing, so you can see the rest.
That’s why, in my online courses, I have people observe their mind very carefully, because when you watch something with awareness you gain distance from it. This is also what happens when people experience Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind process (which, by the way, gives you almost instantly an experience of being the All).
Thanks, once again for your comments, Bill. It is slowly but surely sinking in.
If anyone is interested, there is a series of You tube videos of an Australian woman (Linda Clair) talking about her experience of awakening/enlightenment which describes much of what Bill is talking about. In the first video she talks about how it took her a while to realise what had occurred because there simply was no ‘I’ there to appreciate or articulate it.
I have been going to this woman for meditation and can personally attest to her sincerity. What is so refreshing is that she talks about this experience as being so ordinary. She was an ordinary married woman with kids and no interest in spiritual matters until something took hold of her and compelled her to follow through with what was happening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEgRGAzKew&feature=related
This is what I have come to realize through “playing the game of life”..
But it sure took a long time to do so….
You put words of what I have “sensed” for quite a while now!
It is very interesting to come to this realization!
Okay…”I” will go drink some tea with my beloved now…
But thanks for your blog!
Greetings Bill. You have my admiration for being able to make this information available. One cannot compliment you enough for making it available free.
Regards,
Robert
Thank you, Bill, for showing me/us that it is possible to write and speak about “higher” levels of awareness, though at times our ability to understand requires us to reach a little higher than the stage we are in most of the time. I know that two years ago, I would have had to reach quite a bit; and several years ago it would have all sounded like gibberish (or heresy) to me and I would not have even thought of reaching.
I have been having the time of my life, immersing myself in the works of Ken Wiber and Susanne Cook-Greuter, and following up their references. And I have had some interesting/valuable email exchanges with Susanne…
wow!, it is like corresponding with you. Her comments on our leadership / political developmental lines (lower left /lower right quadrant of Wilber’s AQAL) and how we get the leadership we have were insightful.
A few hours ago, I watched the presidential debate, and witnessed myself empathising with the senators, especially Sen. McCain in such obvious distress, watching the two parts of me…that is them…speaking to each other from different levels of awareness, different vMemes…
And the pundits, the panels of “experts”,
all trying to make sense
of what they witnessed,
from within their own perspectives,
were facinating examples
of several different developmental stages
along several lines.
Thank you for Holosync, and these blogs to help us “understand” the process it facilitaties. Be well.
Hi Bill,
I need some of your wisdom here. I have experienced a lot of wonderful now moments, and LOVE feeling this freedom.
There is one huge shadow iin my life that I can’t seem to conquer. You know and say that to BE is it, and to be, one must make a daily commitment. i agree, but isn’t commitment a human choice? But now my tolerance for the “lazy” is getting less than it was before. I choose (do I?) because all my other choices or non focus didn’t work. And I’m in the same bind I’ve always been in. I’m doing all the earthly work with a small group of people, while the others (even though we are all connected), are choosing to not do so. I’m letting everything be as it is. I don’t think I’m separate from anyone. I try to own my own parasitic nature. I guess I’m angry, because now I’m doing what I’ve always done, being the “responsible” one. I know I’m not responsible for anything, or anyone, but aren’t I responsible for growing toward enlightenment?
Oh I know, I’m not seeing the WHOLE picture, or being the whole picture. I have a desire to motivate others just like you do, so how is that letting everything just be as it is?
I found out through my years of growth that Iactually have some deep core values, that have clarity and are not borrowed. Now I know that to be fully ALIVE is to know the peace of being congruent with “love others as you love yourself”. And then I get mad at all the others who cannot SEE that WE ARE ALL ONE. And in doing so, I become separate again.
Help, help, help. I want to scream to the world WAKE UP!
I’m sure you have felt this way too. How do you let the world be as it is, without feeling apathetic, discouraged, or outraged? I know those feelings are OK and I can observe them. They almost feel like a fire in my blood, a passion, a passion for peace, a passion for authentic love in the now.
Thanks for listening Bill and anyone who has any thoughts I would welcome with great appreciation.
Sheryll
FROM BILL: I am not apathetic, discouraged, or outraged, nor am I wanting to scream for the world to wake up. To have awakening there must be sleeping. The world will never wake up. Buddhists vow to free all sentient being, yet know that this is impossible. It is a paradox. The world is the way it is. Why fight against it? It’s fine to work to reduce suffering, but being in resistance emotionally to the fact that there is suffering, and always will be, is more just suffering. Do what you can, but relax about it.
Thanks again Bill,
I think this is one blog I will read over and over again with more insight and delight each time.
A video that would be of interest to all those who are struggling with the “how” of separateness illusion should look to this video of a brain anatomist. http://www.mindbridge-loa.com/who-are-we.html
She visually illustrates the difference between connectedness to all and connectedness to a separate sense of self.
I am working with children, 3.5 yrs, 5 yrs. and 6 yrs. I have been struggling with the conflict of how to intellectually connect them to their separate selves so they can function in the world (need to take turns with others, fact that others can’t read their minds which means they must talk if they want others to know what they want), without disconnecting them from their sense of connectedness…. Ongoing process.
And, Bill, if you have any ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear from you in the guise of your separate self.
Thanks always,
Nancy
BTW,
I always remember what someone recently said, that a common frustration of children is that it is so painful to have their great spirit stuffed into such a tiny package….
Love to all,
Nancy
I had a huge realization yesterday. Now, I think it should have been obvious, but it wasn’t until yesterday. Many of your posts here and in LPIP ( I am in the 2nd course) are about being exposed to other ideas of how the world works, so that I (others) can change our beliefs. If I change my very strong held beliefs about how the world operates and about who I am. White doesn’t have too win. Things are as they are. Let everything be ok. Let it be ok that I am depressed or happy or whatever.
If I change those beliefs then I will find the support for those new beliefs and that will aid in having a whole new unfiltered perception of the world!
FROM BILL: Better yet would be to realize that all beliefs are just ideas about reality. The map is not the territory, and the biggest block to your freedom is confusing the two. New beliefs are still just beliefs–ideas. Go beyond beliefs to a direct experience of things. Beliefs are handy, but you have to see them for what they are.
I’d like to say a thank you to Gloria for the Youtube post on Linda Clair. It was fascinating.
T
Thanks Bill for the abstract ideas which you teach in clear terms. You greatly entertain my soul.
Thanks for your comment Bill. I “know” what you are saying I just don’t KNOW it yet. Anyway, I am finding that the use of Holosync, and Bigmind are really a great combination. For me, the 3-2-1 technique with the “lazy” world as the object has really helped. I think my last note to you was my 1st person to 2nd person step.
Again, thank you for listening and bringing me back to NOW.
Sheryll
Bill,
I am in the beginning stages of getting to know you, Holosync and centerpointe which to say the least is enlightening ( just ordered my awakening prologue package;-). After reading your words but more so, during, I immediately felt so much more connected to “The Whole” what I mean is that perpcetive has new meaning to me which certainly will begin to have the effect that it is intended to have. I thank “The Whole” through you Bill for dedicating your life to sharing this with anyone who has, had or will have this essential “knowing” to become awakened.
relax, savor, indulge, enjoy life
Donald Scalmanini
Florence, Italy
Bill –
How about the short version? Maybe it’s just too late after a long day, or maybe I’m too down to have the energy to invest in getting better, but I couldn’t get through this.
Hi Bill.
I would like to begin this comment by saying: Thank you.
Thank you for The Holosync solution even though I’m not sure if it’s working… But even so, it has been a steadfast part of my life for the last four months, and it has been comfortable in use.
Anyhoo, this is quite hard to wrap your head around…
As I understand it, you say that we are one being, one energy, and our separate consciousnesses are merely perceived as separate because we lie to ourselves. How can there not be an “I”? I mean, I am not in YOUR body, nor in HIS thoughts, and I cannot hear what SHE is thinking.
And if the concept of “I” is just an idea, then what is an idea to the universe?
A part of me finds this concept ridiculous, and yet, a bigger part of me believes you (or wants me to).
Either way, to a person who has the average view on life and the meaning of it, this is quite disturbing… Scary even!
This was a good blog; gave me alot to think about, but I’m afraid it only leaves me with more questions than answers…
Still confused,
Throstur R. Thorsteinsson.
FROM BILL: I’m continually amazed at how people re-word what they think I’ve said and then disagree with it or become confused by it. I did not say that there is no “I”. I said that there is no SEPARATE “I”. Everything exists in relation to everything else. There is no separate you that acts independently of your ENTIRE environment.
Hi, Bill.
I enjoy your blog and love Holosync, but today I’m writing for another reason.
You’ve done some fabulous teleseminars in the past. Are you planning to do any in the near future? I’m creating a page to direct people to teleseminars for spiritual and personal growth, and yours are some of the best that I’ve experienced. Sure would like to point people in your direction!
Please let us know who you’re interviewing next, and when.
Thanks.
Jacqueline
Hi Bill, great post. So in my thinking and application of this post to my own life and my personal experineses and in recognizing the different times of my life when i’ve had what i have previously categorized as spirtual experiences when my perspective changed and my being became unified with the whole for those several instances in my life of limited duration (seconds but within seconds much learning and awareness and punctuated changes and understanding of my connectedness to the whole and of that which is greater than what I conceived of me (linear thinking etc)), and when I then become aware of the shift and in seeking to grasp it or hold on to it I lose it — does the shift in perspectives for those more awakened and enlightened become one of an increasing frequency and duration of this new awareness of the whole and the perspective change and is this a process of allowing or does the enlightened one truly live in this state of changed perspectives while recognizing that linear perspective does exist? I believe in my own life that I live in the linear mind with intermittent shifts in perspective with the whole, and am wondering does this reverse for the more awakened and enlightened one or is it an entire shfit perspective and living in this new perpective staying centered on the whole with recognition of the mind’s other perspective and in using the linear perspective as a tool? Or is it both? I am trying to allow the perspective to return and be open to it and cannot will it into my awareness but certain environments and conditions trigger the shift and it just happenss. I hope this makes sense and thank you for the post. Bill C
FROM BILL: You lost me somewhere in the middle of the first incredibly long sentence.
Bill
I read your blog yesterday after reading the latest support letter and may need more support???? My experience was one of feeling like I was knocked off the rails….in fact I have this very strong image of a train locomotive coming to a screeching halt with all the cars derailing and piling up behind it. I also am aware of an experience of surrender as I realize that I’m never going to figure it all out(no matter how hard I try). I’m just sitting with it all.
Thanks(I think)
Josh Brown
FROM BILL: I would suggest calling support at Centerpointe and talking this over with someone.
Initially I struggled with Bill C’s post because as you (Bill H) pointed out, it is quite long.
I think he’s basically asking if enlightened people…
* live predominantly in the linear mind
* or from a blissed out perspective
* or if they fully embody a feeling of oneness whilst using the mind as a
useful tool.
I think Bill H answers this question in his series on developmental levels. You might want to check it out Bill C. It’s thorough and fascinating.
But yes it seems that an enlightened person fully embodies their connectedness to everything. And whilst seeing the mind as a useful tool for navigating the relative world, they recognise that it’s just an idea of the world and self, and not the real world or the real self.
Hope that helps.
best wishes,
Terry
p.s.
Bill H – I’ll be expecting a cheque in the post.
YUMMMMM to all of this. YUMMMMM, i say. YUMMMMM!
Howdy, sangha!
Marcus EliYAhu Mann
Hi Bill love you blogs. I just wanted to make one comment. I have been using Holosync for two years now and this financial crisis has not even bothered me. I used to wake at 2 am in the morning stressing about everything. I am now taking your on-line course Internal map of Reality. and I have noticed how it is easier to be open to possibilities. I cannot tell you how easier my life is sence I started Holosync and this lesson. I should be happy with all that I have accomplished to date, but for some reason I love the feeling I get not being on auto pilot. Thanks and may you days be like mine.
Bill,
The below is written not as rebuttal or disagreement, more as a ‘thinking out loud’ to garner some response or insight from you.
I get what the point you are making in this blog entry, but the mind keeps bringing up the ideas like: sure this is all well and good on a theoretical level, but in ‘reality’ these thoughts that I am having are being generated and sensed in this brain that is indeed separate from your brain at least on a physical level.
For instance, the pain sensors in this body detect a wound or illness in this body and transmit the impulses to this brain and not to your brain. Therefore this physical pain is only experienced by this brain. When watching someone suffer with cancer or some other painful disease we sympathize and even agonize with them, but we do not feel the actual pain. It is located in their body and brain, or ours if we are the ones afflicted. Severe pain seems to have a way of bringing one right into the body. There is no doubt during such episodes that we are separate and right there.
Sure, there would be nothing to experience by the brain if there wasn’t a whole since the brain is made of elements of the whole. So, there wouldn’t be a body or brain to begin with without the whole, so the connection to the whole is obvious. The body cannot exist in a vacuum. But, there sure seems to be a brain and body; here sitting on a chair, typing some words and seeing them appear on a screen, feeling sensations coming from and to this body, seeing sights in the room, hearing sounds in the house, smelling the odors of the air, tasting the contents of the mouth and sensing the thoughts, impulses, pictures and etc. in the mind. There is something here which is not there.
Though all the above is happening in a body/brain which does have its own unique space within the whole it obviously is a part of the whole. A part of the whole which is experiencing itself from within itself while feeling it is a separate self? Each one of us the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, sensations sensors, mental formation observers and great mystery experiencers (I.E., The Whole, God, Universe) of the whole from within the whole?
Oddly I can feel the truth of what you are saying and yet cannot understand it or make sense of it. Probably ‘it’ is not understandable by the linear mind, just by the ‘Big Mind’ which is beyond this level of understanding. Coming from that mind, it all just is. We are not, yet we are. Until one knows the answer the right questions can’t be asked. After one knows the answers, there are no questions.
Yet here I am, full of questions.
Steve W.
Thank you Bill. You are and have been one of my biggest heroes and mentors from afar over the last 3 1/2 years. As I just stated, I started using holosync over 3 years ago and I’m on Purification Level 2.
This article was just what I needed to read. I will admit that I have been going through a few difficult situations in my life and this is a clear reminder of how I should be interpreting these events and my reactions to it. Due to a neurological disease I have been battling my entire life (Tourette’s Syndrome), I have really found your work and holosync to be of a big help. Over the years I have learned to hide this disease and the effects and have a successful career – however, I didn’t realize how many negative past experiences I had suppressed.
Your work really has given me hope Bill….and I’m eternally grateful to you.
Kory
I am not native speaker , but I want to say many thanks to Bill.
I have fought with myself for years now very seriously , creating all the troubles possible…
Now reading this text above the understanding slowly arrived from nothing, like the light was swithed on.
Part of me is always afraid example to be sick etc. , other part is desperately want to change lot of things, fighting for the concept of “separated me”.
I did not look this before in the way above, I was convinced that that these are all me.
Now it is truly relaxing not trying, forcing to fix myself…
Thank you Bill
Thanks.
I really needed something good to eat while hungrily meandering through a really odd day. This article tasted like candy and felt like steak. I’m well again.
Michael
With reference to your comment that one cannot decide to love, it is a spontaneous happening, I take issue based on my own experience. I could not stand children at one period in my life. A person who had two adored children was visiting and I was pretending to like the kids because I was a polite person, keen not to hurt anyone’s feelings (!). The father commented how he really liked the way I loved children so much. There were a lot of people present so I just smiled and said nothing, but felt like a total awful fraud. After that I really tried to like those kids and other kids so I would not have to pretend. In the meantime I pretended like mad! Suddenly I found myself genuinely entranced by and loving kids. I was astonished and rather pleased. 25 years later I still adore kids…well most of them!I have since applied this principal of “fake it til you make it” on a few fronts and find it works. I guess it forms new neural pathways.
Bill,
I found this blog entry to be especially fascinating, having been a student of Truth teachings for about 12 years. There were so many things I wanted to comment on but I’ve been able to boil it down to one entry.
Regarding your response to Alan Wortman’s comment on October 10th, you state: “You are depressed because you are holding on to some idea of a way out of the human condition. There is no way out.”
This may come as a shock, or it may just sound incredibly arrogant but there, in fact, IS a way out of the human condition. This is neither my opinion or belief, nor anyone else’s — it is a spiritual fact you can find out for yourself that very few other people have ever known. There is a whole other world that exists regarding a person’s resistance to reality and what each person can do about it. Resistance is negative attraction — the more you resist what you don’t want, the more you are tied to it. The answer is simply to let go. That is the most common way of expressing a spiritual concept that few people in this world are even aware of, much less understand.
I agonized for days over whether to post my comment for you to read because of the nature of its content. But I was struck by your grasp of spiritual knowledge, yet perplexed that it all came to an abrupt halt at which point, in your mind, life became a mystery. In addition to your blog I read many of the articles — and from all of this I got a sense that you have a yearning for more of this knowkedge.
I don’t want to presume anything but if you are interested in seeing way past what you can imagine, there are a number of books and other materials on Truth teachings. For starters, I highly recommend reading “The Secret of Letting Go” by Guy Finley. I guarantee that if you read and study this book with, not only an open mind, but a sincere wish for enlightenment, the way you see yourself and other people will change forever. You will find that your True Nature has no limits. See for yourself — it’s God’s knowledge. Know once and for all that there is something you can do to change yourself.
FROM BILL: No matter what you do, life, and everything in it, is impermanent. The only real “way out” is surrender to this, and becoming aware enough to choose how you engage in life, rather than living on autopilot, where you unconsciously create suffering. Suffering is built in to life, but the conscious person chooses which situations (all of which involve SOME sufferng) to get involved with, knowing the consequences and surrendering to them.
No offence to Guy Finley, but he has not found “the solution” to the human predicament, any more than anyone else. I am well aware of the entire universe of “solutions,” and of course anyone is free to become involved with any of them. See my series on human development, which is one “solution” to the human condition after another, each one left behind as the person becomes more aware and sees through it. Every developmental stage has it’s own solution. For instance, the conventional stage divides everything into good and evil, black and white. This makes it easy to make sense of life–upon entering any situation, you can clearly “see” what pile in which to put everything. The “solution” is to go after the good and avoid the evil.
This works AS LONG AS IT WORKS. But at some point, for some people, they become aware of aspects of life that are not explained by this approach. They notice that all these pairs of opposites (for instance, good and evil) GO TOGETHER and depend upon each other. This brings about a new perspective, and a new “solution”==one where “everything is relative,” things are vaiable and culturally determined instead of set in stone, and where “every voice is equal.” This is the pluralist view. Every developmental level is a way of making sense of life, and particularly why life involves suffering and death. Every solution seems like THE solution, for however long it works. When new information or new situations intrude that show it to NOT be THE solution, there is a period of unsettling chaos, follow by reorganization at a new level, a new perspective. With that new perspective comes a new “solution.” Every person at any developmental level thinks their solution is THE solution.
The truth is, though, that when all is said and done, NOTHING can be done about the impermanence that is built into the universe. Enlightened individuals acknowledge impermanence and surrender to it, realizing that most of the suffering of life–and most delusion–is created by resistance to impermanence. Then, having gained tremendous awareness (a hugely broad perspective that encompasses the entire infinite universe), the enlightened person enters into life knowing that it involves suffering, but also knowing that with great awareness he can CHOOSE what situations to enter into, knowing that they are impermanent and will create suffering. For instance, the enlightened person chooses to have friends, or a spouse, or children, or to have a home, and so forth, knowing that they are impermanent. Any potential suffering-containing situation becomes a conscious choice, which is not the case for 99.99% of people.
I’m not saying that there is no way out of the human condition from a depressed or negative perspective. I love life, but the truth is that no matter what you do, life involves SOME suffering. All of these “solutions” are attempts to pretend in some way that that isn’t the case. They are, in that sense delusional.
I bought the introductory CD the Awakening and then I got the first custom tapes. I did this to overcome a drinking problem. But I have never had more of a severe problem until now. I called and talked to someone and they didn’t help me at all.
This program has made me so dysfunctional that I cannot even deal with anything–I haven’t worked in my professional for over a year!!
HELP!! I feel that this program has sentenced me to DEATH!!
Please if anyone can help me, call me at 602-643-9534.
Thanks for all your help,
Michelle Perry
FROM BILL: Michelle, I’m going to be very straight with you. One reason you have an alcohol problem is that you refuse to take responsibility for yourself. Why would Holosync be responsible for your addiction? You’re not going to be able to get over this as long as you are blaming something outside of you for the problem. And, though Holosync has helped MANY people stop drinking or taking drugs (it is the cornerstone of the Integral Recovery approach to addiction recovery), Centerpointe is not an addiction recovery company. You should seek treatment with someone who specializes in alcoholism. Our support line is to help those using Holosync, but it is not designed to be therapy. I appreciate that you are having a hard time, and sympathize. Find some specialized help, continue to use Holosync, and good luck to you.
Could it be that Bill Harris has actually understated something?
But maybe it is not possible to overstate the concept of “BIG MIND, BIG HEART.”
Thanks for including it with “Awakening Level 1.”
No doubt Genpo goes against the grain of conventional Zen with his “Delta” triangle concept.
(ego/apex/no-ego; immature/apex/mature; unhealthy-alcoholic/apex/healthy alcoholic; dark-side/apex/enlightened-side).
Hee-Jin Kim, likewise, challenges conventional and post-modern Zen with his analysis of Dogen’s similar concept of thinking/nonthinking/not-thinking.
(see Kim, “Dogen on Meditation and Thinking,” 2007.)
For us Christian Holosychners: consider No-God/Beyond God/God.
(see, Carter, “The Nothingness beyond God, an Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida, Kitaro,” 1997.)
P.S. Wiseguy Bill now has got me drinking: that is, drinking garlic-spiked lemonade before falling asleep on my back wearing earphones listening to “Floating.”
Thanks a million BIG-GUY.
But Geez bill, going through 4 BIG DVDs for a little taste of “BIG MIND” was very tedious. Sorry bro.
It was much easier to listen to the also including CD “Floating”.
Fantastic ocean-sounds! Virtual 3D recording itself was worth the price of admission.
Minor suggestion: Add seagulls.
I’ve used at least 4 different ocean recordings for meditation in Tai Chi classes. By far the students like a few seagull sqwacks thrown in–otherwise it sounds like the air-conditioning system. Hey, what’s a beach without those damn seagulls? (sea gulls/apex/no sea gulls).
Totally agree with above. Im over a year using holosync and didn’t hit rock bottom with alcohol till well into holosync use. Professional help is the key. Get the help you need, like you would normally, and continue using holosync. I can tell you that once I sobered up, holosync helped me a lot with dealing with my new life, and I had many realisations about what was going on and am currently VERY concious of this situation.
I read Michelle’s post Nov 9th. My heart goes out to you. One of the most important things I have learned from Bill is the concept of all suffering is caused by resistance and that resistance can take many forms. I am overweight because for as long as I can remember, food has been my addiction. As soon as I am bored or under pressure I get the most compelling hunger happening. I am a new Holosync user although not a new meditator. At times I feel very hungy after a session of Holosync and I am trying hard to identify what resistance I am trying to distract from by eating. So far I have come up with a few and my eating is less compulsive. I have not come to the end of it but I am using it as a tool and watching with great curiosity. I think the stronger the compulsion, the stronger must be the resistance and therefore what underlies that,perhaps the most difficult to confront.I strongly suggest professional counselling and support would be most helpful along with continuing Holosync.
Genius. Every time.
Bill,
I don’t understand what you’re saying here:
FROM BILL: WHO would actually reincarnate? Is there some separate self who would do that? If you think so, find it. Spiritual practice is a disciplined hunt for the separate self, ending with the realization that there is none. Without this hunt, during which you turn over every rock, looking everywhere, most people would never be truly convinced that there is no separate self.
Genpo Roshi, in one of his Big Mind videos, talks about how several Tibetan masters came back and ’spoke’ to him from the dead.
What do you think he means by that?
Richard
FROM BILL: You’d have to ask him to be sure, but I think these masters are aspects of Genpo Roshi himself–and if pressed I think Roshi would agree. But beyond that, why base what you think about reincarnation on what someone else says (including me). Notice that in what I wrote I said to find the self that reincarnates. If you find it–a separate self or soul–and therefore prove to yourself that it really exists, then maybe there’s some way it could go on after the death of your organism (which is yet another question to investigate experientially, rather than just believing what someone else has said).
If, however, you look for the separate self–if you look everywhere–and you can’t find it (other than in your head, where it exists as an idea), then maybe it doesn’t exist. Zen is actually a discinplined way to look for the separate self. The big ah-ha in Zen comes when you realize that there isn’t any separate self, that “you” is an idea, not a reality. But just telling someone doesn’t create the same shift (or any shift at all, really) as discovering it for yourself, experientially. To do that you usually have to search until you’re really convinced that it cannot be found.
So I’m not asking you to believe anything I say. In fact, please DON’T believe anything I say. I’m just giving hints that might send you out on the search. Instead of trying to convinced you to believe this or that, I’m suggesting that you do your own investigation, your own searching, and find out for yourself what is true, what is real.
If you read my series on human development, you’ll find that at a certain developmental level (”mythic”) a person believes in a certain dogma. Instead of finding out for themselves, they believe “experts”–priests, Zen masters, philosophers, whatever. Someone else has the power to know, and I just believe them. At a higher level, though, a person gives up “believing” (which actually means fervently wishing, from the Old English root “lief”) and decides what is real by direct experience. That’s why I suggested finding the self who reincarnates, rather than just believing someone else’s opinion about reincarnation.
The Zen master often asks the student to show him the self, giving the student the idea that there must be a way to do so. A fervent student can almost go nuts trying to show the teacher the self. He looks and looks and looks, and tries everything, until (if he is lucky), he gets it–what he thought was “me” is just an idea. There is no me. The only doer is the entire going on of it all, the entire universe. So, then, as I said, who is it who reincarnates? Show it to me.
I think I get your point that the self can’t act alone and make any changes that don’t also effect the universe around us. Trying to think like you talk, I don’t like the interactions that my “idea” of self has with the universe so knowing myself is just an “idea” is not necessarily any comfort if I can’t seem to change the idea (imagined relationship of self with universe)
FROM BILL: Your idea of yourself can’t do anything, including interact with others. An idea is an idea. Can the idea “small” interact with other things? Can “three” interact with other things? If there is no separate you, who would “change the idea”? Acting happens, but there is no need for a separate doer. And, who is it that doesn’t like the actions? Not liking the actions is a thoughts. You are under the delusion that there is a thinker who thinks these thoughts. Actually, the thinker is just another one of the thoughts. In the same way, the feeler is just another one of the feelings. You don’t need a thinker and thoughts, or a feeler and feelings, or an actor and actions. The thinking and the thinker are the same thing. The feeling and the feeler are one thing. The actor and the action are one thing. This idea that there needs to be a doer and a doing is the same mistake as thinking that there is something called lightning, and then it does something called “flashing.” The flashing IS the lightning. There is no need for a duality here, and the same thing applies to what you think of as “you.” There is no need for and idea of you and a you that has the idea. There is just the idea, but no “other” that has it.
I started this to journey “find myself” and now find myself surprised to find that I don’t exist :~) Is that an old joke or did I just make it up?
Thanks Bill. I’ve been listening to the podcasts again and this one struck a chord. I volunteer at a theatre that puts on “A Christmas Carol” every year and each time I see it makes me ponder on the nature of change. Now I realize the futility of wishing for my own ghosts of Christmas past-present-and-future to scare the living daylights out of me to force me to change.
FROM BILL: Just to be clear, there is a you, but it includes all the interrelationships that connect you to everything. The “me” everyone thinks they are is their IDEA of “me”, which exists, but isn’t who you are, and can’t do anythings (ideas, such as “big” or “the equator” or “happiness” can’t do anything).
I just read this blog and hope that it is not too late to ask a question.
If I am not a doer how can I be responsible for my actions?
Thank you Bill eather way.
Tonka
FROM BILL: Who is asking? Find the one who is asking. Responsibility (the ability to respond) happens, but there is no need for a “someone” who does the responding. The responding happens without the need for a responder, just as the flashing happens without the need for a “thing” called lightning that does the flashing. All you need is the doing, you don’t need the doer. The doer is an idea, not a real thing.
Behaviors are generated from your nervous system. That nervous system is a sophisticated response mechanism that learns certain responses in order to survive, stay safe, meet certain needs, and so on. Once learned, those responses happen, when needed, automatically. Some of them were perfect for, say, a traumatic childhood, and allowed you to deal with a difficult situation. If used in other situations they sometimes create outcomes that aren’t so resourceful. If anger, or withdrawal, or being passive, or being in a constant state of hypervigilance served you when you were small, it may not serve you in a different environment.
The reason many people act in irresponsible or dysfunctional ways is that their nervous system–the part of them that generates feelings, behaviors, and so forth–is operating automatically. When you become really aware you see how these responses are generated, and those that don’t serve you fall away. Still, there is no need for a separate self who responds. Responding happens, without the need for a ghost in the system called “the responder.”
Dear Bill
I have listened to your web course on the Power of Now and have ordered your demo CD of holosync and I am still considering it. I also listen to several of the podcasts in your blog. They are all veery helpful and calrify a lot of things in my mind but I have a question from this podcast ( what if you cant do anything) You describe our individuality (ego) as an idea of the linear mind helpful for transactions in this world but not real and that it is actually the totality that is trying to change but then where does the resistance to this change originate? If individuality is something I have and it is not the doer who is resisting and how can it resist? (which is also an action )
FROM BILL: You’re misunderstanding, to some extent. The separate self is you IDEA of yourself. If I asked you to tell me who you are, you’d tell me your name, what you do for a living, where you were born, what you like to do, where you live, and so on and so on–this is a sketch you have of yourself. Notice, though, that it leaves out all the interactions that connect you to everything else. It leave out how you grow your hair or beat your heart. It leaves out your brain chemistry, how you digest your food, how your cells divide, and thousands of other things. Your idea of who you are is nothing more than a scrawny caracature of who your really are (the entire going on of it all).
That idea of who you are, though, can’t do anything, including resist. Like any other idea, it can’t DO anything. Can the border between Texas and Oklahoma DO anything? OF course not. It’s just an idea.
The problem is that we confuse the idea of a thing with the thing itself, and we especially do this with our idea of who we are. When you ask me where the resistance to the change comes from, you’re talking nonsense. No change is necessary. “Change” is another idea, for that matter. There’s no one to change, there’s no one who can change, and no change is needed. My point in this post was to say that we keep thinking we need to change (that is, what we think we are needs to change), and then we’re frustrated that we can’t ever pull it off.
We assume that this is because we’re too screwed up, or that changing is too hard, or we just haven’t found the way to do it yet. But the real reason that we can’t change is that there’s no “me” to change (and, as I added here, no change is necessary). Once you experientially get (not intellectually, but experientially) that you are IT–all of it, the whole going on of it all, that all the interrepationships that make up the entire universe are all one thing, and that there is nothing in existence that is separate, including a separate “you”–at that point you are free. They call it awakening, or enlightenment, or Christ Consciousness, or Buddhahood, or Oneness, or Nirvana, and many other names. So what needs to change? The entire going on of it all is continually changing, but the idea that there is some independent agent that can do anything apart from to flow of the whole thing is nothing more than an idea, and a delusional one at that.
As for doing, and changing, doing happens, but does not require a “doer.” Changing happens, but does not require a separate someone or something that changes. The doing is a doing of the whole, and so is the changing. Nothing exists independently of anything else. This is the Buddhist idea of mutual interdependence–that you can’t describe anything without describing it’s relationships with everything else. You can’t describe something without also describing its environment.
So, the reason you can’t change is that you, as a separate agent, don’t exist. What you think is you is just that scraggly, incomplete caracature. So there’s no need to change. Once you realize that you don’t have to change, and that you’re IT, looking out from a certain organism, you’re FREE.
And I didn’t say that the ego wasn’t real. I said that your ego–your idea of yourself–isn’t the same as the real thing. It isn’t the real you, any more than your idea of a potato is a real potato. Ideas REPRESENT things, but they aren’t the same as what they represent. If that were true you could eat the menu instead of the meal and it would fill you up. Having an idea of who you are is handly, as long as you remember that it’s just an idea, and not the real thing. Almost everyone, though, has fallen for the illusion that their idea of who they are IS who they are.
Dear Bill,
I fight you and I fight you, knowing along the way that you are right…
My deepest insights which were also my most obvious ones, and at the time , one might argue, my most “shallow” ones, are coming home to roost:
For the child knew before it was conditioned by one’s well meaning catholic parents, the truth,
-what chance do you stand against bishops, Benedictine monks et al in your family when you feel, sense and react in a different way to what you are supposed to?…
I count myself lucky to somehow having found my way to your camp via Deepak Chopra, et al, and finally having found Holosync to be a most useful tool et al. (I am now half way through level 4.)
And yet, there is still anger, resentment and, dare I say it, fear, even though I can see that it is all bullshit, it is still there at times, but I am coping with it much better.
Okay, I am not falling in love with the teacher, because I am also able to see way beyond you, for what it is worth in the nicest possible way, – since not only can I see clearly the double bind, but also the fact that ultimately everything comes from within. While, yes we are dealing with a universe, – and a reality,- that has an ever moving horizon; so it is obviously also with the self…
And in a paradox way, maybe the self is indeed the centre of the universe, at least from this present state of dualistic awareness, if this is how I choose to see myself for now, until I get lost in the next expose….
…and here rests my case…
In gratitude, as always, for your great work
Mercedes Oestermann van Essen
FROM BILL: Wow! You really had me, right up until you dashed my hopes by saying you weren’t in love with me.
All kidding aside, the thing is that no matter how much you experience the transcendent, and certainly no matter how much of any other worldly or spiritual achievements, you still can’t get away from the fact that everything is impermanent. Even the greatest Zen masters still had, in the back (and sometimes the front) of their minds the fear, sadness, even terror, that comes from being impermanent. I know all of you are still hoping, but there really is no escape. That doesn’t mean life can’t be wonderful–in fact, when you reall acknowledge NO HOPE (which is NOT hopelessness, but rather seeing the way things really are and ending your relationship with hoping, hoping, hoping), THAT’S when you really begin to live.
Hi bill kate. My comment is about finally getting what you want and its comming so fast and your so use to not gettingwant or , not getting what you do want. For years I have wanted to be my own boss. Fear has held me back. I have finally started getting it, and things are comming so fast, I feel overwhelmed do you have a meditation or thought process that helps you not get discouraged, I love the rollor coaster ride, but I look like hell, even when I lay down the excitement is almost more than I can bare. I cry,laugh, scream,dance,I hugged a stranger, I had a date for first time in over 13 years,it went great and I am not stressing. I know that things change the impermenance of all things has been my greatest discovery. I don’t want it to end and now it dosen’t. Imagine that just imagine that! Bob Procotor said it will start comming so fast and ferious you worder where its been all this time. Can a person die from sheir joy?
FROM BILL: All emotions, including discouragement and fear, are created by YOU, by how you focus your mind (ie, by the internal representations you make). If you are unaware, you will do this focusing unconsciously and automatically. If you are aware, it becomes a choice. The secret to everything, and the solution to all emotional and motivational problems is to become more aware. Use Holosync!