Paradox One: Silence vs. Chatter 

To experience essence the mind must be still but the mind never shuts up.

In order to become self realized we must become absolutely still and cease thinking so that we may listen to Spirit yet no matter how hard we try, the mind will never shut up. The brain is a tool used by consciousness to identify, organize, understand and direct experience. It is associated with the lower mind, designed to formulate thoughts that magnetize experiences when charged with emotions, another product of the mind. Its desires, imaginings, wishes, and yearnings are truly never ending for as soon as something it has imagined is realized, it is so creative that instantly it begins to formulate the next and the next, and the next. This is all the lower mind really does, serving by helping to translate thoughts into form.

All the greatest spiritual teachers and masters tell us that in order to become self realized conscious beings, enlightened, awake masters, we need to go into deep silence, quiet the chatter, and cease the monkey mind. But how is this possible when the monkey mind cannot shut up if even for a few seconds? The first order of business is to realize that the monkey mind is designed to see the universe in terms of separate objects, often conflicting things, ideas, situations, or events. The monkey mind serves the ego or the false personality and is not interested in the oneness of spirit but rather is afraid of it, even opposing it with its endless strategies. It simply desires more stimulation by isolating items in the world to want or reject and creating methods to go after them or avoid them.

What must be realized is that the constant chatter of the desire-obsessed mind is not bad or wrong, it is just doing what it is designed to do. In the biggest picture it is simply illusionary because Spirit can never really be divided the way the monkey mind attempts. The key to this conundrum is to tune into a bigger awareness, higher mind, that allows the lower mind its apparent activity and yet engages in silence at the same time, a little like multi tasking. Taken a step further it is good to give the monkey mind a task like watching breathing or gazing at the sky just above the horizon line expectantly waiting to see something. Behind the task the higher mind is engaged in deep silence, the silence of pure consciousness or awareness. This is a doing and a being at the same time. The greatest challenge with this practice is that the false personality associated with lower mind will become bored with the task presently and will want something else to do. Watching a babbling brook or stream tends to be easier because the movement traps the false personality into being focused on the belief that something new is happening every moment. Meanwhile higher mind is engaged in listening to spirit, not watching for something stimulating in the environment. Thus the answer to this conundrum is to reject nothing but hold both minds at once until lower mind chooses to cooperate. At some point the lower mind will do the bidding of higher mind more willingly by becoming focused on desiring joy, or peace, or that which higher mind is actually interested in. This requires separating the false personality from the activities of the lower mind so that the lower mind actually realizes it is in service of higher mind. That takes practice and is a result of erasing the seven dragons: Self destructiveness, greed, self-deprecation, arrogance, martyrdom, impatience, and stubbornness.

Paradox Two:

Stupid vs. Smart. Human beings are incredibly powerful and smart but are so vulnerable they can die easily and are capable of incredible stupidity.

No one can deny after gazing at the golden Gate Bridge, downtown Manhattan, Machu Pichu, or the great pyramids in Central America and Egypt that human beings are incredibly brilliant and are capable of creating fantastic structures with their brains and their bodies. Driving a car, flying a plane, or navigating an ocean liner all require immense intelligence and coordination. Our brains with their 100 billion neurons are miracles of evolution, capable of sending probes deep into space, understanding chemistry, physics, and engineering. Yet anyone looking at politics, international relations, the major economic structures, and environmental policies cannot deny our immense stupidity, lack of foresight, arrogance and greed. How is it possible that these totally opposite aspects can dominate human activity so? Clearly intelligence and knowledge do not equal wisdom nor do they add up to awareness or consciousness. In many respects plants are more aware than many human beings because they do not engage in such stupid behavior. The key ingredient is of course consciousness.  Intelligence and consciousness together equal wisdom and self-realization.

The grand experiment on the planet at this time is this: Can these independently mobile, binary focused, opposable thumbed, and frontally lobed simians develop enough awareness to overcome their selfish, territorial, and aggressive tendencies before they destroy themselves? The answer is, a guarded yes, probably but not certainly, which gives the experiment enough risk to be truly interesting, exciting, and dramatic. The fact that humans can and might destroy themselves makes it obvious that they have free choice in the matter and that is something that no other species has. Choice is their bane and their redemption at the same time.

Now intelligence and knowledge of appearances are products of the brain and the brain without heart is a truly dangerous tool. Consciousness and awareness have their source in the heart, not in the brain so obviously the heart has to be brought into the equation if human beings have any hope of survival. On the other hand heart without a brain tends to be overly sentimental, naïve, and impractical so they are designed to work together. Human beings have a tendency to veer precipitously from one to the other but have not often mastered the ability to harmonize them. That is the next step for the masses of the species. What will help this to happen? Certainly not organized religion nor emotional pap spewed by do-gooders. What will bring the hearts and minds of human beings together is necessity, the necessity of doing so or the inevitability of moving into mass self-destruction if they do not. Necessity has always been the mother of invention and nothing has changed that.

As long as human beings experience themselves to be isolated from one another as separate beings, no matter how high their intelligence level is, they will in fact be stupid. When a human being realizes that he/she is actually part of something much greater, that all humans are actually one being, then they become geniuses and masters of the universe. When a person realizes this they are capable of anything including suspending the laws of the physical universe, working miracles, healing instantly, instantly transporting far locations, and demonstrating a host of other amazing abilities.

As long as the false personality is in charge, a human being projects a physical universe that is dangerous, attacking, and filled with death, disease, and accident. Without a relationship with Spirit humans are both stupid and weak even if at times they seem to accomplish impressive feats such as climbing Mt. Everest or building an empire. When a person stops identifying with false personality and identifies with Spirit instead they project a new reality within which they are invulnerable and powerful but without the drama of the other. Awake soul’s bodies are hard to kill because they are not consumed with fear associated with threats and worries over personal safety. Without a constant diet of fearful thoughts, awake souls can go about the business of living much more intelligently and effectively.

Paradox Three:

Human beings must learn to be ruthless warriors yet enlightenment requires total peacefulness and love.

The martial arts are designed to train a combatant to become invulnerable to attack and to use an attacker’s own energy to defeat them utterly. Thus one who attacks a black belt in martial arts is likely to wind up with at the least broken bones and at worst dead. The road to enlightenment often involves skills with weapons, strategies of defense and attack, and absolute training of the body to respond to combat with lightening speed, absolute preciseness, and impeccable timing. Some of the greatest masters this world has seen have also been trained in the martial arts. Yet a perfectly trained master will never use their hard earned skills in combat of any sort for a truly enlightened being will never invite attack in any way. In fact an enlightened master will either project a peaceful reality or will gladly give up his or her body rather than hurt anyone.   

Among the Sioux, a master warrior is one who has such courage that they go through life led by the heart, chest out in front with no defense or offensive weapon to fend off attack. In the same way the Maya warriors offered their heart to the Sun at dawn each day, utterly defenseless and vulnerable. In many spiritual traditions initiates are taught to be ruthless with themselves, to undergo prolonged fasts, arduous rituals and ceremonies, vision quests, and lengthy meditations, to ignore all suffering of the body.

The idea behind this utter ruthlessness is to become impeccable, trained and disciplined to the degree that no worldly distractions can deter them from the spiritual path. The problem is that such disciplines can be co-opted by the ego to become personal badges and trophies. The adept thus ends up not loving and peaceful but arrogant and self-important.     

Just as with the former conundrums the fierce but peaceful master can be understood in light of ego vs. Spirit. When a human being cultivates ruthlessness from the ego or false personality then they are dangerous to themselves and others. There is no room for love much less peace for underneath they are always secretly hoping for a test of their skills, a demonstration of their prowess before others, an opportunity to prove their righteousness and domination of another. On the other hand a true master in service of Spirit is one who will never demonstrate their skill, unlike the way Hollywood movies portray them. Showing the utmost compassion and love, they demonstrate utter ruthlessness when it comes to seeing the world as divided or separate, for this they are unwilling to do at any cost.

Paradox Four:

Enlightenment is a gradual process but it can happen in a flash.

Stories in Zen Buddhism are replete with accounts of Zen monks achieving enlightenment in a flash of understanding as a result of the smallest stimulation such as the sight of a flower or the terse statement of an enlightened master. A knowledge of soul age however demonstrates that enlightenment is something that is gained through maturity over many lifetimes. So what is the deal here? Does enlightenment take a long time or does it come in a flash?

Simply put, young souls are not enlightened but old souls can be? Even this is a paradox because time being the illusion that it is, there is no time and no space in the world of absolute Spirit, the world one must embrace if one is to be enlightened. The best way to understand this is the following. In the world of false personality or ego, a human being is hopelessly caught in the illusion of time. Lifetime after lifetime go by filled with karma, suffering, and struggle. Sometimes there is pleasure and success on a human scale and sometimes the opposite is true. This is what the Buddhists call being caught on the Wheel of Samsara. Eventually the fragment soul develops enough experience and wakes up enough to realize that there is more to themselves than they had previously thought. This usually happens during the mature or relationship oriented stage. At this stage they may begin to study with enlightened masters or awakened older souls. Their interest thus peaked, they begin a spiritual path in earnest but enlightenment itself eludes them because they are not ready for the revolution in awareness that this creates. They are still too caught in the drama of the physical life to be able to transport themselves off the wheel.

Eventually, after a number of older soul lifetimes, they have gained enough awareness and have unattached themselves from enough identifications like fame and fortune, that they are ready for spiritual transformation. Thus they may be born into a situation that propels them into deeper spiritual study. At first they can appear to be as asleep as everyone else but with hard work or with the right circumstances they may have an awakening experience that propels them into a type of enlightenment. For the first time they discover that who they are is Spirit and the body-identified person they thought they were does not exist.

Even this deep awareness may be lost and found, lost and found, for a period of what appears to be lifetimes. Eventually they gain the absolute insight permanently, usually through a sudden jolt and are completely enlightened, making their return to physical life unlikely unless, as a Bodhisatva, they choose to help others become awake through selfless service.

So as long as a person is caught in time, enlightenment takes a long time, but to the truly enlightened no time has gone by at all. In their experience enlightenment always was and always will be. All those lives they thought they lived were just a dream of being separate and didn’t really happen at all.
When that is your absolute perspective, then you too will be enlightened. Until it is, you will be dreaming that you are not.

These four paradoxes represent but a few of a great many that eventually must be resolved. If you should apply the same basic approach to understanding these four you will be able to hold all paradoxes without confusion. Either you look at a situation in light of being identified as a body in physical time or you look at the same situation from the point of view of being immortal Spirit experiencing dreaming about having a body inside of time.



 Originally posted August 1, 2007