one step forward, two steps back

finding a life stance that genuinely brings us into increased alignment with the unperturbed, desire-free state of our truest nature (beyond mind) is incredibly liberating. by contrast, the mind-content-dominated life experience always ends up leading us into varying degrees of claustrophobia, confusion, stress.

if there's any one thing we have real control over, it's the approach we take to life. life is handed to us with all of its complexity and challenges, and our way of handling that raw material determines our experience of it. a life stance that allows our inherent freedom to emerge can take many forms, from a formal spiritual practice like daily meditation to a more subtle inner alertness to consciousness throughout all ranges of experience. 

real and lasting change usually comes as a result of having integrated lessons learned in formal practice into our basic approach to life, so that it becomes our natural modus operandi. but often with new lessons, and even sometimes with lessons we thought we'd long since learned, it's possible to get sidetracked and stop living in accord to that lesson. 

many times this happens when we reap the positive benefit of a lesson: suddenly we're much more comfortable and happy than we were (the very pain that propelled us to learn the lesson now being absent), and we no longer feel compelled to do anything in particular to improve our experience. while certainly understandable, enough of this complacent attitude can have us backsliding into the very difficulties we were plagued with initially that acted as catalyst to bring us to higher ground in the first place. 

we humans have a natural tendency to gravitate towards pleasant experiences and avoid pain and discomfort. this explains why during challenging phases of our life we can become so committed to improving our experience, and in times of ease and comfort we can so easily lose focus. if transcending pain is our only incentive to grow, where does that leave us when pain is absent? taking two steps backward. 

since the temporary abscence of suffering doesn't signify the attainment of any goal, the trick is to be motivated by more than merely seeking comfort; to be inspired instead, for example, by the passion for discovery of self. the difference between the former and the latter is like the difference between running away from something (directionless) and moving steadily toward something (intentionality), or like the difference between being propelled by the bloody whip and finding heavenly guidance in the north star.            

beneath all good and bad

it feels good to feel good, and it feels bad to feel bad. but what remains constant in both pleasure and pain? there is one thing that is unchangeable in this life, and that - and only that - is what we are. this essential nature or ground of being is so simple and silent, our content-geared minds simply skip over it. but when awareness is centered on it, the impact on our consciousness is immeasurable. it's like coming home after a long hard night in the freezing, alienating cold, but then indescribably more settling.

personalizing pain

life's not always easy or comfortable. this is an unavoidable fact for every being on the planet - none excluded. the egoic mechanism, however, has a particular way of reacting to pain and discomfort that elevates these natural and passing phases of experience to chronic, obsessive issues.

there's one reason for this: ego attaches itself to everything it experiences and derives a sense of identity from it. experiences now mean much more than mere experiences; they become invested with the absolute seriousness of defining who we are. the ego takes pain and makes it personal, and in so doing takes any experience of suffering that would normally be associated with a painful event and magnifies it to an unimaginable degree.

unsatisfactory experiences take on dire significance because they reflect directly upon the sense of self, casting a dark shadow over it. pleasing experiences take on a stressful nature because more and more of them are needed to counteract the negative ones and maintain a satisfying identity. an unhealthy obsession develops on both fronts: an obsession to avoid the negative, and an obsession to retain and amass more of the positive.

the entire approach to life is thrown out of whack and becomes an imbalanced effort to let in only a particular slice of experience. pain and loss are seen as unacceptable; a sign of weakness and failure. they become much more than what they are in reality - simple, natural aspects of life in our universe - and develop into grotesque characterizations fueled by our obsessive, unrealistic need to retain strength and success indefinitely.

that which wasn't a problem, because of our unnatural response to it, becomes the source of a tremendous complication that holds the potential to destabilize our entire experience of life, further and further obscuring the natural state of being experienced during infancy and early childhood (and seemingly at all times by other animals).

this natural state is not devoid of challenging or painful experiences, but it takes them as it does any other experience and moves on, not becoming obsessively fixated upon them (a difference that expressed in words may not seem great but experience-wise is huge). it's so significant that the concept of "suffering" as traditionally employed in prosperous Western societies points almost entirely to the reactions toward perceived negativities and hardly at all to the actual source of the reactions themselves. this means that the larger share of our suffering - that which is psychologically generated - can be eradicated by a simple shift in perspective.

of course, one can't just decide to stop reacting unnaturally to life and hope that such a radical and fundamental change will somehow just come about. there is a specific cause for our difficult relationship to life that must be addressed before a restoration to natural functioning becomes possible, just as a breakdown in any mechanism can always be attributed to identifiable problems with concordant solutions.

the only way to end this problem is to locate the true source of our identity. this truth is not some concept or some far-off possibility. it's what is true right now. it's not merely an interesting thought or an entertaining philosophical distraction to engage an idle mind. making unequivocal contact with our fundamental nature is of profound importance to each and every one of us. nothing could possibly be more relevant.