Breaking down or breaking open?

In these uncertain times, many feel like they are at a breaking point. They are afraid that they can't take much more pressure without the risk of falling apart. The human mind interprets such distressing feelings as a precursor to something ominous. From the perspective of the Self, we have the possibility to consider an entirely different scenario. What if we were to treat it as breaking open instead of breaking down, as falling into who we really are, instead of falling apart?

What we are trying to hold together so desperately is the sense of existing as the individual person we are familiar with. We hold on to the structure of the roles and definitions we have accepted as our identity. They feel safe, even if, within that identity, we are not happy or fulfilled.

When life creates situations that bring us to the point where we feel like we might fall apart, it is not to break us. Rather, life is creating a big enough crack in the ego-structure for us to see that, in clinging to who we think we are, we miss who we rally are. If we have the strength and wisdom to watch the crack, to take deep breaths and allow it to widen a bit, we realise that through the widening of the crack we can see and feel the Light of the Self shining.

The Light of the Self will always find a way to reach us, to help us see that we never are, and never have been separate from it. What our human mind can only see as a breakdown, the Self will know as a necessary transformation to let the Light in. The only thing breaking down is the old ego structure and with that comes the falling away of beliefs, stories and sometimes relationship patterns that kept us from knowing the Light of the Self.

If we understand this, we can stop fighting or being afraid. Knowing that the Self is at the back of everything, rather, that the Self IS everything, we can welcome the transformation - confident in the Self's infinite benevolence and trusting that the outcome will always be in our favour.

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Meditation is the antidote to Avidyaa - Forgetfulness of the Self

Of all the obstacles to knowing the Self, Avidyaa is the one at the center. Avidyaa, or forgetfulness of the Self, is the root cause of a human being’s inability to recognize his True Nature.

The mechanism of Avidyaa is activated at birth. We could say that it is the human predicament to forget who we truly are as soon as we develop the ability to distinguish I from you. When a child begins to see itself as an individual with a name and a body, its primary perception of reality happens through the eyes and senses, which can only see separation.

We experience this human state of consciousness - the waking state - as a subject relating to the separate objects around us. Thus we develop an identity as a person, believing in our body and thoughts as our identity and as the source of our knowledge. Avidyaa, or the forgetfulness of our Source, the Self, is so complete that most people never question the veracity of their senses’/mind’s perception and remain locked into the belief of their individual existence.

Meditation is the antidote to Avidyaa. Only in the state of Meditation do we have a chance to experience the absorption of the body/mind/senses in the Self. We get to know that the infinite space of the I that remains when all else falls away is who we truly are. We know that we could never be separate from the Source that is the Self, just like sunray is never separate from its source, the sun.

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The voice of the mind is not the truth

As soon as we wake up in the morning the voice of the mind starts commenting and interpreting every situation that arises. Listening to that voice is not a conscious choice, but a habitual reflex that starts the moment we open our eyes. 

We know that the mind is filled with information from outside that we have internalised. These messages don't describe who we are, they depict what others have projected onto us. For as long as there is no other information available to us, we accept these projections as true descriptions of who we are. 

Once we have the good fortune of learning about the existence of the Self, we become aware that the mind's vision is limited and bound by duality. It is always telling us what we are not. The mind says: believe in me, I am real - when in fact it is a mere shadow of our True Nature, the unchanging Self. 

The Knowledge of the Self is unfolded in Meditation when we experience it directly. This experience becomes the guidepost or reference point we can remember during the day, moment to moment.

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