Understanding
oneself is the secret behind stable inner harmony. It implies an awareness which helps us gain
clarity of the way the conditioned mind functions. Here are some avenues for reflection that can
lead us to that understanding.
People who
are busy hoping to gain some predetermined results using religious approaches and meditative techniques get embroiled in chasing ego-satisfying outcomes and so are not
interested in understanding themselves.
This is like trying to find a solution without knowing what the actual
problem is. The fundamental problem is
the mind itself and not the problem it projects! Unfortunately, this seems to escape the
notice of the vast majority of people. If you are reading an article of this
kind with some attention, then you are not one among them. What fallows would be of interest to you.
The quiet
self-awareness has no self-interest. That is, it is not generated by the
ego. It takes place when the interest in
understanding oneself is detected as the fundamental movement towards bringing
in stable harmony. At the initial stages
of this inwardly turned attention, reflection on some of the habitual ways of
the mind is helpful. Here we see three
of those ways. These pointers are
expected to function as catalysts, triggering the curiosity of the reader.
The First
Pointer: This is related to the way the ego functions. It operates through pockets of
energy, each pocket representing an emotional attachment to people, things or
ideas. Symbolically, they are like knots
in the brain. These knots get energized
every time our thought operates through them.
That is akin to winding a spring.
The more it is wound, the more violently it lashes out when
released. The knots related to one’s
relatives, religion and nationality are usually the most- wound ones. Watching a knot’s process in action generates
the necessary awareness on how we destroy ourselves by falling a prey to the
‘knotty’ behavior! On such self-observation and understanding, the intensity of
the knots comes down and the knots themselves begin to dissolve. One feels a kind of inner relief from the
self-generated tension.
The Second
Pointer: It stems from the adage “One believes what one wants to believe”. This is a sure way by which people deceive themselves. Most of us feel that the psychological
concepts we are holding on to are based on truth while they are no more than ego-satisfying
tenets necessary for the ego’s self-assurance.
The more we probe into this adage the more we see the need to free
ourselves from the tricky self-deception the ego brings on.
The Third
pointer: During our daily life, it is easy to see how the mind is constantly
chattering. It is a kind of energy
wastage. Regarding these habitual thoughts, Eckhart Tolle says that most of
them are unnecessary and are, in fact, quite harmful. This is an important issue whose poisonous
nature can be brought to light by self-awareness.
The inwardly
directed awareness cannot be brought into action through any method or
technique because they are all rooted in the past while awareness is a matter
of pure action in the ‘Now’.
There are many pointers of the kind indicated above and reflections on them can help us move into the calm source deep within us.
In Conclusion: People who feel drawn to these
avenues of reflection will soon see their center of attention moving from the
habitual mind to pure consciousness.
They will free themselves psychologically from belonging to any group because
they see that group-psychology is different from mob-psychology only in degree, not in kind. Their daily life will
be guided by the purity of aloneness and not by any clannishness or
group-fanaticism. Interested readers may
visit the website http://spirituality.yolasite.com
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