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3. HOLDING TO THE CENTER When our minds are swamped with too much activity subtle sensations and signals that occur all around us, and in us, go unnoticed. Our bodies try to communicate with our minds, but too often we pay those sorts of signals no heed, or they get loss amid louder, more boisterous signals. There are energy currents flowing in us, and all around us, but their subtle presence is lost amid the chaos of our crowded thoughts. Ongoing effort is required to develop, or restore, the sensitive faculty of awareness that notes subtle energy currents and their messages. A diligent process of training, practice and meditation needs to be applied. The word “develop” has been used here, but these are actually natural faculties that human beings are born with, but that are then usually lost due to social conditioning. So, it is perhaps better to think in terms of restoration (renewal, reversal and returning). Instead of learning something new in order to gain something we supposedly never had, we’re unlearning erroneous things that caused us to deny or ignore natural capacities that we were born with. Either way you look at the matter it requires a training program in order to implement the transformation. By necessity training requires that exercises be repeated on a regular basis over weeks, months or even years; this is the secret to any conditioning program. Slowly but surely you learn to find your center, calm your mind, allow instinctive insights to emerge, and to contemplate their significance once they do. You need to routinely practice this. If you do you’ll gradually note improvement in your ability to achieve the desired effect. This is no different that a musician learning to play on a sophisticated instrument and improvise with feeling, sensitivity and wit. The natural principles embodied in The Way (The Tao) govern how the whole Cosmos and everything in it operate. Stars, planets, moons, plants, animals and people, all are subject to these principles. There are the physical things we can see, touch and feel, but then there are also things that cannot be detected with the physical senses. For instance, the human ego is not an easy thing to detect. Most people accept it as completely natural… but it is not; and because it is not it represents a leakage– it drains the life out of people like a wound that gurgles blood. The Golden Flower method, with it’s program to reverse degenerative conditioning, aims to heal that “wound” and prevent a person’s life force (time and energy) from leaking away, wasted on ego– an imaginary phantom that serves no natural purpose in the greater scheme of things. Ego is not self. Ego is the usurpation of self. Once you get a sense of what the ego really is, and what it really does to you, you can then set about removing it. Though ego is only a product of human imagination, its noxious effects are widespread and pervasive. Exceedingly few people are entirely free from it. Getting rid of it requires more than a one-time fix; this will be a practical, down-to-earth, ongoing process of identifying and dismissing ego-driven thoughts, attitudes and behaviors any time they arise. Behind the mask of ego your true, natural self waits to be liberated. Your ego is not who you really are, it is only a charlatan– an unseemly doppelganger of you. When ego dominates a person’s thoughts, attitudes, behaviors and motivations, their personal development tends to be stifled. They can’t see things clearly, they unwittingly cause harm to themselves and to others; advances here are countered by setbacks there. Genuine personal development advances to the degree that ego’s influence can be checked and removed. Most people come of age conforming to what seems normal, doing what everyone else is doing, pursuing wealth, fame and power, never considering that there may be another way, or what may be the hidden error of their ways. When ego is given free reign it eventually sucks a person’s life dry, and then they become like walking dead people. Walking dead people have the semblance of life, but they are not really living, not in the meaningful way Nature intends, they’re just marching to their graves. This is depressing. Raising awareness is the means to liberate people from this pathetic cycle. It is a hard thing to put across to people, but when they learn how to calm their minds and find their center they eventually see the truth of it for themselves. If your attention is focused only on the physical world and what you think other people consider normal, to the exclusion of what isn’t necessarily considered “normal”, or what isn’t as easily detected or accepted, or what you may not know or have been taught, you are bound to encounter trouble. It is necessary to calmly consider both the seen and the unseen aspects of life: both that which you are consciously aware of, but also those issues that may be subconscious, unconscious or hidden. This is the key to living a fulfilling life and minimizing troubles. It is not that a person should avoid dealing with the world, only that she should not allow it to draw her off her center. A person needs to train to remain calm and level-headed in the face of frustrating circumstances. There is meaning and purpose to be found in all things, all people and all events, everywhere, all the time. As consciousness pervades everything and everyone you need to watch for it and work with it. Intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, these are all expressions of a consciousness that ultimately links all things together. This is the foundation of compassion. When you free yourself from ego this connection that all things share becomes apparent, and hence, so does the need for compassion. We can raise our consciousness and develop a more sensitive faculty of awareness by spending some time in meditation everyday. These sessions have the purpose of training us how to calm down our unruly thoughts. Just allowing your thoughts to wander or speed around aimlessly causes more harm than good. It can be a huge waste of energy, cause stress, get a person pointlessly distracted, sap the will and provide the ego with ample opportunity to mess up one’s life. When thoughts cease to jabber, there, in that stillness, healing and insight are to be found. All things naturally emerge from such stillness and all things naturally return to it. There is sublime meaning in this stillness. It is a kind of stillness that is pregnant with implications and potential. To grasp these meanings, implications or potentials a person’s attention needs to be routinely focused on this “stillness.” Regularly spending some time personally exploring this nothingness is crucial. Those unaccustomed to such practices may regard it as a waste of time: how could doing nothing at all, or thinking of nothing at all, or focusing one’s attention on nothing at all possibly be useful? But this kind of training is actually of the most useful and essential sort. From this kind of nothingness something exceedingly developmental or transformative emerges. In the early stages of this training the results may not seem all that dramatic, but if a person consistently sticks with the program their experiences gradually become more interesting. After several months, or years, of steady practice a person can look back to where they started from and note how much their lives have improved. Or, at the very least, how much their appreciation or ability to cope has been improved (such capacities shouldn’t be discounted, so much hinges on attitude). A person starts to see the world and others with greater sensitivity and objectivity. They become more modest, calmer, more flexible, more resilient in the face of challenging circumstances, and have greater patience. Perhaps, the person will begin to realize how much he has been presumptuously taking for granted. To center oneself is to be able to calm down one’s mind by allowing all thoughts and mental agitation to settle into stillness. This inner stillness is a gateway that connects each person to the primordial stillness that is at the very heart of creation– Wuji (The Void). It is a hard thing to explain or convey, this way of focusing on nothing at all, yet how this nothing is the source of everything– the key to creativity as well as to instinctively obtaining deep insight. A person needs to be able to gently, yet unwaveringly hold the focus of their mind’s eye, releasing all tension, demands and expectations, and just hold their attention in that completely open, uncluttered internal space. It takes practice, but there is no practice that is more central, effective or transformative. Everything else hinges on this, everything else is improved by this. Stilling one’s thoughts is an exercise in concentration that also has the effect of promoting awareness. Once you have some command over the arrival and movement of your thoughts then you need to examine where they come from and what motivates them. Follow your thoughts to their source. There is a paradox involved in this practice, because by following your thoughts like this you cannot exactly find their source, yet by placing your attention on them in this concentrated way you do discover something therapeutic about their origins and nature. This is a means to further assert your true nature, undo ego and find peace of mind. The experience and effect of this process is hard to convey, but its benefits are revealed when you actually and sincerely practice it. By doing it you come to understand it. The way things appear from this centered vantage point is how they really are–natural reality. Anything contrary to this is delusional– the product of human ego or contrivance. Seeing things clearly, free of confusion or bias further helps a person to reverse the degenerative conditioning they have suffered from. Still your unruly, excess mental activity and watch carefully. Note ego in yourself and put a check on it. Note ego in others and politely avoid it. This is what you need to do. This is turning the light around. The “turning around” part refers to reversing problematic conditioning and putting a check on ego. The “light” speaks to raising consciousness and awareness. People will sometimes correct bad habits, ignorant attitudes or erroneous beliefs without fully appreciating their scope or origins; they lack that awareness. Likewise, sometimes people catch a glimpse of objective reality, but lack the know-how to reliably maintain such clarity; they can’t reliably reverse the conditions that limit their awareness. So, both awareness and counter-conditioning are needed. If you have no apprehension about the way you were raised or educated, if you think social structures and the way power is exercised within them is perfectly fair and decent, if you’re unwilling to challenge your attitudes and beliefs, if you’re unwilling to carefully sort the presumed facts from observable reality, then you are not prepared to undergo the Golden Flower training method. If you are sure you have been conditioned without error, then there is no point in training to counter that conditioning is there? |
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