And the wish to wake up to the unchanging core within us, our truest nature, can be a treacherous adventure.<\/p>\n
Not because it\u2019s so difficult to explain.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually very simple to show people how different ideas can create vastly different experiences, or how worry is almost never useful, but this kind of distant objectivity is far away from the shit we can find ourselves in.<\/p>\n
What we can understand is not the same as what we can transcend.<\/p>\n
What we can talk about freely when it\u2019s not happening, can freak us out when directly created within.<\/p>\n
And what makes intellectual sense at one point, stops doing so in a single moment of well-rehearsed confusion and panic.<\/p>\n
Claiming that it\u2019s our thinking that creates all the suffering can be useful and helpful, but it is also limited, and it can easily become a new problem.<\/p>\n
Thoughts and thinking are not bad; they are the modalities of life that create the human experience.<\/p>\n
They are actually pretty damn amazing.<\/p>\n
Instead of demonizing thoughts and propel people into an endless fight with whatever goes on in our minds (which only creates more thinking and confusion and contradictions and egoic layers that criticize or blame each other), I have found it more useful to point straight to consciousness.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s there, it has always been, and the \u2018only\u2019 thing that has to happen, is to recognize that.<\/p>\n
What we\u2019re looking for, what we are all somehow longing for, is home.<\/p>\n
A feeling of wholeness, of peace, of simplicity, and of safety.<\/p>\n
We want to feel good.<\/p>\n
None of that can be found sustainably in the mind with its notorious unpredictability and conditional nature, even though it will claim to be your Liberation Weapon of choice.<\/p>\n
Home IS when consciousness recognizes itself through you, or in spite of the human turmoil.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a set of circumstances or a box of nice thoughts or a wall full of diplomas.<\/p>\n
Feeling home is what anchors you to something that you can\u2019t even lose in the first place, because it is before anything else.<\/p>\n
Yeah, I know: it\u2019s a fucking jungle full of huge paradox trees.<\/p>\n
You ARE already home, you ARE the thing you are essentially looking for, but it can seem the furthest thing away in the universe of things.<\/p>\n
It IS already within you, but what is and has been always there, is a lot trickier to recognize than the ever-changing content of our hard-working minds.<\/p>\n
The mind scoffs at the idea of an inherent, basic sense of peace within, because it wants to keep looking, to keep busy.<\/p>\n
And since we are totally married to the mental creation of our world and the person we believe to be, we tend to trust our thoughts before anything else.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why \u2018it\u2019s just your thinking\u2019 can be so daunting and even unhelpful: most of our thoughts simply feel like the world, like absolute reality, not a subjective mental creation.<\/p>\n
We can never win the battle with our thinking, and there\u2019s no need to go that way.<\/p>\n
Thinking has no inherent power, besides pretending to be really crucial, and tricking you into believing it\u2019s who you really are.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an amazing storyteller, but it needs an audience, and that is your attention.<\/p>\n
We all fall for this trick because that is how it is should be.<\/p>\n
How do I know?<\/p>\n
Well, because we do.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n
Liberation is not found in conquering our thoughts and beating our minds into submission; it\u2019s about exposing the hypnotizing system of vivid internal creation.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not found by solving endless mental puzzles or \u2018getting it intellectually\u2019, but through a direct, conscious connection to what is not temporary.<\/p>\n
What is always there is what you are.<\/p>\n
What is never changing is what you are looking for.<\/p>\n
It’s beyond the world you believe in, lovingly assisting you in denying its own presence, helping you to find itself or get seemingly lost in the search.<\/p>\n
It is looking through your eyes, experiencing the failure and the hopelessness and the attempts and the hardship and the commitment, struggling deeply without realizing all of that is just a brilliant fantasy in your own little mental theater.<\/p>\n
Consciousness IS knowing, not knowing something, but just knowing itself.<\/p>\n
Knowing.<\/p>\n
Being.<\/p>\n
It is the untainted, unspoiled, uncolored feeling of You, not a specific you, but the pure notion of being alive itself.<\/p>\n
It is before and during and after everything, and it is SO bloody obvious, that it\u2019s extremely obscure.<\/p>\n
Yeah, it sucks.<\/p>\n
Until it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
(Photo by @zulmaury, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s tremendously, mind-blowingly fascinating how the mind that claims to be who we are can keep us occupied forever and ever, always inventing new tricks to suck us into oblivion. And the wish to wake up to the unchanging core within us, our truest nature, can be a treacherous adventure. Not because it\u2019s so difficult […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,96,117,100,116,113,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34387,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34380\/revisions\/34387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}