Trapped in body? Trapped in a mind?

But wait: where are the body and mind appearing?

Looking for inspiration, I opened Jean Klein's book Living Truth randomly:

 

Your teaching helps our understanding mentally. What I do not understand is whether there is something we have to learn with our minds? Sometimes I sit and inquire and try to reflect about my life and its purpose and what to do, things like that. I have always given credence to these reflections, as though from them I would have an understanding and build something, perhaps become more mature, perhaps become more available to openness. Is there any value in doing this?

You must be really realistic. Start from the position in which you find yourself at this moment. Go back home and look at your activities, your surroundings. You will see that they are more or less fixed patterns. Look at them again from the welcoming point of view, and you will see which activities belong to you as a husband, which as a father, as a business-man, as a man who must earn a living. Face the problems of life – this belongs to you.

See all these activities from the welcoming point of view and you will be really astonished. Many things will come to the surface of your consciousness that you never saw before, because you were living only in patterns, in fixed forms.

These elements that surface bring a complete rectification in your life. From these elements comes understanding and it is from the understanding that change comes. It is an organic change. See all your activities from the welcoming point of view. In this welcoming point of view there is no bargaining of like and dislike. Be very alert to the parasite, the "me," who will inevitably put this new position – which comes from life itself – into question. Do not go in this doubt. When there is a decision that comes from life, this decision is instantaneous. It does not go through the analytical mind; it comes from the situation itself. The solution comes directly from the situation. It is the only way – spiritual, practical, realistic – to behave.

Otherwise, you remain enclosed in a kind of conceptual universe which you try to escape because there is no comfort in it, no freedom, no peace. You try new philosophies, new books, a new belief, a new wife, a new job, and so on, but all this keeps you still in the same universe.

When you really see the pattern which keeps you in this conceptual universe, there is a moment when you find yourself outside of the cage. In the welcoming position, if you can call it a position, you are out of the cage. You may see residues of the cage around you, but you are no longer in the cage. Of course, when you see things very clearly in this completeness, there are some practical changes that ask to be made, but I think you will manage it. You must have the conviction that you have the capital, the energy, to effect all that is required. When you do not have the energy or talent to effect something, then inquire where you can find it.

When you try to change your life from the point of view of the split mind, of like and dislike, the conflict remains.

You may change the position of your writing table to face east or your bed towards the north. You may change your ways of doing many things, but the conflict in you still remains. You are involved in the furniture of life. You are wasting your energy with trivia.

What you call the anecdotal instead of the essential.

Exactly.

– Jean Klein, Living Truth (p 42)

That’s interesting. These fixed action patterns (FAP), can include every part of life – the old dead patterns, the habits, of mind, of movement, of actions, reactions, seeing, feeling, behaving … I’m using the concept more broadly than those completely rigid instinctual ones, but rather in the sense of the conditioning we acquire.

We can change things – a new apartment, a new camera, a new book, a new girlfriend – but if the old FAPs remain, inner conflict remains. We can learn new things in an outer sense, such as new languages and how to drive a snowmobile, but they will only give us more freedom in that one small area.

How To Live

We have to be fluid, like the sea. Open to the new, now.

One can see why it has to come “from the situation itself” — not in a material sense, not in an outside sense — but from the totality, the reality that includes, or is, everything. That invisible reality behind appearances so to speak — behind the “interface” that are the senses and mind.

How the mind is only partial.
How mind-solutions are only partial.
Analysis can only take you so far, then you have to “give up” so the answer reveals itself, in “the fullness of time”.

Working hard will not solve them.
Doing nothing will not solve them.
It’s not a matter of doing or not doing.
It’s a matter of seeing – not with the eyes or imagination, but with insight.
And beneath insight is something even deeper, more immediate, intelligence itself.

Vast, incomprehensible. Astonishing.

See all these activities from the welcoming point of view and you will be really astonished. Many things will come to the surface of your consciousness that you never saw before, because you were living only in patterns, in fixed forms.

A camera cannot capture it. A mind cannot capture it, hold it, contain it.
But that’s ok, because the mind doesn’t really exist, except as a form within This life.

Reality will inevitably show you where you are not free, because you will rub up against it. The two parts, which are not really two, will appear as friction.

The partial part will feel it has something to lose, to fear. To gain, to desire. Just notice, simply notice and observe. Even if and when uncomfortable. It won’t kill you. Only the false me will die. And that’s a good thing. ("Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists." – A Course In Miracles).

So “enlightenment” or “awakening” or a “glimpse” of oneself, is “merely” this insight, this deep or direct view, or intuition, however you want to say it — but instead of being about some particular situation or thing, is about oneself, the totality itself, a direct glimpse into reality — what they call the I Am — which is why it’s called “Self Inquiry”. Because it has no content, it can’t really be grasped or talked about.

But even if the Source is mysterious (as Lao Tsu points out*), in our lives it  can take the form of seeing a solution to a problem, or dropping some old habits or addictions you no longer want to do or think. These insights (sights from within), or intuitions (teachings from within) seem to come "out of the blue", from nowhere.

So why are we talking about something that can't be talked about in its totality, except to label the nameless, objectless, such as Self or Consciousness or God or Presence? Why are we bringing it up? Because we go in that direction inevitably, eventually, as we enquire into the question of how to live – because one has to look at oneself, and therefore ask the question who or what am I, ultimately? If you are fortunate, you will eventually find that the material answers, and the spiritual-religious answers, are not satisfactory in the long run; they are only partial and temporary answers. Any pre-fixed answer will be partial and temporary.

The other implication of “solutions” or responses coming from the moment, the situation itself, is that no one can tell you how to live. Not teachers, coaches gurus, politicians, friends, media, family, neighbors, dogs, fish, cats (though the animals and teachers can give one clues), or writers. Only Life can tell you, and in that, there is no Life and You, they are one and the same.

You are on your own, and free.

How can you become more of the totality? By being less of a partiality.

 

 

*
1
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.

– Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu