The Human Experience
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
Suffering is a common human experience. It's part of human life. But we would rather it wasn't. We would rather not suffer. We would rather have a happy, fun or peaceful life. So why does suffering happen and how can we end suffering?
From the Non-Duality understanding, suffering can be seen as a wakeup call. This world of separate individuality, where we feel and believe that we are a separate being in a world of separation, is not really what it seems or what we have believed it to be. We are not a separate being in a world of many separate beings. Separation is a play within the Oneness of Reality.
Planet Earth shows this play of many whilst being one. The many different humans, plants, animals, birds, fish, insects, minerals and so on, are really the one planet expressing itself as many. This apparent division of One into many means some kind of limitation. The further we seem to be from Oneness, the stronger the barriers between us. Strong barriers lead to clashing and fighting. Planet Earth appears as a world of strong barriers separating life forms from each other. It inevitably leads to clashing and competing. Animals, plants and humans fight for supremacy and survival on this planet, due to the apparently strong barriers of separation. This leads to pain and suffering.
So it is separation that causes suffering. A world of separate beings with hardened barriers between them leads to suffering. In the case of humans, this suffering happens on physical, emotional and mental levels. Physical pain is experienced when bones are broken, the body is infected, or there is disease etc. Emotional suffering comes from the separation of strong relationships or the clashing of relationships. Mental suffering comes from mental illness and/or the psychological difficulties of being a separate individual coping with the world.
Self Enquiry is a practice in Non-Duality that in simple terms goes like this: find the one who thinks they are a separate being. I am neither the body, the emotions, nor the mental activity. I perceive all of this. I cannot be what I perceive. It is mental activity that asks, "Why am I suffering?" But who is this 'I'? Who is the one who suffers. There are no real limits that define where the body begins and ends. There are no real limits in the human mind. It is the mind or mental activity that builds up a sense of identity and limits. It is this vague identity that claims it is suffering. Identity means separation, and separation means suffering.
So then we conclude that it is the assumed separate identity that gives rise to suffering, and it is suffering that shakes the assumed separate being from the complacency of its mistaken belief. The end of separate identity then is the end of suffering. In Buddhist terms this is Enlightenment. The end of suffering comes when the separate identity vanishes. Nirvana is when the ego is extinguished. It doesn't mean that the body doesn't experience pain thereafter. The body still lives in a world of apparent separation and clashing. But the Oneness of Being shines through, extinguishing the mental activity of identity, bringing the natural state of stillness, oneness and peace where the mind previously experienced hurt, suffering and turmoil.
It is Oneness that brings the end of suffering. Oneness is here right now. We need only let go of the strong belief of separation and individual identity. It is a sacrifice of sorts, sacrificing the ego for the Whole, the death of the small self and the awakening to the reality of the Infinite One Self. There is nothing other than the Infinite One Self. Nothing can harm it. It remains timelessly as it is. We are That.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
It's useful to understand what loneliness is and why we feel lonely sometimes. When we feel lonely it may be because we miss someone who used to be around, or they are usually around but not with us at the moment. It may be because there is no-one around who is close to us, and that could be because we haven't had a relationship like that or we used to have a relationship like that. So the surface reason can be that we have lost someone we were close to, or they are not with us for a while, or we've not had a close relationship with anyone.
That's the surface reason. But there is a deeper reason or meaning for the feeling of loneliness. It's about Oneness. Simply put, loneliness is the feeling of separation and the need for oneness. When we feel close to someone we feel the warmth, happiness and peace of oneness. We feel less separate from the world. There's a sense of unity. It's similar to being part of a team or a close family, being a supporter or follower of something, like a religion, culture or ideology. This reduces our feeling of isolation and separation.
When we feel lonely, it is a feeling of the lack of oneness, love and peace. We feel that we want others around, or we want someone to be close to. There is a natural instinct in the human being to need a companion, which leads to a feeling of being incomplete when we don't have someone close to love and who loves us. Love is Oneness. It is the shared Oneness of all. When we experience love we feel the oneness of life, that mystical principal that unites all seemingly separate beings.
So loneliness is the feeling of being separate from Love. It's natural for this to be a difficult feeling to cope with. We are not supposed to just cope with it. It tells us something. It tells us that the belief of separation has got such a hold that we feel we need others and that we are lacking what we need to be happy. Being one separate from others is the opposite of True Being. Our true nature, the simple nature of Being, is Oneness. At the heart of the experience of being a separate individual is the shared Oneness of Being. It's like the centre of the wheel of life. We are One. There really is no 'we'. Just One Being experiencing what it's like to be many separate beings. And that means pain, hurt, loss, lack, need, and at the extreme point, loneliness.
As real as loneliness can seem when we are caught up in it, it's not permanent. It passes, like all feelings. This separation isn't real. It's what the mind perceives reality to be. Oneness is reality. Separation is the opposite of reality. That's what the pain of separation points to. It highlights that separation is wrong. Oneness is right. Or rather, separation is false, and Oneness is true. The answer isn't in finding someone to feel at one with, although that's okay. The real answer is in finding the Permanent Oneness that is right here all along. It means recognising that there is always Oneness here, despite what the mind thinks, and living this recognition that we are truly One.
Some may think that if there is only One Being, then it must be lonely. But that's not true. Loneliness is a feeling of lack, need, and separation from others. Loneliness is the lack of wholeness, completion and oneness. The One Being is a complete, whole Oneness, where there is no loss or separation.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
Thoughts are not always a problem, but sometimes they can seem like they are. It may be that we can't stop thinking about something that worries or troubles us, or we just can't stop thinking at all and we want a break from it. Let's look at what it means to be free from thoughts and thinking, and how to achieve that.
Here's where I have to say that we can't stop thinking. Thinking happens by itself. If you've ever tried to stop thinking you'll have probably found that there is a brief cessation, then thinking starts up again. But we can raise our understanding of what is happening with thinking and move away from being a victim of negative or incessant thought.
What actually happens when we feel we have become frustrated with thoughts and they just won't stop is that thinking has created an idea of itself, and it is this mental sense of identity that becomes frustrated with all its mental activity. The frustration is itself mental activity, and the one frustrated is mental activity. Attempting to stop this mental activity is also mental activity. Mental activity can't actively stop itself, because that's just more mental activity. So the sense of being the one who is frustrated, the frustration, and the thoughts at which the frustration is aimed, are all the flow of the same mental activity. It's mental activity that separates itself out into, "Me annoyed about thinking."
The important point here is to recognise that we are not the thinking. That means we are not the worrying thoughts, the frustrated thoughts, the pleasant thoughts, or any mental activity. We perceive all of this. We perceive the flow of thoughts, we perceive the frustration or annoyed thoughts, and we perceive the sense of there being a 'me' who is troubled by this. So, to overcome being troubled by thoughts, and to be free from thinking, there needs to develop the awareness that we are not the thoughts, they don't trouble us anyway, and the 'one' who is troubled is also perceived. It's not that we perceive a being or entity or human that is troubled. The root of it is that we perceive the egoic sense of a 'me' that is troubled. But if we really look for who that is it can't be found. It is a 'me' made out of imagination. It is a sense of 'me' that is formed by mental activity.
This 'me' becomes entangled and frustrated by its own mental activity. It wants to stop it and achieve some freedom from distressing thoughts, and maybe it goes on to seek freedom from all thoughts, to attain the highest peace. But it's all mental activity itself. We are the untainted witness of all this thinking. Our nature is Perfect Peace. We are never the one who is troubled. The core of Being is formless, timeless and unchanging. We are Freedom itself. We have no limits. It is only mental activity that imagines there are limits and it finds itself trapped by its own thinking.
So the answer to be free from thoughts is to let them go. To be free we need to detach. This isn't strictly true, as we are Freedom already and always. There is nothing that we need to do. Remember, it is only mental activity that seeks freedom. For the mental activity to find freedom it needs to let go of itself. We are never attached to this. We are never limited. By withdrawing attention and attachment to thinking, not being entangled in it, the mental activity naturally untangles itself and finds the freedom that is always here. The mental activity needs to give up its sense of 'me' and allow the clarity of unbounded peace to just be as it is.
The practice (for the mental activity) is to let go of its belief of identity, to see and assimilate the recognition that the 'thinker' is itself a thought, and both the thinker and thinking are perceived by our True Being.
- Written by David Hall
- Category: The Human Experience
Has anyone ever really seen you or heard you? If it is assumed you are the body, a limited human form, then this will seem an absurd question - of course people have seen you and heard you speak. But if it is recognised that you are not the human body, and the real you has a spiritual nature, then it shouldn't seem such an odd question. Even then, when it is known that I am not the body, the mind still associates with the body. So it's useful to shake the tree, as they say.
Nobody has ever seen you. You have no form. You are that in which the form appears and disappears. Nobody has ever heard you. You don't have a voice. You don't make a sound. You are the stillness in which sounds appear and disappear. You don't have arms and legs, a head and a brain. That's the human body. It is the body that is seen and heard, felt and known. You are not the apparently limited form.
We think of the human body as being made of matter. But matter isn't really what it appears to be. The solidity of the human body is only relative. Our usual understanding of 'solidity' is something stable, unchanging and impervious - nothing can get through it. But there is no substance that is truly stable, unchanging and impervious. Solid matter is not truly solid. It's only relatively solid compared to other levels of solidity. For example, ice is only relatively more solid and stable than water. Ice is not truly stable, but it appears more stable than its more fluid form.
The human body is only relatively stable. We know this. It is continually changing. It's not perceptible that the body changes within an hour, but the nails are slowly growing, hair is slowly growing, skin is slowly being replaced, air is entering the body system. The body is not a closed system that remains stable. So even if we did identify as the human body, we couldn't really say where its limits are. Although the body seems to be autonomous within the planet, it is really made of the planet substance and is continually flowing and changing with the planet.
It's quite a shift for the mind to turn from identifying as a human. Recognising the spiritual nature of oneself brings in another consideration. Is not the substance that the body is made of, namely matter, just a form of condensed spirit, as ice is a form of condensed water? And if it is thought that I am a soul, isn't the soul also unlimited in a similar way to how the body is unlimited? The soul would be one with its environment also, and not really a solid, limited unchanging form. And if there are no limits, then there cannot truly be many souls.
Some may argue against this in defence of the soul, and that's fine. It is a way of understanding how the spiritual world works: souls take on human form and experience life as a human on planet Earth. That's fine and a useful understanding. But if we closely examine it, it will be found that there are no limits to anything. Humans only appear separate by the air or space between them, yet they continually interact with the air and space. So humans aren't really separate from anything. They are more like interactive, flowing, evolving, forms that only appear dense, limited or solid relative to the environment in which they appear and of which they are made. It is similar with souls also.
The message here is that we are not human and we are not souls. There are no real limits between the human forms or soul forms. Our true nature is unlimited. The universe's true nature is unlimited. There is only What Is, the Infinite One appearing as though it is many. What seems to separate the many is nothing other than the Infinite One that is the substance of all.