(From Handbook For Humans)
The reason for becoming more awake is that it allows us access to a more spacious consciousness, a deeper clarity, one that responds to the challenges of life in a more appropriate and penetrating way. The process of awakening allows us access to our truest self.
Our truest self is not something separate from what we are now, or something that needs to be created. It’s already here, at our core, but obscured.
Imagine that we have a lantern. The lantern is lit, the light is there. But the sides of the lantern are caked with mud, so that we can’t see the light, or can’t see it in its true brightness. And what is the mud which obscures this light? It’s that constant parade of thoughts, emotions, beliefs, attitudes and so on across our consciousness.
At the level of inner spirit, all thoughts and emotions of whatever kind obscure the light. Beautiful, sublime, positive thoughts and feelings obscure it just as much as ugly, petty, negative ones. Surprising? Consider that the light of the sun can be blocked just as much by white clouds as by black ones. Any cloud, of any color, can block the sun.
It’s really not a question of the type of thought or feeling, but rather, of movement happening within the mind. If a lake has waves on its surface, we can’t see beneath that. But when the surface is still, the lake is clear and we can see down into the depths below.
Therapy and ways of working on ourselves can help us deal with some of this movement and reactivity. Conflicts and conditionings formed in childhood and currently affecting us can be greatly ameliorated by various self-processes or with a good therapist. In my life I’ve gone to various teachers and counselors, and done a number of different practices, and they’ve been invaluable. Good personal growth methods are recommended to anyone, and indeed a number of them are covered in this book.
But the fundamental tendencies of the mind towards graspingness and aversion can best be watched, in my opinion, in deep silence and solitude. This fundamental clinging nature of the mind is not born of conditioning—it precedes that— and so cannot really be reached with methods that deal with conditioning. The strong tendency to become attached comes just with having a mind.
So we all have it, this clinging to the contents of our mind, well-adjusted or not. We can be perfectly well-adjusted and still be at the mercy of our desire systems, our beliefs, our attitudes, our attachments. The deeper reality, lying beneath the movements of the mind, is still obscured.
© 1997 by James Sloman
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