(This is Part 2 of a series. Go back to Part 1.)
There are several points that can be made in connection with that example:
1) For the first time I realized that I wasn't my thoughts and feelings: They took place within consciousness but were not that consciousness itself.
2) The suicidal, hopeless thoughts and feelings were still there, but they felt different because they were "losing fuel". I realised that the "fuel" for this mind-production was identification with it. And without that fuel it was rapidly losing energy.
3) Suddenly I was perfectly happy to be exactly where I was, watching my depressing thoughts and feelings and being perfectly okay with them and everything else.
4) However, that was just a glimpse which didn't last long and wasn't repeated for some months. In other words, i re-identified with my mind and went fast asleep again.
There are a few rare individuals who wake up and never fall back asleep again, but if you're like most of us, almost as soon as you make that shift you'll fall back again and become identified again with the thought-stream. Then, down the road somewhere there will be another wake-up. And then perhaps another long sleep, followed by another wake-up. On and on, zigging and zagging.
In that pattern, I stayed asleep for some months but then had another glimpse—and then another and another over time—and gradually over many years the spaciousness became a little more prominant. Or it would be more accurate to say: I began to perceive its always-present nature more as time went on. And as that happened, life became lighter, less of a burden and more of a joy.
5) The good news is that this subtle shift in perception can be done by anyone. Anyone. If we think and feel—which is every one of us—we can do it, and get better at it.
The even further good news is that once you have woken up, even if just for a moment, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will wake up completely.
Sometimes this is said to take countless years. Well, it'll take however long it takes—who cares? The important point is that we can become more and more aware of our own mind and thus more and more free of it. Not that the mind is bad"; it's not—it's just not conscous. And as we become less identified with it, life does become lighter, more spacious—yes, more happy.
But this is not the kind of happiness usually associated with the word "happy". Usually, if someone says they're happy what they really mean is that things are going their way. It's a "happiness" dependent upon circumstances and thus inherently fragile. It's not actually happiness at all.
Nor is happiness the same as pleasure. Indeed, they're quite different. Pleasure is a momentary sensation, the opposite of pain in the duality of pleasure-and-pain, and every life will contain a fair measure of both. Happiness, in contrast, is a general sense of well-being that occurs in what can be called the eternal moment, that is, a moment that is timeless and carries eternity with it.
It is a different kind of happiness, one not dependent on pleasure or circumstances or on getting everything to go "right" or "my way". It's a happiness that is large enough to include various moods, large enough to include praise and blame, pleasure and pain, victory and defeat, light and darkness. A happiness that is large enough to sense the Beauty at the core of all things.
(This is the end of Part 2. Go to Part 3.)
—jim sloman, 12.28.05
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