Stop Trying to Feel Good

A friend has been reading my posts and texted me a question about meditation and the journey inward.

The question is: in the journey of going inward and looking for the “emptiness” – which is also simultaneously the fullness of everything, which is God, which is ultimately where we all come from and who we are at our deepest essence – how do we sit and rest in that state without getting locked into the peaceful states of happiness and joy?

In other words, how do we simply rest in awareness as opposed to cherry-picking the positive emotions apart from the negative?

Here's the answer.

As you're going inward and practicing focusing on turning the spotlight of your awareness back in on itself and resting as that and only that, there's a universal journey that happens to all of us.

You're withdrawing your focus and your life current energy (which the Hindus call prana) out of the body, out of the senses, out of the emotions, and refocusing it back in on the awareness itself.

This diagram I made yesterday explains this process:

So in this process, all of the prana, mental energy that typically goes out into our body, out through our eyeballs, out into feeling things, goes back in on awareness itself.

When you do that, it almost feels like you're constantly “turning away” from thoughts, away from emotions. That's kind of like the initial practice. You're turning awareness back on itself, and you may find yourself constantly like – "Oh, shit… I'm in my thoughts again. I need to stop that and get back to awareness."

You feel like you’re sort of getting lost, and getting found over and over.

That's the initial stage.

And that's a good ‘practice’.

But it’s not the ultimate aim, and it’s not true meditation.

The actual state of meditation which is enjoying what we might call the peace of God… is really viewing all of the human experience as beautiful - as pure emanation of God.

Whether the experience is negative or positive.

Think of it like this: God is like a movie projector operator. He's playing this movie on a screen - like an old film projector where he puts the reel in and rolls the tape, and the light is going through the film frames and shows up on the screen.

God is chilling up by the projector, he's played all these scenes a million times. So he’s just kind of just up there chilling.

And all of us - well, most of us at least - are sitting in the theater, completely engrossed in the screen.

But when we meditate, we turn back. We look at God. We look up at the light itself. And we can go back and sit up there with God in the projector seat. From there, we can look out… Enjoying the happy parts of the movie and the sad parts of the movie.

In that practice of reaching the the state of awareness itself, while simultaneously realizing – okay, I am a point of God's awareness in this meat suit walking around experiencing all these things – you transcend to a level of peace.

It's like Jesus said: you're in the world, but you're not of the world.

You're enjoying the movie, but you're not all wrapped up in it. You're not taking things personally that happen to the characters. You rest in the awareness, and just sit back and enjoy.

The quality of the peace that passes all understanding that Jesus spoke about is a different sort of happiness than just an emotional "oh, I'm happy I made money." It's something else entirely.

There's a famous line from A Course in Miracles that captures this perfectly: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

When you rest in that awareness of awareness itself, which is the only thing that's actually real, you realize it can't be threatened by the movie playing on the screen. The emotions, the drama, the ups and downs are just part of the film. They come and go. But awareness itself is untouchable.

And when you truly see that, there's a peace in and around everything… Whether you happening or not in your life is glorious or painful, it's all unfolding, and you're at peace with it all.

This is being in the world, but not of the world.

Now, there's a higher state. And the state I just described alone is quite challenging to step into permanently. I find myself advancing pretty well lately in being able to exist in that state lately.

But the higher state is what I believe Jesus experienced. There isn't even "you" anymore. That's why he said "I and the Father are one." Jesus of Nazareth was gone. The small human self story and identity is gone, and you're just experiencing literally everything.

That existence however is incomprehensible to even put our brains through.

So back to the question. Here is the quick answer:

You’re not getting lost in the sense perceptions and emotions - it's just enjoying them as they come.

I had a conversation recently with some friends, and one of them just doesn't get the concept of having awareness be aware of itself.

And if you don't understand that, you're literally blind.

If you can't even look at your own consciousness and understand the experience you're living in, you're like a child in preschool on planet Earth. You're living in a fairy tale land of not even being able to examine what was created for you in this experience.

So hopefully this was useful.

Keep the questions coming.

This is basically all I do all day long lately - philosophize.

Happy to answer anything that's been popping up.

-Arlin