SOME REFLECTIONS

From a day of retreat

Here is a photo from better times, about 20 years ago. Sadly, both me and my boy are either too infirm (in my case) or too old (in Biscuit's case) for this

After a very stressful day yesterday in which, in addition to feeling very unwell I took delivery of a new computer and found that processes that were previously quite straightforward almost impossible in today's age without some “work-around” I am using a day in which I have the house to myself and am surrounded by physical quiet, to resist the temptation to go chasing after news and spend the day in meditation and contemplation.

It ain't that easy, I can tell you with the habits of the minding falling into distraction.

Every day I contemplate how the world has changed around us so rapidly and how the vast majority are captive to the process, something that has become painfully obvious with the reactions to the events of the past few days.

It is obvious that we need to, at least in part, wean ourselves from the overwhelming daily news and to start to engage with people who think similarly, not online, but with real people and, if possible, in communities in addition to other preparations for what may be a financial, collapse, in addition.to what is increasingly a looming reality for many - digital IDs and money as well as accelerating moves to AI tyranny.

Many of these things are foreclosed to me with my age and ill health, so that leaves the spiritual option of “leaving the Matrix” and coming to the realisation,not intellectually, but in practise, that “I am Consciousness having a human experience”.

In my mind this is the most important thing of all - disengaging from the whole process while remaining fully aware of what is happening to us and all around us.

I despair when I read social media as well as comments on this Substack and realixe how angry and, frankly, mixed-up people are.

So, having found the binaural beats as a tool I have returned to traditional meditation and to what Tom Campbell calls “point awareness”. I have been focusing on the sounds themselves and have experienced the “events of the body”, as I call them, fall away while I am doing the practise.

After doing this for a while I often find myself falling into silence and “field awareness” where I cease to “process the physical world, being an Awareness only experiencing its own existence”., or diffuse awareness. “Instead of focusing tightly, you can widen your awareness to notice “the whole room,” the overall flow of experience, or the sense of simply being.”

THESE are the best binaural beats

This is something that has been relatively easy for me but difficult to hold for long without the initial practices.

I can offer up some suggestions of how this might be possible. I recall the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, sitting on a park bench in London very depressed and thinking to himself “I cannot live with myself”. The next thought was, “there cannot,surely, be two of me - which one am I?” if you go looking you will find there is no one there and one falls into Silence. This can be found by “minding the gap” - deliberately thinking a thought to its conclusion and experiencing the silence before the next thought or, rather than focusing on the breath itself but on the silence in between.

The following quote from Krishnamurti that I have lived with for many years makes it clear that profound experiences come not from meditation experience with the expectation of a certain outcome but finding the Silence, if that comes can help to see things clearly direct from Source and to suspend the critical and judging mind.

Right now, from where I’m sitting I cannot think of anything more important.

From Freedom from the Known.

Verbally, we can only go so far: what lies beyond cannot be put into words, because the word it’s not the thing. Up to now, we can describe, explain, but no words or explanations can open the door. What will open the door is daily awareness and attention – awareness of how we speak, what we say, how we walk, what we think. It is like cleaning a room and keeping it in order. Keeping the room in order is important and one sense but totally unimportant in another. There must be order in the room but order will not open. What will open the door is not your volition or desire. You cannot possibly invite the other,. All that you can do is to keep the room in order, which is to be virtuous for itself, not for what it will bring. To be saying, rational orderly, not for what it will bring. to be sane, rational, orderly. Then perhaps, if you are lucky, the window will open, and the breeze will come in. Or it may not. It depends on the state of your mind, and state of mind can be understood only by yourself, by watching it, and never trying to take shape it, never taking sides, never opposing, never agreeing, never justifying, never condemning, never judging – which means watching it without any choice. But out of those choiceless awareness, perhaps the door will open, and you will know what that dimension is in which there is no conflict and no time.

If only one person finds the above helpful I will be happy.