You Cannot Train a Fish To Breathe

You cannot train a fish to breathe air, and you cannot train ego to live a spiritual life. Enlightenment comes by transcending ego, not by transforming it. The attachment to ego may be the last attachment you surrender, but until you can accomplish this, you have not set foot upon the Path.

Love Without Attachment

The Teacher entered a trance and said,

"You are concerned that giving up attachments will require you to renounce your life as you have lived it until now -- your possessions, your family and friends. It is true that renunciation of this sort is one approach to spiritual living, and frankly it is the easiest. This is why it has been taught by prophets in the past. Removing oneself altogether from the temptation to form attachments reduces the risk of backsliding and makes the transition to an enlightened state much easier. However, it is not absolutely necessary."

"You can enjoy a material object without succumbing to the need to possess it completely. If you renounce the belief that you can possess a person or thing then it is not necessary to renounce the actual person or thing. It is really the mental image ot the thing, not the thing itself, to which you form attachments. Renunciation really means the refusal to form these mental images."

"You can cherish the people and things that come into your life without coveting them, clinging to them, or becoming obsessed with the fear of losing them. Love is at the core of my teaching and you exhibit it when you cherish without attachment. I provide what you need at every moment without your asking for it. If a person or thing is physically unavailable to you at any time, it is because you do not have need of it at that time."

"The focus of your awareness must be Oneness with All That Is, including other souls that are manifestations of my intelligence and Self awareness equally to you. As you love them and yourself, you also love me. As you love me, you love every manifestation of me. Learning to discern my presence in All That Is is a part of your training."

"As physical beings you are necessarily imperfect. This imperfection endures as long as you exist on a physical plane. To a great extent this is due to the influence of egoic mind, which is only an aspect of your physical form."

"Because you are imperfect and incomplete, you do not perceive the vibrational connections between you and other beings and objects. You may sense these connections on a soul level. Another part of your training is to bring that awareness into consciousness. To the extent you retain the illusion of separation, you cannot truly feel bound by Love to others."

"Physical or emotional attachment is the desire for pleasure or the fear of its loss. It is a weak imitation of the loving connection that arises from Oneness. Mind can perceive only such attachments, while Spirit can experience only Love. Renunciants discard the former in order to bring the latter into sharper focus. If you wish to become fully alive in Spiritual consciousness without renouncing material things, you must remain constantly and vibrantly aware of the difference between Mind and its attachments on the one hand, and Spirit and Love on the other. If you are capable of this then you can experience vibrational harmony between yourself and other individual manifestations of my consciousness as true Oneness."

"It is possible -- indeed it is your goal -- to experience Oneness of this kind with all souls. However, on the material plane a connection with one other soul is optimal. Any attempt to maintain a material connection with more than one other is far more likely to distract you and dilute the purity of your spiritual connection with the One, than it is to enhance it. Therefore I teach you to maintain a loving physical relationship with only one other. You in your material form are simply incapable of maintaining focus on Oneness with Spirit in the distracting presence of multiple material attachments."

"Renunciants avoid the difficulty of balancing Spiritual Oneness and physical union by abstaining from the latter. You may think of vows of fidelity as renunciation as well. Renunciants of all types should enter into their commitments joyfully. If they cannot do so, then they should seek another path."

"Just as renunciants must beware of forming attachments to asceticism, you must maintain focus on the spiritual basis of your relationship in order to avoid morbid attachments and their manifestations -- craving, clinging, jealousy, and regret. Awareness of Oneness at the level of genuine Love is the surest way to attain this, and makes all forms of attachment unnecessary. Your loving relationship becomes a part of your spiritual practice, the true test of which is whether it brings you and your partner into closer harmony with me. If it brings peace and joy to your consciousness, then the relationship exists at the soul level. If it brings pain, fear, or disharmony, it is a mere attachment of body or Mind."

The Source Of Unhappiness

A student asked:

"Why does life bring me so much unhappiness?"

The Teacher answered:

"Your unhappiness does not arise from your life situation, or from other souls. Unhappiness is a reaction that arises within your ego in response to certain stimuli. The stimulus may be the action of another person, a physical mishap, or a pain in your own body. In each case it is something outside your Self. The stimulus may be external, but the reaction -- the unhappiness -- is entirely created by your ego. Do you disagree? The next time you feel unhappiness coming over you, be aware of the process of stimulus or response. Is the unhappiness something that is injected into you, or does it arise internally as your ego's reaction to an external event? Even if you are unhappy only as a result of witnessing someone else's unhappiness, the pain that you feel is not their pain, but your own."

"Unhappiness is the emotional suffering with which your ego responds to a painful stimulus. Because it arises in the ego, it also is outside your Self. You do not realize this until you have learned to distinguish between the ego and your Self as the center of awareness."

"You may not be able to prevent the ego from responding in this way. That is what ego does. Eckart Tolle speaks of the pain-seeking aspect of ego as the 'pain body.' The pain body is composed of the accumulated negative energy of all your lifetimes -- to the extent you have not previously released it -- and may seem even to possess sentience. It literally feeds on and gains strength from negativity. It drives the ego to seek painful experiences and to create more suffering for itself and for other pain bodies. "

"How many times have you asked yourself why you seem to be deliberately causing yourself to suffer; why others seem to deliberately cause you to suffer; or why you seem compelled to inflict suffering on others? This behavior is the pain body in action. It needs no explanation other than that the pain body is engaged in self-preservation."

"Pain is one of ego's principal tools for asserting control over your being. Physical or emotional suffering gives ego an excuse to demand your full attention and insist that you devote all your resources to making the pain go away. Ego enjoys and benefits from this form of distraction. It makes it easier for ego to possess the small self. Mindfulness is the antidote to this poisonous manifestation of ego.  Meditation brings the higher Self to the fore and shines the light of joy into the darkness of ego's suffering. As darkness is only the absence of light, awareness of the Unity of the true Self with the Source of all Joy is the way to remove suffering from your experience."

"You can ameliorate the influence of the pain body only by becoming mindful of its influence and refusing to act mindlessly -- that is, through the ego rather than through the Self -- in response. In this way you further your sole purpose, which is to manifest Joy for your Self and others in awareness of the unity of All That Is."

Attachments

The Teacher Said:

You think that you must look outside yourself for guidance and for peace. When your mind is troubled you turn to religion in the hope that an external power will rescue you. Or you may seek an anodyne in a drug, or a distraction. But there is no power outside yourself that can change your predicament. I have taught you that your thoughts create your life situation. Properly seen, your mind is a tool by which you shape your Universe. Or at least, your experience of the Universe; for behind all appearences the Universe is unchanging Spirit. Any discomfort or unpleasantness you feel does not originate outside yourself; it is totally within you. Because of that, you can eliminate it by changing your thought.

Your mind is a machine which has been programmed to respond without thinking in certain ways to particular stimuli. Certain nerve endings transmit signals that your brain interprets as physical pain, and your mind automatically converts that pain into suffering. It is difficult but not impossible to break that program so that suffering does not automatically arise. Even if the suffering reflex does arise, once you have learned to recognize it for what it is, you can release the suffering and deal only with the pain. Pain is simply a signal the body uses to alert the mind to a harmful condition. If the condition is one that can be ameliorated, the mind can take appropriate action to reduce or eliminate the pain. Some pain cannot be so easily eliminated; by letting go of suffering the pain ceases to be a distraction and you can return to equanimity. [Shinzen Young's approach to the relationship between meditation and pain is described here].

Some pain is emotional rather than physical. For the unconscious person, emotional pain provides no benefit other than, perhaps, to aggrandize the ego ("Look at me, I am in pain!" Of course, only ego itself would consider that a benefit). The mind develops knee-jerk reactions to emotional pain just as it does to physical pain, and the mind is all too willing to suffer from it -- nothing bolsters the ego like a good bout of self-pity. But for you emotional pain serves a higher purpose, which is to alert you to attachments that you have formed and which are disturbing your peace.

All attachments have the potential to cause disturbance. Whether the attachment is to a person, a thing, or an idea, upon formation it immediately creates a duality -- the duality of having and not having the thing to which you are attached. This duality creates tension which gives off negative vibrations. These vibrations manifest as desire; as fear of loss; as jealousy; as antagonism to others who are seen as wanting to take from us the things to which we are attached, or who actually possess those things already and from whom we feel the desire to take them. The mind naturally forms attachments, but it is not natural for the mind to perceive their effects and to purge itself of attachments or to avoid forming them. This is where you -- the authentic you, which is your inner manifestation of Spirit -- can step in and instruct your mind to release the attachment which is causing disturbance, or not to form that attachment in the first place.

The reason that the mind creates attachments is that the mind is influenced by ego. If Spirit does not exert its control, then the mind is controlled by ego. Ego originates as the mind's awareness of itself. At the stage when ego is formed, mind is not yet aware of the presence of Spirit. Mind conceives the idea that it is separate, alone, and unique, and from that thought arises ego. From that moment forward, ego is engaged in spinning around itself a cocoon of separation to preserve its perceived identity. The first duality that arises in the mind is the duality of "me" and "not-me." The ego is the "me" and its sole purpose is to create the perception that it is important, in order to ensure its own survival. The way that it does that is to seek to dominate and possess the "not-me." What it cannot dominate or possess, it seeks to destroy or deny.

Of course, all this activity takes place entirely within the mind. From the single construct of ego arises an elaborate web of fantasies and fictions, each of which is perceived as a "thing" to be seized or destroyed. Whether the desire is to own a thing or to destroy it, that desire is an attachment because ego believes that its own well-being depends upon fulfilling that desire. If the "thing" is the object of desire, then ego believes it cannot be satisfied -- cannot be happy -- without satisfying its desire to possess the "thing". If the "thing" is the object of a destructive desire, then ego believes that it cannot be happy unless the "thing" ceases to exist. This is ironic, since the "thing" was created by mind or by ego in the first place; but ego cannot see the irony, because ego itself is unaware that it created the "thing." The perception of anything separate from self is the funamental delusion of the ego, but the ego cannot be cured of this delusion because the ego's very existence depends upon duality. If the ego were to accept that All That Is is One, that the entire Universe, is a manifestation of one Spirit, then the illusion of "me" and "not-me" would collapse and ego itself would vanish.

You can only become convinced of the Oneness of all things through meditation. Awareness of Oneness comes to some in a flash and to others only by dint of much meditation and inner seeking. Having experienced that awareness, even if it does not remain constantly with you as an immanent experience, you are able to grasp the concept that Spirit exists unconditionally, while ego exists only conditionally. In other words, Spirit is real without context; ego is real only in the context of mind. To the extent your awareness is controlled by ego, it is not genuine awareness; only the awareness of Spirit is ultimate Truth. This is the realization that you need in order to perform the inner work of identifying and releasing attachments. Ego and its attachments can be seen in the light of this realization as mere distractions. Why should you give your energy to attachments that only serve to distract you from the Truth? Of course it is absurd to do so.

Once you have realized that attachments stand between you and the complete realization of Oneness with Spirit, it becomes possible to identify and begin to release them. Here are some examples of thoughts that arise from the false attachment to the duality of "me" and "not-me":

-- That person thinks that he or she is better than I.

-- That person is different from me in ways that make him inferior to me.

-- That person has something that I do not, and I want it.

-- That person does not respect me.

-- That person wants to take something away from me.

-- That person is being treated better than I.

-- I feel responsible for that person's actions and he is embarassing me.

-- I don't have enough money/friends/love/etc.

It may not be necessary for you to specifically instruct your mind to release such attachments, if you are convinced they are unworthy of your attention. By withdrawing your attention and energy from them they should dissipate of their own accord, for it is only your energy that sustains them.

I want to be clear that I am not telling you to release attachments because they are evil. "Good-evil" is just another duality created in the mind. I tell you to release them because they are a distraction, and they prevent you from focusing your attention on Spirit and the Oneness of All That Is. Having attachments does not make you a "bad person"; it simply contributes to false beliefs of separation, and makes you unhappy.

A fully enlightened being does not form attachments. However, this is not to say that releasing attachments is the way to become fully enlightened. It would be more correct to say that the two coincide. The perception of Oneness leads to enlightenment and also to the release of attachments, and the inability to form new ones. Nevertheless, the fewer attachments one has, the easier that perception becomes.