Living in and from our conceptual perspectives about life and what we are doing here, we have created what I call the conceptual egg or the shell of how each of us has created the interface that we call ourselves and how we live from that viewpoint as our way of how we think we are, and how we relate this to the supposed world out there.
If we are to awaken to the reality of this moment with any clarity we need to see ourselves living from this interface self and move beyond our sleep that we are that. As has been stated in previous essays on this site there are methods to help one start to dismantle this great assumption. Once we start to see that our lives are mostly based in assumption about who we are, what we are doing here, we can see that our tendency to believe everything we hear, see, and read needs to be examined carefully.
I have met people who have been around spiritual teachers who have told them that they cannot transcend themselves and to stop their search and only wait till they die. I have written about this and my experiences with several people who were on their death beds and how these confessions were good from the relief of holding things to themselves and from others, but that didn’t enlighten them. This sounds like another belief that keeps one from investigating what is necessary for realizing one’s BEINGNESS.
I am not advocating searching for the sake of searching, that is just someone who thinks they are on the spiritual path and is most likely intellectual. If the search is going to do one any good at all it might keep one going long enough to realize that the ego is not going to realize anything. That the search is only for us to see what we need to get past, which is what we have created as the self and maybe each outreach is to show us that “we are only in the way” of insight, wisdom, and beingness that has always been what is already the case.
One needs a major, intervening experience that is so different from the entrancement of daily life that there is no way for them to not notice the interruption. If you have had alternative experiences without any substance influences that are direct experience of what is, then one can start to see the shell of the conceptual egg they have created and have lived as themselves.
A hinge point so to speak of connectivity being in a place of recognizing, what is not/what is and having that be where we live from in attention/intention, to know when we are starting to create what is not, conceptual, philosophical, mental/emotional constructs that keep one entranced as the eggo/self, just kidding. This can keep us clear as to how we create all that we struggle with and suffer, how our interpretative/distinction functions tend to create meaning from our perceptions that may bring about another belief that we attach to for security, safety, and self survival.
The eggo/self has no interest in turning its attention to the investigation of beingness, that would mean it has no meaning, as this self tries to create meaning from everything to feed the self survival agenda. The survival agenda is online from birth and is highly invested in keeping the biological entity alive, so pulling the supports from this activity and showing the possible meaninglessness for its function tends to bring about resistance since it seems to be what has kept things going.
The freedom of Being is transcendent and the survival agendas of the eggo/mind are not designed to understand that dimension, they are only to serve the biological that nature designed to further it’s existence. If we are move beyond this online modality that we inherited, we need to see it’s inherent structure and in accessing the NOW of SILENCE/STILLNESS, allow ourselves to step into the abscence of prescence where we can vacate what one thinks they are presently.
I know that sounds a little different from what one would expect, but if we can’t go beyond our conceptual/thinking mechanisms of words, definitions and the meanings that we come up with as perceptions, we will be stuck with those arenas as how we interface with existence and they are not pure IS of what is, they are our layering that we consistently apply to survive on this planet.
In our practice of Aikido, we ask you to do something that you would say, normally, not do, because of the way your interface approach to things would not think or contemplate to do. Examples of this are, let the energy of a present interaction go the way it wants to, instead of trying to stop it with force against force, as in blocking the strike with another strike, which is a way of attacking the attack. In Aikido, we attack the attack with Principles, an example of this is, move off the line of the attack with center and see where the energy is already going, we may use a third Principle which could be Kuzushi, or to break the balance of the person at the same instance with the other two Principles of Center and Moving off the line. This is a very practical, hands on way of possibly seeing and experiencing what I am discussing in the previous part of this essay.
You may say, well that is just showing a Principled approach to handling a possible conflictive energy encountered in daily life. This is a start of a way to be able to move beyond what you would say, do in the encounter, but, this is what I am discussing in getting one to “consider” a different context in how they are looking at their lives constantly. Aikido offers this alternate context continually in practice and we are outpicturing psycho/physically this approach to moving past our own conceptual interface mechanism. If one sees the simple profundity of this practice, they can start to see past their own resistant interface and the limitations that we have created that keep us from cracking our own conceptual eggo and live from the freedom of conscious, flowing, open ended Awareness. Thank you, Will Gable