It’s finally time to share the last installment of my discussion with Colin Drake on practice. There’s been a couple of months time between Part 3 and Part 4 due to family and work responsibilities. I try to focus on the blog one pointedly so when I have something else demanding my attention I set the blog aside. Some engagements pay the bills, and some don’t you know!
Anyhow, we’ve had quite a time looking at the different areas of what practice is and whether we actually need it in awakening. When we started the series Colin dove right in with a provocative piece titled Why Do Anything that can be found HERE. He showed us that when we identify solely with Awareness we still act in the world. Why not act dispassionately toward our actions and make healthy choices? I recommend rereading his important points from that article. There’s some great stuff worth remembering.
Colin then shifts from the fact of movement and energy being a reality of the phenomenal world to “the question of the hour” which asks Is Practice Necessary?Found HERE. That is we see that action in no way gets us enlightened or liberated. Meditating does not make one aware. You already are Aware, so how could any practice help? Awareness is stillness, potentiality, the absence of movement yet so totally Alive! My suggestion has been that it can’t hurt so long as you are not identified with the practicer who practices to achieve something as a result of the practice.
But before we take a look at Colin’s last offering I wanted to remind everyone of Part 3 Are There Different Degrees of Awakening and is it Sudden or Gradual? Found HERE. Colin clearly points out that awakening is sudden rather than gradual. I might add that talking of this issue points to the fact that we are speaking in terms of time. Sudden or gradual only makes sense within the scope of mind. Similarly asking about different degrees of awakening suggests a reference point or locality – we’re asking about space. Again we are talking in terms the mind can understand. Awareness, Consciousness, Beingness are prior to, before, and the basis upon which mind and the world are able to appear in the first place. I could go on for hours, but this is Colin’s series!
As we end the series we have one final piece Colin has so generously offered called No Seeker, Practicer, or Contemplator. Before you read the article I would ask that you keep the three previous topics in mind listed below for your convenience. Try to see if you can answer those questions with the insight Colin shares in this final article.
Why do anything?
Is Practice Necessary?
Are there different degrees of awakening?
No Seeker, Practicer or Contemplator
Although I maintain that one needs ‘practice’ to become completely established in, and as, awareness this practice should obviously not entail becoming identified as a seeker, practicer, contemplator etc.. For any identification other than with awareness is only relative and will always lead to mental suffering, and the practice that I recommend is identification with awareness. As soon as we identify with anything else we have started to read meaning into things that have no meaning, the danger of which is considered in this excerpt from A Light Unto Your Self:
There are many things that people regard as being meaningful in this respect, for instance:
I am a double Taurus with Sagittarius rising.
I am a (was born in the year of the) Rat.
I am a number seven.
I am a number nine in the enneagram
I am an Australian.
I am middle class.
I am a Christian/Hindu/Buddhist.
I am a sixty three year old white anglo-saxon male.
I am a potter.
I am a father and husband.
I am in good health.
I am (was, not now) a spiritual seeker.
I am (was, not now) a vegetarian.
I am (was, not now) celibate.
I am (was, not now) a renunciate.
These are all examples of things we are told mean something about us. Now these may, or may not, say something about our personality but do they really say anything about us as we really are? If we misidentify at the surface level of body/mind and thus the ego they all seem to have significance. However, each of these just adds another level of misidentification and gives us a more concrete feeling of being a personality.
At the deeper level of pure awareness these are obviously meaningless, as at this level I do not exist as a separate being, so that any assertion that ‘I am …anything’ is not only meaningless but is also false. (Note that ‘I am awareness’ does not fall into this category as awareness is not a ‘thing’.) Though such thoughts may appear interesting at the surface level of body/mind they need to held in this context and to be regarded as essentially meaningless. So if, for instance, one has an astrological chart/reading done this is to be considered to be pure entertainment ( as is life as it happens) and not to be saying anything about who (or what) one truly is.
Reading meaning into things that have no meaning has caused much human misery over the millennia. Most wars are fought in such meaningless causes as nationalism, religion, tribalism, racism etc… All of which have no essential meaning. That is not to say that the world’s religions do not point to essential meaning, but which religion you follow does not make you a member of an exclusive group which is superior to other beings. It is amazing how humanity is prepared to die or kill in defense of, or propagation of, an idea or false sense of identity with an exclusive group … both of which are essentially meaningless!
Even at the level of day-to-day living ‘reading meaning into things that have no meaning’ limits the lives of many people. This is a major factor in most mental illnesses and we all engage in it one way or another when we let trivial things affect our equanimity. For instance if I get depressed when the soccer team I support keeps losing … which it does! Now this obviously has no meaning apart from the fact that this football team is not very good, but if I identify myself as being a supporter of that team then I can infer that their ineptitude says something about me … Also, most people are superstitious in one degree or another and ‘reading meaning into things that have no meaning’ is obviously the cause of all superstition. Imagine how freeing it would be if one could truly see things as they ‘are’ and not ascribe any fictitious meaning to them! The easiest way to achieve this is by experientially discovering the deeper level of pure awareness and identifying with this.1
In fact any thought which objectifies the ‘I’ is counterproductive and should be avoided. For the Awareness that we truly are is not an object but the constant conscious subjective presence in which all objects arise, reside, are spied and subside.
1 A Light Unto Your Self p. 151-154
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