What is Liberation?

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

What I'm about to do now is to illustrate the impossible, which means I will fail. Still, I would like an attempt to visualize the grand liberation. What I cover here is by no means complete, and the pictures are just intended to make a point.

 

This first picture is a chart of the ordinary set of mind. We could call it 'reality as you know it', or perhaps simply 'you'. The mind of the normal person typically moves speedily and rather randomly between these things, and more. We go from worrying about one thing, to hoping for another, then we plan some thing, and dwell on memories of others. All these pictures, ideas, and thoughts (attachments) replace one another all through the day – a process which normally goes on for as long as we live.

Stress, which is so very common today, increases the speed and the weight of this “capsule” of our minds. All things seem utterly important, yet as attachment intensifies reality loses its vibrancy. The mind, we can say, smothers reality (as it is). To many people (perhaps most), this confinement of me is all they know. They are trapped in it, and fully dependent on it.

Liberation (salvation) is what comes into being when “you” happen to find yourself outside of the mind capsule. This is what the illustration below indicates. From a constant, busy, hard to balance, ping pong-like rush from one thing to another, you have somehow managed to let go. Yes, it can feel as if you actually let go of something physical, like a rock. Suddenly there is great spaciousness, peace, and a perfectly liberating freedom... from yourself. It is so clear you can almost look at it, much like you can behold a can of tuna. The confinement of you, with all its attributes, is there before you, and while you still have access to all this mind-stuff, you are now watching it restfully from infinity. Your senses still absorb the same physical reality, but the experience of being is altogether altered.

 

Full enlightenment would mean a permanent shift into, and complete re-identification with, free, infinite consciousness, but one can temporarily taste and acquaint Liberation at any point. The main reason for spiritual practice is not to glimpse or quickly touch this Kingdom, but to be able to remain there, when the gates open. Any fool (like me) can manage a quick encounter.

There are two main ways of discovering or entering Liberation (which partially or fully frees a person for life), and those are; forming the mind and having the mind formed.

The first way is activity – and is about making the mind calm enough to discover reality outside of it. When it no longer jumps here and there with great speed, we have a chance to actually see. This is done through techniques like meditation, yoga, silence, solitude, abstinence, charity and so on. Beliefs, which say that there is something more to reality, than the obvious, may help since the mind (perhaps through prayer) reaches out beyond itself for guidance and communion. Faith, regardless of belief, is of even greater value, since it puts absolute trust in whatever it is that holds life and reality together. Faith is to trust the Lord, whatever the Lord might be, and to know in the heart, that whatever brought this Universe into existence knows how to handle it. Faith is to give yourself fully to (completely relax into) God – ultimate reality.

The second way is passivity – which comes whether we wish to or not. Reality (life as we know it) has a nasty habit of crashing now and then. Pieces of the mind-puzzle suddenly disappears in unforeseeable accidents or undesirable diseases, for example. This creates a space, which is a window of opportunity in this case. When death, deafening change, or simple inactivity strikes, most of us are too eager to fill that gap with something new. Some people however come to see reality with sharper eyes when they experience loss, but only those who dare behold emptiness honestly for some time. Finally there is the mystery of God's being and light, which for reasons we cannot grasp, come to enter into some individuals when they least expect it. This, supposedly, is the most effective way to go beyond oneself, and to participate knowingly in His grace.

Only the first way can be practiced. The stillness achieved might look strange and perhaps even pointless from inside the capsule. However, daring to come back frequently to silence will inevitably (I dare say) make your head slip through that boundary which separates Earth from Heaven, and that experience, dear reader, is worth every hardship you have ever gone through, and many many more.
Blessed be the struggles of everyone. Freedom to the world!

 

Keep Dry For the Waters of Heaven

To discover our attachments to what we consider negative is comparatively simple. The bad news comes, we react emotionally, and rather soon we find ourselves attached to it. Something went wrong at work, or perhaps the house vanished in a fire. The mind and the emotions start to race in repeating negative circles. Why did this happen to me? Why now? Will the gods ever give me a break?

With spiritual practice you get better at noticing and recognicing the patterns, even in tiny, every-day events you learn to see how your mind fluctuates and darkens. Since you obviously gain a lot by not being drawn so quickly and furiously into a vortex of negative emotions and thought-structures, it becomes natural to keep up the effort.

However, joy too brings attachment. On this the Buddha was adamant, and it may seem like backward thinking. Shouldn't I hold on to, and cherish the little luck and joy I have in my life? When things finally go my way, of course I shall revel in it! Everything else would be wasting the good of life wouldn't it? - to spoil the gifts of God...

Truly, this is hard to realize, and I suspect experience is the key as always. When you have that experience of a truly calm mind, which isn't moved much by the fortunes or misfortunes of life, you come to discover another kind of joy. Inner stillness unveils a previously hidden spring, from which true delight and happines flows out into our being.

I suspect most of us have had some taste of this water, when momentarily happiness gives us the infrequent ride for no apparent reason? When there is no obvious cause for joyfulness but simply being alive? In either case, that spring is there to be found, and its wealth and freshness is astonishing. Where the joy we normally experience is dependant on the situation at hand, and the many jesters of earthly life, this well of water, discovered through non-attachment, simply can't dry out.

Certainly, we have to settle with the odd glass of it once in a while, until we complete our spiritual journey, but the taste is so satisfying and thorough that when a lucky stroke comes to rock us from our position of equanimity, we firmly realize that this promising wind will fade too. So we remain silent, watching as it comes and goes, letting it take us where it must, while internally we remain seated by the waters of The Lord - laughing, by the zero-shaped pond of freedom.

Underneath the Wrapping

As an extension (largely a repetition really) of the last post I thought I'd try to give some examples of conceptual wrappings and some further explanation of what I mean by “the abstract eye”.

When we look at these letters which we are currently reading, we cannot help but silently or loudly, utter or take in, the sounds and meanings we have been trained to associate with them, and their combinations (words). Looking closer at the individual letters, like this U, we can see it has a specific shape, which is really all it is – a shape, or a form. A 'u' isn't a letter anywhere but in our minds. What we see is our minds superimposed upon the form. Typographers, designers, and visual artists, have a better chance of perceiving the u as an image, while most people normally never consider the pure line or curve of it. All they see is the U.

What I'd like us to do now is to gaze at this shape: H until we can behold its form free from the concept we call 'h'. To help out we may start by picturing the silhouette of two pillars attached to each other with a thin horizontal construction binding them together. Perhaps it is the ruins of a once great temple? Try then to see the form completely free from any kind of meaning (Staring at it for a long time usually helps). If we succeed it's great, but if we don't, the fact that we can realize that H is a form, just as “meaningless” as any other form, is beneficial. Though we understand it as a letter, it is still that same and simple form, which the illiterate will confirm, if we doubt it.

We typically don't add much emotional wrapping to the forms we call letters, but some sorts of music, some kinds of food, some occupations, and some types of animals (for example), are not as easily kept free from such additions. Just like the sound added to the letter H doesn't really have anything to do with the H-form, our opinions and ideas about heavy metal, soup, police-men, and spiders, are just that – opinion and ideas. Even if it's true that spiders more often bite human beings than butterflies do, they are not nasty, disgusting, creepy, or evil, anywhere but in some people's minds. (This is also true about police-men.)

The emotional wrappings may partly or fully be caused by actual facts, but hairy, poisonous qualities don't equal fear, because if they did, all beings would fear spiders, and loath heavy-metal. That some people love it and others hate it (whatever “it” may be) should be enough really, for us to see beyond our ego-centric ideas about all things. Unfortunately, this “should be” is wishful thinking. Wrappings don't come off that easily.

When we have managed to look at an H, for a short moment liberated from our branding of it, we can use this same technique on the rest of reality. Just try to keep free from ALL ideas when entering places, and encountering people, and you will notice how strange and marvelous a phenomenon they truly are. Treat every moment as a new and unknown revelation, coming to you all-inclusive and inevitable. There is nothing we can change of what already is, but for our reception and acceptance of it.

If we keep this up, we may be invited into the next level of freedom, where form itself is recognized and experienced as a concept. This is where the H blends together with the background (which no thing can ever escape) and starts speaking to us as the Unity it is. When that happens, we ourselves, simultaneously blend together with the world before our eyes and “seeing” is transformed into “being”.

An H isn't built up singularly by dark lines, but is equally made up by the seemingly empty areas between the pillars, as well as the space surrounding it. It is also fully dependent on the reader, without whom, there could never be form, nor letters. Examining an H is examining ourselves. Let us look beyond our ideas of it. Let us take into account all that which is required for the revelation of an H, and study that boundless process in action. Form and consciousness is now shaking hands, moving closer, and as they do they begin to recognize themselves in the eyes of the other. The merger has already begun.

Developing the Abstract Eye

The main reason for our inability to experience Spiritual Reality, is our conceptualization/objecti-fication of the World, and at the foundation of this is our identification with Ego – our “separate” selves. We perceive Reality as objects, and we think of ourselves as objects. This can be overcome.

We mentally (and largely unconsciously) wrap all we perceive in layers upon layers of concepts. These wrappings are not only the words and ideas we superimpose upon all things, but also the emotions and opinions that go with them. In such a way Truth is veiled from our eyes and souls. The world we see is a reflection of the world in our minds. Instead of receiving what IS, we perceive what we have learned and our self-centered relationships to it.

How then, can we remove this obstacle to the Light? Well, why not look at abstract art? In figurative works of art, there are often a story-line taking place in time and space, and there tend to be objects which we know by name and experience. Looking at such a piece we find ourselves go into thoughts and memories. We might ask ourselves what the image is about, and what it means? In either case, the forms in figurative art are familiar to us, and they are hard to watch with the pure and virgin gaze we need develop for spiritual progress.

When we behold non-figurative and abstract art, the game is very different. Here, the nameless, unknown, or uncertain forms, do not as easily give rise to conceptual thinking. They may suggest or remind us of objects we know, but abstract works lend themselves a lot better to an open mind. The trick is to keep the verdict at bay, and to let things remain what they are – unknown. While our minds struggle to understand what they see (in the “meaningless” jumble of color and form), we should give them a fight, and let the work remain abstract – keep it in the shadows of Mystery.

Even if we succeed in doing so, we typically fall into another trap, which is that of judgment. We like this, we don't like that, we would have preferred it another way, or we are disturbed by a lack of balance, too much pink, the frame, or any other of a million reasons. Here is where we must be vigilant. Whenever we notice these judgments, we should try to let them go, and re-focus our gaze on the art before us. Remember, we want to see what IS, and get away from what we THINK about it. This may of course take some practice.

The mechanisms of mind, including the Ego itself, are much like little children. When we give them a finger, they are happy for a while, but will soon start bothering us about the rest of the hand. It is fortunately also true, that if we ignore them, they will raise their voices for some time, but eventually quiet down. With no confirmation at all, they turn all silent and crawl into a corner somewhere.

As we become experienced with watching abstract art, we tend to discover other pleasures, than those previously known to us. There arises a joy in watching the balance of composition by itself, and the play of simple fields of color, and brush-strokes, are suddenly enough to bring great and satisfying experiences. The openness and suggestive power of nameless forms is a great adventure to the mind, and we learn how to receive the artwork without interpretation. This is a great step. Those of us who have learned this skill, have a great tool when tracking the steps of The Lord, and those who doesn't might still have some leads on where (how) to look.

Now let's leave the gallery and go for a meditative walk in nature. While we see trees, bushes, rocks, sky, lakes, and all the other things we know, we can learn how look at them as we do an abstract piece of art. Think of them not as these things you have knowledge about, but perceive them as patches of form and color that together make up the undivided weave of reality – the very fabric of Creation. We are so accustomed to evaluate and judge that, even were we to walk through untouched lands, most of us would fall into these habits of “too barren, too dense, too green, too chaotic, too murky, etc”.

Allow me therefore to repeat: The world is not a piece of art for you to judge as a critic. It is not a meal cooked to please your personal taste. The world wasn't molded to suit your specific body or mind. The world is the reality from which you have grown, just like the straws of grass on the ground. For you to even think about judging it, or having opinions about it, is great and swollen pride. For millions of years it has prevailed, silently, perfectly, until right now, when you and I come here and start uttering our preferences, as if they somehow mattered. Who cares if we dislike the autumn, if we find birches more pleasant than spruce, or robins more likeable than crows? Life is not about our opinions. If we can bring ourselves to understand that, we may also be able to behold nature (and art, and people) with less of a labeling and judgmental gaze. Again, it is about being receptive to what is. It is about listening with our eyes, and to do so as if all the forms of life were equally important.

If we practice this, and continue to do so, there is a great chance that the Lord will let His Presence be known to us. All things in Nature sing His tune, and when we become aware of that, we also hear that same voice answering from within. That's the first step of true freedom, and a spring of deep and saturating joy. Whenever we make an effort to listen, we can now make out the Piper's flute on the wind, unwrapping the veils of Paradise, and its piercing benevolent Beauty!

Body and Earth

While the spiritual journey consists of a shift of focus (identity) from form to spirit, it is important that we do not make an enemy of the body, or of matter itself. In spiritual contexts you neither fight, nor flee, but accept and transcend what you wish to overcome. It is much like finding an ugly spot on your new wall-paper. As long as you do not accept it, the spot will keep bothering you, and leave you no peace of mind, but as soon as you accept its presence you become free of it. In a way, you will no longer see it.

The Salvation presented by Jesus of Nazareth, or the Nirvana of Siddhartha Gautama, are Absolute. That means they are independent of conditions. If you think that a change of environment is necessary, you are wrong, though it might initially be very helpful. On this issue Sri Ramakrishna speaks wisely: “...when the trees on the footpath are young, they may be eaten up by goats or cows for want of fencing. A fence is needed in the initial stage. When, however, the trunk gets thicker no fence is needed. Then even an elephant tied to the trunk will not do any harm to it.”
(From the Gospels of Sri Ramakrishna)

While the body is not the truth of what we truly are, it is our one vessel on this voyage, and abandoning the vessel does us no good at all. On the contrary, it is our inability to accept and connect with the vessel that keep us bound to it. In our problems, worries, and ambitions of every day life, we lose contact with body and earth, and lead a life almost fully in our minds. We think about the frightening or hopeful future, and on other places and times which we cannot touch, taste, smell, hear, or even see. To a great extent, we live not in Life, but in our minds' maps of reality. In this abstract world of ideas, opinions, plans, goals, regrets, and strategy, we become disconnected from body and being – fully or partly lost in a labyrinth of endless thought-patterns. 

Reconnect now. Feel the body. Feel the weight of it, and the pressure on your bottom, back, or feet. Can we read on without losing the awareness of it?

Since we spend most of our days primarily with the voice in our heads, it is very good to re-establish a conscious connection with the feet, which are furthest away from the brain. When we walk it is great practice to make aware every single step, and the feeling of contact with the ground or floor. As long as that conscious contact is maintained, we are never fully lost in thought. Many forms of spiritual practice like Hatha Yoga, Zazen, and even Martial Arts, or any kind of Dancing, helps greatly in getting to know the body. To welcome the body, be in the body, and be the body, helps us re-discover and experience the Oneness between mind and body. The spiritual presence underneath and within all, is more easily discerned when the energies of the body are welcome, balanced, and perceived by us.

What I'm speaking about here is a very far cry from idolizing the body, or any form of emotional (positive or negative) attachment to it. You need not look in the mirror once to love and accept the physical structure you have at your disposal. Live through this flesh and give it the honor it deserves, but allow also its decline by age and any disfigurements from accidents and disease. These are as natural as its strength, beauty, and agility, and may teach us to seek in the right place. All we need to understand really, is that some disabled persons are happier than the girls on the catwalk, and we need to look there no further.

By making it a daily practice to make aware our breathing, or our placing of the feet on the ground, we establish a connection with the body energy, and the surrounding air or soil. Whenever we find ourselves repeating or listening to a superfluous stream of thoughts (typically a reprisal) we will gain a lot by moving focus instead to the temple of our being – the body, and listen in to the silent sermon held at all times in the halls of nerve, sinew, muscle, and bone. In such a way we may come to remember the secrets of the Earth, from which our bodies sprang and are sustained.

"For in him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)

The Eternal Subject

We have this idea that we can study life and reality. But while doing so we forget that our closest access to Life is not the object of our studies, but the one who studies. The act of studying is Reality and Life in progress. It is a live, first-person perspective of Life. The greatest way to understand Life is to observe observation and to be aware of awareness. It is Meditation.

This experience of awareness, which is what lets us know that we are, is not an object but a subject. It is actually misleading to say a subject, because then we pin it down, and regard it as an object. When we picture ourselves as objects, we move from the experience of being, into thinking about being, which is hugely different, and may be very misleading.

Awareness (subject), as we experience it, without thinking about it, really has no form. Looking in the mirror we see a body, but that form is nothing like the experience of awareness. Cutting a head open we see a brain, but that form is nothing like awareness either. When someone pinches our arms, or tickles our feet, we are aware of it. If someone bangs our heads to the wall we might lose conscious awareness for a while, and so we tend to draw the conclusion that awareness is in our brains. But is that really the case?

If we pull the pedals out of a car it no longer functions, but does that mean its ability to move is in the pedals? What else is required to make the car move? When we split reality into objects we attribute functions to objects. We say that lamps shine, plants grow, and that cows produce milk, but is that really the case? To produce the thoughts which rise in your consciousness right now, what do you need?

Water, food (plants/animals), sunlight, heat, gravity, electricity, an atmosphere, oxygen, space, a planet. These are some of the constituents of a human being. We can lose our eyes, our legs, a kidney, our memory, even our sanity, and yet survive. But if we lose any of the above, we instantly die. If it wasn't for these and the context we find ourselves in (the input) neither thoughts nor emotions would appear. Isolate a brain in the remotes of space, and I can assure you, it would neither think nor show signs of awareness. Without oxygen most car engines don't work, and without a ground on which to roll, wheels don't do much good. Lamps can't produce light. Lamps can only channel the electricity and power of the Universe and help produce light. That is what lamps do.

Looking at the world through a tube doesn't make us the tube. Feeling the heat upon the skin, doesn't make us the skin. We now go back to awareness, the very thing that tells us that there is being - I AM. But what is it that IS... aware? Instead of looking at awareness like an object, know it as subject. Experience awareness, which is you. Try to stay aware of awareness while objects and thoughts come and go. Do this often, and don't answer the question about what subject is, with your mind, because you can't grasp your Self like that. You cannot catch your own tail.

Awareness is acquainted through awareness. By paying attention to the infant of you, you incite it into communication and growth. A new, ancient root is waiting to be rediscovered. It yearns to sprout into its fullness of being – what we may call, The Christ inside.

When we no longer allow the forms of the world to bewitch us, we rest in the Oneness of Him.

By Paul:

“For we have many parts in one body, but these parts do not all have the same function. In the same way, even though we are many people, we are one body in the Messiah and individual parts connected to each other.” (Romans 12:5)

By Lao-Tzu (Approx 4-6^th century B.C.)
"The reason that can be reasoned is not the eternal Reason.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The Unameable is of heaven and earth the beginning.
The Nameable becomes of the ten thousand things the mother.
Therefore it is said:

'He who desireless is found
The spiritual of the world will sound.
But he who by desire is bound
Sees the mere shell of things around.'

These two things are the same in source
but different in name.
Their sameness is called a mystery.
Indeed, it is the mystery of mysteries.
It is the door of all spirituality. "

(Lao-Tzu. “Reason's Realisation”. The Teachings of Lao-Tzu, The Tao Te Ching. Rider. Singapore. Revised edition. 1999 Paul Carus. p.30)

Thy Will Be Done

When making these images, I try to reduce myself from the equation. The only thing I bring into them willingly is the "from the center and out" composition. Apart from that I ignore what's happening in the process of painting. This is not to say that I don't care, but I accept any color and form that shows up, and I try to avoid judging them. By letting go of my own preferences and ideas of what painting, balance and good art is, the canvas becomes a field of practise. I learn letting go. I learn being present, and I learn acceptance, which is almost the same thing. You can't have one without the other.

This is a meditative approach which I (when I remember to) use as often as I can, in every field of life where it is possible. Painting is a good place to practise, because nothing important can go wrong, and it is really challenging for an artist to stay detached from the art.