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.

God Can't Change... His Mind

All that is subject to change is born and die away. The Lord doesn't. If God was subject to change He would constitute no salvation. If we, in some way, could convince Him to change His “mind”, we wouldn't be able to trust Him. He would then be a pawn to the strongest will, or best rhetoric, just like you and I. 

It is the Eternal nature of The Lord that makes Him worthy of our adoration, and our deepest Love. He is the One mountain that will never yield to the winds of change. He is the Infinite sea from which all waves rise and fall.

Many people believe God to be fickle. They envision Him listening carefully to their prayers, and then after some consideration, responding to their desires. They picture God as someone who bends down to the drama of Man and makes decisions based on our strengths and shortcomings - rethinking His policy with the turn of every tide.

How can a Father like that please anything but our personal and egoistical agendas? God saw me, he heard my cries, and because of my honesty and need, he took pity on my soul. Isn't that an extremely self-centered way of thinking? The neighbor just died from cancer, and children not far from here are drugged and sold as sex slaves. Try; In my cries, because I gave an honest voice to my need, I was fortunate to experience God, and experiencing God I was healed.

Now, it may be, that what I'm saying suggests a very dull Lord, one who is closer to a natural force, like gravity, than something alive, like a Person. I believe both of these ideas to be misleading. The picture of a magnet may be clarifying: You, a small shard of the greater Magnet, twitch and turn in your prayer, shedding some of the covering dirt (ego) you have gathered over the years, and thus, you make possible for the Magnet proper to attract you. You have moved within reach. It feels now as if He is doing the work, but He always pulled you to Him with the same strength. Only due to the circumstances, and your willingness to come before Him, are you now able to experience His presence. Perhaps this may even cause changes to the events around you, because all things move around Him. But it is not due to a change in Him, but rather the re-alignment between you.

Everyone alive know that strange things happen. The natural world we inhabit is not apart from Him, and though our societies may be horrendous and insane, His presence shines through them. The Universe is highly dynamic and reflects a dynamic aspect of the Lord. He is everywhere, and it is His very being (not will) that causes all events and phenomena. Aligned with Him we live in Paradise. Separated from Him we move through Hell. This is not because the Lord wills it, but because He IS (what is). When we refuse to partake in Him, or hide in a reality of our own ego-centric and individualistic making, we fail hellishly. The Universe can't sustain illusion. That's where all the pain comes from. It is a skewed perspective, that paints a demonic face upon the Eden countenance of God. The Bible calls it His judgment, and even His wrath, but there is no malice or punishing mind behind this hammer. It is simply the result of our ignorance, and His inevitable nature. He is love Eternal.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

We are plants that can either grow into Loving Union with Him, or turn dry dead in the misconception and refusal of His Light. From an isolated perspective the surrounding world becomes an enemy of me. Through earnest meditation, prayer, and love we heal that imagined disjunction, and reality is made clear to us. His eternal work (being) becomes our own. Through us, as persons, His being becomes action. Look at action spawned from such Unity, and behold; there is the will of God, adapting to the situation at hand, healing the world, so that its waves may be a never-ending melody, in tune with His unchanging essence.

When I now pray; May He help us find His will inside of us, it is not so that He may hear me, but so that I may better hear Him. The Lord doesn't need our prayers, but when we perform them sincerely, His voice reaches its audience, and transforms it into his leaves. We shouldn't pray for God to shape the world into our image, but for us to accept being shaped into His. This is not watching the world being destroyed and calling it the work of the Lord, but to see God's Love in everything, and to shape the world stage for its Artistry.

Existence Exists

There is one fact that simply can't sink deep enough into our understanding, and that is the two word headline of this post: existence exists. We tend to take it for granted 99,9% of the time, and yet we have not even come close to fathom its significance. Pondering this one fact alone can lead to a great awakening.

Reality, that which IS, might not have been at all, and if it had it could have been something else entirely – something gray, dull, mechanical, and flat. If possible, try to see this not from the perspective through which you survey and judge the objects of existence, but from outside of it. I ask you to look at existence itself – at its inevitable and miraculous being. Yes, here. Take a small step outside of yourself and behold it directly. This is what IS. There is no other story. There is no other reality. This is how IS-ness IS, and it actually and fully IS.

Stay, if you may and like, with this one fact for a couple of days. Exclude to the level you can all other worries, questions, considerations etc. Meditate upon being Existence. Ponder the nature of Existence, not its physical nature, possible illusory aspect, or any detail of it at all. Look at existence itself. It is.

I repeat the same thing over and over because it is very likely that you do not see what it means. Existence exists. In the mind existence is treated like an object like any other, but existence/reality isn't an object. It is what IS. We therefore have to let the fact sink in deeply. This is how it looks, smells, tastes, feels, and sounds right now. Yes, it does look, smell, taste, feel and sound. We know it, but we normally do not grasp it. We have to detach ourselves from the “inside of existence” perspective through which we typically perceive the world, and behold existence as existence.

Let us taste the full impact of these two words, and keep doing so. Until we laugh out loud and long at what they say, we have not managed to comprehend their fullness. We have not fully seen that...

We are.

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!

Words of the Wordless - 1

The Light of Evening

Impossible to share
Walking by the lake
In a crescent moon evening

Unwrapped of thought

And freed from self
He hums with joyous Spirit

If the beasts of myth
Crawled onto the shore
In that elated hour of magic

He'd marvel no more,
Than at the already strong,
Sublime, and gracious Presence