We are all Interconnected even with the Universe

In the Buddha’s teachings, the opening of the awareness of the Original Mind and interbeing of life occurs when the non-dualistic cognitive based subject/object separation and alienation ceases. This enlightened awareness of life is fundamentally different from observing, fixating, contemplating and comprehending the objectification of standing apart. To become aware means to transform one’s cognitive structures to regain and repose within the oneness of the original unity of life. Instead, the untransformed, normal cognitive consciousness distorts and veils the original reality because of the separation that is created through the dualistic manufacturing by the subject/object dichotomization. The dualistic thought patterns veil the Original Mind by the entrenchment through which one orientates to life, by trying to manacle life, even though life is always metamorphosing – frustration and suffering naturally follow. The unthinkable letting go of dualism and the belief in the substantial ‘I’ begins when one understands the deceptions created by one’s habitual patterns of thought and consciousness. Only through the transformation and transcendence of these cognitive patterns will the fruitfulness of the Original Mind, also referred to as Buddha Mind, consciousness pattern become unveiled.

The focus of all spiritual practice transformation becomes lifting this inner state of mind, which is normally relegated to the background of human experience, out of a secondary role and give it the rightful primary role. Only when this veiled consciousness is rediscovered, accepted and lived through can the process of becoming aware of the primal unity of life operate. This becoming aware of the source is created by letting go of all the distorting cognitive constructions in which we are usually infatuated and tightly cling to. This includes letting go of the ‘I’, which only clings and tries to preserve itself, never letting go and refusing to completely trust. Once this is accomplished, the alienation in which our ignorance has led us can never fully return.

The Buddha Mind quietly and unconsciously urges our transformation, which allows us to live life not through our self concepts but through understanding non-self. By opening and accepting oneself to this urging, a new obliging awareness develops and transforms the way we live in accordance with the new insights. This maturing towards the Buddha Mind requires a seeking and accepting of transformation. One must lose one’s self’ to find the Original Mind. The conscious spiritual training to achieve the Original Mind cannot be subverted into ego and skill training for worldly success, mastery and reputation. For example, often yoga body training practices have little to do with the original intent of inner healing and integrating work, but become only methods to increase one’s relaxation, health and willpower.  There is little to gain for one’s inner development and transformation from the exercise of the body, which perceives from an objective distance the physique as an object to manipulate, ignoring one’s awareness of the whole person. Instead, inner development can be achieved when one does not treat the body in an objective way, but as a sensitive, responding life-providing organism. Then one acquires a foundational routine to follow the true meaning of practice, beginning when the practitioner learns, by means of breathing, to exercise holistically the mind/body and not just the body.

Unfortunately, in modern times people mostly look only for a method of achieving relaxation without giving much thought to the corresponding tension. This perspective reflects an alienation and life ignorance; a belief that the only deliverance from the harmful consequences of habitual stress patterns is a total dissolving of stress effects through total relaxation. But this does not provide a way out of the tension-relaxation vicious circle, i.e. this approach to relaxation culminates in soft, helpless dissolution, and the person in question immediately falls back into harmful patterns. This approach becomes a life sentence; the interaction of harmful tension and complete slackness. Instead, beneficial relaxation exists only when one feels the correct balance of right tension and right relaxation. This will fill a person with vitality. The waking state tensions necessary for normal existence in the world will be properly sustained and become productive and nurturing. This balance is accomplished by the liberation felt when one understands one’s part of a greater interbeing and the rigid, static, oppositional sense of self-boundaries are removed. By transcending into the completely conscious, yet selfless, condition of a Buddha Mind, one feels safe and serene with one’s whole being.

The pervasive misunderstanding and suffering created by believing in a factual, indisputable ‘I’, and subject/object consciousness, is a crucial factor of human life. On it depends a person’s relation to the world and to his or herself.  Unfortunately, the study of Western philosophy and psychology mostly yields a narrow point of view, which exacerbates the difficulty of a person achieving a valid transcendent understanding of the self. These disciplines usually teach the doctrine of self, or ‘I’, denoting an awareness of a firmly held identity which includes three factors: First, there is a stability and permanence of the self throughout all life changes. Second, one’s ‘I’ or self is unique from everything else. Third, there is a clear separation of the subject from the object, or ‘other’. Therefore, in the consciousness of the normal person who firmly believes in their ‘I’, there is a splitting off from the primal unity of life which lies beyond the pairs and duality of opposites. Once a person says I am ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’, their life is experienced through the comparisons of opposites: subject and object, before and after, above and below, mind and body, etc.. Every effort to categorize and rationalize the reality of the human condition drives one first to one poll and then to the other. Even more, they experience the deep dichotomy between the static ‘I’, entrenched within the habitual cognitive patterns, and their Original Mind, which constantly urges transformation and development. Therefore, without being shown the way from the standpoint of the transcendental, it is impossible to understand how to achieve Original Mind.

Every person’s Original Mind is veiled by the structure of the consciousness which is based on two poles of opposites, with consciousness in the middle. This cognitive pattern, centered on the ‘I’ and based on subject/object opposites, not only conceals the Buddha Mind but also, with its narrowness and misconception, conceals our intimate longing to return to the Buddha Mind. Without the right development and transformation of ego states, there can be no liberating experience of the transcendental unity of life. Without the regaining of the awareness of this unity, humans suffer and can never experience true happiness, fulfillment and peace. The longing for release from suffering, created by the ‘I’, can inspire humans to reflect upon the nature and structure of what is confining them, and to seek a higher form of realization and actualization. This reflection is the prerequisite for the way which will lead one out of their dominating self belief, towards a right orientation of ego maturity development and an integration with the Original Mind.

The conventional ego is mainly concerned with and actively promotes what can be called ‘grasping’ and ‘attachment’. When one thinks I am ‘I’, and establishes their identity, becoming a fixed object, one creates a perspective or point of view, thereby establishing a boundary to a complex of things identified in the world as approved or opposed to oneself. With this immature development of the ego, one creates a necessity to make an affiliation in the ego and an objectification of an established world. Then, as the ego begins to mature through transformations, it reconfigures its autonomy. This is both a static and dynamic significance in that a person can recoup the ‘I’ position to regain integrity, but also explore and update one’s view of the objective world. With continuing maturation, the individual’s ego can preserve its sense of being throughout all changes. Finally, the capacity for self-revealing and self-restraining makes the transformed mature ego not a rigid point, but have the capacity for movement around a secure axis. This allows for the capacity for change without the dissolution of the individual form, whereas the immature ego is impaired by being rigidified due to too much of the ego’s function of grasping, avoidance and attachment. The immature person clings tenaciously to what has been established and obtained, fearing and threatened by opposition, and any alteration to their secure circumstances or positions. When the world and others naturally dispute their self-constructed propositions, roles and beliefs, they attempt to defend them by obstinately fortifying their perspectives and circumstances ever more resolutely. Therefore, actions and concerns are habituated by fixed ideas of likes/dislikes, good/bad, etc., which, in one’s mind correspond to some comprehensible and indisputable ideal of perfection. They must always catalog, classify, and try to correct and make things better according to their indisputable ideals. This creates a constant vexation; because life does not often comply with one’s ideals and there is a frequent incompatibility with the belief of the perfection that one feels ‘must be’. Demoralized or driven by desperation of the apparent injustice and maltreatment of life, one easily becomes alienated and embittered, which eventually destroys all puerile belief in a cherished inherent justness and fairness of life.

In social relationships the immature individual is egotistic and selfish, finding it problematic to empathize and put oneself in another’s place. They find it troublesome to be open and accede to another person because, lacking maturity, they are afraid of experiencing disappointment and perceived discredit by acquiescing. Instead, since they think/act in an egotistical manner of accepting only what pleases them and tenaciously maintaining their position of likes and dislikes, of winner/loser, they not only cut themselves off from the influences flowing in from the outside but also from expressing their own creative potentials. As their personality stagnates by not maturing, no amount of success in the world can satisfy the inner craving for indisputable success. Therefore, out of encapsulation, they never even get to know the possible mature and nurturing people in the community.

Rigidity of the ego shell is one of the malformations of the afflicting ‘I’, and integration with the refuge and shelter of the Buddha Mind is absent. If a success is created, the ignorant person attributes it only to their egotistic efforts, which only strengthens and heightens the wall separating them from not only maturity, but realization of their own Buddha Mind. With each success, fear, distrust and emptiness often increase in this type of person to the same extent that they become admired and envied by others. The opposite personality, by being in contact and living through the Original Mind, openness, friendliness and courage, and any destructive tensions and obstructed forces are resolved. They develop and enjoy a positive, creative attitude, that guarantees an ability with which to master life in a new and different way. They become a spiritual being who seeks something beyond and above a fixed, grasping and unassailable worldly existence. They actualize, in a seemingly mysterious way, by updating and renewing their ego schematization, as well as liberating and integrating the Original Mind.

The spiritually mature person recognizes that there are two levels of living: there is the level of the common accepted worldview, and that of the transcendental view. In fact, a person can realize the transcendental life only by living in the natural world, and one’s natural worldview can include healthy commonsense understandings and scientific knowledge. The world of absolute space and time is considered an aspect of this natural world, and if one becomes skillful and knowledgeable only in the world of space and time and the duality of subject and object, then one becomes alienated from knowing the original unity. To the extent that a person entrenches oneself in the veracity of the natural worldview, the truth of the transcendental remains veiled. It is possible to begin to discern and live by the insight of transcending space-time through the unveiling of the Original Mind by honoring, and not ignoring or denying, the awareness of the intuition drawing us towards the transcendental. Therefore, the unenlightened mind very subtly experiences a tension between the ever present, yet veiled, transcendental Original Mind, which is beyond space and time, and the encapsulated ego with a life embedded in apparent space and time, and its awareness fluctuating between subject and object. How one lives their life can lead to an intensification of this tension, or a resolving of it by transcending the conventional and by embracing the mysterious. If it becomes the latter, a person can attain a new vision which surpasses as well as gives new meaning to the natural worldview.

There can be no understanding of the subjective nature of the personal reality without some awareness of the unconditional reality of the Original Mind. One has no clarification of the foreground structure of their ego centered consciousness until one accesses the background emptiness of the transcendental. Yet this reflection and insight necessarily starts from the natural worldview. This is a seeming paradox, but all progress of the inner cognitive transformation to realizing the Original Mind is dependent on experience, insight and practice. There can be no progress on the way to integration with the Original Mind without bhavana, which means development or cultivating the subjective process of transforming mental states.  However, cultivation without insight is just short-lived and easily uprooted, while insight without practice is unproductive. Therefore, there are three important factors for correct perusal of the inner cultivation: awareness, insight and practice. These necessitate an inward shift towards awareness of life in the present. Right living is the cultivation of a new attitude to life through which relatedness to the Original Mind can be awakened and fortified. When one replaces the importance of their worldly ego, its conventional working pattern is no longer the sole guide to the recognition of reality. Life can then disclose different horizons, gain new dimensions, and increase in breadth, height and depth. What was understood before will have a new perspective and meaning. The previously confined and suffering self, entranced in its subjectivity, will eventually evaporate into emptiness, and the mind, previously chained to the static intellectually comprehensible, is lifted to the level of ultimate incomprehensibility.

Tension and Relaxation

The modern person rarely presents a picture of a harmonious alternation between tension and relaxation. Instead, they live in constant alternation between hypertension and inertness. Even the frequently practiced relaxation exercises of today are often misused, i.e. the person suffering from excessive stress and tension seeks these exercises merely for the pleasant tranquilizing sensation of relaxation and slackness, offering only temporary reduction from excessive tension. When these relaxation techniques are used, they are little better than Band-Aids for the deeper condition. Their function becomes only the enabling of living with a certain impunity in one’s immature, unwholesome attitudes and lifestyles, thereby avoiding the one thing that is needed: finding and living the inner way to the Original Mind.

When asked by an aspirant what was the correct approach to meditation, the Buddha said it is like playing a string instrument; if the strings are too tight the sound is not good; if the strings are too lack, also the sound is not produced in a positive way; it is only when the strings have a proper tension that the sound is correct.

This is the same with our practice of right tension and relaxation through which we find the source of vitalization of the inner way. It is not used for merely seeking physical comfort or to increase the ego power. To properly follow the transcendental path, we again recognize the two levels regarding the development of right tension and relaxation: the worldly and the transcendental. As we know, every person is already the Buddha Nature, but because the person still regards the self as something real and substantial, they entrust their lives in it. However, in the background is always the intuition of the experience of the Original Mind and, as mentioned before, this separation from the Original Mind produces a basic tension in life. The release of this tension is imperative for the integration of the transcendence of self into the Original Mind. When we unveil our innermost part, one discovers the guiding principle for the practice of right relaxation and tension.

When it comes to the inner way, the practice of relaxation has a completely different meaning. Instead of focusing on reactionary de-stressing, it aims at liberation from the peonage to the worldly ego, and leads one towards a progressively deepening awareness of the original interbeing of life. In normal life, tension naturally arises as impulses of psychic/physical energy when the intention of the self is converted into goals and their attainment. Indeed, the filtering cognitive apparatus constructing and imagining the representational world creates for each person a fictional, conceptually ordered, dualistic reality provoking a personal system of like and dislike, good and bad, tension and relaxation. Not only does everything that one encounters set up the discriminating and grasping function and a relation of tension with the ‘I’, in addition, another tension is created when the self evaluates and judges if performances are successful or not. After experiencing self-created heightened tension, one longs for a corresponding relaxation.

Thus important in the development of an inner way practice is freeing oneself, by transcendence, from these persistent self conditioned harmful tensions. They keep one from unveiling the Original Mind since one is constantly on the alternation of exaggerated heightened tension and slothful relaxation. Instead, with the unfolding of the inner way, one experiences the deep malleable calm and refuge of the Original Mind. Then, one’s whole life becomes infused with the intention of unveiling the Buddha Mind. Nevertheless, the achievement of this goal is hindered by the strong tensions stimulated particularly by the rigid, crystallized self’s worldly life. Through generated and exaggerated tensions, provoked by the static self, one’s total life is shaped by psychological burdens – some fresh and urgent, others old and long-standing – as well as by desires and intentions, and the accompanying opposites. Tension becomes excessive, habitual and chronic, leaving one not only distorted and ill by the excessive mental activity and psychosomatic tensions, but it also prevents the unveiling of the Buddha Mind.

Only when one has practiced and realized, even incompletely, the refuge of the Original Mind, can one come to reflect on, and know, how insidious the effects of those tensions are, and how difficult it is to free oneself from them once the originating reactive patterns have become habitual. Every tension represents a bent inclination of the whole being, and every tension begs the need for contrasting relaxation. The disturbance which manifests as harmful tension is the clinging to the fractional, biased one-sidedness which upsets the whole. For example, by tenaciously clinging to a certain abstracted position, this obsession with an accompanying certain desire becomes even more hardened by the fear of contrasting dissatisfaction or loss. This creates an inability to get free from forms of aggression, resentment or compulsion, consciously held fast by the ‘I’, or self-fixation. However, even though access is blocked when tensions have become ingrained, in the background of the ever alternating foreground of polarity and psychological affliction is the Original Mind, which strives for calm, harmony and wellbeing. As soon as the access to the transcendental capacity, coming from the ground of being, is realized, there is also the possibility of maturing and gaining insight and release from the tormenting nightmare of ignorance.

In further analysis, there are two kinds of tension associated with the self: the immediate fleeting wants, and those which have become habitual. The latter is an unconscious domination of harmful tension in which the sufferer has a rigid and egocentric ‘I, Me, Mine’ relation to existence. Such a permanent, compulsive tension may be the result of a trauma, an inner pressure from guilt or fear, a perceived unmet need or an inability to make relational contact with others. In such cases the person is always in the grip of something they cannot effectively cope with, while being acutely aware of their own helplessness and suffering. Such latent tensions are kept active by thought and are heightened to breaking point whenever a compelling situation arises. However, there is release when the sufferer allows oneself to remain in equanimity, and not react in either like or dislike to what the stimulus is. Through this practice of restraint, one begins to be aware that the fundamental reason for one’s rigidity, strain and stress lies within oneself. Nevertheless, even after realizing that one’s tensions and fears for their own existence are created by only one’s self, one still may not be able to effectively cope with this misery. It is only by following the inner way and learning the complete calm of equanimity at the deepest level, that one can be free of the unhealthy self-generated tensions. The awareness of relaxation’s inner meaning, not merely for the relief of reactionary bodily symptoms, is developed by applied daily mindful relaxation. One can eventually let go of grasping and judging, and thereby neutralize the exacerbated tension, transcending the static self’s demands. This can be done only when practiced in a right frame of mind/body.

Eventually, with consistent experience of a conscious, yet selfless, ‘no-thing’ condition, one can return to transcendent consciousness with one deep breath. With practicing relaxation, when done during the day’s normal activities, one finds positive results of this practice with an increase in efficiency and health. For example, when performing many types of common actions like walking, sitting, standing, or eating, one does them in present-based awareness and calmness. This enables one to notice, and correct instantly, any harmful tensions. Only when constantly assessed in an everyday life can this relaxation be experienced as the right interplay between natural, not ego driven, tension and relaxation. People often look mainly for ways and means of achieving right relaxation without giving much analysis to what is right tension. This reflects our entanglement with a life of heightened tension, from which the only deliverance seems to be totally dissolving or relaxing of the physical/mental conditions creating it. However, this provides no way out of the vicious circle. It is useless when the practitioner, immediately after the relaxation exercise, regresses back into harmful tensions. Right relaxation occurs when the practitioner has the understanding of the deeper figure/ground, from which all ego tension arises and strives from. Without this understanding, relaxation is purely physical exercises aimed at only mechanical relaxation needed to counteract the unhealthy tension created by the adamant self.

The Buddha Mind or the Original Mind is rarely experienced by especially over-stimulated, tense modern people. But, it is the only effective release, by using the inner way, from the persistent stress and anxiety created by the illusionary, yet strident, self. Instead, the unique person who taps into the wellspring of right action is filled with the vitality of the Buddha Mind, and understands that right daily practice actually means the right interaction of relaxation and tension as expressed through the Original Mind. They feel released and set free from the self-generated heightened tensions, while the necessary tension for normal existence is properly sustained. They become successful in life by creating maturity and liberation from the encapsulated egotistical self, and the interaction of harmful tension and slackness is replaced.

In the beginning of the inner way, breath meditation can be used. As one is accustomed, breathing is an exercise of the body which a person perceives objectively. In such observing, one comprehends by standing apart. In the beginning of practice, the body is seen as something to manipulate and set right. A certain routine becomes the foundation of future practice, and the correct diaphragm breathing taught is beneficial for one’s physical health and life in the world. Then, a second stage begins when the practitioner perceives that breathing is actually a holistic practice. This means the emphasis is not merely on the mechanical drawing and exhaling of breath, but the fundamental movement of the living whole person, affecting the entire world of the body and cognitive functions. With proper breathing, one releases exaggerated tension and corrects any slack relaxation, and eventually, by understanding their former wrong attitudes, lets go of unwholesome habitual patterns of thought and body posturing. With right relaxation, the feeling becomes a more refined awareness of vitality working within us. Once the individual unveils the Original Mind, one clearly comes to know that body-only training practices have little to do with healing and integrating work.

The Original Mind is the inner consciousness beyond space and time. By becoming aware of the original mind, one becomes effectively aware of the alienation into which the misconceived self-consciousness has led him/her, and only then will they be able to approach and draw again on the wellsprings of life. With the second stage of the practice of breathing, the aspirant learns to free themselves from the rigid shell of the ego as a reference point, allowing them to transform their experience. This maturing is achieved by becoming, by the letting go of the self, by admitting change and transformation; living life not through the subjective, limited and illusionary cognitively based concepts, but by losing the previous habitual self through the ready surrender of the old and acceptance of the new: The practitioner must learn to lose oneself in order to find oneself. The self has taught them to cling and preserve, never letting go. The significance of the second stage is the realization that if they lose their illusionary self they will recover the Original Mind.

The meaning of the third stage is the blissful knowing and building the experience of participation in the Original Mind. At the third stage one has begun and continues to transcend the opposites.

In summary, in the beginning of the inner path, there is the ‘I am ‘I’’, who possesses a body which breathes wrongly, and which must be taught to breathe correctly. Then comes the gradual reduction of ‘I am ‘I’’, in which one feels one’s self as a sentient being connected with great interbeing of life. Finally, in the third phase, comes the supreme experience of the total participation in the greater life of the Original Mind.

While one physically lives in conventional time/space and becomes skillful in the historical world, the Original Mind needs also to be known and expressed. To do this, the whole center of perspective is shifted to a person transcending one’s self with the Original Mind, in which one partakes of life without compulsively measuring, classifying and judging. This is the way to maturity, inner mastery, inner growth. The inner way yields results in proportion to the success of integrating consciousness with Original Mind. Hindrances to this are the very structures, the very habits of the cognitive apparatus, which have complete control of a person’s life. When the practice reveals the domination of the conceptual self, or ‘I’, and begins to unveil the Original Mind, maturity, which is the breaking down of the small ‘I’, the self of grasping of attraction and aversion of rejection, fears etc., transcends identification and views, and moves to acceptance and unfolding of Original Mind. One lives understanding both the historical and transcendental world.

Since the historical development of the ego is the first and primary influence, one’s concerns can easily remain dominated by mastery of the historical world. This one sided view is dominated by the self’s intention to survive and grow with a life. The transcendental world is veiled and ignored. Ignorance of the mechanism for the transformation leads to the specific human unhappiness and alienation. This suffering of ignorance is different from the unhappiness of the unfulfillment of sense pleasures and desires. Once awakened to the contrast of the historical and transcendental world, one cannot totally ignore it, and it becomes a tension. It becomes essential, therefore, that we continue to realize the awareness of the Original Mind by transforming our ordinary daily life to promote our inner work. Our worldly efforts then become the means of inner practice.

The self is preoccupied with maintaining its secure position and competent functioning in the historical world. Man survives in the world by means of a consciousness in which crystallized concepts organize life into rigid structures or schemas. Through these filtering ‘glasses’ a person perceives the world rationally and logically, and orders it according to fixed values, and masters it systematically. This veils awareness of the Original Mind. At the center of the historical life stands the self which is solely preoccupied in establishing and classifying facts; around it constantly revolves its worldly desires. It assumes an attitude of autonomy and sovereignty. With these fixed points of view, the world is divided into a dualism of self-world/other-world, subject/object, etc.. While a person needs an ego to skillfully manage the historical world, the predominance of the self-centered structure of consciousness, with its claims of supremacy, distorts a person’s connection with existence, in which there is an apperception of oneness to be realized with experience, insight and practice.

Immaturity and ignorance creates foolishness and is unhappiness. At root of why many people seek psychotherapy is a clear example of spiritual sickness, and hence suffering, i.e. alienation from life. Immaturity causes suffering to self and others. Instead, the inner refuge experience needs validation, moments of acceptance, and support by activities that can be used as an opportunity for practice, equanimity and calm awareness within.

The egotistic life is always seeking to thrill itself in the various ways available through the sensual materialistic life, and it varies in the intensity of addiction for satisfaction, but the feedback loop is continuous and based on the subject/object duality. By maturing, one opens to the mysterious sense of something more beyond the explicit world. The Original Mind is present in one’s own being, and the effort is to learn how to not only unveil the original, but remain there and live life through that purified conscience while transcending and discarding defilements that hinder the realization and maintenance of this state in everyday life.

There becomes a new awareness regarding how we continually stress our body in the rational daily world, over taxing it with continual requirements and judgments. Body training is narrowed down to development and maintenance of physical efficiency within those demands and, to be healthy is to function smoothly and well within the context of the demands. With the material view, we turn ourselves and other people into objects or pieces of the fragmented world. We are therefore obliged to categorize, fit into and function in this rigid world view. However, to understand the body in context of the Original Mind, there lies a mind/body holistic view. It is the only perspective which allows for a corrected view that the body is not merely an objective thing, but a sensitive participator embedded in life. Once we begin to transcend, we see life and ourselves truly as they are – continually transforming, never rigid. Life is always in process of becoming. So it is with physical beings in time/space. But the Original Mind is not of time/space.

The everyday activity practice for the removal of hindrances takes away what stands in the way of revealing our Original Mind, by building up everything that makes it accessible, and preserving this access. Obstructions are created by rigidity. Since it is a diligent transformation, to attempt to ignore it stops transformation and creates suffering. The worldly self-developed from childhood create the habit of like/dislike, want/not, etc.. When the world threatens to not conform to one’s idea or disappoints, then reactions are habitual mindlessness and reactive. Therefore the reactions are stereotyped, and while well learned, are often outdated, nonsensical and unskillful within new situations. With practice in the physical and practice in the spiritual, one matures and begins to view and respond within the framework of maturity of the Original Mind. The reactions and actions become very different, i.e. wise and compassionate.

As one experiences themselves and others as part of the system, rationally ordered with a fixed, static position, one turns themselves and other people into objective pieces of the world. And, as such, need to fit into and function within this rigid, orderly world. However, once we transcend and understand the relativity and subjectivity of those developed cognitive structures, we are no longer stupefied and enmeshed therein.

Practice towards realizing the Original Mind requires a deemphasizing sense of preoccupation and reaction. One is led to the relinquishing of the grasping and attachment to the sensory world. Once we have experienced and understand better our Original Mind, we begin to see the integration of all. So in the midst of our life, in the historical world, we become aware of the interconnectedness of everything. We recognize the vital importance of our inner experience, and accept and support the awareness and consciousness of our Original Mind. Transformation of our ego consciousness affects our whole person, our respect for our self, and others. The whole person is the result.

As long as one lives only for sense-based happiness and security in the historical world, one is unable to find the Original Mind. However, while remaining involved with the historical world, one can reframe and transform quietly to accept the incomprehensible and the mysterious. Transformation concerns the person’s attitudes that are unwholesome, hindrances and create heightened tension/slackness. Heightened – in the grip of the ego that is constantly concerned with its own security and progress. Slackness – the retreat to excessive reactive relaxation creating lack of balanced effort and responsibility towards the path.

The path on the inner transcendental way releases one from pride, the desire to dominate, the fear of displeasure and the longing for security. One relaxes, without being slack, and right tension is achieved. Hypertension comes from the obligations of the world ego, once we transcend the world ego, we release hypertension. Serenity is based on knowing and living through the Original Mind. The natural mind is one of simplicity, harmony and friendliness, and acting in a fearless way, freely without prejudice. The experience of Original Mind is to experience the oneness within existence. The discovery of the Original Mind is necessary to open life and accept and integrate as it is. For when the world ego veils and is alienated from Original Mind, the hindering effect of unwholesome ingrained habits brings on the suffering inherent in such alienation, and a longing for deliverance.

A spiritual practise means transcending the cognitive patterns that create our ordinary reality. As I discuss in my book, The Buddha’s Radical Psychology: Explorations, one must see through the conventional dualistic dichotomy of the relativistic subject/ object consciousness to welcome the original unity of the Buddha Mind or Original Mind and let it unveil itself into one’s awareness without our wanting or trying to analyse or grasp it. As one unveils and allows the primal unity, which is the background for the myriad foreground cognitive constructions -including that of the ‘I’, me, mine- one finds the true actuality of their humanness which is the pure, undistorted consciousness of the luminous, awakened mind.

When identifying oneself with the ‘I’ and the other multitude of identifications, one’s world is constantly vulnerable to the self-induced tensions created by the perpetually  alternating cognitive pairs of opposites – like/dislike, good/bad, fortunate/unfortunate and so on. When one first intuitively communes with the Buddha Mind, there begins a transcendence of one’s perspective from the subject/object constructed ‘I’. In so, one begins to realize the blessedness inherent in the emptiness of the Buddha Mind where every contradiction is resolved and space/time reality loses its authority. By discovering the Original Mind something decisive happens. Gone is the dependence on the external sense based world which had been regarded as the sole reality and in which the ‘I’ floundered never finding a satisfying worldly foundation or ground and, also, where one’s emotions remain entangled, constantly fluctuating and stressed. Gradually, the world anchored in the ‘I’ becomes recognized as an illusion and remains an illusion as long as it persists as an absolute character. Instead, representing an advanced mature ego stage, is the ego consciousness of the Original Mind -the Emptiness. This stage is only available to one who regards the subjective ‘I’ reality has a mere illusion and one lets go of it. Once the illusion ceases to be the substantive reality, it is understood as the mechanism of cognitive manifestation. Then the relative, subjective ‘I’ reality becomes transparent, and the Original Mind is unveiled. The complete lifting of this illusion becomes the ultimate goal as one progresses on the inner way. The mature person then constantly perceives the Original Mind behind all of their and others cognitively constructed world, like the refraction of light in the prism. By transcending the structure and patterns of ordinary consciousness and breaking through the illusionary patterns of the usual rational consciousness, a person can become one again ‘seeing’ the Original Mind.

While on the practical side, learning to acquire skills and knowledge to successfully thrive within the space/time worldly existence is necessary,but if one’s practice  merely enhances and strengthens the worldly ego, all possibility to transcend the ‘I’ obsession is doomed to failure. While living with ease in the world is indeed a benefit of an integration with the Buddha Mind, this is not a primary aim of practice. Instead, the goal of the transcendental is to overcome the illusion of the dichotomous objective and subjective consciousness and the unveiling of the original unity into one’s awareness without wanting or trying to rationalize and grasp it. Right training in the Middle Way is undertaken only in the service of rediscovering the Original Mind. For, if one’s trainings are directed only toward enhancing their egotistic relation and success in the world, that merely strengthens a person’s illusionary autonomy which serves to only increases one’s estrangement from the Original Mind and the universal truths understood from that perspective. What keeps one alienated from the Original Mind consists not only in being fettered by psychological complexes; the rigidity of habitual cognitive patterns, and debilitating physical propensities but also by the infatuation and dominance of that illusionary point of view. So any renewal is achieved through the transformation of the whole person and this implies not only an intellectual and spiritual conversion but also the transformation of the body and its posture and movements.

The suffering of humans is created because humankind is blinded by their exclusive preoccupation with the dominant world of space/ time and the accompanying illusionary created cognitive manifestations. Instead, with the Original Mind, one comprehends an existence beyond the misconception of the cognitively created world of space and time. This is the way to maturity, the way that yields benefits in proportion to one’s success in integrating with the Original Mind. The obstacles on the inward way are the very cognitive structures of a person’s unexamined consciousness which have complete control of the person’s life experience. The door that opens the experience of the Original Mind is available when the domination of the ‘I’ with it’s companion subject/object perspective is transformed and one’s unfettered consciousness breaks through and contacts the Original Mind- the interbeing of life then becomes understood.

These are two paragraphs from my almost finished book- Realizing our Original Mind. ‘While the self seems real and substantial, our dis-identification practice helps us remember that it consists of only evolving and impermanent patterns in the mind and brain. The self exists in the way that memory allows it to exist. However, like all physical biological processes, it’s existence is transient and illusionary, and thus it is foolish to cling to it. To quote Rick Hanson, ‘Whatever of self there is in the brain, it is compounded and distributed, not coherent and unified; it is variable and transient, not stable and enduring. In other words, the conventional notion of self is a mythical creature.’ When we come to understand that the representations of self are only fictional, which we author and what they represent does not substantially exist, we then can start taking our ‘self’, as the expression goes, ‘with a grain of salt’ or not literally. So, for us to do that, and this is a revolutionary and very important discovery, our mind needs to be trained with some prolonged disciplined practice. The more we study how our mind and brain are intertwined, the more we can use the mind to change the brain, which then supports our future mind. Neuropsychology supports the idea that we have the freedom and possibility to condition and create our particular mind states supported by our nurtured brain structures.

So in the end, after the gradual ripening of the maturation and transformation of our habits, latent tendencies, dis-identification with the subjective ownership of experience, calming and stabilizing our physiology and behavior in our life patterns, we no longer respond immaturely or egotistically to our desires and aversions. Does that mean we become emotionless and detached automatons? No, just the opposite. Instead, we develop the perspective and ability to remain stable, balanced, not susceptible to the quirky ups and downs of our immature selfish emotions and wants. Even for the most accomplished meditator strong emotions can arise, when they do they are observed with the acceptance and objectivity of mindfulness and the stability of equanimity. While emotions can have an impact, it is only momentarily or at best a short time before the stability of calm and dispassion evaporate them away. Through the transformative process, there becomes a greater awareness and respect for our body, serenity of the emotions, increased kindness of the heart, flexible and realistic attitudes, more genuine human relationships growing out of a deeper awareness of our affinity with the web of life and a relinquishing of the Great Poisons of greed, anger and ignorance. We learn not only how to proceed anew but also importantly what we can simplify and do without.’ Look for publication in November, 2016.