from the mind. What is it then? How does it exist?
The appearance of the I as something completely in-dependent of the mind and body is a complete illusion. It is a completely false appearance. And this appearance gives rise to all the afflictions of the mind, all the delusions and resulting karmic actions. This false appearance is the root
of our samsara and our suffering. This false appearance is completely deceptive, and the I that appears to exist in this false way DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL. Thus, the very subtle I that does exist (conventionally) is COMPLETELY EMPTY OF THIS FALSE WAY OF EXISTING. The I is completely empty of independent existence, or of inherent existence.
The I is a mere imputation, a mere label, that depends on the base of the body and mind. Contemplate this strongly. Once you have come to this conclusion, allow all your thinking processes to stop and merely concentrate on this understand-ing with sunderstand-ingle-pointed focus, so that it can penetrate into the deeper levels of your mind.
Suggestions on What to Notice and What to Do under Self-Observation
- That you have many “I’s” , many of which are con-tradictory
- Notice habitual behavior, posture, tics, attitudes, sayings
- Verify sleep
- Verify mechanicalness
- Notice negative I’s especially. Note their frequency:
anger, irritation, criticizing, depression, frustration, boredom, impatience, exasperation, grumpiness, competitiveness, negative inner talk, slander, self-deprecation, despair, hopelessness, violence.
- Note their frequency
- Trace them to their roots in your psychology - Notice habitual “I’s” that say the same things over
and over again
- Recognize your own multiplicity
- Recognize that what you can see that is in you, is a separate you
- Try to realize from the beginning that this separate
“you” is NOT one of the multiplicity.
- Observing, one must keep observing all that the Work teaches
- Try to keep personality passive - Practice inner separation - Speak less
- Remember your aim
- Remember the Work everyday The Work tells you also to notice:
- Lying
- Outright dishonesty, giving people a wrong impres-sion of yourself that is usually flattering, pretending to listen when you are not, pretending to under-stand when you do not, pretending interest or care because it serves you, lying about your status, your knowledge, your merit, manipulating the truth to put yourself in a better light, exaggerating, Identifi-cation, False Personality, Pictures and Imagination, Vanity
- Physical vanity, intellectual vanity, vanity about money, position, power, experience, sexual attrac-tiveness, accomplishment, merit, importance, having some special privilege or secret knowledge, feeling superior to others in some way. Self-deprecation is the flip side of the coin of vanity. It is made up of the same thing.
- Self-centeredness
When you have seen all of these things in yourself, for your-self, you will begin to wake up. When these moments
hap-pen, you will see the state of Sleep and mechanicalness that rules everyone, including you. During this period of ob-servation, there is not much you can do to change what you observe. This is a frustrating stage and it passes slowly. The more you observe, the more presence and strength the observ-ing “I” will have. As you see and verify more often and more clearly, you will not want to continue to manifest from Sleep and mechanicalness. Your will to be conscious and inten-tional and to act with integrity, will be the primary force to help self-observation get rid of the wrong work in your psy-chology. When the Emotional Center is purified of its wrong work, growth in Consciousness is possible.
Check out Your Limits- An exercise in “Intentional Efforts”
If a life path dedicated to the self development is in-tended to overcome our limits,the inner and outer imposi-tions who bring us stuck and unable to do what we really wish to do, it seems obvious that, to achieve the purposed aims need a starting point is needed. And, if we accept the fact that life, so even an inner path, requires a practical guid-ance, then even the starting point must be practical. We can-not get a move driven from hypothesis, doubts, groundless assumptions- we need real and incontrovertible facts.
So, maybe unable to do some “great steps” to a radical changing of the situations, we might begin from something
“less impressive” but also much important; a question. Then, maybe you might begin with ask yourself a simple but rel-evant question:
“What are my limits?”
or:
“What are the limits who take me stuck in the life situation I find myself in this moment?”
Take pen and paper and try to write some questions to this answer. List all the limits you consider prevent to live a fulfilling life, limit from which you want to be emancipated.
Try to write down an inventory in the most detailed complete way, omitting all the limits which resolution depends from
“higher” causes you cannot influence or change.
Now, you have to take a “commitment”, namely to verify in practice every element you listed on paper, testing it carefully to verify its reality. What we ask here, is to “clash”
with all the limitations listed on paper. And much more: if till now you have tried to escape situations who could have put you in a difficult position, now you have to search them.
We ask here to plan your life in the following days in order that every of your limits could be verified without any doubt.
It could seem cruel, frustrating, but it’s also indis-pensable if you want to reach such goal.
But, keep attention: you have to face with your limits, not to stop yourself before this happens. Surely, you will say you have done this yet, maybe it could seem you have done this during the whole your life, facing limits and incapacity to do something.
But, now you have to ask another question: “Have I really faced my limits? Have I really touched those limits, not with an idea, but in practice? Have I really verified a limit, or I have stopped myself maybe a moment before this could happen, before I could experience the suffering of facing my incapacity?”
Many of the listed limits are consequences of a true experience, how many existed even before receiving any kind of confirmation?
And, even admitting that life brought in the passed enough confirms, are you really sure that, in the mid time, something in you does not changed, and that those limits are still effective?
Every day brings wit him some changes, new experi-ences, occasion to experiment and grow. Even our physical body changes every day renewing himself, and, in the same
way, even the environment in which we live changes.
What was of value one month ago, could not be yet of value now. The way I missed something yesterday could have changed me, so today I could react differently when facing the same situation.
What we propose here is concrete and practical. Not ideas but facts. We cannot take in consideration limits who aren’t sure or current. Otherwise, we should use one more time a theory to build another theory, and, finally, maybe with some kind of subtle persuasion, we could even persuade ourselves that we have changed, until a new external situa-tion will demonstrate the opposite.
So, put your pride and convictions aside, and verify the list, proposing yourself to slam the face against every limit present on the list you wrote. If you do it so sincerely, You will discover something unexpected. Be strong, hold out until you experience the impact, and you will discover that some of them just step aside, allowing you to pass trough.
So, you will discover one of the greatest lesson during a path for inner development, a great secret: these limits are not imposed from your life, but just for being convinced that you have limits.
In some moment of your life, you have just accepted this idea (we would not investigate here, because, as said at the beginning, this is a topic dedicated to practice). This idea became an acquired fact, not subjected to any verification.
It just happened, and from that moment, your only preoccupation was to escape every situation who could be related with this limit.
For example, if we “failed” during a job interview and we decide to participate not to another interview, so that we
can evitate similar situations and the following “suffering”, what is really our limit? What is the real cause who limit our life? Our incapacity to find a job or not participate to a job interview? It seems obvious, but it is what we do almost every day:we escape what we consider harmful situations.
How we could hope to resolve, overcome such (or any other) problem (admitting that the problem really exists and that is not a product of our imagination) if we continue to ignore it? Indeed, ignoring an alleged limit does not erase it, on the contrary this behavior confirms his existence.
Our limits are really strange and bizarre: they could conditionate our life, our decisions, but they have not an own life. Without the support of our fears they cannot live, they cannot exist, they vanish as shadows under the sunlight.
Face the problem in a direct way, search, wish, to face it, because, even if you will discover that the limit is real, you will erase the fear. In this moment,the problem will result clear, as it is, not as our fears describe it. This clarity is a good starting point to begin to overcome this problem. Only fac-ing a limit, you can understand the causes and consequently overcome it. Or, (and this is not a rare case) you can realize that this limit was totally unfounded.
A “Rare” Esoteric Exercise
Our mind plays a crucial role in our lives, even in our self development. Indeed, as it could also be the main cause of our state of imprisonment, it could also be a “tool”
to emancipate us from unwanted and troublesome emotional states, and which also can improve our presence and partici-pation in what happens around us.
During the first period of my apprenticeship, it has been taught to me that there are seven basic types of “exer-cises”, of which the training of the mind is the first. Now, in order not to create a misunderstanding, “exercises” here are not intended as a series of things we must do sequentially, but a “practice” that is more a way of being, a way to live in a different, more sober and intense way.
When we speak about a “practice” to improve our mind, we might intend this as a way to make it active, instead of passive: so, learn to use our mind instead of being used by it, as usually happens.
In his book , “Guidance in Esoteric Training”, Rudolf Steiner described a series of practices in which a complemen-tary exercise is just the cultivation of an active mind.
Before sharing a practice which is not this one, but related to it, I would like to cite a very interesting quotation from this book that, linked in a right way and in context with the exercise that will be proposed in this post, a smart mind will surely gain profit in his daily practices. Here’s the quote:
“The first condition is the cultivation of absolutely clear thinking. For this purpose a man must rid himself of the will-o’-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a very short time during the day – about five minutes (the longer, the bet-ter). He must become the ruler in his world of thought. He is not the ruler if external circumstances, occupation, some tradition or other, social relationships, even membership of a particular race, the daily round of life, certain activities and so forth, determine a thought and how he works it out.
Therefore during this brief time, acting entirely out of his own free will, he must empty the soul of the ordinary, everyday course of thoughts and by his own initiative place one single thought at the centre of his soul. The thought need not be a particularly striking or interesting one. Indeed it will be all the better for what has to be attained in an oc-cult respect if a thoroughly uninteresting and insignificant thought is chosen. Thinking is then impelled to act out of its own energy the essential thing here, whereas an interesting thought carries the thinking along with it. It is better if this exercise in thought-control is undertaken with a pin rather than with Napoleon. The pupil says to himself: Now I start from this thought, and through my own inner initiative I as-sociate with it everything that is pertinent to it. At the end of the period the thought should be just as colourful and living as it was at the beginning. This exercise is repeated day by day for at least a month; a new thought may be taken every day, or the same thought may be adhered to for several days.”
Even Gurdjieff gave an exercise that was, queerly, ig-nored by most of his disciples (curiously, a person that prac-tices the Gurdjieff “system” said to me that this exercise is irrelevant), even if it’s a “masterpiece” as practice, something that could give, to one who persists in this (and similar) practice, one of the “keys” to an integral way of experiencing things, an objective reason. If you think I am exaggerating,
then leave aside your thoughts and try it for yourselves.
So, speech aside, this is the practice:
Choose the most common object close to hand, and make it as an “object” of your particular contemplation, con-sidering the following aspects:
• What is its origin?
• What’s the cause of its origin?
• What is its “story”?
• What are its characteristics and qualities?
• What are the objects in touch with or in relation with it?
• What are its possible uses and applications?
• What are its effects and consequences?
• What does it allow to explain or demonstrate?
• What is its possible end?
• What’s your opinion, the causes and the reasons of this opinion regarding this object?
This way of observation might be done dependent on your personal knowing and understanding. Indeed, what is important here, are not the possible answers, but the way we use our mind. It’s a pondering.
Consider first, at least three of the above mentioned
questions, one by one, then the results together and try to realize them as a whole: try to look at the same object while being aware of all the data you have gained from the contem-plation of the object, Experience it through the awareness of all the data you have achieved.
To see results from this exercise, one might perform it daily. It’s a considerable effort, because it implies the use of a “muscle” that is usually lazy, but the rewards will be worth the effort: a clearer, deeper and more complete way of experi-encing things, a great control of our mind, a skill of detach-ing ourselves from unwanted emotional states which are only some of the results that will be achieved through this practice if done with diligence and constancy.