Ancient & current mystics, shamans, sages, prophets and other awakening individuals from all times, traditions & geographic locations, repeatedly assure us that life is dramatically different thanour common understanding suggests. A classic example: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English mystic
Most of us are if anything, hyper-aware of how badly so many things in the world around us appear to be going, so statements about everything being rosy are at least puzzling, if not infuriating! Closely associated, is the common assumption that our external environmentdirectly determinesourquality of life, and to ensure oursurvival, security & happiness, we must control & manageour external environment.Mystics call this predominant misunderstanding'outside-in thinking.'
A common characteristic of awakening people is that they have evolved to 'inside-out thinking':
“regardless of what ‘problem’ we think we have, our only real problem is ('outside-in thinking,' thus) feeling cut off fromour innate wisdom & well-being. And the moment we reconnect to that source energy (by shifting to 'inside-out thinking'), our problems stop being so problematic and we move into a new reality.
I call this natural state of connection to the whole ‘being online.’ It’s the space of relative clarity and well-being where we have access to bothour personal database of knowledge & the deeper wisdom of Mind.
When we’re online, we can be assured that whatever comes through us is likely to be of use. At these times, intuitions and insights flow through our mind like gigabytes through a data cable.
When we’re offline, feeling uncomfortable, stressed, pressured, scared, or just numb, we get caught up in trying to figure things out, work them through, or overwhelm them with our brilliance.
In simple terms, being online feels better – it’s that quieter, deeper feeling … People describe it as clarity, contentment, happiness, ease, well-being, or even peace. In the quiet of that deeper feeling, we can easily hear 'the still small voice' within. This is the way our mind is designed to work – as a clear channel to our higher wisdom.
When we’re online, we see that any situation can be handled through a combination of common sense and insightful action. Any changes to be made become obvious, and while not always easy, remarkably straightforward. Life stops seeming so overwhelming, and the world stops seeming like a problem to be solved.
So how do we do it? How do we go online?
As with so many of the things we’ve been discussing, there’s nothing to do:
Being ‘online’ is our natural state.
We don’t need toworry about learning or practicing techniques to get or stay there, because the moment our mind clears, even if it’s only for a moment, we automatically return to our factory default.
Understanding that we’ll always get back online when our thinking slows down takes the pressure off – it’s not up to us to manage our state. This allows us to take advantage of our state of mind when it’s high, stay in the game when it’s low, and not waste much mental or physical energy trying to change, control, or ‘fix’ it in between times. Meanwhile, we’ll do less damage in the world. In my experience, this is one of the most beneficial and least considered implications of the inside-out understanding – recognizing the role of Thought in creating experience makes us less inclined to run amok when we’ve gone offline. Instead of blaming our job, our partner, our kids, or the universe in general for our problems, we recognize that but for our thinking, we’d be having a completely different perception and experience of our situation. Consequently, there’s nothing to be done other than the basics of what needs doing.”
Michael Neill “The Inside Out Revolution. The Only Thing You Need to Know to Change Your Life Forever.” Hay House, 2013. CLEAR, CONCISE, DEEP, VALUABLE!
“If you want to help people, you can try to help people. But if you really want to help people, show them a new world, a new reality, and get out of their way.” Sydney Banks
Things seem to be moving too fast for us to truly savor life in a peaceful, satisfying manner. So we suffer from the shallows. In a recent podcast, one of our finest living mystics described this conundrum: “Day by day, life in today’s world is complicated and demanding. It’s not easy to keep up with everything that it’s asking from all of us. And sometimes you can have the feeling that you’re being dragged along, like skimming over thedepth of your own life. And you also can get the feeling that you’re suffering fromdepth deprivation. You can also get the feeling you don’t give yourself the chance to feel the deprivation, because the cell phone went off.” James Finlay
The wonderful mystic, Sydney Banks (1931-2009), shared his discoveries primarily with mental-health professionals, educators & social workers, because he understood how pivotal his message was for all human beings, regardless of any beliefs. Below, a brief excerpt from two of Banks' students' book introducing Banks' powerful teaching:
“Sydney Banks: A Breakthrough in Understanding Human Beings Syd was born in Scotland, had a ninth-grade education, and was working as a welder in a pulp mill on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Syd thought of himself as being insecure. He lived with the weight of his insecurity, which led him to be quite serious.
Most of us are familiar with the experience of insecurity. Insecurity is a feeling of uncertainty, doubt, and discomfort. It can be a subtle sense of tension in our bodies: tension in our face, neck, shoulders, or stomach. We can also experience insecurity as a feeling of stress or upset. It can take many forms such as fear, anger, or unhappiness. Often, if we stop and sense within, we can notice this tension somewhere. It can become such a constant companion that we eventually acclimate to it and no longer pay much attention to it until it becomes very strong in our experience. Can you imagine what it would be like to have one insight that would relieve you from the burden of your insecurity?
Sydney Banks’ First Major Insight: It’s All Thought! In 1973, when Syd was 42 years old, he went to a marriage enrichment workshop. There he met a psychologist who was also attending the workshop. During a break in the workshop, they had a conversation. Syd mentioned how hard this workshop was for him because he felt very insecure. To that the man replied: ‘Syd, you are not insecure, you just think you are.’ In that moment Syd had his first powerful realization or insight.
My whole world just exploded in front of me. It was so simple that it just broke me through into separate realities and it was so devastatingly beautiful that all my problems dropped away. They all started flashing past me as just fantasies because I started to realize that insecurity was thought … All of a sudden to find out that it’s all thought, justthought manifesting into a feeling. That realization was so beautiful that I never slept for three days and three nights. “The Best of Two Worlds”
In a flash of insight, Syd realized that every bit of his feeling was created from thought. He said he felt like a bomb went off in his head and a lifetime of insecurity lifted from his shoulders. What he realized was that all of his insecurity and unhappiness was just a temporary thought creation. After this insight, Syd looked around him and saw people everywhere thinking up unhappiness, and innocently not realizing that it was being created from their own thinking! He realized that feelings were notcaused by the past, or by circumstances, by other people, or by anything other than thought. He realized that feelings are always and only generated from the power of Thought. And he realized that feelings are created from within, notcaused from outside of us.
Syd’s experience and insight has relevance to every one of us. In a sense his story is the story of every human being. We all live in our own personal reality that, moment-to-moment, is being created from the power of Thought, and we don’t realize it most of the time, if at all. But like Syd, every one of us has the ability to wake up to the fact that our insecurity is just a temporary Thought-created experience, an illusion. Insecurity comes and goes as our personal thinking comes and goes. In this sense, our insecurity is just an illusion. It has no enduring substance. It is not a part of us. It is notwho we are but is only a temporary construct. Syd saw that all thought content is an ‘illusion’ in the sense that it is not a permanent truth, but only a transitory interpretation. Syd knew that every one of us is able to realize, or wake up to, the creative power of Thought, be free of its limitations, and return to our well-being.
Sydney Banks’ Enlightenment Experience: It’s All One!
Not long after his first insight, Syd had a profound epiphany - a rare and spontaneous enlightenment experience. Syd was talking to his wife and his mother-in-law when he felt like he lost all sense of self, of them, of the room, and found himself shrouded in white light. In those few seconds he experienced entering and going through this shimmering light.
From this experience he realized that all of his life is pure formless energy manifesting into all that has form. He also realized that all existence is ‘the same energy whether in form or formless.’ He realized the great oneness of life. After a few seconds he came back into awareness of his surroundings and was filled with intense feelings of love and understanding stronger than he had ever felt before. The depth of his experience is a very rare occurrence in the history of mankind. He turned around to his wife and his mother-in-law and said: ‘I am fee! I’ve come home!’
Syd was an ordinary man. He had a life changing insight followed by a profound epiphany that not only radically changed his understanding of life, but are relevant for, & give hope to, every single human being.
His realizations are about the essential nature of human beings and how every moment of our psychological experience is created. Syd knew that people could realize this for themselves. He recognized that every insight anyone has about these fundamental forces, or Principles as he liked to call them, would raise their overall level of well-being.
We (authors: Dicken Bettinger & Natasha Swerdloff) have experienced the truth of this, both in our own livesand in the lives of countless thousands of people to whom we have presented these fundamental Principles.” Dicken Bettinger, Natasha Swerdloff “Coming Home: Uncovering the Foundations of Psychological Well-being” Independently published, 2016.
Below, the transcript of a wonderfully deep, subtle & meaningful interview with Linda & George Pransky, who were students & close collaborators of the mystic Syd Banks, since 1976: “People change through realization. You don’t change through willpower. You realize something, and when you realize something, your beliefs change, your understanding about life changes in such a way that you change. Realization comes with a feeling of your spirits going up and your experience of, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s true!’ It’s this kind of explosion.
A good example is people who smoke. They’ll say, ‘Oh, I know I need to stop smoking.’ And then, all of a sudden they’ll go, ‘Oh my God, I really do need to stop smoking!’ And then they stopsmoking once they have that realization of ‘I really do need to stop.’ At first, it’s just an intellectual thing. And then it’s organic, your whole being understands the meaning of something - it’s a thing of the heart.
My first realization was around moods, because I really struggled with moods. And then I realizedthey weren’t a big deal, but I had made them a big deal. And the realization that they weren’t a big deal, that they were normal, everybody had moods, that I didn’t have to be afraid of them, my whole experience of moods changed, such that I knew I had them, but in my experience they were now in the backgroundrather than foreground. The realization was a game changer in terms of moods. Before the realization, I would try to run from my experience of a mood. I’d feel my mood dropping, and I’d try to literally run from it. But then I realized it was no big deal if your mood dropped, it was just a temporary psychological experience.
Realization is something everyone’s wired for, but it’s not on our time frame. You can’t will it to happen, it just happens spontaneously, and usually when you least expect it. It’s something deeperthanwillpower or efforting. Getting all caught up in your intellect trying to fix yourself orchange yourself just gets you into a big snarl. Change doesn’t happen from the intellect it happens from a deeper aspect of your mind.
Interviewer Mark McCartney: How can we not interfere too much with the very natural process of realization?
Enjoying life, gratitude for what we have instead of focusing on what we don’t have, is the platform for insight. But people think that if they really dig into their problems and really think about them, and get really serious & intense about them, then I’m going to get an answer. You would think that would be the way, and people do think that’s the way. But it’s the opposite, which is confounding to people’s minds. In a way, the more you free your mind, the more space & freedom in your mind, the better it does, creates a platform for insight, the better off you are.
Yet when people want an answer, where they feel like something’s wrong, or they feel like they need to fix something they attack it with their desire, their want, their need, their intellect, their insecurity, and it just doesn’t work that way. It works the opposite. To have such opposition or will for something in us to be different, is a difficult way to cultivate ease or gratitude, when we’re so focused on having to change something, and soon as well. This desire & attachment to the change, being down about the fact that you haven’t changed, all get in the wayofchange. Accepting how you are, and forgetting about yourself, allows you to change. It’s the opposite of what people think.
I think people can have an understanding of life that fills the void that they feel. Because when you have a question, you feel a void. I’ve always had a lot of faith – not religious faith, just faith in life. And the other thing I have going for me is that I’m comfortable in the unknown, in not knowing. So that really helps me because I’m not in a hurry to find answers. I can get reflective, and when I get reflective, the answers come to mind. That’s what really helped me to have a nice life. Faith allows answers to come to mind in their own sweet time. Faith is trust that the answer will emerge. It’s an absolute game changer because it allows you to be patient, because faith is really another form of patience. So when you feel you’re up against it in life, if you understand that the only thing that’s wrong is you’ve lost your faith, all you’ve got to do is regain your faith. You could use the word trust interchangeably – trust in life – that life will help you, that you’ll get the help you need, the answers you need, whatever you need, that it will come to you.
"The most important question a human being needs to answer according to Einstein: 'Is the universe a friendly place or not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." Joan Borysenko PhD
It’s not an intellectual thing, it’s deeper – I feel it in my bones, in my heart – I feel this. It’s an example of a realization, because you realize the function or the place of faith. And then the realizationallows you to make it real for yourself. Because there are plenty of people who say they have faith, but it’s not a realization, it’s a belief. So, it doesn’t give them the comfort or the security that they’re looking for.
Trust in the sense that life is emerging makes it much less of an intellectual engagement. Our intellect is always struggling for answers. That’s not where answers occur. The intellect is nothing but questions, but there are no answers there. Answers come from an understanding of life. That’s what helps human beings – when you get a deeper understanding of life. That does something for people.
Interviewer: This seems so counterintuitive to how life seems to be picking up pace it seems, even in the sense of information and transfer of information, and people’s sense of relationship, I think even with time, but this sense once again that – I’m sure people who are listening have the experience of trying to find answers to life through their intellect which often just seems to create more questions or perhaps even more discomfort even.
So the experience would be where you slow the intellect down, because the intellect can get a lot of momentum. And so you start to slow the intellect down and then time and your life slow down, and you feel better,more connected to the moment, to your life, whatever your life is in the moment. You feel connected and drawn into life, rather than drawn into the intellect. Being drawn into life - that’s where satisfaction is. There’s not a lot of satisfaction for most people in their intellect. For some people who love to think, there is. But in a lot of what we think about, there’s no satisfaction.
When you think about it, life is a feeling. There’s a ‘feelingfulness’ to life, to living, to being alive. You might say, an ‘awakeness’ to the moment. As you kind of fall out of the intellect, you just get locked into the feeling of life. And the feeling of life is lovelyand it’s ordinary. It’s the ordinariness of just having a meal, or talking to your partner, or having a cat, or taking a walk, or working. Or getting into what you do in the moment when you’re talking to people, and there’s just a nice feeling to it.
Interviewer: With that sense of feeling of life, how does that mix in then with your realization about your mood – that you don’t have to resist your mood, because it’s a normal part of life? Because some people think that in order to be drawn into life, there needs to be an absence of discomfort in a very psychological or mood sense. I really love ‘being drawn into life,’ and ‘feeling life,’ I think that also offers a potential for feeling whatever life is.
People reactto their experiences that they don’t like. I reacted to my experience of mood which I didn’t like, so I would react to it, and my reaction was kind of blown out of proportion, was dramatized, so I would have a big, unpleasant reaction, and that was my life for however long that reaction lasted. Now I would not call that as being drawn into life, I would call that reacting to my experience that I didn’t like. So when people start to understand that they’re going to react to some experiences in life, it’s normal to have experiences that you react to, and everybody’s different. Your experience that you would react to, for example seeing a spider you might get all freaked out; I might see the same spider and think, ‘Oh, how cute.’ So people’s reactions to the same thing can be different. It’s our reactions to our experience that take us out of that feelingfulness with life. That’s okay, it’s human. In my experience, the best thing that I can do is just get over my reactions as fast as I can, nothold onto them.
What I struggle with is being harsh and impatient. In my 30s I realized that about myself. If I was patient, that feeling would go away, and I’d be in a whole different feeling. So when I would react to my harshness, if I just got patient with that experience, it would go away. My reaction to not liking my experience was the only problem, was the only thing that was happening. It was so simple. Instead of using the word 'patient,' when I get into an experience that I don’t like, I 'get quiet with it' – 'be with the experience quietly.'
Life is always going to be a full-contact sport. So everybody is on their own about that. So in order to have a peaceful life, you have to have a lot of faith and you have to roll with the punches.
Interviewer: My initial response always to getting angry was to get angry at myself for being angry. And good luck with ever escaping that I guess. For you George, how did you begin to cultivate this quiet?
Well I had a realization about reactions. I realized that all I was doing was reacting to life. Instead of living life, I was reacting tolife – to the fact of living. And that was a huge change for me.
I always thought Linda was a very moody person. Then all of a sudden, she changed and took responsibility for her moods, and that solved everything.
It’s very, very simple, and yet it’s an endless conversation with yourself in that to the extent that you react to your experience, you get caught in it. And what happened simply isI stopped reacting to my moods. And then I no longer looked like a moody person, nor did I have the experience of being a moody person only because I stopped reacting to my moods. What she did instead of reacting to her moods, she got quiet and just had them. She went through the experience with them quietly. She wasn’t kicking & screaming with them.
I work with a lot of people who have anxiety. They get the experience of anxiety and they just get all completely caught up in itbecausethey think it’s wrong, it’s meaningful, and there’s something wrong with them, and they don’t like it, and they’re embarrassed, they don’t want to have it. They have so much thinking about their experience of anxiety that it just mushrooms. And they become more anxious, and they identify with it, and then they become afraid of it, and they hear the footsteps of it, and it becomes a lifestyle of anxiety. It’s a lifestyle of anxiety when it could be just a passing experience. That’s the choice: is it going to be a passing experience - OR - is it going to become a lifestyle?
That’s what human beings are up against. Where are they going to go? My moods were a lifestyle until they became a passing experience.
Interviewer: How do you invite people into anxiety not becoming a lifestyle?
Some of the questions I ask them is, 'Why does it matter if you have an experience of anxiety?Why is it such a big deal?What’s wrong with having an experience of anxiety?' That question cuts to the heart of the issue. Then I tell them that the problem isn’ttheactual experienceof anxiety, the problem is all the extraneous thinking they have around it andthe meaning they make of it, andhow much fear they have around it. So there’s this little experience of anxiety that they don’t like, or maybe it’s even a big experience in the moment, but then it’s all wrapped in these layers & layers of extraneous thinking. And that’s the problem – the layers & layers of thinking & meaning they put on it. What does it say about me?What if somebody sees me anxious? All this is just layers of thought they put around the experience of anxiety. So I just pull it all apart with them.
Interviewer: The problem with a lot of our discomfort is having a problem with the initial discomfort. [[[It's well-known that people with anxiety are anxious about their anxiety; people with depression are depressed about their depression etc]]] How would you suggest people reconnect with their sense of faith, what would that look like?
People have to realize that they are a lot more powerful than they think, and that they live in mental health – the basis of who they are is mental well-being or mental health. And the only thing that gives them the illusion of being brokenis broken thinking. People can get a lot of broken, very negative thinking and they loose their well-being. But once they get rid of their broken thinking, clear their minds, they naturally reconnect with their own mental health, their own natural resiliency and own personal power. And everybody has natural resiliency, innate mental health, and personal power. And what happens is their intellect tricks them, they get bad habits of thinkingthat they believe in, that makes them think & feel broken. And they have to clue into that, that they’re their own worst enemy in that regard. Some of their thinking can be their own worst enemy.
Interviewer: How do you find people engage with this almost acknowledgement that it’s my broken thinking right now?
Well the truth of it is, it’s not going to help anyone to blame their experience on the outside. It never helps, even if it looks true, it never helps. And it never helps to justify. What helps is to just see what you experience, what your thinking is doing to you. Understanding what your thinking, perspective, belief, the way you’re looking at it, is doing to you. And your understanding will naturally clear it. There’s a lot of justification – Well I wouldn’t feel this way if … or I feel this way because … and it just holds your negative experience in place. Even if it’s true, it doesn’t matter. What matters is people want to feel better. Everybody wants to feel better. It’s nice to feel righteous indignation and yes, everybody agrees with you and it feels great, and you can relish that for a bit, but it’s not going to help you. You have to eventually take responsibility for your own experience and how to get out of it. It’s going to take a toll on you. It’s going to wear you out. So you just see how to find your way out of it, no matter who’s right. And you really have to give up ‘right & wrong,’ stop looking at ‘right and wrong,’ because that just puts you in this ping pong game. Let’s table ‘right and wrong’ and just look & see how to make it all better.
Well, the thing about human beings is they know the difference between a good feeling and a bad feeling. Every human being knows the difference. A child knows the difference. If you can know the difference, you always can head towards a good feeling, a better feeling. It’s built into us to feel good, and we just have to go back to it.
Interviewer: Irrespective of what may be acceptable, I know how something made me feel and I know just in the feeling, if it doesn’t matter if people say, ‘Oh, you were right, you did the right thing’ or that was acceptable or not, I have a built-in sense within me that, ‘Oh, when I did that, that didn’t feel okay.’ If we’re living the felt experience or if we’re living our lives, not just reacting and we’re feeling the experience of our lives, to me it doesn’t matter what external people are saying, whether they’re validating me or disagreeing, I know what I felt. What is a good life for you?
Just being alive, just living life is a good life. Living life and meeting it, and being resilient about it is a good life. Being reactive to things and then rising above it, coming out of it, knowing that you can come out of it, knowing that you can rise above your reactions and get into a nice feeling again and enjoy your life – that’s a good life.
Some people get caught in their reactionsand they’ll stay there, and then they’ll come out and get caught in another reaction and stay there, and they just live from reaction to reaction. That’s no fun. Or they get caught in righteous indignation and they just won’t leave it. They’re just angry at life and don’t allow themselvesto be resilient and pop out of it.
I think that a good life is when people can follow their own inclinations. I think people have the inclinations that will lead them to a good life - trusting themselves and listening to themselves and following their own inclinations. And you can see that in young children, six years old or younger. That’s what they do. They don’t even know it but they just do it. That’s their inclination.
I think ultimately, ultimately, we all want to be just ordinary. That’s the key. If you want to be special, you’re going to feel pressure. So to be ordinary, you don’t need to deal with any pressure. If you’re willing to be ordinary, then you’re not going to feel pressure in life, and life is going to be good to you. But people don’t understand ‘ordinary,’ because they have ideas about what that looks like. You can be an ordinary cardiovascular surgeon. So it’s not like, I should be ordinary so I shouldn’t get a higher education. They have a lot of thinking about what that looks like. But it’s not that. It’s the feeling of just being yourself and just not trying to be more than what you are.
Interviewer: We often see these external metrics, where we compare our lot to somebody else’s, where often the trick at times in this life is realizing that your own unique imprint or fingerprint of whatever it is you are, or constellation that you are, has never been before. You are one of 110 billion people that apparently have existed on this planet. That’s pretty special even if you’re just your ordinary self." How People Actually Change with George & Linda Pransky - What is a Good Life? #65https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKs-kmf-t7A (below)
“While the cartoon is clearly poking more fun at mathematics than psychology, the same three-step formula often seems to apply whenever people undergo a transformative shift in their life. Step One: They live their life, doing the best they can but often drifting or even floundering along the way. Step Two: Then a miracle occurs … Step Three: … and somehow their life is completely different. They go from inaction to action, from stuck to flowering, from limited to free, from miserable to happy. They’re no longer driven to drink alcohol or go shopping or take regular hits of their drug of choice. Before long, their career takes off, their relationships improve beyond all recognition, and their creative output soars.
We all know at least one person who’s experienced this kind of transformation in their life. Perhaps it’s a friend or family member who ‘found religion’ and really did begin to live a kinder, gentler life. Or someone who was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness or had a near-death experience and began to experience more gratitude and to appreciate the simple things in life. Sometimes, the cause of the transformation seems more random – the person read something in a book, or heard someone say something that somehow struck them at a far deeper level than may have been intended. Syd Banks reportedly experienced his first major insight while hiking with a fellow participant on a weekend seminar. In the midst of an argument over which of them was more insecure, his companion told him, ‘You’re not really insecure, Syd – you just think you are.’ Somehow, that innocuous, almost comical statement made nearly 40 years ago triggered a series of insights into the nature of Mind, Thought, and Consciousness which led to the development of a whole new field of psychology. Such transformations are not the result of an intervention, but rather the effect of a shift in our level of consciousness.
Most of us experienced at least a temporary shift in our level of consciousness the first time we fell in love. Suddenly, the world seemed a more beautiful place. We were inspired to write poetry, or to draw pictures, or create things that reflected the beautiful feelings we felt inside us. Because we attributed those feelings to another person, we often returned to our habitual level afterward. But those feelings don’t come from outside us – they’re a part of our essential selves. When we see the fundamental truth of that, the shift in consciousness becomes permanent and new levels of seeing become availableto us. That transformative shift comes to us via insight – literally ‘sight from within.’
Insights are those wonderful ‘Aha!’ moments when we’re able to see something about ourselves, our life, or life itself in a whole new way. People often call them ‘light-bulb moments,’ because we see things in a new light that makes them look less fixed and less scary than before. If there’s anything to be done, we do it without the need for any additional debate or willpower. In these wonderful transformative moments, we discover a fresh new way of seeing something that we may have been looking at for ages. We suddenly ‘get it’ – not intellectually, the way we might understand a concept, but at an almost cellular level, the way we either get a joke or we don’t, even when we know that it’s supposed to be funny. Quite simply, insightschange our world.” Michael Neill “The Inside Out Revolution. The Only Thing You Need to Know to Change Your Life Forever.” Hay House, 2013. EXCELLENT, CONCISE, IMPORTANT BOOK!
Michael Neill (above) is a student of Sydney Banks (below)
"There are an infinite number of levels or states of consciousness. The way we observe and react to reality as a whole is directly related to the level of consciousness from which we are functioning. Let me give you an example: It’s one of those days when you wish you had stayed in bed. You’re in a bad mood and everything seems to go wrong. You might even feel the entire world is against you and, as far as you’re concerned, it’s someone else’s fault for making you feel that way. Of course, when you have days like that, nothing you do goes well. Now here is a strange thing: You go to bed feeling awful. The next morning you wake up and – lo and behold – you’re in a better mood, and you are relieved to realize the whole world isn’t against you after all. Now think about it, the world hasn’t changed. It’s the same old world out there; what has changed is your level of consciousness, which has come back to a more logical state, enabling you to see life with more clarity & understanding.
It is very important to remember that the gift of Consciousness has no form or power of its own; how you use it is strictly up to you. This gift gives us the ability to recognize that there are different levels of existence.
Levels of Consciousness are similar to an outside elevator on a tall building. It goes up and it goes down all day, every day. The higher the elevator car ascends, the more can be surveyed. Views that may be blocked from the fourth floor can easily be seen from the tenth. Similarly, the higher your level of consciousness, the more understanding will be in your heart. The higher the consciousness elevator ascends, the more you see and understand, allowing you access to more common sense, insights & wisdom. That is, when your consciousness ascends to a higher level, it assists you to see beyondwhatever misled thoughts were obscuring your vision yesterday. Now consider that if someone were trying to explain such a psychological elevator ride – say, to the twelfth floor – to a person who had never been above the second floor, the conversation would appear mystical for the simple reason that they would be talking about the as yet unknown. You can try to analyze or explain Consciousness forever and you will never achieve your goal – guaranteed! If you continue to try to analyze Consciousness, you will never come to the end of your futile journey. The important thing is, now that you know Consciousness exists, forget trying to analyze itand simply use it." Sydney Banks "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.SKILLFUL INTRODUCTION to Sydney Banks' PROFOUNDLY BENEFICIAL INSIGHTS
Many of us assume that if we can't understand every step of an explanation, then it's nonsense and we instantly abandon the subject. At the same time, we take for granted & make daily use of an almost infinite number of phenomena - INCLUDING LIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT ONES eg LOVE, TRUST, MEANING, etc - which our innate wisdomknows intimately, but about which we have little or no intellectual understanding. Yet we innocently remain emotionally attached to the illusion of our rationality.
“You are a worldly adult. You have spent your whole life letting go of the innocent dreams that made your childhood so warm and hopeful and full of certainty. Dream by dream you let them go. We all do it, to shield ourselves from disappointment. It’s easy to shed them. Not so easy to get them back.” Fiora Gandolfi, “Fiora’s Niche.” by John Berendt, in “An Innocent Abroad. Life-Changing Trips from 35 Great Writers” ed Don George, Lonely Planet, 2014.
We label "fanatics" others who are enthusiastic about experiences we've never enjoyed. We can't imagine ourselves ever doing certain things like them eg climbing Everest, assume we'll never get to experience whatever lures them to extreme adventures, and quicklydismiss it as "madness." Early in her fascinating book, Maria Coffey wonders, “Was it possible … that as these adventurers tune into the natural world, they unwittingly open channels to hidden powers and realms of experience that we call mystical and paranormal? That these channels lie dormant in us all, shut down beneath layers of insulation? And that the process of risk-taking strips away that insulation, opening the way to spiritual transcendence? … I became increasingly convinced that extreme adventurers break the boundaries of what is deemed physically possible by pushing beyond human consciousness into another realm. … reaching a spiritual state of being is the principal lure of extreme adventure …" MariaCoffey. “Explorers
of the Infinite. The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes – and
What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communications,
and Touching the Beyond.” Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin, 2008.
There are of course many other, more direct, more efficient & infinitely safer ways ("to the top of the mountain") of reaching spiritual states of being than via extreme sports.One of the wildest danger addicts, Kristen Ulmer - for 12 years was the best female big mountain extreme skier in the world; voted by
the outdoor industry as the most extreme 'fearless' woman athlete
in North America - finally realized that it didn't make sense to continuously risk her life for something better achieved through well-established spiritual practices, which for her happens to be Zen meditation.
Kristen Ulmer. “The Art of Fear: Why Conquering Fear Won’t Work and What to Do Instead.” Harper Wave, 2018.
Nevertheless, Coffey's book is inspiring & insightful, filled with heroic yearning & striving often required to pull oneself out from the powerful gravitational pull of comfort & conformity. With apologies to Star Trek, let us boldly read about where few men & women have gone before!:
“In 1993, Marshall Ulrich was running the Badwater course ("for ultra-marathoners, the toughest race of all"), trying to break his own record. He set out at six pm, watched the sun go down, and carried on running into the night. At some point, around the forty-mile mark, he felt himself leave his body. Suddenly the effort of running was gone – from above, he watched his lone figure pounding along the road, he could hear his footfall and see his support team waiting at certain stages with food and water. He saw himself eating and drinking as he ran. ‘It was like watching myself on a movie screen,’ he says. ‘I lost all sense of time. It could have been only ten minutes that had passed, but then I realized that dawn was coming, the sun was about to rise. I knew it was time to go back into my body.’ He was reluctant to tell anyone about this, particularly other runners. ‘I was sure they’d think I was nutty.’ Then he met Yiannis Kouros, the legendary, world-record-breaking Greek ultramarathoner, who now lives in Australia. Kouros is unabashed about the spiritual component to his running. ‘It is not easy,’ he writes, ‘to grasp what is taking placein the mind and the soul, in the senses and beyond the senses of a runner due to the refusal of the body. Only if the runner achieves his transcendence, and especially in the metaphysical level, he is then able to continue.’ When he heard Ulrich’s story, he fully understood. And he told him how to get back to that place. ‘He said I have to break myself down until there’s nothing left – until I transcend the limits of my physical body and enter a new realm of existence.’
“We must live in the free fall of infinity. Standing at the edge, the heart opens."ThomasMoore
It is often the hardest, most challenging experiences of our lives that crack us open. For some people, these experiences are chosen, or accepted as a consequence of risk-taking. For others – for most of us – they come without warning. Unlikely gifts that rip away our layers of insulation, allowing us glimpses of the mysterious, the ineffable – the infinite realms of human consciousness.”
Then for the finale, Coffey recounts her own dramatic near-death experience (NDE) - herown glimpse 'beyond the veil' past our consentual, mundane, physical reality to the transcendent, helping her grok the insights of extreme adventurers & many, many others. Maria Coffey. “Explorers
of the Infinite. The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes – and
What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communications,
and Touching the Beyond.” Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin, 2008.
Short (8min)Oscar-nominated Canadian film "The Flying Sailor" about a real person in Halifax:
“Ajahn Chah, the great Thai Forest master, went to visit the most famous Forest master of the era, Ajahn Mun. Ajahn Chah had already practiced for 10 years in the forest, the jungles, living in caves, doing jhana and samadhi practices, dissolving his body into light, having deep insights, surrendering, almost dying many times and somehow coming through it.
So he went and he bowed, and he paid his respects, and he said ‘May I tell you about my practice?’ And so Ajahn Mun listened as he told him about his experiences. After he finished, Ajahn Mun looked at him and said
‘Chah, you’ve missed the point.’
Ajahn Chah said ‘What do you mean?’
Ajahn Mun replied ‘These are just experiences. It’s like going to the movies, you can go to a war movie, a romantic comedy, a documentary, a history movie, there are so many different kinds. So you had all these different experiences of light or insights or various other things – but these are just experiences. The real question is, To whom do they happen? So turn your attention to Ajahn Chah, back from the experiences you have, to the one who knows, to knowing itself, to consciousness, as if to inquire, Who am I?, What is this? What is consciousness itself? Who is knowing?
It’s a little bit like being in the movie theater, and you’re completely caught up in some great drama, and then somebody next to you rustles & moves, or drops their popcorn, and all of a sudden, like waking out of a trance, you’re like ‘Oh yah, movie theater, there’s a light on the screen, it’s not actually the action I got engaged in so fully I forgot.'
And so Ajahn Mun said to Ajahn Chah ‘Rest in the one who knows. Rest in the pure timeless witnessing of things – the awareness. Become the one who knows is also the phrase used to describe the Buddha or Buddha-consciousness. And in that, in that you will find your freedom.’
And that freedom isn’t dependent on a retreat, or a particular set of circumstances. It’s really the freedom that’s invited and available to people wherever you are, here and now.
We are consciousness itself, knowing itself, being itself, expressing itself out of the void into form.”
