Chi Wei

A Character of Thought

Our conditioning, our enculturation, our culture, and our language tend to segregate and categorize reality. Perhaps this is to better understand, however, from my perspective it fosters confusion and superstition. From confusion and superstition arise suppression and exploitation.

Segregations of being such as body, mind, soul, and spirit serve no function but to contribute to the ignorance of religion with its rites, rituals, dogma, and dictates. Such segregations encourage the separation we feel from our world and other sentient beings that surround us. Humans are always trying to define what makes us different from the other animals on Earth. The only difference is that we, as humans, have decided to be like god and decide for ourselves what is good and evil.

Soul, mind, spirit, body, indeed god, angels, devils, saints, are purely notional, we have made these up and we cling to the notions like we cling to our other pet beliefs. For example, the angelic message is insight that flows with the source of life, the message that gratitude is the only appropriate response to what arises in the course of life. Or that righteousness is seeing good (rather than being good), seeing all that occurs as from the source and as it very well should be. These are insights and point to the truth. An angel is one who delivers the message to those who are less than awake, less than attuned to that wisdom which emerges from a connection to the source.

Prophets did not see the future, that is not possible as the future does not exist. Prophets saw the present and had the gift of discernment. They could see the emerging reality, in the present, and knew where different paths would lead. Farmers who rely on their crops for their livelihood can certainly tell the difference between an emerging blade of wheat from a very similar emerging weed stalk.

By now you are asking, "what does any of this have to do with meditation?" The rites and rituals, practices and techniques we subscribe to are based in the same segregations and categorizations. Most religious teachings are fundamentally sound (and very much the same as every other religious teaching). However, the way those teachings are interpreted to and perceived by the general populations are ludicrous. Meditation is a good example. Sitting in a lotus position and attempting to empty your mind of content is not meditation. Meditation is not something you do or learn, it is something you do not do.

Meditation is freedom from the perceptions and interpretations, the judgments and segregation that your conditioned brain insists upon. It is the suspension of the chatter of thought to enable pure awareness. Pure awareness is what comes naturally when the conditioning of the mind is observed and discarded. The trick here is that you do not believe this. The conditioned thoughts are telling you that there needs to be a method or practice to get to the pure awareness.

If pure awareness is prior to or outside of conditioning, please understand that any technique or method only serves to reinforce the original program. It can never lead you back to an un programmed state. Only pure awareness can do that. Observe the thoughts, realize they are not "yours", realize that you are partially awake within the dream, of conditioned awareness and you are half way there.