The Natural State

It will be clear to most seekers (especially those who have tried meditation) that the mind operates in two significant modes.

The first is how we normally go about much of our day where our minds are occupied with things that have nothing to do with the task in hand. For instance we can sit in the car for hours and have no recollection of approaching junctions, joining main roads, parking etc. We are (as the phrase goes) lost in our heads - involved in some kind of narrative, planning, remembering, ruminating, holding conversations with ourselves.

The second mode* is that where we are attentive to what is actually going on in the moment. We are not lost to past or future narratives - we experience existence directly as it unfolds in real time (so to speak.) A state of immediacy that is sometimes referred to as presence.

For this post I’ll refer to the two modes as cogitation mode and experiential mode.

It’s my experience that one mode doesn’t cancel out the other (although in extreme cases it seems to), rather, one mode becomes dominant and the other takes a back seat. And this happens to varying degrees along a spectrum. In a heightened sense of the experiential mode, cogitation is almost absent (though mentation is still present and names and places are still recognised etc.)

A heightened and ongoing sense of the experiential mode - in which there is the sense of life simply presenting as it is without a sense of separation or fragmentation - is what is sometimes known as the natural state. This natural state** is a felt-sense or experiential gnosis - as opposed to an intellectual understanding (although an intellectual understanding often accompanies it.)

Although there are no formulas for arriving at this heightened mode/natural state, there are a couple of approaches which orient towards an opening in which it might be revealed (it’s already the case but is obscured by the dominance of the cogitation mode and its distorted perceptions.)

The first could be thought of as a kind of top-down approach. This involves the direct realisation/recognition that Life - as it is - THIS… is inescapably already the case. Without effort-ing, struggling, modifying or obsessing, Life or Wholeness or _____________ is already and always presenting itself. As mentioned, this is an experiential realisation/recognition - a kind of felt sense. It’s no use looking to mind for it - that will only push back to the cogitation mode (this is the reason that stories of ‘I had it then I lost it…’ are so prevalent.)

The other approach is that of mindfulness/meditation. This could be said to be a bottom-up approach where moment-by-moment attention is kept on the actuality of what presents itself. In this approach there is the dissolving of internal dialogue/narrative resulting in a reduction of 'me making' and delusion forming. In this absence of delusion forming there arises the apprehension of life simply happening exactly as it is happening in which narratives of a past, future and a sense of an abiding separate entity are not upheld in mind.


* From a neuroscientific point of view these modes roughly correlate with brain circuitry known as the default network and the direct experience network. This is not to say that the states are merely brain states.

** By this do I mean enlightenment? Well I don’t really know what enlightenment is - everybody seems to have a different take on it. But what I can say is that in this immediate state of wholeness, concepts like enlightenment become utterly irrelevant, even slightly laughable - so it could be said to be a cure for the sickness of enlightenment.
 

The Being Of What Is

At any given moment there is simply the happening or be-ing of ‘what is’. No matter what I (as in the body-mind-personality) do or how I do it - it is always, already the happening of ‘what is’.  

‘What is’ refers to this which is inescapably the case - existence, reality, life, be-ing, creation, source, oneness, tao. Some refer to it as awareness or consciousness. Those who are the most cautious simply point to THIS or thus-ness…

Whatever we call it, this realisation gives rise to the sense of a greater ordering of things beyond the confined sense of a separate self. In the moment of this insight, the sense of ‘I’ points straight through the body-mind to that which gives rise to it - the radiance of reality itself.

Mistaken Perception

Imagine waves on a vast ocean. The ocean (which is a living principle in this thought experiment) has, over time, assigned a limited degree of sentience and perception to each wave. Via each wave the ocean comes to know itself. Each wave can rightly proclaim, from its unique perspective, ‘I am the ocean.’ The wave is the portal through which the ocean manifests a form of self-reflection.

Now, over time the ocean forgets about this self-reflection business and eventually new generations of waves ponder and reasonably conclude that they are, in fact, waves. They forget that they are the ocean’s play, portal and expression and in error believe that they are somehow independent, separate and inherently existing. With this comes a sense of existential anxiety and fear of annihilation. 

This is a caricature of the nub of our existential predicament which is basically a case of mistaken perception. From an early age we overlook the ineffable obvious and identify as the limited expression/portal. My intuition (and in some sense it almost feels like a memory) is that when we came out of the womb - if we could have articulated it - we would have naturally assumed that we were this _______, this dynamic occurrence that is Life itself - nothing less.

Something is happening, something is going on, something ultimately inexplicable - and in moments of quietude there can be a sense/recognition 'ahh… this is so obvious… THIS is what I am… I am Life*… that's what this is… Life simply happening…'

And with the seeing of this we can drop our straining for enlightenment, the endless perfecting of the self, the religious dogma and pedantry, the ceaseless compulsions… and rest here, now, THIS… That’s all… because that’s all there is, THIS... creatively unfolding.



* Life is the placeholder I’m using in this particular post. Tao, Source, Reality, God, Awareness… etc. are equally adequate/questionable.