contrasting colors
Today I was hit with a sudden impulsive urge to reexperience some of my old activities in my younger days. As I was going through these emotions, I noticed a major dynamic shift in my awareness that pertained to my immediate surroundings. Relative to my previous memories the climate had a different emotional hue that saturated the manner of emotional color of things at my home. This was a very interesting observation and I had to introspectively investigate why I was experiencing this subtle awareness shift.
So the begin, I want to focus attention to quality of time itself relative to our emotions. Time has many different manners of coloring our emotions, for instance, in a mode in which ones patience is low relative to the quantity of time, in that context time issues a less favorable color to represent the quality of our emotional status. So the first thing I have always held as a fairly default color issued to my emotions regarding time within the realm of home was fairly negative. The primary reason for this is that due to the rural location of my home, the social climate surrounding my home was one I was never quite fond of. Since this was the case, time spent within the confines of my home was generally issued a negative hue.
I recently have been attempting to implement a more serious meditative practice into my life. I have recently started reading Eknath Easwaran's passage meditation and trying to integrate his recommendations into how I structure and initiate my daily life. I also have another book I have had for quite some time called the emptiness sutra. I had previously meditated but I feel as if I am starting to gain a deeper understanding of the process. I have started to really see how emptiness and nothingness can also issue very positive colors rather than purely negative darker ones. I had previously associated emptiness and unrationalized fragments of time as things that held no other color other than those emotional colors associated with darkness, despair, and negativity.
After reading Buddha's Dhammapada and the Upanishads, I have discovered a concept that is directly associated with meditation. The idea of watching the mind or ego and seeing how it behaves. While doing this one starts to gain a conceptual abstract image of who or what it is that is behind the ego or mind. A more elegant way of putting this is that of getting to know the knower, or getting familiar with the mind. Going through this process has been extremely valuable to me in discovering new pathways in which to moderate my emotional configuration. It has been tremendously helpful in allowing me to get very comfortable with areas of my mind that have been causing me emotional disturbances after my brain injury.
So back to where I started, I have now forged a new set of colors in which I can express my emotional climate relative to emptiness. Emptiness is a very common atmosphere presented within Milton. I used to have a wide variety of dark undesirable colors to express myself within such a climate, but thanks to my interest in meditation and the wonderful aid of Buddha and Eknath Easwaran, I have now a much more pleasant set of colors to express myself with.
Emptiness is the main thing I wanted to talk about. Relative to living in a highly social area such as a city, living in a more rural area and seem more empty in that is offers less social options. Let us consider both modes of consciousness relative to social dynamics and natural nonhuman phenomena. So it seems very simple fairly quickly, the main attribute for human being that can issue pleasurable circumstances is over human beings. Since this is the case, it seems sensible to then conclude that a social environment is superior to a nonsocial one. The brilliant thing I have seen in my investigation into Brahmanism and Buddhism is that the most pure and brilliant essence that pertains to our consciousness is only experienced within the realm of emptiness. It seems very counter-intuitive for such to be the final resting place of the most fundamental core aspect of human consciousness but I am starting to experience meeting and getting to know the most pure aspect of my being. There are many wonderful qualities and caveats to learn about in discovering this path. Since this is the case it quickly permits one to gain access to favorable colors to aid them to counter the blackness often chosen while facing emptiness within the climate of isolation. It offers a new perspective of experiencing time within the climate that was previously deeply dark and full of sadness. A wonderful discovery I want to share. I must say, this is not all attributed to meditation. I do think a great portion of this is also due to my diligent aerobic exercise. I do both coupled together. Buddhas recommended practice of meditation along side exercise and attempting to physically live as close as I can to our ancient descendants.
Something that just passed through my mind this morning as I was meditating I really want to organize into a written thought. Describe the concept of spirituality and the true essence of consciousness as that of being outside the realm of Cartesian rational. Why getting familiar with this true essence or becoming more comfortably familiar with this knower (knowing the knower) is such a wonderful activity. It seems that all phenomena that we are conditioned to first recognize and deal with on a everyday basis can be adequately dealt with within the Cartesian domain. Since this is the case, it has become a widely accepted cultural norm that anything pertaining to spirituality is most likely a wasted use of ones time. What I wanted to talk about is how we all have the easily recognizable ability to abstractly reason and deal with non-tangential attributes of the mind on a day to day basis. Refining and developing the capacity to appreciate emptiness is very important to me. One attempting to describe a abstract idea often finds this to be incredibly challenging. There is no duration or length of time that can define it, there is no physical shape or attributes, ect. Once you leave the plane of three dimensional space, normal usage of language become quite challenging. It is often then said that well what is the use of finding some means of dealing with concepts outside the three dimensional plane in which we reside! One massive argument I want to remind myself about is that our mind and consciousness operates in many ways confined to a three dimensional space, but it extends beyond such a space. This is why spirituality is still a relevant spectrum to consider. Spirituality is the space beyond Cartesian boundaries. Within the modern culture, investigating a space is sometimes frowned upon, but alas! Keep investigating!
Cheers
周培森