The Mind and Meditation

Why do I feel so bad?

Tell me about your objectified, external feeling-experience.

I’ve been experiencing a lot of emotional tension of late. One moment I seem to feel good about myself and life and the next second I am filled with angst and uncomfortable feelings. Feelings are strange things! You have said that when we are feeling things, we are experiencing energy - frequencies. There has to be more to the story!

Everything is connected; nothing is autonomous. It is said that we have a mind-body-relationship, wrongly insinuating that mind and body are separate constituents of Man. Corporeal form is physical mind, feelings are emotional mind and thoughts are the movements of mental mind. Your physical, emotional and mental natures work as one nature in the nature of mind. You have experiences on physical, emotional and mental levels, all within the field of mind. All experiences are found in and connected through the medium of mind. Don’t accept what I say to be true; understand at the level of your own experience that this is the case. I do not want to give you new beliefs; I merely want to show you what you already know to be true.
Today you have an experience of sadness. You see the world through your sad physical eyes; you think sad thoughts about it and yourself and feel everything to be true. You sense a physical sadness
when your attention is with your physical body, your feelings proclaim an emotional sadness and your thoughts a mental sadness.
All this belongs to your experience of sadness.
An accident affecting your physical body may cause emotional disturbances and mental angst. After an emotional conflict with your mother, your body feels weak and deprived of its energy. Your thinking mind resounds with your emotional confusion. You have feelings of warmth towards the secretary at work, which affect not only your thinking, but which also thunder through your body as enticing, lurid, physical sensations.
You find your sadness to be predominantly in the chest and solar plexus area, but you can also feel it behind your eyes and have sensations of weakness in your arms: your mind is physically, emotionally and mentally depressed.

You don’t have to rub salt into my wounds. Just because you are so high on life doesn’t mean you have to push people down. Just let me know when you need cheering up!

What is it that you sometimes say to your friends? “Come on, loosen up and go with the flow!” Why not accept your own remedies for your feelings of sadness and discomfort? Come on - loosen up! You have noticed that sitting next to rivers, watching the water flow by, calms your emotions. We don’t have to have a river in front of us to experience the calming effect of rivers.
Use your imagination for a few minutes and build in your mind the following visualisation. Keep this moving feeling-picture-thought as clear and alive as possible:
You are standing next to a very powerful river and the water is thundering past you, millions of tons of water, relentlessly rushing by. You stand, enthralled by its immense flow of power.
Mind is not its own intelligence; in essence, mind is clouded, synchronised stupidity. Standing next to the river, or imagining that you are doing so, is for mind, tantamount to the same thing. Mind really does not know the difference between your experience of the chair in front of you and your thoughts about it. So, visualise your river and feel its flow for a few minutes. This will allow a greater flow within you.

Not bad… that helped quite a lot, though I’m not at all sure why.
How does this fit in with what you have said before? You have said so much that I am having difficulty keeping a clear understanding. All that stuff on beliefs and experiences; energies, dreams, etc. and now this. It sounds fairly simple when you are explaining things to me, but not when I am trying to remember them. Does life have to be this complicated?

Things will gradually become clear and simple.

Isn’t there any way of welding what you have said into an easy, overall structure or picture?

Why do you like rivers?

They’re powerful and full of life.

Let’s imagine that you are now standing next to a great river, looking down at the water directly below you. You notice that the flowing water is in a constant state of change. Water is being replaced by new water all the time - the river is never the same, not even for a millionth of a second. Water is flowing into your field of vision and flowing out of it - arising in your experience and then leaving it.
You observe the fact that not only is the water different from moment to moment, but the formations it takes, the waves, ripples and currents, are also never the same. The river is in continual change and transformation.
You experiment with the river and discover that by plunging your hand into the water, you limit its flow and cause turbulence - your interaction with the river is causing it to change. The water around your hand is now moving faster than the water under it, affecting the formations the currents are taking.
Hard though it may be to accept, what you call life is like a great river. All of your life-experiences are arising and passing by in mind; all of your experiences arise and fall away like the water rushing past you. Through your interactions with the river of life you are changing it. You, that which witnesses mind, never changes - when you stand back from the river of life, you realise this.

Are you saying that I should allow my life to flow past me without lifting a finger?

What flows into experience and flows out of it is transient: this is not the life that you are. You are the observer of the river, not the river!

You have said that my beliefs form my experiences. How does this fit in with your river analogy?

Your beliefs are the ways in which you identify and deal with the river. Your actions, reactions and interactions with the river decide your experience of it: these interactions are your beliefs about it. Regardless of whether these interactions are physical, emotional or mental, they are still beliefs: they are your ways of looking at and experiencing the river.
Through putting your hand in the river, jumping into it, swimming across it or drinking it, you are changing your experience of it. If you had the belief and feeling that the river was dangerous and that you might fall in, you would have a negative experience of the river. If you saw the river as a means of making money, your experience would be of financial glee. If a loved one had drowned in the river, you would have uncomfortable, mental experiences of the river.
Your interactive dealings with the river form your definition of it and the way you experience it.

The river starts in the mountains and ends in the sea. This experience is not limited to just my individual standpoint or way of looking at it! This is a fact about the river that has nothing to do with beliefs.

This is a way of viewing the river that humanity shares - a group belief. If your sense of “I” were with a fish, the river would become the atmosphere that you breathed. If you were a minute speck of condensation, you may insist that the river starts at the sea, floats into the air, is carried inland by air turbulence and then, because of air pressure, falls to the ground in the mountains. The man drowning in the river finds your “mountain to sea” belief to be, at least from his point of view, quite trivial. Because of his angle of perception, he is convinced that the river is limiting his flow of breath. Also, because he is moving with the river, he claims that there is no flow, only sinking. That the sun rises and the sky is blue are merely human standpoints in mind.
Through your beliefs, you are giving yourself to the river. You are giving your grasping hands to it in an attempt to control it and through doing so, you are causing turbulence and tension. When you feel desire for, or fear of the river, you are trying to stop its flow.
Your fears and desires cause blockages and disturbances in the flow of feeling-life. Your thoughts about the river are limitations that you try to place upon it. Your feelings and thoughts about the river can never be the river - they are empty beliefs that you hope reality will fill for you.
Your greed for the river may lead to you building a dam so that you can use it for your own purposes. This would cause great tension, not only for the river, but also for the surrounding landscape. Didn’t you read a while ago “be of the world, not in it”? Be of the river, not in it; observe the river from a safe, enjoyable distance.
Everything arises in the Now; as you look down at the river, the Now for you is the water in front of you. Remaining in the Now will reveal more of the river to you. Using our analogy, this would be equivalent to looking up and seeing more of the river instead of looking at the water directly in front of you - instead of looking down at the river and claiming that your narrow vision and view of the river, is the river, you are releasing this false belief and experience and allowing the Now to show you more. See that your beliefs about the river are not the river and that the best way of experiencing its majestic flow, is through standing back and enjoying it. Allow your life to flow: without your miserable, tension-causing beliefs. Allow emotions to stay in motion and flow with the river.
This you understood much better as a child, without all your mental garbage and belief-congestion. The flow of life, at least on feeling levels, was very clear to you then.

What flow did I have as a child? I don’t remember any flow. Maybe you are mixing this flow business up with the swing of dad’s slipper.

All your experiences are in a state of flux, they are changing all the time: the changing is the flow. At the moment you feel a little emotional. This is because you are not allowing your emotions to flow and change - you are saying through your beliefs that you are your emotions, that they are yours. This is equivalent to putting your hand in the emotional, feeling waters of life and trying to stop them. Your emotional feeling nature is not flowing, causing your experience of blocked waters behind your eyes and in your chest.
As a child your were able to allow these emotional waters to flow and found this feeling aspect of life’s great river to be almost ecstatic.

Can you help me to remember?

I can bring your attention to a small park with a little pond where you used to catch indecently large frogs. You would first spot a pair of globular eyes above the water level between reeds, close to the edge of the pond. Then you would move your body like a snake on the ground, inching your way toward the pond’s edge, slowly raising your head, so as not to disturb the frog. Without further contemplation, in a moment of ecstatic focus, the ground you were lying on and the pond would disappear, as your grabbing hand and agile arm would thrust forward at an unbelievable speed, grasping the frog and pulling it from its aquatic recluse. How such a small hand could, with such dex¬terity, grasp something so big and slimy filled you with accomplishment. Do you remember this joyous, direct, flowing, feeling-reality?

I remember… what a grin.

This is your emotional, feeling nature working, as it should: without blockages. The fate of your amphibian friends was ominous. You would squash them between rocks in order to examine their contents. Without mental conges¬tion and without the mental acts of relating to right and wrong, you would kick them as hard as you could and see them flow through the sky. You were warmly impressed by the distance a frog could be booted when caught in mid-air after it had jumped. This was a good advantage of having plastic sandals; you could simply wash the gunge of them off when you got home.

Enough, enough… what a giggle! Why did life feel so different in those days?

In those days you floated on your experience of the river without claims of ownership. You floated through the day experiencing that exciting distance to life that all children experience. Because you now cause turbulence in the river, it is not so easy to float on it, which results in you occasionally sinking into it.
When you see yourself in these younger days, you see a child that spent most of its time in an emotional, feeling-ecstasy. This was your astral nature working as it should: devoid of emotional blockages - mere ecstatic, emotional flow - the motion of astral frequencies and playful, floating fancy.
As a child when you were angry, it lasted only a couple of minutes - you never hung on to it and claimed it to be your own personal property as you do now. When you felt happy, it lasted as long as it lasted - you didn’t go around telling everyone about your own individualised happiness like you do today. In those days your happiness and anger were allowed to pass: they were experienced as being part of the river of life. Now you take these transient feelings of anger and happiness and claim them to be your own property, when in fact they belong to the river of life. Trying to make them your own, which you can never succeed in doing, causes you and the river discomfort.

I guess in those days, I didn’t have my mental understanding of life, disturbing the flow.

Yes, limiting mental ideas can stand in the way of the flow of life, but this is not the main reason why it was easier for you to float on the flow of feeling-experience as a child. The primary factor was your ability to live in the Now.
Your ability to remain in the Now and your ability of letting go of the river are equal in strength. Letting the river pass without intervention brings you into the Now; remaining in the Now allows the river to flow. This is why, as a child, you grew and changed with such a ferocious speed. Letting go is inviting change and growth; being in the Now teaches you how to release ignorance.
Because adults fearfully hang onto the river and desire to have it forever, they hardly grow or change at all. The change between five and ten years of age is remarkable. Between the age of 50 and 70, hardly noticeable! As we let go of our beliefs we start to allow the river of life to flow without our limiting involvement. The river becomes a great pleasure as our awareness of it unfolds. It is in the Now that we witness the flow of life - this is the flow of our experiences, flowing into the Now and flowing out of it, changing all the time.

I’m a little confused by what you mean with emotion and feeling. Are they the same thing?

In our analogy, emotions are only energies, frequencies within the river. The sensing of these energies you call feeling.
Emotion is the motion of the river on a certain level. The word emotional arises when, because of beliefs, this motional flow is obstructed. An emotional person is a disturbed person. The emotional energies around him are not flowing as they could do. The diminution of discomfort you experienced after visualising the river, is a reflection of an increased emotional flow. You stopped saying my sadness, my discomfort and emotions and instead observed the flow of mind imagery. Mental-mind is intimately interwoven with feeling-mind and so affects it. Think pleasant thoughts and pleasant feelings arise; think unpleasant thoughts and unpleasant feelings will arise.
A child in the middle of a tantrum is not emotional. Children never get emotional. They may become aggressively expressive as they explore the energies around them; they may bubble with laughter as they experience the free flow of their own feeling nature, but it only lasts for a while. They allow emotions to flow - into experience and out of it. Adults identify with emotions and say: “I am emotional”. This belief makes letting go of emotions difficult. The child merely feels emotions arising and falling away without the identification - without saying “these are my emotions”. A child that is allowed to express emotions and let go of them grows into a healthy, non-emotional adult. This does not mean that as an adult he will be unable to feel things. Because he doesn’t identify himself with his emotions, he will be able to see more of “the river” than a person with emotional disturbances will. This will allow him to feel, or sense more within the field of his feeling nature.
This kind of person is usually of the sensitive, cheerful variety that appreciates the simple things in life. He is not driven so much by fears and desires and the usual emotional, astral disturbances.

You have said on many occasions that I should have more faith in the now and remind my self of it at every opportunity. The now seems to have little substance in comparison to the real things in my life, what you call the river. Please tell me more - why the now?

Well to start with, the Now is totally free from all substance so you will never find it in mind as a thing. As you awaken to who you are you will find that the Now is more an aspect of being than some objectified reality. Coming closer to your own true-being automatically brings you more into the Now; conversely, the more you are able to focus yourself in the Now, the greater your presence of being.
You remember the game of repeating “Now” for a few minutes, to the exclusion of everything else and the sense of presence it gave rise to? This doesn’t just apply to you. This game can be played by everyone and the results will be the same. The Now is the body of enlightenment - it is the space in which the Living Light of your true-being manifests. As we strengthen our awareness of the Now, so are the falsities of mind diminished. Nobody need believe these words, all they have to do is to sit down, breathe maybe a little deeper than normal and repeat Now with a good honest intent. The heightened flow of their experience will speak for itself.
Your mind, with relentless persistency, confronts you with images of yourself in “past” and “future” spaces. The spaces of yesterday and tomorrow are mental ideas that have no reality per se: space can only exist Now. I have little desire to discuss this point with you, but I do respect your finite views. It’s fine by me that you insist, “my kitchen table has its origin in the past”. I have to maintain that your kitchen table has never touched past and that it will never know the future. It has only been Now. The Now can never become a part of the past, only mind belongs to the past - mind is nothing more than the movement of memories.
You say “now” in your mind and believe that your awareness of the word “now” is all there is, or as you sometimes put it, “this is the now and I am in it - there is nothing else”. In some respects you are correct, the thing is that you are only aware of mind’s imitation of the Now: thinking now, is not the actual Now.
Holding your mind steady through repeating “Now” eventually bores it into silence, or at least a lower level of activity, allowing a higher self-awareness in the Now. Through releasing the mentalisations held concerning the Now, we allow it to speak for itself. Sadly, man prefers his mental imagery of life to the real thing. To know the river, you have to observe it. Thinking thoughts about, or looking at dead pictures of the river will never replace the actual experience of it in the Now.

All this business of living in the now is becoming a little dated. As soon as you pick a book up these days, you read the words “live in the now”. My friends and I have put great importance on living in the now. This has not been a solution for them or me in any way!

There is quite a substantial difference between talking about living in the Now and actually doing it. In the case of you and your make-believe friends, it is more of an intellectual ideology, or if you will excuse my directness, an excuse for self-destruction and abandonment.

You had better explain that one!

Saying that one has to live in the Now and simultaneously popping those dubious tablets your bewildered friends sell to you, is not one of life’s paradoxes, it is one of life’s sorrows. Rolling one of those things you call a spliff whilst lecturing on the importance of living after what you are, is a well-disguised cry for help. This is quite definitely not living in the Now and if you think it is, I recommend you paint you’re face blue and red and start selling flowers.

No comment.

I interpret your submission as being admirable and most dignified.
Man, in his search for release from misery and ignorance tends to wallow in it, believing that his misery belongs to life and that through truly understanding it, he will eventually understand himself. Believing that one is the content of one’s mind is total misery and the ultimate self-ignorance. The Now is the hand of providence that guides us away from this misery.

To be totally honest, I might as well admit that I am always forgetting the now. One second I have it in mind and the next it has gone without my noticing, returning a few hours later for a couple of seconds more. I always seem to forget - why?

The basic problem is not the fact that you merely forget the Now, it is your unwillingness to try and remember it.
My sentences are long and my messages sometimes deep, but what you have to do is very simple indeed. The direct road to the Now is mere self-remembrance. When you are trying to remember who you are, you are actively moving into the Now.

Wait, slow down, that sounded important. Give me that again!

• When you are involved with tying to remember yourself, the Now is remembering and manifesting in you.

That sounds very easy, but I don’t understand a word of it. How do I remember myself? I am myself now, what can I possibly remember?

You say “I” of yourself and at the same time have no idea of what you are talking about. What is this “I”? Everyone says “I” of himself or herself. What is the difference between their “I” and yours?
To listen inward, in search of the source of the “I” in your head, is self-remembrance - life remembering Life.
Self-remembrance demands attention. Contrary to the beliefs of some of you high-life friends, attention can not be sniffed. Attention arises through the longing to go beyond ignorance; through refusing to be moved by ignorance. It is the state of the warrior, standing absolutely still in dynamic equipoise and pure attention, his sword unsheathed. No thoughts of the sword, no thoughts of himself and his surroundings, just pure attention in the Now: Perfection in perfection; self in Self.
Spend a few minutes Now and try and remember the state of mind you had as a child. Return to your pond activities and recall the state of mind you had the moment before you plunged forward to grab a frog! As you planned your attack on an unsuspecting frog, your mind was not pure - it was following greed. As you grabbed and pulled the frog from the water your mind was not pure; it was caught in aggressive desires. When you were poised, your attention given totally to the Now, merely observing the frog, you were the warrior - you were held in true-being and remembrance.
This is self-remembrance. If you can remember this, you will sense the action of life remembering Life, self remembering Self.
The warrior’s self-control annihilates all aggression. He is a warrior of peace, a servant of the Now. As and when something happens outside of him he is not drawn to thoughts, he remains totally in the Now: the warrior captured in the pure action of his own being. When the need for action arises, it does so all by itself. It is obvious to him that the enemy is his own mind. He refuses to be drawn along on the river of mind and instead finds his completion through merely observing it.
From the perspective of mind, the Now is moving, going somewhere - it is traversing the universe, moving through the day towards tomorrow. Seen from the perspectives of the Now, it is mind that is moving, it is the day that arises in the Now, not the Now in the day. In the same way, the warrior knows that it is the universe that moves through him and not he through the universe - he knows himself as the Now. The life that he is has won and lost thousands of battles; he has been born and died many times. Despite this he has always been victorious because he knows that it is only the man that remains in ignorance that looses.
Staying in the Now is a great challenge, a most noble intercourse with life which enacts the ultimate good for yourself and the world around you. Staying in the Now is allowing ignorance to pass away so that the truth may be known.

I think one of my difficulties is that I seem to loose my sense of Identity in the now - I have difficulty in finding myself in the now. Do you understand what I mean?

This is not the way of the warrior: the warrior does not look for himself. He knows himself as being, being in the Now. When you ask, “who am I”, your mind will reply “I am me”. “Me” is an object in your awareness, it is not “I”, it is the personality, the mask you wear - what is behind the mask? What is behind mind and all the things your external world has taught you about yourself? Ask again, “who am I” and ignore the answers your mind offers you: remain with the question. Mind can never truly answer this question and so, through your persistence, you will move beyond mind, into the Now and a greater perspective of the river of life. Remembering your being in the Now is self-remembrance. The remembrance I am talking about has nothing to do with the circulations of mind - you will never find yourself in mind.
Repeat to yourself, “Now am I”. Do this without trying to identify yourself with your physical feelings or mental ideas - just say Now, Now… Feel your great connection with the world around you, everything encompassed in your Identity: Learn to live your life as the Now - feel the connection of everything through the medium of the Now.
Saying “I am something” is an attempt to freeze reality and stop the river from flowing. You can’t freeze a river, for if you do, it will disappear. It is the river’s flow and change that make it a river. To be able to partake in life we have to keep on moving, changing, ceaselessly letting go of the old and embracing the new. The best way of doing this is through remaining in the Now.

What you are saying is that if I am able to remain in the now it is good and if I am unable, hard cheese. Surely there are other things that can help me to remain present in the now?

Your unwholesome living subdues your abilities. You live a life of agitation that is lacking self-respect and moral foundation. By removing the impurities in your mind you will strengthen your ability to remain in the Now. Wholesome living purifies the mind. A more stable, moral base in life will strengthen your attention and appreciation of the Living Now.

People telling me how to behave and lecturing me on what they believe is right and wrong is definitely something that strengthens my belief in irritation! Why not live and let live without all these moral warrants and admonitions.

Your upbringing, it would appear, has given you a rather negative understanding of what morality is. Morality has little to do with right and wrong as you understand them.

I can feel one of your monologues coming on. I am all ears but please, keep it on a level that I can understand. None of this pure awareness and warrior nonsense.

A good way to understand morality is to understand its growth in you as an individual and sense its natural awakening in consciousness. You have reasonable powers of memory - let’s apply them Now.
Bearing in mind the massacred frogs, let us go forward in time to around the age of thirteen and the discovery of your father’s Webly air-pistol that was hidden in a forbidden draw.
Being the mettlesome individual that you are, you had to try it. You were afraid of putting a hole in something valuable in the house and so instead, opened the kitchen window and set your sights on an innocent and unsuspecting sparrow perched in the tree at the bottom of the garden. You raised your weapon, took aim and pulled the trigger and accomplished a direct hit. Hitting something as small as a sparrow at a distance of twenty-five yards on a first shot was a great achievement. You ran into the garden to check the condition of your chirpless victim. It lay flut¬tering a little under the tree. You had shot it straight through the neck.
This was the last time you killed something for the fun of it. Instigating the slaughter of hundreds of frogs years earlier and the feeling of indifference as to whether they lived or not had been replaced, or was being affected by a higher level of mind consciousness (and also a higher morality) that didn’t tolerate you blowing away sinless sparrows.
Another exemplary case of the growth of morality is seen when we try and understand why the pleasure and excitement of filling your pockets with unpaid for shopping items, gradually gave rise to feelings of guilt: there came a point in your life where you realised that you didn’t feel good about yourself after robbing shops.
What I am saying is that morality is inherent in consciousness. With the growth of consciousness comes the growth of morality. As we reach the higher levels of consciousness, we find that moral¬ity is built into the substance of what we really are. That which grows in awareness is virtuous and moral and that which cannot remain in awareness is sin, vice or immorality. The higher our awareness, the higher our morality. The more aware we become of what we are, the more moral we become. This is neither good nor bad - it is just the way things morally are.
It is not that consciousness decides to behave after higher moral standards or views it finds reflec¬tion in, it is those higher moral standards and views. Mora¬lity is knowing what damages oneself and others and knowing what is beneficial for oneself and others. This is obviously tied in with the level of your consciousness - how conscious we are of our surroundings and ourselves. Morality cannot be found in the concepts of good and bad - it is a supporting pillar in the unfoldment of consciousness.
The question of whether it is immoral to slaughter innocent frogs depends on the consciousness of the person doing the slaughtering. The splattered frogs, for you, were a healthy part of growing up. If some adult had found you mutilating these green amphibians, they would probably have revoked your frog licence. Being told that you were evil or punishing you because of your low morality would have impaired your growth to the moral and emotional stability you experience today. That which strengthens your sense of inner well-being is moral for you, that which promotes imbalance and disturbs the integrity of your being is immoral.
What is morally correct varies from culture to culture and has changed as man has changed. The morality that was present during the religious crusades would not be acceptable today; the morality that murdered thousands of friendly and harmless witches would not befit our present day values and morality.
The evolution of Man is also the evolution of consciousness and morality… I sense your boredom is rising so I will end by saying: listening to yourself and truly finding out what is right for you will develop your own morality. Paralleled to this development you will find an increase in attention, understanding and ability to remain in the Now.

Well, it looks like I’m a complete looser as far as morality is concerned! After remembering my earlier frogroms, I feel inspired to persecute my younger sister’s hamster. Would putting it in the food mixer and taking it for a quick spin be seen as a part of my moral development? Now it’s going round… in the Now, Now round, Now round, Now.
Judging by your silence, I suspect that you are not impressed - sorry.
What else can help me to remain in the Now? I think I understand that self-remembrance helps, knowing that I am not my experiences helps and that healthy living, or morality, helps. Is there anything else that can aid me on my crusade?

Through deepening your understanding, you strengthen your determination. Knowing what you have to do fills you with strength. When you are unsure, determination fails. Let us now deepen our understanding.
The nature of mind is a nature of duality. Within the great field of conscious-experience that we call mind, we find all of life’s polarities and opposites. Male and female, the Father in heaven and the Mother earth, yin and yang, left and right, up and down, right and wrong and so on. You see clearly that for night to be, we have to have day. You understand that for a river to flow we need the polarities of high and low.
Mind and matter are not two separate phenomena; they are polarities of mind. Matter is physical-mind. All human conscious experiences arise and fall away within the two great polarities of mind: higher-mental-mind and lower-physical-mind. The result of these two polarities is flow on mental, emotional and physical levels - they facilitate movement within the field of mind and allow the flow of evolution, the flow of becoming to take place. Mind is the field of becoming - it is changing all the time.
A battery has the polarities of plus and minus which facilitate a flow of electricity. In human terms, you have physical, emotional and mental polarities that instigate manifold movements within the field of mind. These complex energy configurations follow their natural inclinations. The river flowing to the sea is a natural inclination - your physical, emotional and mental movements, follow the natural inclinations formed by your beliefs. If you believe that you are obese and unattractive you will eventually become obese and unattractive; if you believe that you are unworthy, experiences of unworthiness are bound to arise. All this is possible courtesy of your dualistic mind.
Mind is conditional: there are things that are big because there are things that are small, there is good because there is bad - all these dualities are conditions of mind: everything that arises in mind is dependent on the conditions of mind: Anything that is dependent on something else for its existence is false.
When mind is confronted by something without polarity it, with disturbing ease, dismisses it. The Now is without polarity and is therefore of little interest to mind. This is true of all the things you really value. Love, peace, true knowledge and true-being are all unconditional and beyond mind. Mind claims happiness and sadness: beyond these dualities there is peace - neither happiness nor sadness. Mind claims knowledge of things: beyond these false, relative, conditional mind-reflections, there is true knowledge - that which knows knowledge. Mind says “I love and I hate”: Love knows not hate - it has no opposite. Being and love have no polarity or opposite: they are unconditionally One.
Mind consciousness is a product of duality. Consciousness is dualistic: it is a subject-object operation, something becoming conscious of something else. Beyond consciousness there is awareness. Yes, we say that we are aware of something, indicating duality, but at the same time, awareness can exist without an object for its attention. Awareness and the Now are present in all of your experiences and are at the same time beyond them: they are completely without polarity, or an opposite.
When we speak of consciousness we understand that there is a beginning and an end to it - it starts and it ends. Consciousness of the table in front of you flows into your awareness when you look at it and out of it when you turn away from it.
It is possible for you to imagine the end of the world, the whole planet exploding and disappearing. The Now, however, would remain. Without the Now there can be no world. Similarly with awareness - consciousness may be terminated, but the being and awareness that it arises in, were before it and they will be after it. Awareness is more like a mode of being than an interaction in mind; it is akin to space, a place where consciousness happens.
It is not that the Now arises in mind, it is mind that arises in the Now. The Now precedes mind.
You sense that the Now can exist without anything else and you sense that your being aware can exist without objects of experience - just stay in the Now for a few minutes and sense this to be true.
Pure-awareness and the Now are aspects of the Living Light that you are: you are beyond duality, polarity and all conditions. You say that you are male: this is the case in mind only. You are neither male nor female, you encompass and transcend the polarities of male and female: you transcend all the polarities of mind.
What you are defines all definitions and is beyond them. What you are defies all definition, so when I say that you are Living Light, understand that you are much more than this measly mind definition.
There are many levels of mind, areas of experience as it were, the obvious ones being dreaming-mind and wakeful-mind. There are higher levels of mind and experience that we understand when enthralled in states of rapture. These levels of mind are expressed through all artistic dynamism and higher human endeavour in all fields of life.
The conscious mind is in direct connection with these higher levels of mind through the medium of the Now. The point of power is in the Now. You would do better to find out for yourself whether or not this is true through your own subjective enquiries. My words point toward realisation, do not mistake your mental understanding for the actual realisation. Enquire Now, without my help.
You dabble in poetry, music and art. In any of these areas when you are finding difficulty in manifesting what you would like, stop everything and remain in the Now. Refuse to let go of the Now. Feel it, give your breath to it, and take your breath from it - be it completely. After five minutes or so, return to what it was you were having problems with and experience the higher flow of mind flowing into creation, bringing with it what you needed. This is not only true of your artistic manoeuvrings, but is also true in all areas of life where a higher expression is needed.
Pure-awareness in the Now is the point of power, the fulcrum of experience in everything you do. It is the control room of all experiences. To remain in the Now gives you complete control. The things you need will flow into your experience without mind’s limitations. Pure-awareness will guide all your experiences.
I have said that your higher sleep experiences are attainable in daily consciousness. Giving your self to the Now is giving your self to these higher states of being.
Sit with a straight back and without thoughts, give your self totally to the Now. Experience the deep sense of rest the exercise gives rise to. Your mind will struggle against you for the first few minutes, attacking you with all possible ideas and thoughts about why you shouldn’t be doing what you are doing. As thoughts arise, release them to the river and with an even stronger determination be still, like the warrior.
There are many ways of being present in the Now that we have touched upon; many other ways will become apparent to anybody willing to question his or her experience of self in the Now.

That was just too much for me… far too much for me to assimilate in one go. Is that the end of it?

There is a way that enables presence in the Now, that has universal application, that I have not yet touched upon that I will some day have the challenge of teaching you.

Okay, let’s get it over with. As you have insisted, “there is no time like the present”.

When you have learnt to keep a safe distance to the dictates of mind we shall begin. When you are able to face life without being blown to pieces by explosive thoughts and washed away by emotional storms and upsets, you will be ready to move on. Active participation in the purification of mind through the medium of the Now is not for the weak-hearted. The removal of all the conditions of mind will someday become your task.

When?

Understand that the Now is eternally Now and that there is no hurry. If something takes a week, an hour or a day, what does it matter? The only thing to be wary of is that you are not moving away from your goal, moving away from liberation. You have already taken many steps in the right direction so be patient.
Through letting go of beliefs and experiences and allowing them to flow, you have been de-conditioning mind. Seeing that you have power over your thoughts and feelings is a mammoth step toward a purified, unconditioned mind. Understanding the importance of the Now and the need for morality are illustrious tools that will release you from much ignorance. This will allow a greater flow of universal intelligence. Keep working, knowing that as long as you are walking toward your goal, you will arrive. Feel the Joy of being free and peaceful in the Now - stand back from the river of life and refuse to be corrupted and know that I am with you.

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