Читать книгу Making Your Wisdom Come Alive - Michael PhD Gluckman - Страница 15

More about Awareness later. But first there is one thing that we should discuss: the popular idea of the subconscious or the unconscious. These ideas are used in psychology. They’ve been picked up as popular words for behaviors or feelings that seemingly cannot be accounted for. “I don’t know why, but I constantly feel down or depressed,” “I just can’t seem to shake it,” or, “For no apparent reason I just break out in anger or fear. I just don’t know why.”

One important part of the path of Self-Knowledge is to recognize everything that you take to be you. Even the emotional and behavior patterns that you say, “This is just the way I am.” The Indian sages would call these patterns vasanas and say, “Get rid of your vasanas.” Indeed one of the most amazing feelings of freedom on this path comes from releasing these patterns. They tend to dictate so much of our lives and our experiences.

When you release them, all of a sudden instead of clutter, you have an open space. Furthermore, when you no longer live by the patterns in your mind, your life seems a whole lot less predetermined, and you seem to have a lot more free will. The feeling of automatic goes out of your life and you have choices that you didn’t know were there.

So how do you release these patterns? As you can probably see the whole movement of this meditation is towards the subject. When you become aware of something as objective, you become free of its limitations. When you can see it, you are free of it. That’s because what you see is just an object in your awareness. It is not your identity.

But here there is a quandary. What about the subconscious or the unconscious? If something is unconscious how can you ever become aware of it? I argue that you are already aware of it. If you did not know the thoughts that cause your moods then you wouldn’t have those moods. The same is true of your behaviors.

Right now, however, you may be so close to these thoughts that they come under the category of, “This is just the way I am.” But as you step more into your own Self–Nature, you will begin to see the thought patterns that control your life, and you will step free of them.

Here’s a hint: These thoughts are often masked under the guise of “This is just the way I am,” or “This is just the way my mind works,” or “This is just the way the world is,” or “This is just the way life is.” Later I will show you how to use these guises to catch these patterns.

One of the magical things that happens on this path is that you become aware of these little assumptions, and when you become aware of them, they are no longer the way you are. Yes, just by becoming aware of your assumptions about your mind, the world, life, and your identity, you open up a space that was once clouded over.

The effect is that where you once felt heavy and bound, you now feel light and free. Where you were once predictable in your responses to life, you are now free to experience life, and respond to life in a completely different way. It is at this point in your practice where life becomes fascinating.

I call this the art of introspection. When you master this art, you will know the difference between the theory of self-realization and the experience of your own Self-Nature.

In the next few chapters we will go further into this art of introspection so you will get a better idea what it is. We will start off with “Self Judgment.”