Duality & Desire: How to Begin to be Free of Your Mind pt 2 of 3

(I suggest reading a few of the posts preceding this one)

"An observer is someone who doesn't make a judgement." - Eamon Loughrey

To begin to be free of the thinking mind that controls you, you first have to divide yourself into two. That means you should separate your awareness over your mind and body. So in other words you are going to be observing how your mind and emotions and body behaves. In order to separate yourself into an observer versus the mind/emotions/body you will have to train yourself or recondition yourself to constantly be alert in order to observe. Think of it like a Russian doll metaphor: the larger doll (your awareness) is overlooking the smaller doll (your mind/emotion/body).

What are you observing?

Duality

Duality is symbolized by the black (shadow of the truth) and white (the real truth) checkerboard in Freemasonry. We have to transcend duality of the thinking mind which has been conditioned to judge what is 'good for the I' & 'bad for the I' and is the obstacle to awakening:

You are not going to observe into the stories of the thoughts that run around your mind themselves but observing TECHNICALLY how they arise. Let me re-explain: You will need to begin with total observation on what arises from the mind without being distracted by the story each thought entails, which ONLY serves to distract even further. This requires plenty of patience and vigilance. Be aware that you will be tempted frequently to listen to the story of thoughts. 

Everything in the mind arises in duality. The first thing the mind will do is JUDGE. It will then judge what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. So the thinking mind only perceives things as either 'good' or 'bad'. These are not opposites of each other, they are on the same line, the same polarity so in fact it is actually good vs the absence of good but in duality they are ONLY seen as either 'good' or 'bad':

"Life is not a conflict between opposites, but a polarity. Poles are the opposite ends of one magnet. You can’t have one without the other. If you take a magnet, say you have a magnetized bar, there’s a north pole and a south pole. Okay, chop off the south pole, move it away. The piece you've got left creates a new south pole. You never get rid of the south pole. So the point about a magnet is, things may be the poles apart, but they go together."

- Alan Watts

For a clearer understanding of Duality I suggest reading this short article by Mr. Joseph Panek, Transcending Duality: http://www.aseekersthoughts.com/2008/12/transcending-duality.html before continuing this post.

Desire

In duality, your thinking mind -- not the part that uses calculations or planning things or intuition/conscience and so on -- but the part that you identify yourself with: Everything that arises in the mind rises out of Desire or Rejection for the self, according to our story (our 'Story' is a conglomeration of our beliefs, past, fears, frustrations, and desires). Anything that gives you Pleasure (Good) or the polar opposite, Pain (Bad), is how your thinking mind's illusion was formed. Most people call the thinking mind's illusion as the ego but in fact it is just the thinking mind's illusion. I will get to the real definition of Ego later. It is self-serving your personal story, your separate world (through your name and personality). Anything that arises after you view things as "this is 'good'" or "this is 'bad'" THEN these thoughts will then arise:

- Jealousy (comparing yourself with others or judging others)

- Revenge/Hostile (a reaction to you being rejected, including the idea of others deserving bad things happening to them)

- Offense (taking personal offense to anything that happens in your surroundings, part of this is to Magnify situations)

- Greed (deserve more then what you're getting)

- Self-Sabotage (putting yourself down)

- Self Pity (including Victim Stance)

- Power (Superior or Inferior to others, part of this is being Stubborn)

- Procrastination (a form of Sloth/Laziness)

- Fear/Worry/Paranoia
- Apathy (don't care about others)
- Solo (you don't need any help, or the false idea that you can do everything on your own without considering circumstances and people and environment)
- Lying (exaggerated truth)
- Pride (including Appraisals & Attributions. Attributions refers to making excuses, such as an explanation of why things happen to us, it can be positive or negative to either give credit or blame, respectively.)
- Addiction (crutch to deal with either a painful or a pleasurable emotion)

It is difficult to be as still as the silence of a flower. The stillness of the mind is always disrupted by a thought, and when you are tempted to get distracted by the story that each thought entails, the mind becomes chaotic. Desire is an urge within you that is always looking to enhance/gratify your personal story (either positively or negatively) and the urge rises frequently and keeps you distracted from Reality. This includes 'boredom' that is really just the mind having nothing to do but wanting attention and to please itself. It keeps you distracted from the world around you, it even keeps you distracted from noticing that you are breathing. If it keeps you distracted from noticing your breathing that means your are controlled by your thinking mind's decision. Then imagine how much more it distracts you from. Therefore you are in a dream-like state. The above list of 'seeds' are examples of how it keeps you distracted by making your story to being very convincing and real (but it is only an illusion, please read Your Personality and Understanding the Puppeteer). Each seed gives you either a Pleasure/Good (positive) polarity of the emotion or Pain/Bad (negative) polarity. For example Pride/Shame, pride is the selfish positive (pleasure) and shame is the selfish negative (pain) enhancing your 'I' story. Notice that when something doesn't give you pride you feel shameful; Also if something does not make you ashamed, you feel pride. 

You have to first notice that you are dreaming or brainwashed before you can begin to 'wake up'. That is the reason why some of these are called the Seven Deadly Sins because they send you into darkness or in actuality that the mind now is taking more control -- we go against the natural law of what we are (going against the law creates karma). So metaphorically, it is as if you are dead because you are not conscious of Reality.

Do not observe into the story of each thoughts that come from any of these seeds because you will once again be distracted -- see how tricky the mind works? Just observe them technically because their only purpose is to hold on to your illusory identity. So if you have an emotion that arises out of Offense, simply just be aware that it is Offense, without looking into the JUSTIFICATION that your mind will present (don't look inside of the thought, step out of the box ... again the Russian doll metaphor). And keep going. This is how you begin to observe how your mind behaves and will immediately assist in strengthening control back to yourself. You will get better with time at being able to divide yourself into two in order to be alert to how your mind works. It takes consistent practice and eventually you will get better at it, for some progress will happen in quickly, others will take a lot longer. You will learn to understand the characteristics of each emotion, how it affects you and how it arises thoughts in parallel character. You will be quicker at recognizing emotions when you do this practice. From here and through your direct experience (I can't tell you how your mind works, it is your universe not mine) you will be able to extract understanding from constant observation. But an important advice is that during these times of effort you will 'fail' many many times at being quick enough to catch the emotions as fast as they arise, because we react almost automatically to these emotions with actions. Do not give up and don't take such 'failures' personally, because this idea of 'failure' is again a trick of the mind wanting you to feel guilty and worried etc. Keep going DO NOT GIVE UP, it is ok. It takes many failures to understand things even better, so there is no loss. It takes time to learn. Please read Slow Down Part 1 and Slow Down Part 2 to know why.

It may help to keep with you a list of emotional seeds so that it may be easier to pinpoint what an emotion that arises within you is. It is even better to jot down as much as you can all the emotions (by label only) that arises within you for a day. You'll better understand your behavior patterns as they will be shown in the light. 

When you start the practice of dividing yourself into two, many things about you will come to light, your truth will slowly reveal itself. This is the path to transcend black & white duality (inferior desires) and strengthening your intuition (superior desires) by stepping into the world of color or up the chakras (described metaphorically in the Wizard of Oz): Transcending the mind in order to see what you are. Or in other words, in Reality.