The Door to Higher Consciousness is Closing
The Door to Higher Consciousness is Closing
The Only Thing you Take with you When you Die is the Quality of Your Mind
The Only Thing to be Afraid of Is Your Idea of Yourself
[Discourse given on a seven day Vipassana Level 1 retreat in 2016]
The Door to Higher Consciousness is Closing
To break the cycle of attachment to the human round is very, very hard to do – and to come to a human life as fortunate as this one is extremely hard to do. But things are not getting better. There's no point tap-dancing around or beating about the bush, things aren't getting better out there. We're just pretending that it's still okay, but it isn't, is it?
I attempted to say this about ten years ago but I felt back then so much resistance from people who felt I was being negative by suggesting we need to give up our way of life and embrace something considerably simpler and less elaborate if we want any chance of finding a lasting peace in our lives. I was criticised for discouraging the prevalent attitude of pursuing our ambitions as single-mindedly as possible in the pursuit of personal gain and status. Ten years ago, I should have been saying things aren't getting better. Well the truth is, if I'm your spiritual teacher or meditation teacher or anyone who you're seeking some kind of guidance from, I need to be saying that to you. I need to find the courage. I don't think it's appropriate for me any longer to let you pretend that the right attitude is just to hope that everything is going to be okay.
You've got to realise that we're experiencing now, as we do at all times, the effects of choices we made in the past. If we want something different, we have to make some serious choices now. We haven't changed anything like as much as we were being asked to change, and we've got to be honest about that. We've done the bare minimum and we haven't actually changed very much at all.
Now I think it's time to say that we need to do a little bit more. At the very least we need to challenge ourselves to ask whether we could be doing more, because if you don't challenge yourself in this life, if you don't ask yourself questions like, “Am I prepared to change?”, then you are basically still bound to this way of life regardless of which direction it goes. If you want to break your attachment to the human cycle and make your way back to a state of consciousness that is higher than that, you have to live in a way that is considerably higher than the way we're living. That's just how it works. You already know enough now about the laws of the universe to see what's happening. So now is the time to take this seriously and do the work that you've spent these years preparing yourselves for. It really is.
Perhaps it is my fault actually, for not encouraging you more strongly to let go 10 or 15 years ago when you first started. I was aware of the backlash that came as a result of encouraging such fortunate people to give up their life of privileged and abundance and embrace a simpler life. Actually we had the chance of freeing ourselves from our attachment to that life without it being a painful process. We only had to embrace the notion of taking less and giving back more, and thereafter delight in the idea. Well now really is the time to do it while you still have the opportunity to do it – it really is the time to be practising deeply and letting go deeply.
So I feel I need to paint a picture of where this could lead if you were to do what you could do, because it's not really a question of how Boris Johnson or Brexit is going to roll out. All of that is the effect of choices we've been making over the last twenty years. Or the choices we didn't make over the last twenty years, that's more importantly the point. The choices we didn't make over the last twenty years are the reason we're facing what we're facing now, that's the way to look at it.
And why didn't we change and simplify our lives and accept that we would have to live and be happy with considerably less? It was because of our intoxication. Continuing to allow ourselves to be intoxicated with the illusion. And an un-willingness to be inconvenienced by the truth. We are all intelligent enough to be able to see that our way of life cant go on for much longer. If you look inside your heart you will know that there was a point at which you pretended that you hadn't seen for yourself what really needed to be done. If you are really honest, there would have been a point in your lives where you knew what you had to do, and then there will be another point not long after that where you convinced yourself you might not have to do it, and instead just told yourself that things will just work out ok. Is that true? Is that fair? Because we've got to get to the point here. Remember one of the paramis we will need if we are going to progress is self honesty.
The Only Thing you Take with you When you Die is the Quality of Your Mind
We're not taking any of this material stuff with us when we die. We know that. The only thing we're taking with us is the mind together with all its qualities and the karma it has accumulated. If you want to come to a higher state of being than the one we're living now then your mind has to operate in a wholly higher state of consciousness than the way it operates now. That's just how it is. It simply is not the case that we come to a higher state of being without raising the quality of our consciousness. And it is the case that if we allow the quality of our consciousness to degenerate the quality of life degenerates with it.
Now the point here is that we are all capable of operating in a higher state of consciousness than the one we run our lives by. And yet we are not doing it. We are not choosing to live as consciously as we could. We all hope and pray that our lives will improve in various ways, but are we sowing the seeds for genuine and lasting improvements in the quality of our life? What would allow us to believe that life could improve without us improving our consciousness? It is delusion to think that way.
We all have it in us to change and now we have to do it. You really have to. Because someone's got to start doing it. It's like there's a boat or a train that's leaving and you've got to get on it, and that boat or train is consciousness. It's consciousness that is leaving. That consciousness that connects us to the deep intelligence at work within our lives is leaving. It is waning in us as we chose to build our lives upon wilfulness instead of virtue. And when we lose it, it's very difficult to get it back again. While we have that quality of consciousness that is capable of acting as a moral compass we have to let it show us what we have to do. And then we have to not just listen to it but act upon it .This is really serious.
There is a state of being that is a higher state of being than the one we live here and we all have it in us. We all have a memory of it, and part of us is longing to go return to that. But we don't just get back there by turning up to church on a Sunday. And we certainly don't just get there by burying our heads in the sand and hoping everything is going to be ok. It is a very high state of consciousness. It's the very best and highest of what we are and if we don't honour it and make it extremely important in our life, it will wither within us until we forget that it was ever a part of us. We have to live our life by high principles now. We need to raise the bar. We all need to raise the bar. It's no good complaining about how things are turning out.
So this is a very, very important time. Hearing this Dhamma again and going, “I'm not going to let that slip away into the background” is really important. Because having the opportunity to turn that Dhamma into something that's alive within you, it's harder and harder to do now. You all come here on retreat knowing that it's harder and harder to progress with your practice, that it's harder and harder to keep your connection to that consciousness that I'm talking about. I'm sure if you all look closely enough you will recognise feeling of that depleting over the past 10 years or so.
So now you've got to let go the stuff that distracts you. I don't know how else to say it. But think about it, you wouldn't be sitting here now having learned as much Dhamma s you have learned and practice as much meditation as you have practiced if you didnt already know that what I am telling you is true. You know what this Dhamma is. This is your pathway out of suffering. It is your journey home. Now I do get it; I can understand why so few of you have really let go yet: It is because life has been too intoxicating for us up until this point, we were too intoxicated. It was too alluring. The world had too much to offer us. “Why would I possibly want to give up all these things that I can have if I want them badly enough. Something other than that? Am I right? Is that fair enough. But it isn't like that any more. It's not alluring or intoxicating to us any more. So don't stay entangled in it. We've got some catching up to do. We have some lost ground to make up. I need to be encouraging you, you need to be encouraging each other, and you need to be encouraging your friends.
These changes that have to happen aren't going to happen because we get told to do things, they're only going to happen when we start choosing to do it. You need to feel the calling in your heart that tells you, “This is something I came here for. This is what I came here to do.” All the other stuff is nonsense. This is what you came here to do, now you've just got to do it. Stop tap-dancing around. Stop looking for an excuse to go and do something else now. Free yourselves fro suffering, break free of the layers of lethargy that we get smothered by, let go the wishful thinking, or the sense of entitlement. Let all of the hindrances go. If you are are not yet free yet, then free yourselves. If you know that you're still in the grip of those lower aspects of your mind do what you have to do to break free of it.
Whether life is a real struggle or whether we elevate ourselves up to a place where it's not, that's what's in our hand to decide right now. Do you get it? The choices we make and what governs those choices will define where we go from here. The distance between us and where we want to get to is very far now, and it's getting further. Bring it closer. Keep it close to you in the way in which you live the rest of your life. What you make your daily life about now needs to be about aligning yourselves to that consciousness and being guided by it. Thats what Living Dharma is. Not being driven by all the other things that we are so easily driven by, that are not for our welfare.
We're very lucky that we still have places like this where we can actually make present this consciousness. This vibration that you're now sitting in now is no longer the ambient background to our lives. It is something we have to seek out because we have driven it from our lives through the way we have chosen to live. We've got to make it ever-present inside us, so that when we go back to wherever we go, it doesn't go out like a match. We need to make it blaze strongly inside us so that we are never far from it. The conditions in which to progress and flourish are harder to find now than they were, and they're going to get harder still. But the other side of that is the impetus, the momentum to do it gets stronger. So if you were sitting there thinking, “Well, I don't know if I really need to do this, maybe later. Maybe another life. As long as I keep brushing myself down every now and then I'll be all right.” We have to stop thinking like that. NOW is the time to free ourselves from suffering...Not later.
What I'm actually saying is, all that stuff that you think you can carry along with you, you've got to get to the point of realising you can't. There's no part of that egoic mind of yours that crosses the stream, that makes that journey home, so you've got to get used to the idea of letting stuff go now. And you've got to make the choice to live in a way where consciousness is still resonating in the background. We have to make that choice because if you don't, that match will go out in us before our inner fire is fully lit. And then we will have to keep coming back here to get it relit. But one day you might not make it back, and once the light of spirit has gone out in our hearts, it is a long way back to consciousness. So set yourself up in your life now, in a way that consciousness is in the driving force, real consciousness, and then keep working at it until it shines brightly in you again.
The Only Thing to be Afraid of Is Your Idea of Yourself
What is happening now is the way that consciousness always degenerates. It happens every single time. Time and time again. It is always the point at which we get so intoxicated with ourselves that we forget where we came from. It's only ever that. It's not some evil force of darkness being manipulated by the elite few and we are these poor people who suffer on account of them. It's nothing to do with that. It's only ever when we get so intoxicated with our idea of ourselves that we forget start of fall in love we ideas of our own creations and forget the true ground of our being. This life is not driven by the will of man. It is consumed by the will of man. It is always the case that the brightest minds become the undoing of themselves - that's what the Buddha called the wheel of samsara. So don't worry, you don't need to be a bright spark, you just need to have a heart. It's not the brightest of sparks that get off the wheel, they're often the ones that keep coming back time and time and time again because they think that what they're capable of doing will sustain them. The think they can endlessly bend the world to their will. But they can't.
The only thing that sustains this life is the power that sits in the background, and when we are severed from it, our light goes out. When humanity severs itself from it, its lights go out and the whole thing has to start all over again. So it's in the hands of those who aren't willing sever their connection to consciousness in the pursuit of their desires. Our heat knows the truth, so we need to be able to feel our heart speaking to us. And if we cant feel it we need to take that as a sign that we need to wake up. As soon as you feel yourself becoming numb, you need to do something about it and get back to the place where you can feel it again.
I came down on the train after five days in London and I was looking out of the window and seeing the beautiful view as the sun went down and I thought, “how beautiful the light is!' - but I knew I was only looking at it, I knew I couldn't feel it, I was just watching it. That was after only five days in London around all this harmful wireless technology. Okay, we dust ourselves down and the lights are back on again. But you can't take the risk of letting long periods of time go by where you can't feel what's happening to you because of this wireless network technology grid. It's because we can't feel what's happening to us that we sanction the things that we should be giving up.
So its time to let go your master plan and all the conditions you put on your willingness to let go. This is really important. From the moment you felt yourself separating from consciousness the only thing you ever really wanted was to get back to it. So start listening to your heart again. Listen to your heart. You're all still conscious enough, so you can listen to it. It's your battle cry, it's your call to action. So make it count. Make it a blissful letting go.
You have to practise love and wisdom in equal measure now. Wisdom shows you the way and love overcomes your fear of letting go. Feel love for who and what you are. That doesn't mean your idea of yourself. You need to find that love in your heart if you haven't found it yet because that is what will give you the courage to let go. This is not just the path of those who have grown tired of suffering. It is the path of those who absolutely know that they long to end their separation from the source of that love.
