2014 ms item01 03 09 b phillips awakeningday9
Formula for Miracles® Presents
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 9: How One Big Lie Creates All the Suffering in the World Unfortunately, most of us spend our lives running around on the branches of the tree of suffering, and we never actually get to the root of it. Fortunately, the root of all suffering is simple but profound: it is identification with the “false I”. For example, if I think that I am Brent Phillips, then I have identified with the “false I”. In fact, most of us spend our entire lives in service to the “false I”, which sucks because then you don’t know that it doesn’t actually exist! But because this concept of the “false I” is so pervasive and so well entrenched, the vast, vast majority of humans go to their graves after spending their entire lives serving the “false I”. This is really sad, because this one myth - the “false I” - is directly responsible for all the suffering in the world. As a result, the more deeply you can embody your Awakening, you’ll experience less and less suffering, less fear, less stress, less contraction, and less worry. Instead, you will experience more joy, more fulfillment, more contentment, and more expansion. To understand this better, let’s take a step back and explore what really happens when awareness or consciousness has an experience or a perception. In short, the capacity to perceive is the essence of consciousness. By contrast, the ego, the personality, or the “false I”, is the means by which consciousness or awareness interfaces with the physical world of duality. One good metaphor for this process is a lamp: the true self is the light, and the ego is the lamp shade. In this lamp metaphor, two light bulbs (hidden inside two separate lamps) that can’t directly interact with each other. Instead, they can only affect the environment around them via the light projected through the lamp shades. The lamp shade does not itself produce any light, but the lamp shade can distort, influence, and modify the light projected through it. Similarly, consciousness or awareness can’t directly manipulate or influence the physical and mental objects around you. Instead, it projects itself into polarity through the interface of the mind/body organism. Another good metaphor uses computers, where (in this metaphor) the true self is the computer hardware and software with its processors and memory, and the ego is the interface that connects the user to the computer via the screen, the mouse, and the keyboard. In life, understanding and even mastering the personality and persona is incredibly useful and valuable, but this tells you nothing about the truth of You. Instead, learning and understanding your personality or the “false I” from the place of awareness allows you to use the personality and the mind/body organism as an interface to physical reality. However, just as a pile of state-of-the-art computer hardware is meaningless without the right software, your body, mind, persona, and ego have no real inherent value, and are instead simply an interface between awareness – the true YOU – and the world of polarity. In some cultures the word “seer” is used to describe someone who has achieved high levels of understanding, perhaps even getting close to or fully realizing Enlightenment. If you look carefully at the word, it contains this truth with in it: you are the “see-er”, or seer…and a true seer is one who sees the truth of who or what he/she truly is!
So, how exactly does this “false I” create so much suffering? You can take any circumstance or situation where something bad seems to be happening and find the myth of this “false I” at work. As an example, let’s say that you made a bad investment and lost millions of dollars and ended up bankrupt. For most of us, that experience would create a lot of suffering, and you would likely have thoughts such as “I made a huge mistake”, or “I can’t believe I lost so much money”, or “I’ll never have another chance to earn that much money again”, or “I am a loser”. You might even think “I am going to be homeless” or “I’m going to get sick and die in horrible pain because I can’t afford medical care.” But notice that all the statements that create the suffering are based on the assumption that the “false I” is You and that it actually exists. For example, let’s take the thought “I’ll never have another chance to earn that much money again”. Notice how that thought is based on the assumption that you are the ego-mind, the personality, and the body. When you make this false assumption, it is natural to get stressed and afraid, because losing all your money means that you can expect to have a lot of painful and difficult future experiences. However, what if it wasn’t You that lost the money? Even better, if you ask yourself, “To whom is this loss of money happening”, the correct answer is “nobody”, because there is no one here. Remember that there are no beings with free will or awareness! Instead, You are simply the awareness having a perception facilitated by a particular biological mind-body organism that lost millions of dollars. But You did not lose the money, and in fact the “false I” (the star in this drama) does not exist at all. And if it doesn’t exist, how could it be You? In other words, the truth of what’s really going on with your life is similar to watching a movie where your favorite character loses millions of dollars. Of course, the actor playing that character won’t suffer terrible distress or have trouble sleeping because the character he is playing loses some money, because the actor knows that he is not the character! He knows that he is simply playing a role for dramatic purposes, and he knows that the character losing millions of dollars was simply part of the script. Hence, the loss of the money doesn’t bother the actor – and the actor does not suffer - because not only is the actor not the character, but the character is a fictional abstraction who doesn’t actually exist in nature. In other words, if you ask “Who was it that lost those millions of dollars?”, then the answer is that nobody lost millions of dollars. And when you live in that truth that nobody lost millions of dollars, you won’t suffer! Every problem or circumstance in your life is exactly like this, even physical health and pain: you will only suffer if you falsely identify with the fictional character that this bad thing is “happening to”. If you can connect with the truth and embody the understanding that none of this - including physical pain - is actually happening to You, then You will dis-identify with the “false I”, release your attachment to result, and experience a radical decrease in suffering, stress, fear, and pain. A great saying that summarizes this truth is something I learned when I studied martial arts: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. You’ll find that the less you have “I” centered thoughts, the closer you get to presence or embodiment, and you’ll tend to act in a completely spontaneous way without the need for thinking. This is what Jesus meant when he said “You need to become like a child again”. He did not mean that you
should be naïve or stupid or let others take advantage of you – instead, he’s speaking about simply being in the present moment and acting from feeling, rather than from thought, and saying that living this way often leads to incredible joy and satisfaction and provides incredible power. Unlike newborn babies and animals – who act without thought because they are not capable of having thoughts – the Awakened adult human has the potential to act without thought because they have learned the truth of who and what they really are, and have tamed the mind. The Awakened adult can then use the mind as a tool to serve awareness, instead of letting the mind use You – awareness - as a tool to serve the agenda of the “false I”. Making this shift is not always easy, and it’s unlikely that all of your suffering will disappear overnight. Still, Awakening truly is the start of the path that leads directly to the top of the mountain where there is no suffering! Remember that your Awakening is defined by a clear understanding of who and what You truly are; it is the “foot in the door” that leads to Enlightenment or Liberation, which we’ll call the complete transcendence and elimination of suffering. Once you’ve Awakened, your next task is to move forward and embody your Awakening, and as you do so, your suffering will become smaller, less intense, and less frequent. In fact, you’ll even develop a completely new relationship with suffering, because you will understand that suffering is really nothing more than an incredibly useful and powerful feedback mechanism that shows you where you are not yet free. This is a really important point, so let me conclude here by reiterating it: suffering is nothing more than an incredibly useful and powerful feedback mechanism that shows you where you are not yet free. And even better, suffering not only shows you where you are not yet free, but provides an opportunity and a circumstance for you to become more free. For example, if you are not yet free because you are worried about money, this money stress not only shows you where you are not yet free, but gives you an opportunity to become more free even in the face of enormous money stress. After all, would a truly Enlightened person suffer from having massive debt or losing their job or home? Of course not! They wouldn’t suffer no matter how big their problems are because they are free.
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 9: How One Big Lie Creates All the Suffering in the World Unfortunately, most of us spend our lives running around on the branches of the tree of suffering, and we never actually get to the root of it. Fortunately, the root of all suffering is simple but profound: it is identification with the “false I”. For example, if I think that I am Brent Phillips, then I have identified with the “false I”. In fact, most of us spend our entire lives in service to the “false I”, which sucks because then you don’t know that it doesn’t actually exist! But because this concept of the “false I” is so pervasive and so well entrenched, the vast, vast majority of humans go to their graves after spending their entire lives serving the “false I”. This is really sad, because this one myth - the “false I” - is directly responsible for all the suffering in the world. As a result, the more deeply you can embody your Awakening, you’ll experience less and less suffering, less fear, less stress, less contraction, and less worry. Instead, you will experience more joy, more fulfillment, more contentment, and more expansion. To understand this better, let’s take a step back and explore what really happens when awareness or consciousness has an experience or a perception. In short, the capacity to perceive is the essence of consciousness. By contrast, the ego, the personality, or the “false I”, is the means by which consciousness or awareness interfaces with the physical world of duality. One good metaphor for this process is a lamp: the true self is the light, and the ego is the lamp shade. In this lamp metaphor, two light bulbs (hidden inside two separate lamps) that can’t directly interact with each other. Instead, they can only affect the environment around them via the light projected through the lamp shades. The lamp shade does not itself produce any light, but the lamp shade can distort, influence, and modify the light projected through it. Similarly, consciousness or awareness can’t directly manipulate or influence the physical and mental objects around you. Instead, it projects itself into polarity through the interface of the mind/body organism. Another good metaphor uses computers, where (in this metaphor) the true self is the computer hardware and software with its processors and memory, and the ego is the interface that connects the user to the computer via the screen, the mouse, and the keyboard. In life, understanding and even mastering the personality and persona is incredibly useful and valuable, but this tells you nothing about the truth of You. Instead, learning and understanding your personality or the “false I” from the place of awareness allows you to use the personality and the mind/body organism as an interface to physical reality. However, just as a pile of state-of-the-art computer hardware is meaningless without the right software, your body, mind, persona, and ego have no real inherent value, and are instead simply an interface between awareness – the true YOU – and the world of polarity. In some cultures the word “seer” is used to describe someone who has achieved high levels of understanding, perhaps even getting close to or fully realizing Enlightenment. If you look carefully at the word, it contains this truth with in it: you are the “see-er”, or seer…and a true seer is one who sees the truth of who or what he/she truly is!
So, how exactly does this “false I” create so much suffering? You can take any circumstance or situation where something bad seems to be happening and find the myth of this “false I” at work. As an example, let’s say that you made a bad investment and lost millions of dollars and ended up bankrupt. For most of us, that experience would create a lot of suffering, and you would likely have thoughts such as “I made a huge mistake”, or “I can’t believe I lost so much money”, or “I’ll never have another chance to earn that much money again”, or “I am a loser”. You might even think “I am going to be homeless” or “I’m going to get sick and die in horrible pain because I can’t afford medical care.” But notice that all the statements that create the suffering are based on the assumption that the “false I” is You and that it actually exists. For example, let’s take the thought “I’ll never have another chance to earn that much money again”. Notice how that thought is based on the assumption that you are the ego-mind, the personality, and the body. When you make this false assumption, it is natural to get stressed and afraid, because losing all your money means that you can expect to have a lot of painful and difficult future experiences. However, what if it wasn’t You that lost the money? Even better, if you ask yourself, “To whom is this loss of money happening”, the correct answer is “nobody”, because there is no one here. Remember that there are no beings with free will or awareness! Instead, You are simply the awareness having a perception facilitated by a particular biological mind-body organism that lost millions of dollars. But You did not lose the money, and in fact the “false I” (the star in this drama) does not exist at all. And if it doesn’t exist, how could it be You? In other words, the truth of what’s really going on with your life is similar to watching a movie where your favorite character loses millions of dollars. Of course, the actor playing that character won’t suffer terrible distress or have trouble sleeping because the character he is playing loses some money, because the actor knows that he is not the character! He knows that he is simply playing a role for dramatic purposes, and he knows that the character losing millions of dollars was simply part of the script. Hence, the loss of the money doesn’t bother the actor – and the actor does not suffer - because not only is the actor not the character, but the character is a fictional abstraction who doesn’t actually exist in nature. In other words, if you ask “Who was it that lost those millions of dollars?”, then the answer is that nobody lost millions of dollars. And when you live in that truth that nobody lost millions of dollars, you won’t suffer! Every problem or circumstance in your life is exactly like this, even physical health and pain: you will only suffer if you falsely identify with the fictional character that this bad thing is “happening to”. If you can connect with the truth and embody the understanding that none of this - including physical pain - is actually happening to You, then You will dis-identify with the “false I”, release your attachment to result, and experience a radical decrease in suffering, stress, fear, and pain. A great saying that summarizes this truth is something I learned when I studied martial arts: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. You’ll find that the less you have “I” centered thoughts, the closer you get to presence or embodiment, and you’ll tend to act in a completely spontaneous way without the need for thinking. This is what Jesus meant when he said “You need to become like a child again”. He did not mean that you
should be naïve or stupid or let others take advantage of you – instead, he’s speaking about simply being in the present moment and acting from feeling, rather than from thought, and saying that living this way often leads to incredible joy and satisfaction and provides incredible power. Unlike newborn babies and animals – who act without thought because they are not capable of having thoughts – the Awakened adult human has the potential to act without thought because they have learned the truth of who and what they really are, and have tamed the mind. The Awakened adult can then use the mind as a tool to serve awareness, instead of letting the mind use You – awareness - as a tool to serve the agenda of the “false I”. Making this shift is not always easy, and it’s unlikely that all of your suffering will disappear overnight. Still, Awakening truly is the start of the path that leads directly to the top of the mountain where there is no suffering! Remember that your Awakening is defined by a clear understanding of who and what You truly are; it is the “foot in the door” that leads to Enlightenment or Liberation, which we’ll call the complete transcendence and elimination of suffering. Once you’ve Awakened, your next task is to move forward and embody your Awakening, and as you do so, your suffering will become smaller, less intense, and less frequent. In fact, you’ll even develop a completely new relationship with suffering, because you will understand that suffering is really nothing more than an incredibly useful and powerful feedback mechanism that shows you where you are not yet free. This is a really important point, so let me conclude here by reiterating it: suffering is nothing more than an incredibly useful and powerful feedback mechanism that shows you where you are not yet free. And even better, suffering not only shows you where you are not yet free, but provides an opportunity and a circumstance for you to become more free. For example, if you are not yet free because you are worried about money, this money stress not only shows you where you are not yet free, but gives you an opportunity to become more free even in the face of enormous money stress. After all, would a truly Enlightened person suffer from having massive debt or losing their job or home? Of course not! They wouldn’t suffer no matter how big their problems are because they are free.
