2014 ms item01 03 10 b phillips awakeningday10
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 10: Understanding the Difference Between the Mind and Awareness One of the fundamental misunderstandings that makes Awakening challenging is that most of us can’t make a clear distinction between the mind and pure awareness. In fact, most of us humans in the modern world tend to see the two as being essentially the same thing! Today we’re going to make a clear distinction here so you can see that the mind (not You) is simply a tool or mechanism used by You to facilitate perception or awareness. The most concise definition of the mind (as opposed to pure awareness) is that the mind is a screen that awareness uses to experience sensations. The mind is an object in duality, or polarity, and so objects of the mind can be good or bad, up or down, black or white, painful or pleasurable. By contrast, awareness is in Unity, and can not be labeled or grouped - it simply IS. A good way to think about the truth of how You work is that the mind, body, ego, and personality are simply biological mind-body mechanisms to facilitate perception or awareness. In other words, the mind is like your eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and nerves, which are biological mechanisms of perception that facilitate experiences that actually occur in the brain. Similarly, your mind is a sensory mechanism that awareness uses to perceive the Universe in the same way that your mind uses your body to facilitate having sensations such as hot, cold, wet, dry, etc. All suffering results from the mind’s obsessive thinking about itself. The suffering results not so much from the contents of your thoughts; that is, suffering is not a result of having the “wrong” or “bad” thoughts. As a result, changing your thoughts can’t and won’t eliminate suffering. Similarly, pushing the food around on your plate won’t create more or less food. Instead, suffering results because the false self - that what you think You are – that is at the center of the thoughts is not You, and in fact it does not exist! For this reason, mastering the personality via psychological analysis will rarely make you happy or relieve your suffering, in the same way that rearranging the food on your plate can’t make more food. And nearly everything that your mind does to improve your life – including most New Age work such as meditation, energy healing, and Law of Attraction processes - is essentially the same as trying to get more food by pushing it around on your plate. These efforts can never yield permanent, sustainable results because the mind is part of duality, and therefore every action of the mind has an equal and opposite reaction. Hence, no amount of action directed by the ego-mind can ever result in true happiness or bliss, but instead it can (at best) create a temporary drug effect of psychological inflation. (If you are not already familiar with psychological inflation or don’t know how to recognize it, you might want to check out VIP Club Special Event 7 Steps to Happiness, because learning how recognize the difference between psychological inflation and true transformation will save you literally tens of thousands of dollars or more on programs, classes, and sessions that are in essence just a temporary psychological effect dressed up in New Age clothing.) By contrast, if you live from an Awakened place, truly understanding that nothing You are perceiving is actually happening to You, and you remember that the “false I” that things seem to be
happening to is simply a fictional character that doesn’t exist, you’ll experience less and less suffering. Suffering is created as a direct result of the mind struggling to force the world to be the way you want it to be. Hence, the more deeply you embody the truth that nothing ever happens to You, the less you will suffer. Awareness is the act of the experiencing itself, without any judgment or labeling or reaction to the content of what is being experienced. Therefore the content of your life – or that which perceived, or the objects on the screen of the mind - can never affect awareness itself. In other words, nothing that happens in duality can ever affect You...and that’s exactly why Jesus told us to “turn the other cheek”! Your Awakening can be so deceptively simple that you may overlook it. Don’t forget that in some spiritual traditions the student of Awakening was expected to ask their teacher if they had achieved their Awakening, because the Awakening itself is nothing more than coming to crystal clear understanding about exactly who and what You are, as well as who and what You are not. It is powerful but subtle – after all, if it was obvious, you wouldn’t need confirmation from your teacher, would you? Typically, you’ll experience the majority of your post-Awakening peace, tranquility, confidence, and joy as your Awakening is embodied. It is quite easy to quickly fall back asleep, and so staying in the Awakened state often requires powerful motivation and diligence. To help you better understand and experience the difference between the mind and pure awareness, use the following exercise.
Exercise: “Noticing the Space” This is an exercise in “perception perceiving Itself”. First, simply take a moment to notice the perceptions you are having. Notice what you are seeing. Notice what you are hearing. Notice what you are feeling. Notice what you are thinking. Notice and be aware that you are seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting. Noticing the act of awareness without labeling or judging the content is awareness itself – that is YOU! But be careful not to cross the line into duality by applying judgments or labels. If you think “I’m looking at a white wall”, you are in the mind, not awareness, because the truth is that you are simply looking – the thought that what you are looking at is a wall, or is white, is the mind skipping over the act of perception and instead judging and labeling the content of the perception. You’ll find that no matter who you are, where you are or what you are doing, there is always plenty of perception! Perception is self evident and obvious. This knowing explains why sensory deprivation tanks are powerful vehicles to facilitate deep meditation and increased consciousness, as the tank inhibits and helps to break you out of your deeply ingrained habits of immediately labeling and judging the content of all of your sensations. Even in a sensory deprivation tank, there is still perceiving, and in fact there is just as much perceiving in a sensory deprivation tank as there is on a roller coaster or
at a rock concert. But since the content of your life, or what is perceived, is as close as we can get to what we would call “nothing”, the tank makes it easier to simply be aware of awareness itself, and allows you to more easily perceive without the mind butting in and disrupting your pure experience of Yourself.
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 10: Understanding the Difference Between the Mind and Awareness One of the fundamental misunderstandings that makes Awakening challenging is that most of us can’t make a clear distinction between the mind and pure awareness. In fact, most of us humans in the modern world tend to see the two as being essentially the same thing! Today we’re going to make a clear distinction here so you can see that the mind (not You) is simply a tool or mechanism used by You to facilitate perception or awareness. The most concise definition of the mind (as opposed to pure awareness) is that the mind is a screen that awareness uses to experience sensations. The mind is an object in duality, or polarity, and so objects of the mind can be good or bad, up or down, black or white, painful or pleasurable. By contrast, awareness is in Unity, and can not be labeled or grouped - it simply IS. A good way to think about the truth of how You work is that the mind, body, ego, and personality are simply biological mind-body mechanisms to facilitate perception or awareness. In other words, the mind is like your eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and nerves, which are biological mechanisms of perception that facilitate experiences that actually occur in the brain. Similarly, your mind is a sensory mechanism that awareness uses to perceive the Universe in the same way that your mind uses your body to facilitate having sensations such as hot, cold, wet, dry, etc. All suffering results from the mind’s obsessive thinking about itself. The suffering results not so much from the contents of your thoughts; that is, suffering is not a result of having the “wrong” or “bad” thoughts. As a result, changing your thoughts can’t and won’t eliminate suffering. Similarly, pushing the food around on your plate won’t create more or less food. Instead, suffering results because the false self - that what you think You are – that is at the center of the thoughts is not You, and in fact it does not exist! For this reason, mastering the personality via psychological analysis will rarely make you happy or relieve your suffering, in the same way that rearranging the food on your plate can’t make more food. And nearly everything that your mind does to improve your life – including most New Age work such as meditation, energy healing, and Law of Attraction processes - is essentially the same as trying to get more food by pushing it around on your plate. These efforts can never yield permanent, sustainable results because the mind is part of duality, and therefore every action of the mind has an equal and opposite reaction. Hence, no amount of action directed by the ego-mind can ever result in true happiness or bliss, but instead it can (at best) create a temporary drug effect of psychological inflation. (If you are not already familiar with psychological inflation or don’t know how to recognize it, you might want to check out VIP Club Special Event 7 Steps to Happiness, because learning how recognize the difference between psychological inflation and true transformation will save you literally tens of thousands of dollars or more on programs, classes, and sessions that are in essence just a temporary psychological effect dressed up in New Age clothing.) By contrast, if you live from an Awakened place, truly understanding that nothing You are perceiving is actually happening to You, and you remember that the “false I” that things seem to be
happening to is simply a fictional character that doesn’t exist, you’ll experience less and less suffering. Suffering is created as a direct result of the mind struggling to force the world to be the way you want it to be. Hence, the more deeply you embody the truth that nothing ever happens to You, the less you will suffer. Awareness is the act of the experiencing itself, without any judgment or labeling or reaction to the content of what is being experienced. Therefore the content of your life – or that which perceived, or the objects on the screen of the mind - can never affect awareness itself. In other words, nothing that happens in duality can ever affect You...and that’s exactly why Jesus told us to “turn the other cheek”! Your Awakening can be so deceptively simple that you may overlook it. Don’t forget that in some spiritual traditions the student of Awakening was expected to ask their teacher if they had achieved their Awakening, because the Awakening itself is nothing more than coming to crystal clear understanding about exactly who and what You are, as well as who and what You are not. It is powerful but subtle – after all, if it was obvious, you wouldn’t need confirmation from your teacher, would you? Typically, you’ll experience the majority of your post-Awakening peace, tranquility, confidence, and joy as your Awakening is embodied. It is quite easy to quickly fall back asleep, and so staying in the Awakened state often requires powerful motivation and diligence. To help you better understand and experience the difference between the mind and pure awareness, use the following exercise.
Exercise: “Noticing the Space” This is an exercise in “perception perceiving Itself”. First, simply take a moment to notice the perceptions you are having. Notice what you are seeing. Notice what you are hearing. Notice what you are feeling. Notice what you are thinking. Notice and be aware that you are seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting. Noticing the act of awareness without labeling or judging the content is awareness itself – that is YOU! But be careful not to cross the line into duality by applying judgments or labels. If you think “I’m looking at a white wall”, you are in the mind, not awareness, because the truth is that you are simply looking – the thought that what you are looking at is a wall, or is white, is the mind skipping over the act of perception and instead judging and labeling the content of the perception. You’ll find that no matter who you are, where you are or what you are doing, there is always plenty of perception! Perception is self evident and obvious. This knowing explains why sensory deprivation tanks are powerful vehicles to facilitate deep meditation and increased consciousness, as the tank inhibits and helps to break you out of your deeply ingrained habits of immediately labeling and judging the content of all of your sensations. Even in a sensory deprivation tank, there is still perceiving, and in fact there is just as much perceiving in a sensory deprivation tank as there is on a roller coaster or
at a rock concert. But since the content of your life, or what is perceived, is as close as we can get to what we would call “nothing”, the tank makes it easier to simply be aware of awareness itself, and allows you to more easily perceive without the mind butting in and disrupting your pure experience of Yourself.
