Our "animal nature" means all our automatic, unconscious, and habitual physical, emotional, and mental functions—things about ourselves that we don't think about or are unaware of. From this point onward, we'll call this Material Nature.
What we need to understand about our Material Nature is that it's only concerned with survival, safety, security, comfort, and pleasure. It's not interested in our higher Quest for enlightenment, healing, and wholeness.
Not only this, but our slavery to Material Nature applies equally to what we usually regard as our supposedly higher human activities, ideas, pursuits, and creations.
Our conditioning and Material Nature predispositions literally fool us into thinking that we and our lives are completely real and conscious and that we have the free will to do as we please when we please. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Are you thinking that this couldn't possibly be true? That it's absurd to suggest that your view of reality is skewed, that you are not truly conscious, and that you don't have the free will that you think you do?
Then look at the latest neurological research, quite apart from what ancient traditions tell us. The research shows us that, for the most part, our decision to act in any given situation comes after the unconscious neurological impulse to act.
Moreover, it shows that we tend to invent reasons and explanations after the fact for why we acted the way we did.
And to cap it off, it shows us that up to 90% of what we experience of the world is a virtual construct of the brain, built up from memories and from stuff the brain actually makes up to fill in the gaps in the picture. Think of "The Matrix" and you're not far wrong!
Science is now proving what ancient traditions have taught for thousands of years.
Until we start to question, observe, and explore ourselves and our lives with these ideas in mind, we will remain in a half-awake, conditioned, and habitual life.
Need more proof? Ask yourself these random questions:
* Where does your consciousness "go" when you drive to work each day, have no conscious recollection of the details of the trip, but somehow you got there anyway?
* Why do you make New Year's resolutions, with the full intention of carrying them out, but somehow they mostly go by the wayside within weeks or even days of January 1st?
* Why don't most diets work?
* Why do you "forget" where you put certain things, like your car keys?
* Why do you have dreams and wishes that you just can't seem to make happen, despite all your determination and effort?
* Why do you go to seminars, workshops, lectures, etc, and have great realizations, make wonderful affirmations, and resolve to change your life, but after you get home, somehow, over the following days, weeks, months, it all fades away and you find yourself virtually back where you started?
* Why is it so difficult to concentrate on something if it doesn't "grab your attention?" Even if the thing is important to your life somehow, like doing a tax return or making a will?
* When you are engrossed in a task, where does the rest of you, your life, and the world around you "go"? And why do you forget important things when in this state, like remembering to pick up the kids from school or remembering to make a certain important call?
* How much of your life do you think you spend daydreaming and imagining scenarios? (Hint: it's more than five minutes a day!) Where are you during this? Are you seeing, hearing, sensing the world around you?
* Have you ever tried to sit down in a quiet moment and simply remain aware of yourself and the outside world simultaneously for more than a few minutes? Come on, be honest! What about 20 minutes? What happens to your mind when you try this? And what would happen if you were to try this daily for a week or a month?
* Have you ever tried to stop yourself in the midst of a crazy, hectic day, full of schedules and commitments, and sit down, take a deep breath, and intentionally become calm, composed, and centered?
* If you really have free will and the power to choose, why can't you control your reactions sometimes? (By the way, it's not just sometimes, but mostly; it's just that we make excuses, rationalizations, and justifications for most of the times.)
* If you are truly in control of your thoughts, emotions, and what comes out of your mouth in heated moments, why do you still end up saying things to others that you regret later?
* And if you are really in control, why do you blame other people or life in general for "making you" angry, upset, depressed, unhappy, whatever, and for "ruining" things for you? Or, conversely, blame yourself for making mistakes, not being good enough, not trying hard enough, etc?
* Why do you think you sometimes see others better than they see themselves, but you think nobody sees you better than you see yourself?
* Why do others see you better than you do? If you're honest, you have to admit that this is sometimes the case!
* How can different people see the same things so completely differently and be so completely convinced that they are each right while the other is wrong? Take any relationship dispute as an example!
* Why is it so hard to see and embrace another's point of view in such circumstances? What are the odds that you are right and that you see things more clearly than anybody else all the time?
* Why do we say things like, "I will never become like my parents, never do the things they did," etc, yet we so often find ourselves doing things exactly like our parents?
We could give many more questions and examples...
We're actually in a prison, but we don't see it, and, because we don't see it, we continue to insist that we're free. Until we Wake up, we will insist that we're awake. Until we see a greater reality, we will insist that our small reality is all there is. And until we realize that we don't actually have what we think we have in terms of true consciousness and free will, we won't be inspired to go looking for it.
Our first and biggest challenge on this Quest for a more conscious and intentional life is defeating these self-delusions about ourselves and our supposed level of consciousness, grasp of reality, and free will.
This applies equally to everybody, even to people who may have followed a spiritual path for years. All spiritual paths serve us in some way and are stepping stones to higher consciousness—to enlightenment, healing, and wholeness. However, most spiritual paths only take us to the threshold of waking up, of becoming more real, of becoming conscious, and of having the possibility of true free will.
To cross this threshold takes something quite different from what most spiritual paths offer. It takes something quite rare, which might seem like a strange thing to say given how many spiritual books line the New Age shelves of every bookstore.
Most spiritual paths sell themselves as offering a way over this threshold, and many genuinely think they are succeeding, but they and their followers are mostly fooling themselves. There are exceptions to this, of course, e.g. the Sufi Way and pure Zen.
The others are caught up in a Material Nature game of fad and style masquerading as spirituality. The "latest" spiritual ideas, "ancient" wisdom, "cutting-edge" science, acting and talking in a certain way, doing prescribed rituals and meditations, and wearing certain clothes doesn't make a true spiritual path if the essence is missing. The essence is what brings all the rest of these things alive.
Without this essence, something languishes inside us; something longs for something more real, conscious, and vibrant. What does it mean then to live a more real, vibrant, and conscious life?
In short, it means living with more Presence. Presence is the essence—the missing ingredient.
Presence isn't an easy concept to explain, but it essentially means being here now, simultaneously aware of ourselves, ourselves observing the outside world, and the outside world itself—the Seer, the Seeing, and Seen, all at once. It means being simultaneously aware of our Material Nature sensations, emotions, and thoughts as these come and go and as they interact inside us, but not attaching to them. It means remaining in the middle of all this, so to speak, as an impartial witness or observer.
Presence has also been called mindfulness (Buddhism/Zen), being awake (Sufi), self-remembering (Gurdjieff),
watchfulness
(Biblical), Being, awakening, the
second
attention (Castaneda),
peak
experience (Grof), Christ consciousness,
and many other names.
To attain Presence, we must detach from our conditioning and our Material Nature needs and impulses. This doesn't mean, though, that we stop appreciating what these things have given us; it doesn't mean condemning them or throwing them away. They've kept us alive, made our lives more or less comfortable, protected us from the unknown, kept us safe from having to deal with too much truth all at once, helped us get along in society, and given us the opportunity to learn the lessons of love in the material world.
Presence is a state of greater realness, greater consciousness, and true free will. And it's in this state that we will experience ourselves, our lives, and the world around us more vibrantly.
It's important to note, too, that there's a huge difference between thinking about becoming Present and actually doing it. Even our most sincere efforts to actively become Present easily come unstuck when our Mental Nature (as part of our Material Nature) takes over and we find ourselves thinking about other things, daydreaming, analyzing instead of experiencing, and getting attached to getting results, while only thinking we're Present. And this even happens while we're following a spiritual path, if we're not mindful and if we don't yet understand how Material Nature works.
Constant watchfulness is required, as is constant practice. We need to continually bring ourselves "back" to Presence, struggling with distractions and with a mind that wants to wander off at the first opportunity. However, for this, we require a certain strength of will and attention that life doesn't teach us, but which we can develop in the right circumstances and with the right guidance. We'll find this in a true spiritual school environment.
Without Presence, everything in us, in our lives, and in the world, whether material or spiritual, is ultimately like empty calories, like fast food, i.e. it will give us a temporary high but let us down later and, over time, will even make us sick. And one of our greatest sicknesses is self-delusion about our true state of consciousness.
With Presence, these very same material or spiritual things in our lives will neither give us a high nor a rebound low; instead, just by being in this state, even while life goes on in us and around us, we'll find the fulfillment and inner peace we've been looking for. This is what S.O.L.A.R.® offers.
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Copyright S.O.L.A.R.® 2008
