The mind is the past. The heart is the present.

Thoughts are the result of past actions and knowledge. They feed you the same old story.

Many of them speak about a character in here who needs to defend from the cruel world out there. They are a defence mechanism who can turn to offence when its stories are being threatened by an outside stimulus.
The rest of the thoughts are just as well, playing the same tape on a loop, and hoping to get different results by doing the exact same thing.
Some of them are happy, others are about worries and anxiety.

The mind is interested in being safe. Even when the mind is apparently thinking about the new, this new needs to be in between certain boundaries, not to get you out of the comfort zone or not too much at least. You need to be able to get back to safety if any danger appears. Danger to the story we build about our "selves" that is.

If you take a moment to watch your thoughts you will notice they feel like a contraction. On the open sky of the awareness, they appear like a dot, which can grow bigger and bigger darkening your whole visual spectrum until you become lost in them.

The mind is loud, it needs to be heard. Feels like it is compensating for something. It is scared not to be contradicted. It is scared not to disappear. It is afraid that... It doesn't exist.

Being lost in your mind, your past becomes your present and your future. Nothing changes. Not really.
A cage.

The heart is the opposite.

It is usually quiet.
It does not speak in words but in sensations and feelings. Some are pleasant. Some are not. Either way, it is a language different than that of the mind. Some say it is the language of the universe.
The heart shows you things as they are and not how the mind pretends they are.
The heart is about being brave, getting out of the comfort zone, showing you what you need to work on, what past traumas you have hidden in the dark corners of your psyche.
The heart likes to take risks. It likes the new, the real new, not the "acceptable" new.
The heart likes differences: different situations, different people, different ways to feel joy and even different ways to feel hurt.

The heart is about growth. The mind is about staying the same.
The heart is about action. The mind is about reaction.
The heart is about love. The mind is about resentment.
You get the picture.

In the end, life is about learning. It's not meant to be an never-ending paradise. We left the Garden of Eden because it was getting too boring.

So what is the greatest tool we have to listen to Life? The mind says love is blind but the heart knows what it really needs.

~~~~~~~~~~

I wrote this down as it helps me make a clearer picture of everything. Maybe it helps you as well.
I'm aware that the above is an oversimplification of what is really going on but it is a place to start.
There are no such entities or bodily functions as "mind" and "heart".

Mind is a metaphor for being lost in thought-content.
For being lost.

Heart is a metaphor for staying with the sensations/feelings.
And being one with everything.

Let's continue

It's been a while. Some years. Maybe more.
I am not the person I was before. Well, I am not "a person" anymore.

Not sure I should keep on writing in this blog. Maybe start anew and discard the old.
But the old is still my journey and I cherish it with all my heart.

So let's continue.

On thoughts and the spiritual search and thoughts about the spiritual search and just thoughts and just spiritual search...

The "search" is not done by a "me" either.
It is just being done.
The thought "who thinks this thought" is still just a thought, independent of a self.
There is just awareness of thoughts and sensations and that's it.
Sometimes thoughts (+/- sensations) roll on creating stories and reactions.
That because, somewhere, there is identification with those thoughts and stories.
Somewhere there is a belief.
Belief: an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof. 

Without proof.

Find the beliefs.
Let them speak.
Listen.
Let them go.

Enjoy the space created in their place.

💗

Manifesting the Unmanifested

Creation/imagination is limitation. Every time you have a thought you limit your boundlessness.

Every time you build something you contract the universal into a single dot. You create matter from condensed particles. From the point of view of the universal unlimited potential an object is something dead. Even if newly created, it is bound to die one day. Everything around us is bound to die because that condensed energy longs to be free. Sooner or later every object, be it a planet or a human body will go back to the elements from which it was created.

Even self-awareness is limitation, you are aware of your own body or a thought, both being objects.
Everything you perceive with your 5 senses (6 if you consider the intuition) is an object - a landscape, the moon, your thoughts. They are all objects.

They are all your creation, the way in which you manifest into this world.

If you stop objectifying your surroundings you live in a perpetual state of the unmanifested. You are nothing and everything, the alpha and omega if that sounds more familiar.
There is nothing there but still everything appears out of that nothingness. "Nothing" becomes something. The something (the objects we see around) are an illusion of our senses. It is also true that if it takes "nothing" to be something then why not be everything? Because nothing is limited so you can truly have everything. Everything you ever wanted.

That sounds good in theory but I guess it is harder to put in practice. Not because it`s really "hard" but because it takes faith to go for the last yards and accomplish that "something".
And then funnily enough you achieve that "something" followed by the "everything" for then to realize you are still not satisfied. Something is missing.

Yeah but, remember how we just said that everything is born out of "nothing". Well then everything is as good as nothing. You tried to manifest the unmanifested, to limit the boundlessness, and you got a fraction of the whole package. No matter how much you accumulate it will still not be enough. It will not feel complete.
So the secret is to be the unmanifested instead. Don't limit yourself to be that or the other, to be rich or to have the perfect spouse or to travel the world. They are just limitations.

So this might represent an answer to the question why we are here. We are nothing but a manifestation of the unmanifested in a material plane. But why do we need to separate ourselves from the wholeness and come here? What is it to learn? Why do we have to feel divided and to long for reuniting with the source? I still to find an answer to that question. That if there is answer.

New Year`s Resolutions

...are bound to fail. You make a "promise" to yourself to do that or the other. However you try to change the effect by neglecting the cause. The cause is who you are and not what you do. You cannot get different results by being the same person you were until now. You cannot do different things when your subconscious is still conditioned by your old perks.
Want to change your life in the year to come? Then I suggest you first drastically change who you are.

For example let`s take one case. He`s been searching for oneness and enlightenment for a while now. Every path he took seemed promising in the beginning but in the end didn`t bring him any "tangible" results. That was what he asked for - results. However results are the award of the logical mind. You can ask for results when you start a business or learn a profession.

Results are the product of the material world. The thing he was looking for was not. The "awards" for his immaterial journey could not be material. They cannot be quantified in this plane. Maybe they can be quantified in another dimension, but not here.

Looking for "tangible" result here means only that his spiritual journey was not 100% spiritual after all. Maybe it was hiding some social aspirations as well, like getting smarter or richer. He wanted the best of both worlds and in the end he didn`t get very far. He was attending the effects while all this time the cause was neglected.

But that is just a case. Most new year`s resolutions are about getting to be more successful or thinner, once again using the same means and hoping to arrive to different end results. Somebody once said this is crazy and he was right. You might win a few battles but the war will be won by who and what you are and all your temporary victories will vanish if you don`t respect this simple rule. It`s all about cause and effect. Attend the cause first and you won`t even have to bother with the effects anymore. They will improve by themselves.

The substance stars are made of

Tonight I have a bedtime story to share.

A long long time ago... or was it just a while ago? Hmm no matter, in my mind is as fresh as yesterday. It was sunny and warm, a perfect autumn day. I was walking down the street and I saw a girl in her early teens. She was rollerskating and enjoying her time with her friends. She was all a smile but I noticed one of her arms ended in a stump.

Immediately my mind processing entered a grim mode. I started to pity the girl thinking how hard it must be for her to go through life and how even more hardships are awaiting her in the future. Why things like this happen? Especially to a child. Life is not a walk in the park anyway...

And then she looked at me with a serene look on her face... I immediately felt ashamed. I realized my judgement was born out of a life of programming and social conditioning. The so-called reality my mind is constructing is what keeps me in the prison of judging something as good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate event, accepting or denying.

When that realization happened I stopped judging. I stepped out of my mind`s "comfort-zone" and realized life simply happens. It`s us who label things as good or bad. But that doesn`t make it real. Not at all. When what I hold to be acceptable clashes with what another holds to be acceptable then none is true. It`s just a mind construction, a daydream.

Old news, you might say if you read my previous writings. Something was different this time though.
When you look beyond form you see the truth, you see what is immortal, you see the substance we are made of. And I seen it in that child`s eyes. And I see it in the plants, and the animals, and a gorgeous landscape. It`s the feeling of being connected to one another, the feeling of not being an individual entity but one of the many parts of a sole organism. It`s the feeling of being transported beyond form back to the center of the universe. Back home.

Form dissipates because it is not real. A hand is a stump is no more. It`s just a machine we use to take us to our destination. The stump only exists in your head, and only until you step out and you realize it wasn`t there in the first place.

Forms are bound to change but the spirit is eternal. And maybe one day in autumn you will walk down the street and feel something that will rock your world, a feeling of oneness and completeness. It might come from a beautiful sunset, or a blossoming flower, or the smile of a child who knows what is important in life.

And then you wake up.

The lesson of a tiny creature

I was in the countryside during the weekend doing some labour around the house. I was shoveling some gravel which was to be used for building a new parking place for the cars. Close to ending when I was pretty tired and didn`t pay as much attention as before I unintentionally hit a frog which was hiding in the sand pile. Unfortunately the shovel cut down one of her legs.

It was a small to medium size light green frog. I took her and placed her on a pasture a bit further away. While doing so I couldn`t not notice how calm she was and how warm she was looking at me. Her eyes were watering, most likely because of the physical pain, but other than that she did nothing but to look at me and blink from time to time.

I was amazed by such peacefullness. Don`t think any human being could react this way when facing such a brutal vicissitude of life. However this tiny frog did nothing. Life is life and there`s not much we can do about it but live it and go with the flow. It doesn`t matter if you greet life with open arms or with clenched teeth. What is going to happen will happen whether you like it or not.

Somehow men didn`t learn this lesson. Animals and plants did. They live for the moment while men live for tomorrow with their silly dreams and expectations, fighting and waiting for something that will never come, destroying themselves and the planet we inhabit in their search.

All this time I was looking at this frog wondering what to do to make it better. I can`t really make a frog grow a leg back lol so there wasn`t much to do. However the time I took watching it meant something to me. I borrowed some of that peacefulness myself. Somehow a lesson in awareness has been thought and a frog was the teacher.

All the other beings we share this planet with have an important lesson to teach: to accept what it "is" and to abandon our mind programming and prejudice and everything that keeps us in the past or dreaming about a "better" future, and to live in the now - the only time that is certain.

I will close with a quote from the Bible even if "God" knows I`m one of the worst Christians walking the Earth. However this was quite appropriate:
"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin" (Matthew 6:28)

What is true?

A week or so ago I read a book by a guy who says he reached enlightenment. The method he was teaching his pupils was for them to simply discover "the truth" out of everything else.

"Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. That’s it. Ask yourself what’s true until you know."

So far so good. It didn`t help me that much but it was a good place to start.

"It`s about finding out what we know for c e r t a i n and everything else."

I wrote down a couple of things that resonated to what I hold to be true. Truth is that which was not created and what will never reach an ending. However there was no break through, no new discovery, no "Evrika!".

Until tonight, when a paragraph from Eckhart Tolle made some light. It is not the first time when life gave me some answers even if with a short delay and when I was nowhere waiting for it.

"If in your relationship you experience both love and the opposite of love - attack, emotional violence, and so on - then it is likely that you are confusing ego attachment and addictive clinging with love. [..] True love has no opposite. If your love has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of your self, a need that the other person cannot meet for you. It is the ego's substitute for salvation or God."

It is not something I never heard before. But somehow tonight it stroke a chord inside of me and suddenly there was light.
Eckhart is talking about love relationships. I`m talking about everything in life:

Whichever has an opposite is fake.

Simple as that, plus the answer to the question of "what is true". Whichever doesn`t have an opposite is the truth I have been waiting for.

This can be used in any situation life presents you with. If your happiness is "because" of something and in the absence of that thing you will start feeling miserable then the whole situation is not true - that for happiness vs. sadness but it`s the same for everything else which has an opposite.

All the opposite principles are representatives of duality, we live in a dual world after all. All those that do not have an opposite come from the world of non-duality and are those that will survive our mortal death.