Life unfolds spontaneously, emerging from nothingness. The silent, unknown energy source that sustains the known universe and flows through each of us is that uncontrollable, spontaneous occurrence of Life constantly happening in the present moment. We truly feel alive when we recognize our spontaneity, our essence of life’s energy flowing as the effortless, indivisible mind-body conscious awareness of love, joy, and peace. This is the moment when our addiction to thinking, the cravings, and fears of a divided mind, the separated ego, ‘I,’ disappears, liberating us from the chains of our negative, self-sustaining thoughts.
My effortless existence of ‘awareness’ happens when I remember that the mechanical patterns of my isolated thinking mind—the constant will of the ego’s endless mental craving for memories of satisfaction and the fulfillment of its future desires, including its eternal survival—create the fictional instrument of psychological time, which is a.k.a. fear, the source of my suffering. Understanding these illusions of time is vital to overcoming my addictions.
When I become aware of my incessant thinking as self-talk that perpetuates my separate imaginary ego, which constantly relives the past to avoid its fear of the ultimate failure, the end of time: the death of the ego in the present moment. This mechanical, mental process of repeating the past to control the future—ignorance—is the cause of my suffering. Suffering ends when my ego mind becomes quiet when my addiction to thinking stops; when time stops, the fears of loss and unfulfillment disappear, meditation happens, and intelligence arises as the truth: a complete understanding of the ever-changing reality of life spontaneously occurring in the present moment.
As I become aware and observe my thinking without prejudice or judgment by comparison, I understand that a mind divided between past attachments and future desires, with no patience for reality in the present moment, is the conflict of choice in the illusion of psychological time, the source of my mental suffering. When I go below the surface of my suffering to discover the truth of choiceless awareness, my heart spontaneously opens, allowing the deep emotion of loving-kindness to flow, healing the mind with the undivided attention of mind-body consciousness—my whole being of natural intelligence—that does not block or distort the Love flowing from within each of us.
When I hit bottom in addiction, and my separate ego was exhausted to the point of being silent in a meditative state, the enlightened awareness of my suffering revealed the truth: I was trapped in my mind, living unaware of how the trained ego works, how it blocks and distorts my natural energy-in-motion—the Love flowing through me. If I can stay aware and embrace my suffering with unified self-love, the only power that Life has graciously bestowed on me, I can heal my divided, conflicted mind and body to be whole again, genuinely human—to be one with the natural flow of Life. Then, my Higher Power—when the ‘self’ disappears—undistorted energy, non-possessive Love, can freely flow into the world in every moment, which is always the present moment.
VAB 04-20-24
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