What can be done to make use of each moment so that its spent in awareness and in peace?
To be physically somewhere does not mean to be aware of where one is, nor does it mean to be aware of what’s going on inside, as it is likely to be lived through a daydream.
When aware, the most can be made out of the learning of life and each moment can be usefully used, living it fully. Being aware is to come out of the death of sleep and into the current of life.
While not aware or in observation, the moment in terms of learning is minimized or lost.
To be receptive is to be in a position to learn inwardly. If you are really trying to be, then spiritual forces will be drawn to you, and then more teachings can take place in dreams and in the astral plane, but also through perception. That is perception within the present moment. Don’t think that just because this is the physical world that you can’t learn and see new things that are beyond what the five senses can perceive. You can, but you need to do the right things to do it.
You can use the present moment and live life, making use of each moment, not wasting it and the opportunities it brings. You can physically do things and yet absolutely waste your time by not doing anything spiritually. You can spend your time pursuing pleasures and running away from pain, but that’s not psychologically revolutionary; it doesn’t bring about real change.
Within each moment most people are pursuing pleasure or running away from pain, living a half-life through a daydream, and yet missing the spiritual beauty of nature and life.
To have this spiritual beauty, it has to be more important to you than that pleasure, or pleasure will override it.
To a few, inner peace is of greater value than pleasure and they will strive to attain it.
Inner peace is not a vague thing, it’s not an abstract thing. It’s something that deep down, anyone with spiritual yearnings strives for. It’s something powerful enough that you can wish to do without the animal desires because you know there’s something better, there’s something more valuable than them.
Inner peace is not an idea or a belief. It is something in the moment that’s so valuable that we would exchange pleasure for it.
Inner peace is not simply the absence of conflict – it’s something else. Peace is an almighty power that exists within, that can override everything else and become more important than everything else.
And hand in hand with it is love, which is not the good feeling that many people mistake it for.
The real thing, peace and love, exists within the moment. One comes from the other, but they require activity. It’s not like pleasure, which comes free – it’s not that easy. It takes a war to get to inner peace, which is something that is really misunderstood. Peace is not simply the absence of conflict.
The part that is aware is consciousness or essence. It has the ability to have an incipient level of peace. Its level is relatively small, but it’s there. Consciousness is a fragment of a greater Being that gradually merges with it as we develop spiritually. The more parts of the Being that one has, the greater the capacity for peace. This peace is the thing that gives the strength and the awareness of the moment to hold onto, when life and the egos are raging all around.
In its basic form awareness can go in an instant; a thought can take it away, unless at an advanced stage, where the parts of the Being are within, which as a consequence of their being present, irradiate awareness, peace and love.
When that happens, the whole psyche is changed, the whole consciousness is changed. Life becomes very, very different. But the starting point is the incipient peace of consciousness, which is felt when aware in the present moment.
The best way to learn about awareness is to be aware inwardly and outwardly. It can be done at any time, but it helps to train to do it, just like an athlete trains for sport, gradually training to remember to be aware, and by remembering to do it.
Thinking about being aware is thinking; it is not awareness. Thoughts and ideas stay as intellectual ideas, to be accepted, rejected, added to the concepts of the mind, but they are not awareness.
To find peaceful awareness, it has to be experienced, then what it is will be known.
You can be aware in any moment and train yourself wherever you are. A good way to practice being aware is by setting anchor exercises in which you are aware doing short, simple, daily tasks such as doing the washing up or putting your shoes on. I’ve called them anchor exercises because they anchor you to the present moment at regular times of the day, so you remember to think of awareness when you go to do one of the simple tasks you have chosen. These were amongst the first exercises I learnt when I started this spiritual quest many years ago and they are a great way to start to learn to be aware.
Another good way to train yourself to be aware is to go for a walk and just try to be aware when you’re walking. You can try this at numerous times in the day if you wish, for any practical length of time. Awareness walks in nature can be especially inspiring.
Watch for thoughts, emotions, distractions and the daydream that will all crop up and knock you out of awareness. If you have them, come back to the awareness. If you are a beginner, don’t get lost in thoughts of awareness, but walk safely.
Although it sounds simple, there is a lot to explore in being aware. It’s actually a search to find it, but if you keep going and trying to maintain the awareness you can reach to those moments of peace, when you feel quiet and just ‘here’.
Q. I have moments of clarity in which I appreciate life, but I find it hard to keep coming back to that every moment; I can only have moments of it. I think about how I can come back to it but when I think about it, that idea complicates it even further. So it’s like I’m fighting to just walk.
The complicated ways of the mind are an entanglement in the search for peace. If you get into them you will be completely lost.
It’s possible to try sometimes, but not search and not persist, or not practice in the right ways, and therefore never discover how it works.
Everyone is fighting for pleasure. When people say that they have some peace, it’s seldom real peace. It’s usually a thought, an emotion or a combination of both, but not true peace.
Because it’s not easy to find and maintain, then most people will avoid it. But that means that most people live without it and that is tragic for the world, because what that means is that the desires and drives, the egos, are the things that basically rule everybody’s life. This creates the terrible mess that there is in the world. All the suffering, misery, the inequalities, all of this is due to what’s within.
Ideas of a better world are one thing, but because of the way that human nature is, it doesn’t happen; the same thing repeats. The same family life, consumer life, competition, misery, violence and so on keeps repeating, and most people have little idea of what peace is – in some cases not even the tiny bit that the essence is capable of perceiving.
To maintain awareness requires a struggle, a lot of sacrifice of the negative within, and there are very few people who are actually willing to make that sacrifice, which is a terrible shame, not only for the individuals concerned, but also for humanity, for the planet. To live a life without knowing what real peace is, is tragic. It’s like living just a half life, living the life of an animal, with an intellect. But that’s the situation that the world finds itself in, and there are just a few people willing to do what it takes to find peace.
Without making an effort, peace and awareness are just not going to happen. Awareness doesn’t spontaneously arise of itself, unless the Being is within. Then the Being gives peace, but that is at an advanced stage.
When trying to be aware it’s common to feel an underlying state of haziness. That is a result of being aware of the usual state, which humanity is normally unaware of. It’s the result of being inwardly fallen; it’s vital to rise up and have the spiritual within.
To have real and lasting inner peace requires much work and a lot of sacrifice, but that peace, for the few who have ever had it, is within in a timeless way. Those who don’t have it are completely deficient as people. Those who don’t have it are just basically animals with an intellect, running around – no more than that; destined to just die, never really having been alive in a truly worthwhile way.
To get out of this a massive change is required. The mind won’t give the solutions – only practice and experience will do it, because the mind is part of the animal that is governed by egos. If you try to find the solution in that, you get pleasure and pain and no real solution.
The mind is an instrument to use, but it’s not the source of peace. Emotions are not the source of peace: it is not an emotion. So you won’t get to it through an emotion. Many people think that peace is a certain emotion, but it’s not at all – it’s something completely different from that. It happens within the present moment, but it is something else, it’s a change within the individual. It’s something that comes from consciousness; it’s not an emotion at all.
I always thought that this feeling of peace is something that is going to be wow, something really distinct, but is it simple? The sensation, it’s just the sensation of peace, bliss? The difficult part is to keep it from moment to moment, because I can find that I’m very relaxed and I don’t notice any tension, that I’m sort of in the moment, there is no thought, I’m in this spark of clarity, but it’s a simple feeling. Is that what it is or should I expect something more?
In its incipient form, it’s something simple, but there is more to it than that. When you get it, you know it, you perceive it immediately, and it can hit you. Later on, it can be all encompassing, it can be massive, the whole world is changed. The way that human beings experience the world is governed by the five senses and the brain, but the Being can transform those, plus there are other senses as well – psychic senses. When those are developed, when the Being manifests, then the whole perception of the world changes – aromas, everything. It’s quite different; you live in a different world, a world that’s beautiful.
It always strikes me how people come into the countryside and just talk, or play, just go around chattering, and it’s obvious when someone is aware, that those people are not in the countryside really. Physically they are, but psychologically they’re elsewhere. The countryside differs from the city in that it’s alive. There are lots of different animals, essences, lots of different aromas, not just petrol, all that pollution from the city. So the wavelength that many of the creatures are upon and the wavelength that’s required to pick up on the elementals of nature, is different from the wavelength of the person who’s going along to the countryside just thinking, just carrying on the same old daydream. You won’t perceive anything spiritual at all if you do that; spiritually it’s a complete waste of time. In fact, to someone who’s aware in the countryside, such people are like abominations, monstrous things that are completely out of tune with nature.
You may think that some of the people who live in the countryside are in harmony with nature, but it’s not necessarily true. Without developing their consciousness, they could just live in a normal, animalistic way. That in spite of many people thinking that they have an inner harmony with nature. Although someone is not destroying nature, it doesn’t mean that they have harmony within it. Harmony within nature is a function of consciousness, of a developed consciousness – it doesn’t come just by being brought up in nature. Being brought up in nature without a developed consciousness can mean a person just as is animalistic as they are in a city or a town. It’s just a different set of circumstances. To really be within nature, you’ve got to be aware and at peace, and then you can perceive the animals, the birds, the different ways that the time of the day brings its own sense and aromas and energies, and life.
All of this is lost when people don’t try to be aware in nature. If you can try to be aware, you will begin to perceive the life that is all around. Living in a city, that connection is lost by being surrounded by concrete, noise, cars, fumes and all the rest of it. In the countryside or in a quiet spot, you can tune in to nature – that’s if you tune yourself into it. If you carry on just like you’ve been doing in your daily life, you won’t tune it, you’ll just carry on thinking when you try to be aware. The chain of thoughts of the mind have to be broken with awareness to come out of it.
Society, with its modern mechanical means of living, with its cars, fumes, etc., makes everyone very much out of tune with the natural world. It’s so easy just to carry on thinking, reacting and daydreaming. Nobody notices; you don’t look out of place. You just look the same as all the other millions in the same city. Just bring someone like that to a group of aware people and they’re right out of place.
If you do get away from the noise of a town or city and manage to be quite aware, and you go back into the city, you’ll notice it a bit jarring and uncomfortable. That’s because it’s full of people reacting away, feeling negative, pursuing pleasure, going through pain – that’s how life goes.
To break the chain of thoughts, to break out of the egos, the inner states and patterns, you have to keep observing and being aware as continuously as you can without letting up – that’s if you’re interested in finding peace and tuning in to nature. You don’t have to be in nature to find peace; you can find peace in a squalid part of the city, because that peace is within. But to find peace wherever you are, you do need a continuous application with the goal of finding that peace. It has to be continuous; if you let it go, you’re out. You have to then try to claw back, which is very difficult. So it requires a continuity of action and continuity of direction. Later in the path, with the Being within, the peace is permanent, wherever you go.
Is it a matter of being as perceptive of things as you can, like the complexity is there, but you’re just trying to hold onto whatever you possibly can and then through time, through holding onto that, it just develops in itself? Like eventually you just wake up an extra degree?
The mind is complex; it’s the starting point. If you keep trying to be aware, you’ll make little breakthroughs here and there. Just keep doing that and they will appear more and more. When you get setbacks just go back to being aware. Sometimes you feel as though you can’t do it, but if you just keep going, you can claw yourself back and keep making breakthroughs. If you combine this with self-observation, then you see what is manifesting within you, and then you change it, die to it. If you also practice alchemy, you can truly change and advance.
I’ve had times where I’ve felt states of peace, but then I lose them and can’t find them again. It’s like doing the same thing doesn’t work anymore. If I’m doing what I should be doing, should I be able to have that core of peace all day, even though the egos are coming in and creating problems?
No, not without a permanent centre of consciousness. That permanent centre comes with the Being within at an advanced stage. When there’s no permanent centre of consciousness, you always have to claw yourself back.
Taking it from a beginners level, it also depends upon where you’re starting from. If you’re starting from a really agitated state, or a time when you’ve been thinking and using the mind too much, like hours and hours say of studying, then you’re low on energies, which are needed for the psyche and the body and everything to work well, but more than that, the state itself is not very clear, it’s a mess.
Usually that’s the way that it all starts when you try to work psychologically. It’s like a mess, a mix-up of energies and we work to clear that. By trying to be aware you come out of it a bit, and then before you know it, there’s an emotion or a thought or the slightest thing and it’s back into the mess, but if you keep going, you’ll find yourself getting clearer and starting to just understand more of how it works. But you shouldn’t expect to be clear all the time.
To do that is an advanced work that takes a lot of work and time. It requires an alchemical process, where the energies themselves get cleaned and the various internal parts are built so that the Being, the Spirit, can be incarnated. When that happens, then the psyche gets transformed. Before that, there’s a process of cleaning and creating to do.
When you’re being aware, you’re actually clearing and stabilising the psyche: if you know how to, you can destroy the subconscious states, the desires, the egos. Alchemy destroys them and builds the internal parts, and in that way – transforms the psyche.
You start with the basic essence or consciousness and the mass of egos, of subconscious states, feelings and drives. In the beginning the fight is between that tiny consciousness against this mass of egos. When someone is not in consciousness they are in egos. The consciousness is the real you, the real person. The egos are just temporary things – they’re not the real you. The egos are not permanent, they’re not the consciousness. So be in that consciousness. That’s the point to do this whole work from – it’s where that peace inside comes from.
The more you practice, the more you exercise it, the clearer it gets. Then it’s transformed with alchemy, but the point of investigation is consciousness, the real you, the real person. The egos, thoughts and desires are not the real you, they are just temporary.
~ A talk by Belsebuub given in Quebec, Canada 2004
