We are all trying to communicate to each other through our perspective. Perspective includes biases, preconceived notions, beliefs, feelings, judgments, and thoughts. All of these are subject to being correct or incorrect. All of these are like different colored lenses through which we view life, changing the appearance of what we see. All perspectives change the way we hear and process information.
Being aware of this is the difference between being conscious and unconscious in daily life, and is a key to deeper understanding.
How do we become aware of this? By simply observing ourselves.
Do we go about our day, whipped about by our interactions with others, moods arising with origins unbeknownst to us, repeating the same patterns, saying the same things? Do we only hear what reinforces what we already believe and immediately dismiss any other information?
Or, do we go through the day in neutral observation of ourselves?
A common response to this is, “Neutral observation of ourselves. Right. Everyone keeps saying to ‘practice mindfulness’ and just observe myself, but what the hell does this even mean?” If you have this reaction, you are not alone, and the reaction is understandable. There are a lot of people and things telling us to be mindful but not explaining anything, or making it seem like some overly complicated process.
The great news is that is not as complicated as it’s been made to seem. Again, let’s call on the video game analogy to describe this.
Observing the Self
Being an observer to yourself is not dissimilar from taking an avatar view of yourself, just like in a video game.
In a video game, like the one above, you view your body as an avatar going through the physical world around you. Your house. Your transportation. Your office or workspace. Your grocery store. Every possible environment you encounter.
To observe yourself in your actual life, simply imagine your body as an avatar in the “video game of your life.” See your body going through your physical world, and observe what happens to your body within it. Realize that it is not much different from controlling an avatar in a video game. You move your body around, just as you decide where to walk, step, and drive, or what to pick up, eat, or think. You decide how you respond to other people who appear in your environment. The difference is there’s no handheld controller, instead, you simply just choose.
In this “video game of your life,” you could picture your emotions, thoughts, intuitions, and physical vitality as meters on the screen. There could be a subset of emotions—love, fear, happiness, anger, guilt, and so forth—all with individual meters showing their current amount as you encountered various situations throughout the day.
There would also be a stress meter, and this one would have a cumulative effect and would be directly tied to the amount of sleep you had the previous night. There would also be a hunger and thirst meter. The ratio of these things helps determines how many life points you either earn or spend throughout the day. All these things determine whether or not you are choosing light or dark in each instance of the one choice you make throughout the day.
As wild as this may sound, this is not dissimilar from being an observer to yourself. When you simply go throughout life observing yourself in this manner, you then realize your body is just an instrument to feel, think, and do things and that what makes you you—your consciousness—is not the body, mind, or feelings.
When you realize this, it significantly decreases the amount of stress you feel in daily life, because it will inevitably alter your perception of time to be less frantic and more deliberate. Doing this will help you realize the timeless nature of your consciousness. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, until you eventually realize this was your true nature all along.
You don’t need drugs, alcohol, medication, or any other distraction to decrease stress. You only need to stop distracting yourself and see reality for what it is. How? It is more simple than you may think. You obtain this ability through one way only, and that is true meditation, which is simply deep self-reflection that is honest, bold, and in direct contradiction to fear.
This is simple, yet the key is in the consistency.
What Meditation Is & Is Not
Meditation is not about chanting mantras, yoga poses, holding mudras, counting beads, competition, or anything else. Meditation is sitting in quiet, honest observance of yourself without resistance and understanding whatever arises is just describing the state you are in at that moment. Eventually, you will see past this and know there is only that moment, only an infinite now, and only now matters.
How you get from one point to the next is your own personal journey meant to illuminate your true nature, and it cannot be given to you or described to you by anyone or anything else. It all starts and ends with meditation, and all that truly matters is that you do so with sincerity and consistency. Even if you had to walk 100 miles, taking 10 steps per day would eventually get you there. Meditation is no different. It has a cumulative effect. Even 10 minutes a day will eventually get you to the shore of your self-understanding.
Meditation is not about achieving anything or gaining powers. It is not about glorifying or giving your authority away to an external entity, be it a teacher, deity, or ideology. These things arise on our path to distract us and pull us back from seeing the truth of reality and who we are. Meditation is only about truly seeing what is for what it is. When we see what is clearly, then we can then clearly see how to act and respond in life according to our own true, sovereign, internal authority.
Many, if not most, of these so-called spiritual teachers and gurus today trying to sell you spirituality, religion, or some alternative to it are selling us water by a river. Some are selling us darkness disguised as light. You do not need anything or anyone else to attain spiritual insight but the ability to observe yourself. You do not need blessings or permission from a priest, pastor, rabbi, saint, or anyone else. You need only to observe yourself and see your true nature.
The path to true understanding is not a many-forked path that reaches the same destination. Not all paths reach the light, and many reach a false light. All paths lead to only light or darkness, and all paths are paved with both light and darkness. To see light, we must realize our experience of darkness is meant to show us the light and show us how to choose light. If this realization does not occur, then we just continue being lost in the dark.
There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the dark conscious.
Carl Gustav Jung
Some things will take you into darkness, possibly forever. Some things are designed to distract you, to confuse you, to frighten you, to deceive you, and some are even designed to kill you. Some things may appear to be incredibly pleasant and easy, but all such things have a hidden price.
You must not be fooled. All of these things are after one thing only: control of your life. Why? To convince you to willingly give them your energy however they can get it. You can give energy in a variety of ways, like money or emotions, but the common thread of them all is time. Why would darkness want your time? Because any time spent feeding the darkness is time you were not able to seek light and thus become aware of the illusion of darkness.
Your Timeless Consciousness Forced to Experience Time
Since we are all bound by time here, understand that we spend our lives learning how to alter our timeless nature to force it through the experience of time. This leads to a lot of frustration, illness, and wasted time, because this path is against our true nature. Let’s use money as an example. In order to earn money, for instance, we must spend an amount of our time. The ratio of time spent to the amount of money earned will be proportionate to society’s perceived value of what you are doing and how you apply the effort to do it. That is all.
Understand that you do not have to earn money. It is your choice. If you make the choice to earn money, understand that you can choose how you earn money. No one and nothing can force you to make money in a way you do not choose.
Being forced to make money in a way you do not choose is a violation of human rights and is fully of the darkness, and includes abuse, slavery, & trafficking. No one who is for humanity can support such things, yet many people willingly jail themselves into jobs or careers they do not like or even hate, convinced they can do nothing about it. This is a lie of darkness—there are more ways to make money today than probably any time in human history. You are free to choose whatever method you would like. The only thing that stops you is yourself when you allow the repetitious thoughts of societal programming to dictate your life.
Once you earn money, understand that you can choose what to do with that money. No one and nothing can force you to spend money in a way you do not choose. You have two choices. You can fall into the trap of societal programming and treat money as you’re told, all of which seeks to divide us from each other, hold one section of people above another, or create illusion to confuse yourself and others. Or, you can treat money as a neutral tool, a currency of the system, and spread light into the system with how you spend it and what you spend it on.
Equally important to understand is that we do not truly need anything other than clean water, nutritious food, safe housing, and access to healing care. Everything else is absolutely unnecessary, existing only to convince you to willingly give it your time and to distract you from the truth of reality. This has long been the valley of misunderstanding between spiritual attainment and materialistic comfort. One side would argue you needed to give up all your worldly possessions in order to reach spiritual understanding. The other side would argue without giving up all your worldly possessions you would be unable to reach spiritual understanding making it an impossible endeavor for today’s modern people.
Both of these arguments are invalid and designed to confuse you from seeing the truth. What objects or things you choose to have will either help or hinder you on your path, and will either help you find light or darkness. They’re just objects, and you assign them the power over you by the amount of time you choose to give them and what you use them for. It is the intent behind what you use and how you use it that matters most of all.
Intent Matters
Spiritual understanding will occur regardless of external environment provided the internal environment is maintained with honest, neutral observation to allow spiritual understanding to occur. That being said, no true spiritual understanding comes without first experiencing great discomfort, dissolution, and pain. However, if you are consistently seeking light through true self-reflection, you will find it, and it will not matter if you are sitting in the dirt homeless or on a designer chaise lounge “living your best life” when you do.
Understand this, however: after you find the understanding you seek, it will inevitably affect how you view and thus maintain your external environment from that point forward. A simpler approach will likely appear in ways you had previously stopped yourself from seeing, and you may find you already have more than enough to do what you need to do.