Humanity has been advised for thousands of years to live in the now, in the present. In conjunction with this, modern spiritual leaders such as Eckhart Tolle are advising us to be in touch with “Being,” the spiritual side of us – if this seems like ‘mumbo jumbo,’ just ask yourself whether most people would be aware of your spirit, (or life force or life energy), once you’re dead! There must be something that makes us different from lifeless corpses!!
With reference to the Figure below, this recognition of forever-Being or Big Mind goes a stage beyond living in the now, to a state where we sense the life force itself.
In this state, we are living in touch with the eternal, timeless, formless Big Mind (Being life force) in the present moment while the temporary form of Little Mind (Human ego) takes a relatively low place. There is a shift towards the Being Model (RAS).
In a fully awakened or enlightened person the ego might hardly be running at all. This is the opposite of the typical human condition where our frail ego forms are running our lives, so, for example, we become our anger, our resentment, our guilt or whatever emotion we are feeling at the time.
In awareness, as you learn to awaken to Being or Big Mind, you observe the thoughts and emotions that emanate from the ego, without identifying, judging, or getting caught up with them. As you awaken much more deeply, you experience your true nature in the present moment as the formless spacious stillness, the silence out of which forms (including thoughts and emotions) arise.
How do you enter the state of presence? It helps first to relax, to breathe deeply and then to divert your attention from your head into your body, (or you might choose to think of shifting attention from your head into your heart). Feel the inner body energy. Ideally, there will be gaps in thinking, (yet without consciously resisting thought), referred to as “no-mind” in the East. This helps to clear mental noise or clutter, while at the same time opens you up to the far greater intelligence of the universe, well beyond that of little mind or your ego thought streams. Your body has intelligence well beyond your mind, something which your mind knows nothing of. It is this intelligence that creative people like Albert Einstein have drawn upon. When you are fully present in the now you can feel Oneness with all that is, with Being or Big Mind – you sense enlightenment.
Enlightened beings know that humans have free will, and that the vulnerable, self-protective ego, the fearful ego, the ego-possessed little mind running amok, has caused and continues to cause havoc on our planet. (Think of World Wars, Civil Wars, and countless millions that died for ideologies in Russia, China and Cambodia, etc.). Awareness is evidently important to our sanity and survival as a species.
The state of the world reflects the present state of evolution of human beings. Hopefully the challenges that the humans experience from their fearful ego will in time give way to a more benign consciousness or awareness. (In connection therewith, human development is relatively young. Some scientists believe that human language, and perhaps by inference, ego, commenced around 50,000 years ago. In comparison some scientists believe that that the earth is circa 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is circa 13.8 billion years old. But, perhaps we don’t really know – maybe the universe has always been here in some form. It is just beyond human intelligence to understand how incredible amounts of energy came into the universe, in stark contradiction to the scientific observation that energy cannot be created (only transformed).
We need to remember the
limitations of little mind. Consider that we wouldn’t expect an ant to
understand the human mind, so why should we expect the human mind to fully
comprehend Universal Mind or God? As an aside, perhaps Jesus’ assertion that we
can only reach God through him was symbolic as we can all relate to Jesus, (and
other luminaries too), but cannot relate directly to the God that we cannot
see … other than, through our background awareness.