About Mind
On Monday, in Shtokholm, three American scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their research explains a significant aspect of the process our cells undergo as they age and die.
The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres are the caps on their ends. A unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation during the cell’s duplication process. With each duplication telomeres are shortened, causing the cell to age and, eventually, to die.
Telomerase is an enzyme that makes telomere. It’s activity is high at the beginning of cell’s life, then, as the body ages, telomerase becomes less and less active. Eventually telomerase stops recreating the telomeres, telomeres disappear completely, and the body dies.
This process is true for all cells in our body, save for one kind. In this one kind of cells telomerase’s activity always remains high, telomere length is always maintained, and the death of the cell is delayed indefinitely. Those cells are immortal. They do not age, they do not die.
Those cells are the cancer cells.
I read an article explaining this research and it made me wonder … with the quest for immortality, with the terror and denial of death, with developing technology that keeps the body alive for as long as possible, with the intense drive to always be young, to never change, to never die … what is it that we are really doing?
The only immortal cells in our bodies are cancer.
It does makes me wonder…
Everything is. There is a universe in the tiniest leaf, there is a whole of creation in me. I will see it, if I look.
I really enjoy my art class. The teacher begun her introduction, on the first day, by saying: drawing is not about putting shapes down on paper, it is not about what you can do with pencil and charcoal, it is not about technique and skill. Drawing is about looking. Everyone can draw, she said. If you can see it, you can draw it.
We had a homework exercise that made the point beautifully. The task was to draw a fruit or a vegetable, from memory. Then to take an actual fruit or vegetable and draw it again, this time from observation.
Drawing a pepper from memory took me about five minutes. It was a simple shape, elongated, grooved. It looked like a pepper, it was a pepper, everyone would recognize it as a pepper in an instant.
Then I took a pepper and placed it in front of me. Forty minutes later I was nowhere close to completing my drawing. There was so much detail, so many shadowy shapes, so many highlighted places. The longer I looked at the pepper the more details I noticed. Grooves, ridges, stumps, kinks, depressions, curves. They were endless. I could have drawn for hours, for days, for years, and never be “finished” with describing the pepper with my pencil. The pepper was endless, unlimited.
What a beautiful illustration of our relationship to reality that is, I thought as I drew. We see reality in symbols, simplifications, streamlined shapes. An elongated shape is a pepper, a round shape is an orange, a round shape with rays is a sun. Killing is bad, being nice is good, stealing is wrong, giving is right.
Our mind, being always on the defense, can not open to the wealth of shades, shapes, kinks, curves, stumps and depressions. The mind makes things simple so that we can “deal with them”, categorize them, judge them. So that we are safe, so that we understand, so that we are sure to be good, sure to “do the right thing”.
But what if we let go of mind? What if we look? Then we will see an entire universe in a small, red pepper. Then there will be an entire universe in a smallest leaf. If we ask a question and look, we will see an entire universe in ourselves.
Then every single pepper is perfectly complete and unique, no better or worse than other peppers, but perfect as itself. Then each one of us is complete and absolutely unique, perfect as who we are. Then everything is complete and absolutely unique, perfect as what it is.
Everything is the real question. Everything is the real answer. If we can see it.
Question: I stumbled upon your site and was struck by your post. This is me. Your writing hit my heart and I do feel that you are correct when you said that “as long as were lost in you my thoughts, lost in planning, managing, changing . . .” But I am afraid I don’t know what else to do. I have no idea how to find out how to step away from those things I feel I need to control . . . like securing a job with retirement, earning a living doing something I don’t love in order to send the kids to college and feed us, being the single mom 24/7. I have no idea how to step away from this life and be ‘open’ to what I could be. Any hints??
Answer: This is going to be a terribly long, and probably frustratingly unhelpful, response, but I don’t really have a short and simple answer to your question. Actually I don’t know that I have any answer at all. All I have is my experience, which I will be happy to share with you:
I know exactly what you mean when you say: “I don’t know what else to do”, and in saying so you hit the problem right on the head: we don’t know what else to do, because we, humans, don’t know who else we could be, how else we could be. Worrying, doing, striving, organizing, managing, is how we are trained to be, it is how we are taught to relate, to live.
It is my experience that it is our mind that creates all the noise and struggle, and that we, humans, believe that who we are is our mind. We believe that we are our thoughts, preferences, opinions, ideas, achievements.
It is also my experience that our mind is not who we are, that we are much more, much greater, that we are what is called God.
I found that I can choose who to be. I can choose to identify with my mind and lead the “normal” life with all it’s normal problems and tribulations, or I can choose to let go of my mind and be who I really am, be God. Boundless, unlimited, absolutely free to create my life however I want to.
I believe that this choice is the key, and it is my choice, my very personal choice. I don’t believe that anyone can tell me how to make this choice, nor do I feel that I can tell anyone how to make it. It will be very different for every single human on the planet because each of us is unique, and so each of us chooses who to be in a unique way.
There are, however, plenty of ways and practices that help in becoming present, help us experience who we are in a different way, from a different angle, from a different perspective than that of the mind.
I begun with zen buddhism, I practiced it for about 7 years before I met my current teacher, Brooks Greene-Barton. As I experienced, through my practice, who I can be other than what I was told, as I felt myself and the reality in a different way than the “normal” one, I became more and more present to who I really am, other than my mind, and so I was able to choose, consciously, to be myself only, more and more.
It is not an easy thing to do, though it is simple. It is hard to break any habit, and the habit of believing that our mind is who we are is a very persistent one, reinforced by society, reaching back thousands of years. It is a habit that we were trained in since birth.
It does take some time and practice to be present in a different way, to start seeing reality in a different way. Ultimately though, I believe that it is a simple matter of choosing to be who you are, God, not the mind.
It is not about making things happen. It is about being ready to allow things to happen.
This is a different way of being in a world, different from how mind operates. There is nothing to do. There is nowhere to go, there is nothing to achieve, there is nothing to change. But there is being, experiencing, expressing. Why? Why not? I am here. Why? … I am here.
“Who am I?” is much more fun question to ask than “Why am I?”
We, my husband and I, just moved to Santa Barbara from Ojai. We saw this house few weeks ago, it just wouldn’t work for us then. The house seemed great but we couldn’t see ourselves in it, couldn’t fit into it. Three weeks later, as we ate dinner in a restaurant in Santa Barbara, we realized that we are ready to move. Our Ojai adventure was completed, we were ready to go.
Two days later we saw the house we’ve seen few weeks previously, this time it was perfect, we moved in the following weekend. There was hardly anything for us to do. Granted, we worked for a day or two packing and unpacking, but that was it. The move happened so quickly, so easily, that I hardly noticed it.
We were ready and everything fell into place, we were ready, and everything happened. Easily, effortlessly, gently. We were ready, so there was nothing more to be done.
This doesn’t make any sense to the mind. Allowing things to organize, letting go of control, letting go of the need to know how, when, why, what for, doesn’t make sense to the mind. Mind needs to know, organize, understand, have a plan.
When I choose to open to who I am, who I really am, who I am as God, my mind needs to know what it means, needs to know why, what for, what will it do, how will I change. Will I really be God, or will I only imagine it? Will it be real?
But I don’t need to know that. I can just choose to open and allow it to happen.
Knowing how mind functions I can choose to let go of it. I may not know what it means “who I am as God”, but I know that mind needs to know, so I can let go of that need. I know that mind needs to control, so I can let go of that need. I know that mind needs to understand, so I can let go of that need.
My mind needs to make things happen, so I can let go of that need. Then the only thing that’s left will be … me.
It is wonderful to be outside. I begin to believe that living in houses really wasn’t such a good idea. It is so spacious, so open, so unguarded to just be out in the world where trees are, where birds are, where the sky is.
Working in my yard today was such a pleasure. I was pulling generations of old, dried ferns out of the ground. It was not an easy task, they resisted, clung to the earth with all their might and did all they could to become slippery and fragile, twisting, bending and crumbling, doing anything to defy me. I was pulling really hard, slipped and collapsed on the ground, laughing. The bed of ferns I fell on top of was cool, soft and fragrant, the smell of fresh, moist earth exhilarating, and the sky was so gorgeous, and I was happy.
My yard needs a lot of work. When we moved to this house, about a year and a half ago, the yard was a disaster. Hardly anything was still alive, what was alive was hopelessly overgrown and tangled. We put some work into cutting and pulling the brambles, cleaning out the space for new plants … and … we got busy. From time to time we would realize that the yard needs landscaping but neither of us had any experience with plants, there was so much work, we had no time, there were other priorities, we were too tired. The yard continued to look bare, dusty and dismal and we knew that something should be done, that it should get fixed. Occasionally we would plan to call someone, get someone to come and do something, but we never quite got to it.
Which is why my recent and sudden love of gardening was surprising, not to say strange. I spent hours outside those last two weeks digging, planting, watering, pruning. I enjoyed myself so thoroughly that it took me over a week to register that this is not like me. Not only working in the yard is not quite normal, but even more strange is me doing it for pleasure, because I like it, because I am happy doing it.
This is what happened, I realized, this is what’s different. Before the yard was a duty, it was something that had to be done. It was a space that didn’t work for me esthetically, and needed to get fixed.
But today, as I was pruning roses and cutting faded geranium blooms, there was such a peaceful, spacious, restful space. The kind of space that really close friends enjoy, friends who can sit together in silence for hours simply being in each other’s presence, feeling the connection. I felt that my house was surrounded by friends. I didn’t need to talk to them, just being with them was enough. Letting go of my mind, relaxing my body, and simply enjoying being alive.
And it made me wonder – why do we want to save Earth? Why do we want to save nature? Is it because we believe we should? Because it’s our duty? Because it’s the “right thing to do”? Is it because we are really, really scared and want to save our collective butts? Is it because we need nature to survive?
And if we didn’t need nature to survive, if it could collapse without taking us with it – would we miss it? Would there be a hole in our lives, a hole that’s left when a loved one is gone?
Do we actually like nature? Do we enjoy it’s company? Or do we simply use it for whatever it is we need?
Our mind would have us act out of fear. It would have us be terrified of an imminent danger, always ready to defend ourselves, to fight for survival. Our mind would have us act because we should, because we need to, because we have to, because it’s right, it’s a duty, it’s an obligation, because it is our job.
But when we let go of the mind, when we come back to who we are, who we really are, I believe we act because we like it, because it feels really good, because we really enjoy it, because it’s fun.
Which may be why after nearly every session with Brooks during which I open really deeply to who I am, when I ask him: “what do I do now?” he doesn’t say “go save nature and save the world”. He says: “go have fun”.
