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Door 5 - At home in awareness, my perspective is always flexible.

“You must attain the mind that see’s a bird, not the word ‘bird’. You must attain the mind that knows the mountain, not one that knows the word ‘mountain’”. – Seung Sahn
Seung Sahn - Zen Master

Door 5 will take us on a journey of humility, one that starts by questioning the truthfulness of many of the assumptions we make about life. We will then start peeling away the layers of assumptions and labels to find that we’re so much more our self when we let go of what we’re not.


Door 5 is “At home in awareness, my perspective is always flexible.”


This is a doorway to peace because we so easily become fixed to a single perspective, through doing so our experience will always be limited by definition. A perspective is defined as ‘A way of looking at things’, and a way of looking at something is not the way things are.


Would you want to live in a house where the architect had only used one perspective? Or the builder had only used one plan? At the very least there will be bits missing, so we encourage this perspective taking in the physical world outside of us. The more angles we can see something from the more accurate our impression will be.


There’s an old story that illustrates this concept of perspective:


A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them had ever encountered an elephant before. They decided to go to the town square where the elephant was being kept and touch it so that they could learn what it was like.

The first blind man touched the elephant's leg and declared, "An elephant is like a tree trunk!"

The second blind man touched the elephant's trunk and said, "No, an elephant is like a snake!"

The third blind man touched the elephant's side and said, "You are both wrong, an elephant is like a wall!"

The fourth blind man touched the elephant's tail and said, "You are all wrong, an elephant is like a rope!"

Each of the blind men had a different perspective based on the part of the elephant they had touched. They argued and debated with each other; each one was convinced that their own interpretation was correct.


This story illustrates how different perspectives can lead to different understandings of the same thing. Each of the blind men was only able to experience a small part of the elephant, and none of them was able to see the whole picture. This story also emphasises the importance of considering multiple perspectives in order to gain a more complete understanding of a situation. It also highlights the importance of humility when it comes to understanding the world around us.


So we can agree that having more perspectives on a situation gives us more information and a better chance of seeing the truth. So, what is the actionable part of this? What is the doorway to peace?


It’s humility.


It is humility that shifts our perspective from ‘I’m right’ to ‘I could be wrong’. And the question we can ask ourselves when we’re faced with a challenging experience is this, “Is this true?”


If we realise here that it’s not true then it reveals itself as a mirage instantly. If it is true then we ask, “What is another way of looking at this?” Could that also be true?


We don’t want to rush this. We might even take a deep breath and find a quiet spot to ask this. This approach can relate to perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, opinions. In the heat of any given situation this simple decision, simple act of questioning, can halt any false assumptions and create space and for us to connect with ourselves and break this cycle of automatic reactions.


It is evident that taking multiple perspectives is a sensible approach when building a house, but the same cannot be said when dealing with thoughts or emotions, as it may require a little more effort. However, if we experience anxiety, it could be beneficial to investigate its root cause. This emotion could be linked to an underlying thought or belief, such as feeling inadequate or incompetent. We can scrutinise this belief, we can question our own perspective. We may ask ourselves;


Is this belief true? Is there another way of looking at it?


What if I was capable - how would that feel?


In most cases we will find it’s not true, and if it is true then it’s certainly not the only way of looking at it.


This difficulty of taking perspective often increases when we have a disagreement about perspectives in the field of relationships, pick any relationship.


Think about the last minor issue you had. Maybe something someone said, believed or assumed about you, maybe your boss or your partner or your friend. E.g. “You agreed to do this last week..” You may not remember, or you remember it differently. There arises multiple versions of the story. Your version, their version, your version of their version and so on. This is when only two people are involved.


Now we’re already aware that we can build a more accurate picture of what is going on through taking multiple perspectives. We know that multiple perspectives are useful and helpful. However, if we’re confronted with one, with someone we know or a stranger, we can find it extremely difficult to take on.


What makes this so difficult? Why is it so hard to take on somebody else’s perspective if they disagree with ours? I am going to suggest it is the subjectivity of it, this is where we lose perspective.


We’re often more attached to our perspective simply because it’s ours. There’s a sense of ‘me’ or ‘my’ that that is attached to it. This is where separation begins, when we identify ourselves with a thought.


In our last session we looked at cause and effect – that thoughts are a natural occurrence based largely on how our ‘past’ interacts with the present, and if we can treat thoughts lightly then we will suffer less. We will come into less conflict and we will be more objective, rational.


However, if we identify strongly with a particular thought, then we have entered the world of limitation. The root meaning of the word ‘identify’ comes from the Latin ‘Idem’ – meaning ‘the same’ – and ‘Facare’ – meaning ‘to make’. It means to make the same.


So we make our self the same as our thoughts. Then these well adapted survival mechanisms, of fight or flight, dive in to protect our thoughts, concepts, imagination like they’re true and our life depends on it.


To reiterate, most of these thoughts that come up are the effect of previous thoughts, which roll back all the way through time. And essentially what we’re saying is my thought is truer than your thought simply because I thought it.


Can we comprehend the amount of limitation involved in that kind of assumption?


The fear is that we will lose ourselves if we let go of our thoughts, ideas and beliefs, but the opposite is true. We lose what we’re not and we become more who we are than we could ever imagine.


So by identifying with thoughts, we’re making our self the same as our thoughts, and according to our nervous system, we’re putting our ‘life’ on the line, so no wonder we feel so protective of it.


This doorway to peace “At home in awareness, my perspective is always flexible” suggests that a flexible perspective, which we’ve already proven is closer to the truth than a fixed perspective, is contingent on us taking our home in awareness. Whenever we shift our positions mentally we’re coming out of identification with thought and we’re stepping back and entering the realm of awareness, we’re expanding our self.


This leads us to the obvious remaining question – what is our self? I am not here to tell you who or what you are. But I can tell you what you are not.


You are not a thought.


Thoughts come and go, yet you remain. You are not a body. The body comes and goes, and you remain.


This isn't about spirituality or the need to believe in something; it's science. Our bodies are constantly being rebuilt, with 98% of our tissues and cells being replaced every 8 years, essentially created from the food we eat. At a molecular and atomic level, our bodies are made up of matter that has existed for billions of years, created in stars and supernovas. At a subatomic level, the matter that we are made of behaves in incomprehensibly weird ways - popping in and out of existence as we know it.


This isn’t to deny the usefulness of a body, or even thoughts, it is all utterly amazing – beyond even what we can fathom. Thoughts and our body are valid and essential parts of our experience.


It can be helpful to recognise our self as two aspects – the story aspect and awareness. The story aspect is essential to survival as individuals, and there is convincing amount of evidence to suggest that we are separate entities with distinct stories, personalities, ideas, beliefs and agendas. This all very real. However, upon closer examination through direct experience we can see that our entire story is made up of thoughts. While it was necessary to construct this story to grow and survive it is an important step in or evolution to let go of it, to allow it to exist but to cease identifying so wholeheartedly with it


So there’s the story and there’s something else here, more consistent than the story, more essential, more basic, we may call it awareness, or consciousness, or attention, light, luminosity, silence, stillness, spaciousness. Whatever it is, it is always here. Hidden in plain sight.


And we can only point towards it with words, the awareness I am pointing to in this session is prior words, it’s prior to thoughts and labels. Words and labels are amazing, but it is the nature of words to separate, they are a single perspective, an isolated fragment of reality. The word bird is not a bird.


If what I’m saying isn’t landing, please don’t create tension or wrestle with it, just let it pass through, like the sound of the wind.


At first and at times it feels almost unnatural and confusing to examine the nature of awareness. We are so connected to the stream of thinking and perceptions that we overlook this background. But we can glimpse it and these glimpses grow into seeing. The main thing here is to focus on what is true for us right now.


And what is the motivation for this?


When we recognise the nature of awareness when we’re at home in awareness, then we are at peace, and all of the problems that exist outside of us reveal themselves as illusions.


It’s like looking into a dark room. At first we can’t see anything, but gradually our eyes get used to the dark and the contents of the room slowly reveal themselves.


A good pointer or teaching is like a lamp which helps us to see. Different pointers will resonate for each of us at different times. We don’t need to get caught up on any particular words – they’ll point to something or they won’t. Over time our eyes will adjust anyway, and it all becomes more obvious.


Join us for the practice to find out more.




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