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| Gary Weber |
I stumbled upon a video of yours on Youtube... how we may have NO choice in our life that life just happens. I was suddenly comforted by that...an enormous relief and I cried a few tears of gratefulness. I grew up in an alcoholic and abusive household...spent most of my life suffering with the belief that I wasn't lovable or likable...paddling like mad to stay afloat.
I have...addictions...alcohol, food, sex, drugs, etc. Anything to give me a break from the painful thoughts that keep me in a state of fear and disappointment...I am so tired of it...belief that I must be perfect...when I saw your video and considered that maybe this is all part of my destiny and being a drug addict doesn't say I am once again messing up in life....well it felt like it was a gift...
...thank you for sharing this information. I love it when others like Eckhart and yourself extend love so that others may receive it.
...Do you believe that the addictions are preprogramed or am I making bad choices? Are the addictions the vehicle for me to finally end suffering or am I hiding in a drug addiction and using spirituality to deny this?...your video grabbed me and gave me hope.
With Best Love and regards,
G. Namaste.
Great that the Universe danced "you" to that video.
There is no "I" to make "bad choices", or to "use spirituality to deny this", or to "hide in a drug addiction".
Using the best cognitive neuroscience we have, we are unable to find any "I" anyplace. All that can be found are several centers through which the sense of "selfing/I-ing" manifests intermittently...Otherwise...those centers are used for other functions...there are 11 centers through which most "selfing" occurs - two main nodes, and two subsidiary networks, one for "me and not me", one for "me now and in the future/time"...
One of the five research studies in which i am in is @ Yale...based on this work..The principal investigator...who works primarily in addiction, is clear on the issue of "free will" - there isn't such a thing.
stillness
Hi Gary,
I received your book..loving it!...love the exercises...help me see that I am not an I...
doing more meditation...asking who am I?...I am not an "I"...more aware of witnessing my thoughts and that is cool...not experiencing as much self hate with my thoughts..."U r a drug addict and that is so bad u don't deserve to be happy..." I hear it and then I ask if it's true (Byron Katie) and I recognize that maybe those thoughts are...where I need to heal...I know I am a drug addict...but so what....I can love and accept myself anyway...
am very grateful for your work and your book...thank you for extending that knowledge...am feeling more at peace and more loving towards me...so great not to be living in self hate all the time!
...my brother just died...addictions...and the same feelings I struggle with...he ended his life by hanging himself...he is free at last of his painful thoughts. The thing I feel most sad about is that I was learning finally to be free of my thoughts that try to convince me that I am unlovable...hoping to be able to teach this to my brother...so that he might find the peace I was starting to find...thanks for being such a caring being...
...do you think that a person taking their own life may...be the ultimate rejection of the ego or "I"...knowledge that this life is an illusion...so therefore not necessary to complete?... if ending their life here is an awakening of sorts?...maybe the taking of his life was a predetermined plan and indeed out of his control?
Namaste and happy for...being introduced to you and your knowledge by the universe...you and your book are making a big difference in finding the inner peace that lies beneath my self hate.
Thank you for being there and extending love.
Namaste.
Everything, everything, is predetermined and out of "our"(anyone's) control, including your brother's actions...All of it, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, happy, sad, etc. is out of our control.
we can try to come up with some "reason" it was this way, how it's "better" or "worse", "fair" or "unfair", "good" or "bad", but that is just our projection. In reality, the Universe is so massively complex and interconnected that the smallest thing that you do, could have an enormous impact in some way you will never know on folk you don't even know and will never meet...
If you really absorb the idea that we have no free will and no control over our actions, speech, thoughts, or senses, and importantly neither does anyone else, there is great relief, forgiveness, peace and happiness.
stillness, love and surrender
Gary,
Namaste, this is exactly what I needed to hear.
I love the way your actions extend love to me.
Freedom is learning to love the chains that bind us to our destiny. Our struggle on the way to this freedom and the final surrender deserves profound compassion. We are all in this together.
ReplyDeleteHi Gary,
ReplyDeleteI'll be direct here in providing a different perspective. I know you won't take it personally.
It's interesting reading the first post. It sounds very similar to my own upbringing. My mother was an alcoholic, my father a cold, physically abusive man. There was sexual abuse, probably (not to me, but allegations). I say probably because its hard to know who is playing what games, and two of my siblings are now schizophrenic. A third, my younger brother, committed suicide. Another sister - and my mother - tried to kill themselves, but failed. Drugs and alcohol are key themes. Oh, and we all got beaten up a lot by our parents.
I too felt completely unlovable. It is the worst feeling imaginable.
With all due respect, I do not think that changing worldviews helps much when dealing with deep emotional pain, and I come from experience here. The shame and pain are locked into consciousness fields into which the individual is effectively chained. Changing worldviews is a beginning, but in itself it is not enough for the deeply wounded, as it merely changes the map. The territory stays the same. Simply telling someone that there is no "I" is not very helpful in such situations, and might even cause great confusion. It may even exacerbate the mind-body dissociation which often lies at the heart of the issue.
There is no one correct path for everyone. Personally, I found that I had to learn to feel, and feel deeply. Until one connects with the pain, it is simply shuffled around, and it never heals. It is also important to learn to be present, so we don't become attached to the story of the pain. Surrendering to the moment opens the heart. Yet that can be incredibly difficult for those with deep pain. The image I got when I first began to do this was of a giant ball of string. It had to be allowed to untwirl slowly.
I also learned to read consciousness fields, which helped me understand how the 'energy' of shame (what I call 'dark' energy) becomes passed down from generation to generation. I also believe that past lives play a role, although I am not attached to that perspective. It just makes sense from what I have seen clarivoyantly.
The thing is that you can't know this from "the science", because we just don't have the technology to map this stuff, and it is too far out of left field to even be investigated.
For deeply wounded people, it also takes enormous personal courage, and tremendous commitment, to allow the emotional body to 'unfreeze'.
If I was to give a recommendation to the original emailer above, it would only be after checking his energy field. But my understanding is that there is no healing it without feeling it, regardless of how many "I"s there may be lurking within. Even if there are 11 "I"s, we still have what I believe is the God-given task of assuming responsibility for what moves through us. Perhaps "I" is an illusion, but the pain does not disappear from the psyche simply because we adopt a knew understanding of self.
With respect,
Marcus
Gratitude for your deep sharing of your pain and openness to express it so vividly and clearly.
ReplyDeletei meet w/many folk in this work, some indirectly through videos, e-mails, blog posts, talks, etc. and some directly in 1/1s over extended periods and in classes. In any of those vehicles, all that any of us can do is to give openly, clearly, truthfully and from presence and stillness, whatever arises in the time and connection available.
i do not agree with your personal perspective on the “I”, nor on “free will”, nor on how helpful understanding that they are an illusion can be. It is important to understand that these are not philosophical concepts; they are the scientific reality. Many/most folk have great resistance to this information, particularly if they are locked into painful personal “stories”. Byron Katie, who the questioner mentioned, has excellent approaches that have helped many. Her most recent book, “Who Would You Be Without Your Story?”, as well as any of her other offerings are strongly recommended.
One indirect or direct contact might not resolve "everything" immediately, and further work of different kinds will prove useful. i have witnessed, however, that a shift in understanding such as the writer/questioner expressed, can be a/the critical element in healing, a vital step in moving beyond that pain, of truly seeing something differently, and of opening a real path for clarity to manifest. Trying to reach clarity from a platform based on illusion has little chance of success.
Thanks for that, Gary. I don't pretend to have your understanding in the domains that you have explored. I am merely sharing my own understanding from my own journey. I realised at about the age of 30 that I needed to heal, and that if I didn't deal with my own pain it would simply enchain me for the rest of my life. Before this point I was in denial, because it was just too much for me to deal with.
ReplyDeleteI think that with any kind of spiritual work you have to begin with where the person is at. Some people don't carry a lot of pain, and are relatively unencumbered by the projections of others. But some, like the fellow in the first letter, and I, have enormous issues to deal with. In such cases stillness in and of itself is not enough.
At times I investigated whether meditation could replace the emotional work, but when I sat down I kept getting images of ice and snow: meditation simply froze the emotional energy, it did not heal it.
But if one becomes truly present and the agendas of the mind drops, the trapped emotional energy will surface of its own accord, and in perfect timing. I also believe that in my own case there have been (and still are) spiritual forces/entities who help trigger the opening of the trapped energy. I believe that there is an effective spiritual law in operation which maintains that whatever emotional energy exists within our energy field, we must assume responsibility for it. And I am also not discounting the possibility of Grace - divine healing - but unfortunately that is out of our hands, by definition!
I like Leonard Jacobson's approach to emotional healing. It is very gentle. One makes presence the core of the journey, but also allows any emotional energy to rise, spontaneously.
All healing can be a trap though, as I'm sure you realise. It becomes an excuse, and an addiction, which the ego sets up to avoid being present, being real. It may be that in my own case it is time to just be more present. But I don't think I could have reached this point if I'd not dealt with the emotional body.
Finally, I don't discount that I may have fundamental misunderstandings about all this. All I can say is that I have acted according to the best of the understanding and wisdom that I have been given.
Regards,
Marcus
Marcus,
ReplyDeletei agree w/many of your points.
i have worked w/many folk who were in severe situations of all sorts and with whom i use many different approaches. These can range from sitting inquiry meditation to spontaneous postures, chanting, Byron Katie, chakras, pranayama, texts, etc. that are found to be useful in that specific situation - it will likely be different the next session.
i too did not find that sitting meditation alone was adequate in my own practice, which is why i actually did all of those practices in my book.
As you know, i am dedicated to use "science" as far as it can go, which is much farther than i thought it could ever go, particularly in cognitive neuroscience and quantum physics. It is astonishing what we know now that we didn't know when i started meditating 40 years ago.
i also know/feel that there is a vast and energetic Presence that moves all of "this", in fact, is all of this, all of "us", all of everything. She is the choreographer, all the dancers, the audience, the orchestra, etc. She dances us as She chooses.
It is like Einstein said "Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size."
Deep gratitude for your sharing, integrity, ongoing efforts and involvement.
gary
Marcus - I know speaking from personal experience that I felt the same way until "I" touched the source which resides outside of space/time. I now see myself as an energy that flows through a body/mind that is traveling through a projected and fixed life stream. Once that understanding started to become a reality, the saying "there's no such thing as a true thought" clicked
ReplyDeleteMurilo again Gary. Sorry if I am repeating myself. Just to make it clear. I guess my questions is:
ReplyDeleteSelf-enquiry, asanas, using affirmations...the way I see these are "actions". Is this your view as well? If so do you think that although these are actions we still have no control over it?
I am not sure if I am getting this wrong but the way I see when Sam Harris talks about free-will, that we have no control over our actions that, "Although free will does not exist, we can create a framework for our choices which makes certain outcomes more likely than others. For example, you can remove all candy from your house to reduce the odds of eating sweets. Whether you feel the urge to eat sweets, however, is not something you have control over. Your “wants” simply are. They are not things you control."
It seems contradictory to me, I mean, "no control over our actions" but then create frame work??
Same for Why Does One Practice If There's No Free Will?
Like I said before, I "totally get it". No free will, we are not under control of a lot of stuff, including thoughts, desires, fears, "most" of our actions etc but we still can do a little bit to help like meditation?
Sorry, it is just hard to understand. If there is no free-will, if everything is pre-determined then I am meditating out of my control, doing asanas out of my control? Is that it? Or is it more like, everything that lead to it was out of my control??
When I look at my life, a lot of what happened, including starting to meditate are due to circumstances that were completely out of my control, but NOW, after all that happened, meditation, eating healthy, self-enquiry are all under my control?
Kind Regards,
Murilo
Hi Murilo,
DeleteIt's important to realize that Sam Harris's depth of understanding changed a great deal with time.
The book "The End of Faith" was written in 2004". "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" was written in 2010. "Free Will" was written in 2012. "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" appeared in 2014.
Sam does say on p. 170 of "Waking Up", in discussing cutting through "the illusion of the self", he says "If I've met a person who has done so perfectly, I am unaware of it".
In Robert Wright's NYTimes best-selling "Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment" in which "i" was featured, he points out that it has been done. There is even a dialogue of Robert Wright and Sam Harris discussing that very fact.
The point of all of this is that Sam Harris does eventually come around to the understanding that "everything is pre-determined" and there is no "free will". It's like Einstein and Ramana Maharshi said:
Questioner: How did you make your amazing discoveries?
Einstein replied: "I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."
Questioner: "Are only the important things in a person's life, such as their main occupation or profession, predetermined, or are trifling acts also, such as taking a cup of water, or moving from one part of the room to another?
Ramana replied: "Everything is predetermined".
Nikola Tesla and Stephen Hawking found the same thing.
Trust this is useful.
stillness
gary
Hi Gary. You make a very good point that Sam Harris's depth of understanding changed a great deal with time.
DeleteYou must have answered the same question thousands of times so thanks for taking the time to answer me.
It is a very odd feeling to completely surrender but I agree the more you do it the more there is peace.
I subscribe an online Buddhism magazine and this morning when I saw an article in my inbox I just felt like not reading it, very unmotivated, I will just sit here and do nothing, a very strange feeling. Why read it if everything is pre-determined? At the same time something inside doesn't agree with it.
I went through your article "Why Does One Practice If There's No Free Will?" again and it is hard to fully grasp it. Still seems contradictory to me to not be in "little" control of any of my actions and still "practice" for enlightment to take place and stabilise.
Please, please don't get me wrong I am not saying you or anyone else is wrong. In fact, I don't have the experience and I haven't studied the subject deeply.
It is more about an internal feeling, and my own experience. Perhaps what means "practise to stabilize enlightment" to you means something else to me like I have "little control" or perhaps I don't want to give up the idea.
Right now the idea that "most of it" is not under my control but that I still "must" do something that it is under my control to make certain outcomes more likely than others resonates more with me. I feel more like some sort of combined effort is required, something "unconscious" and somethings that requires my own efforts.
Who I am to question Nicola Tesla, Einstein, Ramana, you or anyone?
But it is very important for me to question things in order to find what is true for me. Such intelligent people must have some sort of connection with the Universe, or God or whatever name we give it but I still question myself at the same time. Why should I believe it? Just because it is Einstein? Ramana? Could they be missing some part of the puzzle? I guess it is because they are enligthened beings. The way I see we're all on the same path and it's amazing what one can learn if we open our minds to the fact that we can learn from anyone. I learn a lot from my kids.
Again, I haven't studied a lot about it but I keep questioning myself. For instance, the Libet experiment. Does it simply prove that we are not under control or is there something else that we still don't understand?
Thank you so much again Gary. I love your website, I learn so much from it and I will keep going through it and will also read some of the books you mentioned and keep on the quest for enlightenment, to become a better person, to be in service of others.
There are two passages I know of in the Bible that illustrate the same idea of no free will.
Matthew 6:8
For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.
Isaiah 65:24
I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer
Kind Regards,
Murilo
Hi Murilo,
DeleteTwo very excellent passages from the Bible. Thanks for sharing them.
stillness and letting go
gary