Lift Your Arm

...Presence. Full awareness of here and now, and nothing else; that is in those eyes. Depth and simplicity. Life is deep and simple. The truth is simple. The truth is what exists in this very moment. Those things are simple; a touch on your skin, a fleeting warmness in the body, the sound of a bird, a vanishing memory of a long dead friend. From this point we have a choice to make: to penetrate further in depth into this reality, or creating a new world using these sensations as building blocks. Until we know what we are doing, both ways are beautiful; Until we are not bound to our creation, this ability of mind to abstraction is magical.

My teacher, U Nandasiddhi said: The most important thing that you should take with you from here is t

hat your mind always should know what it does. If you eat, you should know that you eat. If you walk you should know that you walk. If you breathe fast you should know: I am breathing fast. If You breathe shallow, you should know: I am breathing now shallow. If you move your hand you should know it.

You might say it is not mystical enough, it is too simple, it is easy. Really so? All right. Through an experiment I can show what he really meant. For that I will need your cooperation, though; let us play a half interactive game. You must sit now in front of the monitor, your hand laying on the mouse. Lift your arm, please! Just lift it up in air, then put it down.

...

Done?
Then, tell me, how did you do it?! Perhaps you have absolutely no idea; maybe do not even get first what I mean. Perhaps my lines set you more aware, and then you say that this muscle in the shoulder contracted, that other fixed, another again relaxed, etc. But I did not asked that either! How your mental decision of raising your arm become translated into a physical action?! You have no idea; it happened just like that... Even more, where, and how your self made the exact decision in which exact moment you start to lift your arm? You can keep thinking "I lift my arm, lift my arm" and nothing happens; Until a real decision is made, when without even t

hinking it trough "I lift my arm" it lifts. Try it! ... When and where exactly that particular decision was made. How? No idea, have you..? Any?! It just popped up, and happened just like that??? But if you have no idea how you decide, who really raises the arm, who hugs your lover, who lives your life?!?

Should I distract you even more? :) Before you are reading this line, were you aware of the push of the chair on your butt-whether there was more push on the left or right side, whether it was soft, in a small or large area? Were you aware how the shirt touched your skin, causing very gentle sensations? Were you aware of the dryness of your lips, the tension of eyelids, the warmness inside the abdomen, the ...

Then is it really you, who participate in this world? Even the grossest and most simple actions, and the grossest manners slip away from your awareness. So, are you really there on the other side of the screen, in this very moment? Or, rather, that is a semi-robot, and you are sitting in the cage of your mind, among your fears, powerful desires, and in wired habits that you have been carrying for God knows how long - sometimes, even you yourself laugh at yourself... Don't you? :)

Do you grasp the importance of this? We live so deeply in that world we created on our own that we barely perceive reality. It was a very simple question: How? not about the God, about the meanin

g of life, not about deep philosophy; nothing like that. Isn't that -ironic, hm? That we desire transcendental truths without being able to penetrate the truth of lifting arm; That we live our lives being a total alien even to our own body, but having so firm ideas about what the world is, how it should be, how it should not be, and how other people should or should not behave, what is good and what is bad. Does it sound sane? What truth such dulled minds can possibly gather?

And, soon or later, the truth, the true nature of the real world hits us; inevitably. When I say 'true', when I say 'real', I mean something absolutely down to earth, nothing misty. All phenomenon that exist out of mental interpretation, that exist here and now. Every now and then -when a person is not as we think s/he should be, when we do not get what we think we deserve, and ultimately when we are -or a beloved one is about to be ripped away from this existence by death- the corners of the illusory world, we have been keep creating, collide with reality. Like two spinning rectangular metal frames one within the other. Unless they exactly fit in one and other and have the same spin, that is when we live fully in reality, a collision is bound to come. Then we are forced to face reality. Then our fragile world is smashed by the powerful presence of the only entity that exists for real. Then our concepts we starve to hang on are shaken; or broken. Then we face that love goes, that good not at all always wins, that I am crying by my dieing sweetheart being totally powerless, that reality is a powerful flow which sometimes lifts up supporting our illusio

ns, and sometimes squeezes people into bloody mess. That reality couldn't care less.

Is that the real nature of this world? All of us felt it sometimes, I am sure. But if one does not understand how s/he lifts the arm, why on earth we have the arrogance to think that we know what love is or should be, what good is and how this or that person should follow that, what death and pain is? These are way more subtle phenomenon than a lifting arm. Yet, about these we have a rigid opinion, and if the world dears to be different we feel sorrow, annihilation, loneliness, we feel betrayed. Is that sane? Isn't that ironic?

The most suffering, the most pain is actually caused not by a cruel reality, but the tension that evolves when our play-world is matched against the incontrollable flow that we call Universe. So, then who causes and can end these sufferings: the Universe that rips our world apart, or we, who build it? After all what real control we've ever had? What control we had over coming to this existence? And instead of identifying our selves with that ultimate impulse, to enjoy and understand what we were given, we all got trapped in some dreamworld where we do not know a thing for real, not even the secret of a lifting arm, but cling for a control over fleeting illusions created by our minds. Insane. Control over concepts that melt away in the moment one truly starts to investigate them... Have you ever dared to face reality with clarity, instead of through the blurring shields of your rigid interpretations? Have you ever dared to see what love really is, what pain really is, what death really is? For that matter, what does life, and to be alive really mean? Have you ever dared to let it go, and just observe? Have you ever stopped and dared to see what it really means to lift your arm..?