Freedom.

[Turtle]

The reason I take time to reply to you is my Dad used to be very similar with you. Very pessemistic sounding, he at the time, and you now say you feel there is nothing wrong wit the path you are walking, and no you are right there is nothing wrong about it, but niether is there much good about it. You are cruising, through the worsening seas of the gray area. These feelings of yours will get worse and worse until you change. This is the universes way of discomforting you from your surroundings, trying to make you brake the attachments in ready for new ones to come.

lol, me being pessimistic. I can see how you perceived me to be pessimistic, but I am not. More accurately, I am going through the pain of realizing that this realm of existence is not where I want to be, but where I am nonetheless. I have already accepted my lot in life here, but still feel the desire to leave, because I believe that the next step will be exactly where I want to be....however.....I realized earlier today that it's not so much a different realm that I want to go to, but like some of you mentioned, the separation of my consciousness from my body and more importantly my mind. I was reading up on Buddha's teachings earlier today, and realized why recently in life I have been so actively creating peace in my mind and emotions through meditation so that the days would be easier. Part of the reason was obvious, I desire peace and want to spread vibes of peace on this planet because frankly, we need more of it. However, I just realized that when you are in that state of peace, you are tuning to your consciousness and not your mind. Stilling the mind.

Here's the problem. Perpetuating that freedom and incorporating it into every moment of your existence, so that you are then "watching" your life as you live it, aware of your mind and body being pieces of who you are, but not what you are. I think we all know how it feels to be distracted and grounded back to our minds and bodies, away from that mindfulness that Buddha speaks about in his teachings.

So to kind of summarize where I've come to now...I have just begun the practice of remembering to tune my awareness to the still consciousness that is the foundation of the mind and the body, and to do this as often as I remember to during my daily routine. I do not know if Buddha eventually lived his life in that state consistently, but he was pretty much teaching that that is how you end suffering...you still have problems to deal with and pain to go through, but you no longer suffer through any of it at that point. That is kind of like the holy grail of life lessons for me, to come back to awareness and realize your mind and body do not constitute what you are as a being of existence.

Once this lesson is mastered, I have a feeling that the rest of life will unfold with a speed, grace, and effortlessness that is unsettling to the mind, because we will not have to worry about trying to think through life's problems (threatening the purpose the mind/ego's existence). Instead one can "watch" himself live his life, "watching" his avatar (as I describe avatar, your mind-and-body)....being very much linked to the avatar, but not identifying with it....

aka, Freedom... dammit.

Much love, and godspeed.

-Jamal


*side note...I had to re-edit this post SO MANY times, and as I refined it, I felt myself disconnecting and reconnecting to my mind, almost as if I was going to OBE. I think this is what I am talking about, "watching" yourself live. This is heavy stuff, and now I gotta sleep. Words are very clumsy indeed!*