'YOU ARE WHAT YOU SEEK' | Spiritual Mumbo-Jumbo or Statement of Truth?
Ever heard the phrase: You Are What You Seek? For years I thought it was just some happy-clappy spiritual mumbo-jumbo. To be told that I was peace when I wasn’t feeling peaceful was not only confusing, but really annoying! That was, until I learnt meditation and started to experience a sense of inner peace - irrespective of what was going on in my mind.
But don’t take my word for it… try this easy experiment.
[Scroll down to watch video or see below for written instructions]
Stop reading, close your eyes for 30 seconds and watch what’s happening within your mind; quietly observe the thoughts happening. Then, whenever you become aware of a thought – which could be about this post, something you need to do later, or anything else – give the thought a number: one, two, three and so on. Remember to count the thought that says ‘I’m having no thoughts’ as that one is easily missed!
Having done that, how many thoughts did you count: 2, 22, 202? It really doesn’t matter how many. What matters is the fact that you could count even one thought. Why? Because this shows that you cannot be your thoughts. Instead, you are that which is aware of your thoughts. A thought is an object and you are the observer of the object. One is constant, whereas the other is constantly changing. Thoughts come and go. But you don’t.
This brings us back to the original question - You Are What You Seek : Spiritual Mumbo-Jumbo or Truth? To answer this, then you need to first know what you seek/want. If I could give you a magic wand and you could have one wish, what would you want? Having asked this to literally thousands of people, the common answers include: peace, love, joy, freedom, contentment, confident etc. What would you want?
Now you know what you seek, how it is possible that you already are what you want? Let’s take peace as an example. Peace is possible because you are not your thoughts (or emotions!). The mind is made up of temporary phenomenon, yet there is an underlying aspect to you that is permanent. By using meditation techniques to be more consciously aware, we can discover that the awareness that’s aware of our thoughts is ALREADY still, quiet and peaceful.
Believe it or not, the same goes for the other common things people would wish for, too. That which is aware of the mind is already absolute confidence, it is already completely content, and it is already an aliveness that is often described as joy.
By making the shift in where you put your attention - less on the movement of your mind and more on the awareness that’s aware of your mind - you can reconnect with the aspect of your Self that is permanently peaceful and learn that the spiritual sages were in fact speaking the truth when they said you are what you seek.
Keep Reading To Dive Deeper…
[Below is an Extract from my Calm Cure book]
Self-awareness is the term I use for being aware of the aspect of your self that is aware. What do I mean by this statement? Inside you, right now, there is an awareness that is aware of this moment happening, including for instance, the words you are currently reading. Yes, your mind is reading, but your awareness is aware of the words on the page. See the difference? Some call this awareness the ‘observer’, the ‘witness’, the ‘stillness’ or the ‘being’. It really doesn’t matter what we label it. What matters most is that we are aware of its presence within us and make it a priority to experientially engage life with self-awareness from now on.
“What you are looking for is what is looking.”
Awareness is aware of all of your inner thoughts, emotions and physical sensations, along with your external events and experiences. Awareness is still, silent, spacious, peace-filled presence; it is not otherworldly, but as real as you can get. It is the most permanent and unchanging aspect of you, so I would go as far as to say it is who you really are. Silently observing the happening of every inner and outer experience that you’ve ever encountered. There has never been a moment in your life when this awareness has not been present within you, even if you haven’t always been aware of its presence. Awareness is aware of the full spectrum of life and by being self-aware you can find it is possible to coexist calmly with anything that comes your way.
The safe haven of awareness
In the same way that the sky doesn’t care what flies through it, awareness is not concerned with what it is aware of. Irrespective of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ life appears to be on the surface, your underlying awareness remains still, calm and well – always.
One of the core reasons why we tend to recoil from experiencing the full spectrum of life is that we’ve tried to do so without self-awareness. We’ve been taught to think about life, rather than directly experience it from the safe haven of our permanently present and peaceful awareness. Thinking about life gets us caught up in a world of thoughts and, if they happen to be negative, then that is how we feel. However, by being self-aware – aware of the aspect of your self that is aware – you can experience the unconditional calm of your awareness, instead of only the ups and downs of your conditioned mind.
Without self-awareness, our thoughts about what’s happening determine our experience of, and relationship with life. But here lies the problem with relying solely on this non-aware thought-based perspective on life: The mind makes sense of reality by judging if it is good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, or positive or negative. If based upon our preconditioned mind-made judgements, life appears to be bad, wrong, worse or negative, then the habitual tendency is to resist the perceived problem and experience the negative side effects of our resistance to ‘what is’, including anger, anxiety, sadness, fear, guilt, grief, shame, frustration, loneliness... the list goes on. But as already mentioned, your awareness is an ever-present ongoing state of still, silent, spacious calm within which you can comfortably coexist with all of life – free from the countless symptoms of conditioned conflict and unconscious over-thinking.
“Self-awareness sits at the heart of healing. Being self-aware is not a way of avoiding or escaping life, but the way to have a healthy relationship with life so that you can experience the full spectrum without suffering.”
