In love with the world - 1.Adding wood to the fire

Contribution

Christophe and Ralf 

Who am I?

• Relative self: the self that identifies with labels (outer appearances, gender, roles, social identity/status, particular habits and qualities,…).

The outer layers of mind—the constructed labels—function like clothing that identifies our social identities and cloaks our naked, nonfabricated state of original mind…

• Absolute mind = mind of pure awareness: qualities of mind that are vast, not contingent on circumstances or concepts.

Awareness is as present in our lives as the air we breathe, we can access it anywhere, anytime.

Adding wood to the fire

• Adding wood to the fire: Deliberately bring difficult situations to the forefront so we can work with them directly.

Using out inner resources to work with these issues is our only true protection, because external circumstances change all the time and are therefore not reliable.

We take the very behaviors or circumstances that we think of as problems and turn them into allies.

• No self: unconditioned awareness that reveals itself with the dissolution of the chattering mind that talks to itself throughout the day.

Questions

1. Do you relate at an experiential level to the sentence “We go about our days with minds filled with ideas of what we want, and how things should be, and with reactive responses to what we like and do not like.” Does meditation change your relationship to that?
2. Have you ever added wood to the fire or were in a situation where wood was added to the fire? If yes, what insights did you get?

Meditation

Sense of self, who am I?