Brian E. Miller's Blog, page 2

Perceptions: How the Mind Separates the Whole

I came to realize clearly that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. ~ Dogen

Our entire world is viewed through the lens of our perceptions. How we view ourselves, others, and objects. Our entire world is created by the thoughts we project outward from the beliefs and conditions we have built since childhood. We experience things as being independent and outside of the mind, but our experience of life is just a projection of the mind. In our power to perceive is our power to create the experience. This is our intimate connection with all that is. Because everything exists only in the way I perceive it to, I am deeply and intimately connected to all things in this way.

I am not saying that things do not conventionally exist. Things exist: I sit in a chair right now as I write on my computer. I do not deny that my body is here, fingers tapping away on the keys. Brian exists, yet I don’t exist the way others perceive me to exist. Even I view myself through the lens of my own perceptions, so I only exist to myself the way I perceive myself. And I exist to you only the way you perceive me as well. We often see someone or something through the lens of our perceptions and have a fixed view of it as static and unchanging, when the reality is that everything is constantly changing, in constant flux. For example, if I had a piece of chocolate cake and presented it to two people, one may say, “Yum I love chocolate cake!” The other may have had a negative experience with cake in the past and think, “Yuk I can’t stand chocolate cake.” This cake now exists as two different things, one that is a source of pleasure and goodness and the other as a source of aversion and disgust, when in reality it is just a piece of cake that is dependent on an infinite amount of circumstances to exist. Perhaps I left the sugar out of the cake, when the chocolate cake lover takes a bite, he or she may grimace and think, “Yuk I don’t like that chocolate cake.”

This is a simplistic example of what we are doing all the time to things and people, including ourselves. We may think, He is an angry person, she is a spiritual person, and so on. Both things and people are constantly changing; our bodies and minds are in a state of constant flux and in fact are conditions that depend on many factors to exist.

All masters have realized that by changing our minds, our perceptions, we change our lives and the world around us. Einstein said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” The decision is ours, and in fact many believe that the only real choices we have are in how we experience the perfection all around us. We have the choice to experience the moment, and it starts with our thoughts, which create the emotion, and thus how we experience life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force—that thoughts rule the world.” In the past several blogs We have been investigating how our beliefs and views create our thoughts, which create emotions that lead us to action, or inaction, which physically create our worlds. The simple act of shifting our perceptions can be very powerful in our lives.

There was a woman known as Peace Pilgrim who walked the Earth bringing her message of peace to all who would listen. She once said, “If you knew how powerful your thoughts were, you would never think a negative thought.” Our minds are very powerful tools and players in creating our reality, so wouldn’t it be wise to be able to go in and shift our perceptions?

I recently heard a person talking about a celebrity, saying how she didn’t like him because he was a jerk and a pig. I asked her if she knew him. She replied that she didn’t but had heard a story of him doing something or acting in some way one day. I asked her if she ever had a bad day or a time she regretted saying or doing something. Of course she had, don’t we all? I then proposed that perhaps this man is not as bad as she perceived. Perhaps he was having a bad day. And in his case, the bad day or act gets publicized worldwide.

I do not know this man, and wasn’t defending him, but was pointing out the fact that we fix people into labels. We do this with ourselves all the time: we may have screwed something up or perhaps we were picked last for the baseball games in gym class, and now we have this perception that we are a bad baseball player. I must be terrible, we think, I screwed up in the last game, I am always picked last. Even if we are a mediocre player we have the power to change if we wish. Yet we will never change if we keep the fixed perception of being a bad baseball player.

Think of a perception you hold about yourself and analyze why you see yourself as such. If it is negative and you wish to change it, investigate all the causes and conditions that led to that belief and perception. Perhaps it started when you were told something as a child.

So who do you think you are? Make a list of ten things you perceive yourself to be. Try doing five positive and five negative. Now look at the five negative things and investigate why you perceive yourself to be this. What can you do to change that perception of yourself? Do you perceive yourself to be lazy? Why? What actions can you take to change this? Remember it starts with the view, the perception, then the action. If we are lazy, chances are we have a view of ourselves as being such, and so we live up to that view. Yet, once we change our inner world of perceptions, our outer world changes as well.

Do you wish to be a slave to the perceptions of others, or the perceptions of yourself? You can never control how others perceive you, but you can control how you perceive yourself. Do not worry or fret how others see you. If I give a talk to 2,000 people, there will be 2,000 different perceptions of who I am. But the only one that really matters is the perception I have about myself. When we change our perceptions, we change the way we look at ourselves and thus change ourselves. When we change our perceptions of the world and other people, we do the same. It is your choice.

We can practice observing our preconceived notions of others as well. We may see a homeless man, and all these preconceived notions may come flooding in: perhaps that man is an enlightened being or perhaps not, but we will never really know if we allow the prison of preconceived notions to keep our minds narrow. Maybe we see a holy man and think he or she is all knowing and good. He may well be, but may not be as well. The movie Kumare comes to mind, in which a man pretends to be a guru: he dresses like one, grows his hair long, and wears a beard. He plays off of the perceptions of what others believe a guru should look like and be, when in fact he is just a hip, thirty-three-year-old filmmaker from New Jersey pretending to be an Indian guru, or at least that’s the perception he projects.

The words from the wise Baba in Shambhala come echoing in, “Sometimes what we see isn’t necessarily what is there.” This is not to say there aren’t dynamic, wonderful people in the world, or despicable ones who cause much harm, but when we allow the automatic response of preconceived notions to mold the man, we aren’t really being very open minded to the possibilities.

When we realize that everything is only a perception of the mind—it exists, but it doesn’t exist the way we perceive it to exist—then we realize that we have a beautiful and intimate connection with everything and the ability to change it simply by changing our mind, which is perceiving it. You may say, “I don’t care how much I change my mind, this person will always be rude and difficult.” To a mind that perceives the other to be difficult and sees only a shallow flaw in another, then yes, but wisdom will reveal a person who suffers, a person who may be misunderstood, and perhaps then we can change our view from one of annoyance and avoidance to one of understanding and compassion toward another. This is one example of many.

Let us start with ourselves and the things we see in our world. Again I ask you, “Who do you think you are?” Because as Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

An excerpt from “Small Steps to Giant Leaps”

Interconnection

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man does not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.  ~ Chief Seattle

A mystical and wise monkey named Kavi in my novel Shambhala talks of how we are all a reflection of the Earth from which we came. Our bodies are composed of three quarters liquid and one quarter mass, like the Earth. Our veins and capillaries are like the rivers and streams. We have energy centers that run various systems of our bodies, just like the Earth. Like the Earth, our bodies can flush out toxins, but if they are too overwhelmed by toxins they will break down.

A great quote from Kavi is, “You are all things on Earth, and all things on Earth are you.”

Let’s think about this further for a moment, logically and scientifically. Your body that is sitting here now—your physical body inside and out—is just the result of the massive amount of food that you have eaten throughout your life. This food was grown in the Earth, fertilized by countless bugs and other beings that died and broke down to create nutrients in the soil, grown and cultivated by others, nourished by the sun and the rains, picked and harvested, processed, packaged, and transported, and then prepared for you by others. Therefore, your body is a result of the efforts of others. Or in the very least, the result of infinite conditions that came together to create what you call your body. Let’s look at this a little deeper: your genetics were given to you by others; your language, even your name was given to you by others. All of our conditions are due to the causes and conditions of others.

So then, where is the Self?

Uh oh, the big question: here comes the airy fairy mystical stuff, right? Wrong. We can stay very practical here. The fact is that self cannot exist without others. Everything depends on everything else to exist. In fact, even the word self can’t exist without other. In the most simplistic form, we can look at our Earth and how what we do to the Earth affects us. When we create genetically modified foods or spray toxins on the food we eat, we suffer cancers and famines for the simple fact that everything is interdependent and what we do to the Earth we do to ourselves.

We can see this in our everyday existence: choose to smile at someone and say a nice word and the ripple you create will be far different from one if you choose to frown and say something nasty to that person. A simple rule of thumb is to be kind and enjoy, or at least try to, because we are then creating this for all others, and in effect ourselves, because all we are is other. The wisdom of our interconnection makes us grateful for all of life on this Earth. There is a delicate flow of life. We breathe in oxygen created by the trees and plant life and expel carbon dioxide, which in turn feeds them.

So back to the big question: Where is the self. What brings us hardship and pain often is the view that we are separate, apart from others—independent. But as we just discussed, we are all a part of others. All we are is others. All we are is dependent on others.

Mother Teresa’s observations of the world concluded, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of not belonging.” She also noted that, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” These profound statements by Mother Teresa illustrate the feelings of deep insecurity and disconnection we have with the world. We foster this unrealistic view that we are separate from all others and things in this world, when the truth is that all we are is due to the circumstances of others and in essence all we are is other.

While I was working on a documentary film in college about the rising problem of homelessness on Long Island, I had the good fortune to spend some time with a wonderful woman named Sister Elaine Bohrer. Sister Elaine started the Light House Mission on Long Island, whose mission is to feed the hungry and help the homeless. The closing line in the film is from an interview with her, and her simple yet powerful words stuck with me since that day: “We all need each other and that’s what makes it work.”

The fact is that we all are each other, and the wise ones have realized that by helping others we are helping ourselves. What I have found to be an effective way to overcome depression and insecure thoughts of separation is to volunteer to help others. This outward view and focus on others gives us back that sense of belonging and worth. Lao Tzu, the great master of the Tao, said, “Serve the needs of others, and your own needs will be fulfilled.” When we become the source of something, whether it’s love, abundance, belonging, or anything, we are creating it in our lives as well, because there is no separation between me and another. When we become the source of what we want and create it for others, we naturally create it for ourselves.

An excerpt from “Small Steps to Giant Leaps”

 

The Phases of Changing a Habit

An excerpt from “Small Steps to Giant Leaps”

When we wish to create a new habit, we must know that it takes practice, patience, and consistency. There are phases of learning a new habit, skill, or ability. I remember when I first learned to ride my bike. My mother would hold the back of the seat, and I would begin to peddle fast as she let go. I had to think about the peddling. My balance was wobbly, and stopping the bike was a whole new adventure. I remember I had to crash the bike the first time, because I was going so fast and I didn’t yet have the habit (ability) yet to stop.

In time, riding a bike became second nature to me. I didn’t have to think about it. I would practically live on my bike for most of my childhood. I could ride that bike with my eyes closed. I remember being able to stand on the seat as the bike was moving. All of our habits progress like this. At first we don’t understand the new skill or habit, and often we don’t even recognize the benefits it will have for us. Next, we attempt to learn the new skill, because we realize it could be of benefit to us in some way, often this is the toughest phase. I remember this phase when I learned to play the guitar, it seemed as though I would never get better. But I did.

The third phase is when we now know how to ride the bike or play the guitar, but it still takes a bit of concentrated effort to do so. This brings us to the final phase, where the skill or habit has become second nature to us: we hop on a bike without a thought, we strum the guitar with our eyes closed, not needing to think about it. In the world of psychology and education these are call the Four Stages of Competence and are called unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Don’t worry, I will explain this cluster of words more simply. Let’s look at these four stages of competence, or phases of ability as I like to call them, in relation to changing our reactive habits of emotion that tend to control us and create undesirable results in our lives. As we begin to work with the methods outlined in my blog posts, we will naturally move through these phases, so understanding them will give us the power to accept each phase, knowing we will make progress.

Phases of changing our habit energy:

Phase 1

In this phase our jealousy, anger, or other afflictive emotion arises, and we react without even recognizing that we are reacting. It just seems to be who we are and what we do—an almost unconscious action or reaction.

Phase 2

We now recognize that anger, jealousy, miserliness, or fear arises, but we still allow it to create our reactions. Even if we fight the urge to react, we just can’t help ourselves. This is the toughest phase, and the one where most people give up, thinking they can never overcome this habit energy. Don’t give up because no matter how strong the emotion is and no matter how many times we allow it to hijack our actions, this is a necessary step in the progression. You will never fail if you never give up. This is where we need to bring in patience and self-compassion, being gentle with ourselves and not beating ourselves up when we do act out of a deluded sense of mind.

Phase 3

In this phase delusion arises, we feel the energy of it in our body, but we don’t allow the emotion to act itself out through us. We do not follow it, and conversely, we do not suppress it. We practice stopping and patient acceptance and allow it to pass through us without acting it out. Sometimes it takes days or hours to pass, but eventually it does pass. Perhaps you need to use writing to get it out, you may need to go for a long walk away from the person or situation that sparked it. Or you can use any of the numerous techniques we have been practicing so far throughout these blogs. At this phase you begin to bring clear thinking into the otherwise clouded mind of delusion. Perhaps you realize that the person who said something to you making you angry has recently lost his or her job or is going through a tough time and is just irritable. You may realize that the remark really had nothing to do with you, or that the person just suffers on deeper levels. Their cockiness or arrogance is just a cover for the pain they feel. Whatever the situation, we begin to bring wisdom into it, remember that wisdom means to see clearly: a mind that gets stuck in a delusion of anger, jealousy, greed, and so forth is the opposite of a clear mind. So in order to get to the clear mind of understanding, we practice stopping and allowing afflictive emotions to pass. Patience is key. This does not mean we become a passive doormat. Patience is a strength. It takes a warrior-like determination to walk away from a situation that makes us angry or to confront our greedy or jealous minds. It is easy to react with anger, but reaction is a weak state of being. We allow ourselves to be controlled by our delusions. On the other hand, the warrior is always in control, always stable and centered. When the storm of delusion arises, the warrior accepts that it is there, without the need to follow it. Such a demeanor is anchored in true strength, and every one of us has the potential for that warrior-like determination. Such a warrior is not the type that makes war on another. That’s not valiant. The warrior who sets out to know himself or herself, in order to serve others, exhibits true valor.

Phase 4

In this phase the reaction energy doesn’t even arise, and if it does, it is not as strong. in fact, often you forget that you had that energy arise in these situations. When the energy does arise, it is short lived, and you know how to let it pass through without letting it take control of you.

Keep these phases in mind as you work with your habits. The waves of energy that once manipulated and controlled your every action will become smaller and smaller as you engage in them less and less.

An excerpt from “Small Steps to Giant Leaps”