The book of our life stretches between the two end points, and this blog is the chronicle of our personal history. The story of this personal history may be infinitely varied at an individual level. Breaking through the different heights and abysmal depths along the route in the world of shapes and forms may provide the individual wanderer with endless joy and immeasurable sorrow.
By identifying with our personal history written in the world of shapes and forms we experience ourselves as individuals different from everybody else.
Our parents began to weave our personal history; first they told us who we were, they relayed the rules of living in a community, together with other people within a specific society.
Then the little Ego was born in us, and we started to listen to the voice of the Egothat began to tell us our personal history. The inner voice told us a story about who we were and which way our life was heading.
We found the story so convincing that it never even occured to us to question its truth. But is this story really true, or is this just the Ego, babbling away and leading us into the cobweb of thoughts hopelessly?
The Anatomy of the Personal History
Every waking
moment of our life fits a personal history with our own Self in its focus. Our
life can only be interpreted within the framework of that history. The reason
for that is that we identify with the voice of the Ego, the narrator of our own
story, so closely that our personal history becomes the foundation of our
entire life.
A closer look at
that personal history will, however, reveal that our internal story consists of
a fabric of experiences and thoughts. Thoughts that explain our experiences,
thoughts that we believe and with which we identified, thoughts that will thus
provide the foundations of our self-determination.
Our personal
history keeps us under its spell, in a hypnotic state in which all our
attention is devoted to the inner voice and story it tells. In this way we give
up our alertness, the world passes by us, because we only concentrate on the
elements of reality that appear to confirm our personal history. We therefore
lose our grip on the deeper dimensions of life. The deeper dimensions are
present in our life, but we lose contact with them because of our lack of
alertness.
Beyond the Personal History
The question may
arise in us whether we are really identical with our own personal history, or
perhaps we are more than that? Everybody has some vague suspicion that our
personal history does not reflect reality, we are in fact at a deeper level
than that.
When everything
is apparently all right in our personal history, we achieve our goals, we are
happy, and the vague suspicion vanishes entirely in us, and our identification
with our personal history becomes more powerful. There are, however, moments in
our life when nothing appears to succeed, so we are unhappy and we suffer. The
suspicion then reinforces in us, and we tend to believe that we are more than
the cluster of thoughts that constitute our personal history. We realize that
we are more than mere thoughts.
As long as we
insist on our personal history, and on the storyteller, the deeper dimensions
of our existence remain unaccessible for us. Not because these deeper
dimensions are not present in our life, but because weaving the web of our
personal history engages all our attention.
Waking up from the Personal History
If we become
aware and conscious of our own personal history that we are telling ourselves,
we have a chance to wake up from the hypnotic spell of our personal history.
In order to
become aware and conscious of our personal history, we must ask ourself the
question, ”Who is it, talking in my head,
who is this inner voice, telling me my own personal history?” The only
possible honest answer to that question is, that ”I have no idea!” Any other answer is rooted in the personal history,
and as such, it is to be rejected.
The honest
answer may easily be a shock for us, completely uprooting our life the way we
lived it previously. The more closely we identified with our personal history,
the bigger our astonishment may be. We no longer believe in what we have firmly
regarded as our own personal history. This experience may, however, lead us to
the point of questioning the truth of what we believed to be true in connection
with ourselves.
This is the
first sign that we begin to wake up from the hypnotic effect of our personal
history. Now our attention is no longer fully engaged by our personal history,
the storyteller telling us the story, and our identification with the story. We
may then become sensitive to the deeper dimensions of our life.
We are the Entirety of Existence
The gateway
leading us to the deeper dimensions of Life is Alertness, which appears as a
result of the release of our attention from the hypnotic state of listening to
our personal story. The new Alertness enables us to learn about ourselves
without identifying with our thoughts and emotions.
What we first
experience in this new, alert state beyond our thoughts and emotions is the
completeness of existence. In that state all fragmentation disappears from our life,
we recognize the inner spaciousness of our existence, our inner happiness and
tranqulity. We feel at home in our own skin, and we realize that our alert
consciousness is free from all kinds of thoughts and emotions.
We then may
decide whether we wish to continue to listen to our personal story, or we move
further on, towards the quiet foundations of our existence.
~From the book: Frank M. Wanderer: The Revolution of Consciousness: Deconditioning the Programmed Mind
(C) Frank M. Wanderer, 2013-2016
You can republish our articles for free, but please include the author’s name and a link to our homepage (www.frankmwanderer.com)
About the author:
Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D is a professor of psychology, a consciousness researcher and writer.
You Can Help the Author!
1. Buy my books at Amazon.com and read it!
2. Write a short review. A few kind words helps me a lot.
3. Buy me a Coffee! Support me to continue writing more posts - buy me a Coffee as a thank you via Paypal!
Thank You.
3. Buy me a Coffee! Support me to continue writing more posts - buy me a Coffee as a thank you via Paypal!
Thank You.
NEW WAKE UP BOOK
Frank is also the author of the following books:
- 3 Stages in the Evolution of the Human Spirit EGO – ALERTNESS – CONSCIOUSNESS
- The Chant of the Heart: Enjoy the Nectar of Being
- The Flames of Alertness: Discover the Power of Consciousness!
- The Biggest Obstacle to Enlightenment: How to Escape from the Prison of Mind Games?
- and several other books on consciousness and enlightenment.
You can follow Frank online at:
- https://egoalertnessconsciousness.wordpress.com/
- www.fmwanderer.wordpress.com
He has contributed to a few different spiritual websites including
Watch this video too!
Very enlightening. Pure Buddhism I guess if such a thing exists, as there have been numerous Buddhist sects, many of which have died out. Damn it, I have wasted my life in samsara and maya instead of studying sutras, vedas and tantras. Maybe next time.
ReplyDelete