Quest for Spiritual Self-Reliance

Quest for Spiritual Self-Reliance

Movement of Meditation

Martin Esten

Copyright © 2015 by Martin Esten

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the author or his designated agent(s), except by a reviewer, who may quote a brief passage in a review.

Dedicated to all who yearn for freedom.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: Meditation on Thinking

The Origin of Dysfunction in the Human Species

Presumption of Problems

Psychological Build up

Illusory Need for Prevention

Primordial Pain

Major Building Blocks of Dysfunction

Mind Means Well

There is no Spiritual Thinking

Time and Thought

Impermanent Thought Will Never Accept Impermanence

Thought is Always Old, Awareness is Always New

Creation of the Thinker

Pleasure Principle

Karma Determinism (Destiny)

To Cherish Thoughts

No Need to Learn More

Creativity

Transition from Awareness to Thought

Trust That Silence

Self-Centeredness

We Are Simply Just Not Interested

Key on the Quality of Thought

Use of Mind

CHAPTER TWO: Meditation in Images

The Basic Restriction

Forming of Images

The Need for Conflict

Illusory Separation

Who Gets Hurt and Who Gets Flattered?

The Need to Be Someone

Bumper Sticker

Images of God

Returning Home Is to Drop All Images

CHAPTER THREE: Meditation on the Little Me

Reactivity

Who is Judge/Observer?

Suffering needs the Little me and Its Story

Language

Little me and the Universe

CHAPTER FOUR: Meditation on Struggle as Opportunity

Struggle as Blessing

Fear

Psychological Problems and Disorders

Conflict Situations

Criticizing Others

Colored Perceptions

To Wish Ill

Conditioned to be Unhappy

CHAPTER FIVE: Meditation on Sin, Hell, Cause, It

No Rewards and no Punishments

To Sin

It

CHAPTER SIX: Meditation on Meditation

Meditation is the Most Natural Thing

Ego Wants to Own Meditation

Happiness is Only a Byproduct

Not a Twenty Minutes Exercise

No Practice

Spiritual Pretenders

Spiritual Supermarket of the West

Developing Dependence

CHAPTER SEVEN: Meditation on Religion

Time to Move on

Surrender

Believer vs Atheist

To Follow Spiritual Authority

No Differences

Description and Reality are Two Different Things

Requiem for Fairness

Letting Go

CHAPTER EIGHT: Meditation on Outside Security

A Better Life

Inner Adjustment

To Have More

Inviting Insecurity and Opposites

CHAPTER NINE: Meditation on Escapes

Too Much Noise

Ego Has Spilled in all Social Media

Desire and Fear; Pull and Push; Pleasure and Pain

Love

Hope

CHAPTER TEN: Meditation on Relative vs. Absolute Truth

Need to Specify

Different Approaches to Truth by Different People; Same Results (For Spiritually Advanced)

Everything is Watched

You Cannot Bring It About

A Different Kind of Intelligence is Needed

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Meditation on Awareness

Suicide

Nothing is Required

Be Vigilant

Tasting the First Freedom

Making It More Solid

Keep it Clean and Healthy

Coming Back Home to Fairness

The Only Question

Learn How to Fly

Notes

About the Author

Ego thinks that it can avoid death, and that is how it all starts…the fight is on….

— Martin Esten

Introduction

There are two potentials in your life: to live from a heavy psychological buildup, which is internally created ego-madness, or to live in freedom from all this madness. Which one do you choose? The question of living in self-created prison or in freedom is the most important question that you need to ask yourself in your life time; everything else is secondary. To ask, answer and understand the question of freedom through your own self-reliant approach is the purpose of this book.

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The focus of this book is the exploration of dysfunction in the human species and its reflections in everyday life. The dysfunction discussed in this book regards the ‘problem’ of not knowing who we are at a fundamental level and instead identifying ourselves with our body-mind. In itself, this not knowing of who we are leads to the identification with thought, which leads further to a deep sense of separation and immense suffering among people. The reflection of this dysfunction in the creation of a totally artificial and unhappy entity, and our inability to see it in ourselves will also be examined. To understand and to be aware of the nature of dysfunction is the first and last step in all true spiritual undertakings. Through uncovering of what is unreal in us, there will be understanding of that which is real. This basic ego-mind dysfunction and our inability to do anything about it will be exposed repeatedly through various perspectives and by means of actual examples. Clearly seeing the dysfunction leads inevitably to freedom from it. This is a notion that is expressed in a maxim with which we are all familiar: The truth will set you free.

This book is not an academic or intellectual endeavor; it does not belong to any particular category of writing. It is not an information-based book. There is no information given, such as one would find in a math or science text. Rather, this book presents an ongoing movement of discovery. This book ought to be read and used as a mirror through which the reader is observing him or herself in his or her reactions. The writings in this book are an ongoing movement of meditation, using words to communicate individual insights. This book is not a guidebook, because no book can ever guide you to true Self-discovery. Only life can do that. Understanding, or rather communicating about understanding, can be unlocked through words, but words are not it. Every book is always and only a description of something, not the thing itself.

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This book is meant to be a journey that the reader can take with the writer. Soon, you will realize that the writer and the descriptions in the book are not important at all, and then you will realize that the only important factor here is yourself. This book is your own book; you are writing it and always have been writing it. You will soon realize that you have always known what you are reading about here. These are your own words echoing off the walls of God.

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If you want to share and know what confusion is and perhaps see the sanity through that confusion, then welcome, you are in the right place. If you can handle a trip into the unknown with someone who might be just like you, then I invite you to travel with me. I am standing absolutely open in all my imperfections in front of you, and I invite you to join me in this perfect freedom of imperfection. This is a book of a common person, someone like me and you perhaps, someone with no title. This is a book of a spiritual underdog who is as of yet unaware of the mighty being that dwells within his or her heart. I have nothing to give you to believe in. I offer neither consolations nor flowers. But if you are willing to look at your own confusion through the mirror of words, then maybe this act of seeing has some kind of value. We can only share and travel together like two friends. We can only travel together as two absolute equals who look together—me in me and you in you—to meet finally without separation.

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There is no spiritual authority or guru here; there is no specific teaching. There is only looking as we go into ourselves. To see the truth as it is—no analysis and no escape through any myth or dogma of any religion or new age spirituality. Just to see the raw reality as it is without any unnecessary spiritual or religious verbiage. Only through this act of seeing, light can be found, and where there is light, there is clarity, which means nothing less than the end of confusion and the end of the suffering phase. This book examines the mostly undiscovered potential that is hidden within our perpetual human struggle. These writings will point out the reality of enormous potential for those who are seemingly lost. To see and to heal, here and now, you and me together, as one human being. Healing ourselves and therefore healing the whole of humanity as well.

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We can take a journey together, but whether we do so or not is entirely up to you. It is not about what I say, but about how you listen. Your listening is the most important factor here. If you listen with comparison and judgment, then you will prevent yourself from deep understanding. Some parts might seem repetitive when read from a conventional and judgmental state of mind, but when read from a non-comparative state of mind, you will find the repetitive sequences to be of the highest value. It is for the best if you do not compare it to anything else. Understanding is not in what is written here, but within you. You read and you listen to yourself silently as well.

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Let’s forget about all enlightened people for a moment. We are not concerned with enlightenment right now, because even that can become an obstacle. Wanting to become an enlightened being can quickly become just another unnecessary ego trap. To become anything psychologically is simply just a misunderstanding of the natural order of things. It is helpful not to immediately label anything and anyone, especially ourselves. As Rumi says: I am astounding lucid confusion! If you label me and define me, you will starve yourself of yourself. If you box me down with labels and definitions, that box will be your own coffin.

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There are no arguments or positions to be analyzed here. There are no definite truths to be argued over. There are only different descriptions or pointers towards the truth. To argue over descriptions is simply a waste of energy. We are using language here, and what is being spoken about is not the truth itself. Language is a tool that is based on separation and fragmentation, and is therefore limited in describing wholeness. Truth does not belong to anyone, and if you see similarities with what you read here with someone else, then you are most likely right. I am influenced by others and by language as everyone else is. There are no original thoughts; we are all merely recycling the same ancient truths.

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Pay attention to the empty spaces between paragraphs and words; the empty spaces are more important than the words themselves. This book should not be read quickly. It is important to slow down and to take a rest between individual paragraphs. Become still and let the truth of what has just been said work on you. Allow it to unfold. The only question you need to ask is if this or that description is communicating something to you. If it does, good for you. Use it and burn it, have fun with it or not, but do not compare. Just keep reading. Watch your reactions and resistance. What are you resisting to? Who is the one that is resisting? Look within yourself. That is the only place you need to look; everything is to be found within your own heart

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Chapter 1

Meditation on Thinking

The Origin of Dysfunction in the Human Species

(Thinking about the cruelty of thinking; using the mind to get beyond the mind, as we can use a thorn to remove another thorn; thinking and separating in order to go beyond thinking and separation)

I used to think myself into every situation. I used to think myself into every relationship. I did not even have a say in it. Something was thinking me instead of I thinking about things. It was like being on autopilot; it obeys its own rules and takes no prisoners. It uses and wastes all one’s energy. Fear and anxiety of everything becomes a norm, and life is a hell on earth; must add self-created hell. And behind all this is thought and the identification with it, along with the creation of false identity out of thought, which is the main cause of most of our suffering.

Identifying with the mechanical, survival-mode mind, and creating a non-existent, entirely artificial entity out of it is the origin of dysfunction in the human species. The mechanical mind and conditioned thinking represent the very movement of the psychological time. Identification with the mind causes us to become increasingly lost in imaginary problems of the past and future. We are continually trying to solve non-existent mental problems, never succeeding in solving them.

In thought, which is the mind and in its reflections in society, everything is becoming linguistically, culturally, socially, and psychologically more and more fragmented and dislocated. All of today’s problems spread out from this dysfunction, which simply means losing oneself in thought and creating a false sense of identity out of thought.

Eating the apple from the tree of knowledge and the false identification with thinking (not the ability to think) is what it means to be taken out of the paradise. There could be no better symbolic expression of the origin of the human dysfunction.

Life and being cannot be based on any form of fragmentation. Life, at its fundamental level, is non-fragmentary; it is one with all. If we lose this sense of oneness and one-life connectedness, then of course we will feel fragmented, separated and lost. We will suffer on the very account of separation itself.

If you watch your thoughts, you will soon realize that most of your thoughts are dislocated. You will see that thoughts rarely follow any logical or sane sequence. All images and thoughts are distorted, and are most of the time entirely irrelevant to the situation you are in at that moment. You will see that many totally incompatible thoughts and memories pop up from nowhere. Imagine that your sense of identity or sense of being is lost in this mess of irrelevancies. Well, that is exactly what is going on; your sense of self is lost in this mess of irrelevancies, which in turn creates your own personal hell.

When you watch your own thinking and feeling, you will soon see that all your internal movements come and go, moving in their repetitive, irrational loops. Our minds have become an incredible irrational machine of rationality. The brain itself uses total dysfunction and imbalance of thoughts for a sense of security.

Thoughts are in themselves intrinsically non-truth. The very existence of thoughts is based on separation and fragmentation. We tend to think about situations and about other people, and we call this sad process life. There is no life in thinking about life. Thinking is one dimensional and far too small to capture anything essential.

Thought seems to have no intelligence of its own. It works out of habit, and it must be conditioned in whatever it says. To live only from thought is to be asleep; to be aware of thought is to awaken out of it.

To be awakened simply means to live out of the reach of thought and time but still use it. Of course thought still happens, but one does not have one’s home in it anymore. It seems to be a question of using thought or being used by it. To be used by thought is to live in the dysfunction of the ego or the self-centeredness that so many people talk about, especially the spiritually inclined ones.

Practical thinking itself is not a problem, but to be identified with thinking and to not know who we really are beyond thinking is the real issue here. To eat that apple from the tree of knowledge symbolically represents the beginning of the ability of man to differentiate, the beginning of the ability of man to think and identification with this ability.

When your own identity is lost in the mechanical tool that should be used for differentiation, then you are not connected to your true nature anymore. This is what it means to lose paradise. The symbolic and Biblical paradise, and the connectedness to the source or connectedness to your own being, are one and the same.

Being a victim of your own mind and your compulsive thinking is self-induced madness. It is more like a prison—constant fighting and never-ending problems. In extreme cases, people cannot even smell flowers or look up and see the sky anymore. They are afraid to look. Many people are afraid to be happy. Their minds say to them, ‘Be careful! Do not be happy, it might turn into unhappiness. Do not look at that beautiful sky!’

Identification with thought, not thought itself, has become our biggest curse. The creation of the little me out of thought is the only hell that exists. (The terms ego and little me are synonymous when used in this book.)

We are extremely self-centered; we are constantly thinking about our problems. This never-ending self-centered worrying is the main reflection of the mind-identified dysfunctional state in the humans. The constant mental movements are like seemingly unstoppable static noise that does not serve any purpose at all.

To suffer in order to step beyond suffering, and eventually not to suffer necessarily, but consciously choose to heal oneself, is one of the main themes of this book. Compulsive movement of thought is a form of survival mode gone wrong. By dwelling mentally on mentally created problems, we are channeling all our attention into this static noise, in which nothing can ever be truly resolved.

Whatever you put our attention on will grow stronger in your life, and when all your attention is always lost in thinking, you are endlessly lost in attempting to solve non-existent problems. Losing yourself in solving imagined problems creates a huge psychological - time buildup, which separates you from life itself. This very separation from life, not your particular problems, creates most of your suffering. You are simply no longer able to feel joy in your life because of this very separation.

Thought does not know joy. It can only think about joy, which never leads to joy. Thought is predetermined to move in and towards increasing pain and fragmentation. Joy happens automatically as a byproduct of stepping beyond thought. But do not try to be free of thought; that would be just another thought. To see the movement of thought with your own heart at any given moment is way towards freedom.

Presumption of Problems

In most of our thinking, the actual arising of any thought is in itself already a presumption of some ‘problem.’ We are conditioned to think that to think things out will bring us peace and order, but it just simply does not work that way in the psychological world of the little me. Thinking can never bring peace because thinking is, in its very nature, separative and fragmented. That which is separative and fragmented is, by definition, the essence of non-peace.

The purpose of thinking is to solve problems. Unfortunately, one important detail is often overlooked; most of our internal problem-solving does not coincide with any actual problems. We are caught up in fixing problems that have not arisen yet and most likely never will. We are fixing, securing, and internally fighting things that do not exist at all. We constantly live in the darkness of the same loop-like movements of our conditioned minds.

When your whole identity is invested in thinking, speculating and making judgments; all your fears and anxieties are always just around the corner. Fears and anxieties are created through thinking. All your conditioning and your fears are part of memory, and memory is thought. If you are constantly lost in all sorts of judgments, you are lost in the ghost-filled attics of your own mind. Your perception is distorted because all you see is the buildup of your own conditioning, and your conditioning contains many fears and many problems in itself.

We are not connected with what is in this very moment, and so we are not connected with life. There are numerous layers of conflict that are implied in our thinking. First, we lose connection with life itself, and second, we dwell again and again on our own fears and anxieties created from particular patterns of thinking.