chapter sixteen

Cultivate Clarity
of Perception

Imagine this scenario: you walk into the conference room at work where three of your coworkers are talking in whispers. As soon as you step into the room, they stop talking and take their seats. What is your first thought? How do you respond to them as your meeting progresses?

The way we respond to everyday occurrences is entirely colored by our perception, which in turn is determined by our neurohormonal superhighways. We interpret our experiences not only according to our inner state, but we also take them very personally. Quite simply, we feel strongly that the world is out to get us. In every interaction, our immediate thought is what it may mean for us. Think about how you interpret the news—whether it is about a hike in taxes, a local crime, or a natural disaster, your first thought is about how it affects you. This isn’t a personality flaw or an issue with any one of us in particular. It is the way we are wired, thanks to the pathways we build in response to our upbringing and learning. Not only do we immediately jump to (usually wrong) conclusions, but we hold them to be true.

In the above scenario, your first thought might have been that your coworkers were talking about you behind your back, when they might have been discussing an issue that was completely unrelated to you. If you felt that your colleagues were talking about you, your future interactions with them will be colored by the incident. See how we propagate suffering?

To live a life of joy and fulfillment, we must learn to clean the lens through which we view the world and interpret our experiences. This is the purpose of self-inquiry, a powerful tool for inner housekeeping. In this chapter we will explore the concepts that keep us bound to suffering and make it hard for us to experience true compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and love.

Of all the components of the Bliss Rx, self-inquiry is the subtlest and therefore the most challenging. It takes a deep interest in becoming free of suffering to sustain the practice, along with ongoing deep meditation. With repeated practice, self-inquiry opens us to immense joy and sweetness by peeling away all that obscures our true identity, eternal bliss consciousness.

A Closer Look at Suffering

So far in this book, we have looked at the way our neurohormonal pathways are formed from a biological standpoint. Let us now look at the basic constructs of suffering from a psychic perspective, connecting it back to the neurohormonal superhighways. What is it that makes us jump to conclusions and trigger the cascade of reactions?

Assigning Truth to Experience

For us to react to a situation, we must first assign an element of truth to our experience. In the above example, your immediate reaction that your coworkers were talking about you might arise from a past experience where you might have felt excluded in a peer group or discovered that somebody was indeed talking about you. The conclusion you reached at the time (which is now unconscious) is that people generally exclude you or talk about you behind your back. Of course, your rational mind may know that this is not true. However, as long as you react to a situation, you can be assured that it is your subconscious mind that is in control and not your rational mind. And reactions occur because, at some level, you believe this to be true.

Simply believing that something is true doesn’t cause all the pain and grief. Not only do we assign truth to our experiences, but we also believe that they should be different. You don’t suffer because you believe that your coworkers talk behind your back. You suffer because you believe that they should not behave this way. If you did not have the ability to believe such a thing, it would make no difference to you whether they talk behind your back or not. Wanting things to be different than they are is what causes much of our suffering.

Taking Thoughts Seriously

Notice that you have no control over your thoughts. You can’t choose what thought is going to come up next. From the standpoint of the mind, thoughts are just wave forms that arise and subside mostly randomly. In fact, 95 percent of our thoughts are useless autobiographical ruminations that arise from the default mode network (Can We Get Off
the Superhighway?). Only 5 percent of our thoughts are directed toward tasks at hand, planning, and other useful functions. If we can see that thoughts just come and go and not take their content seriously, our lives would improve instantly.

Not Taking Responsibility for Our Experience

Ponder this for a moment: everything we do is based on wanting to feel a certain way. Every choice we make, every interaction we have, and every reaction that arises has its roots in our limbic system–driven neurohormonal pathways and the hormones that make us feel good or bad. In early life we learn what feels good and what doesn’t, and this becomes the lens through which we view everything that comes our way. We take things personally when every situation is completely neutral. How I interact with you has absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with my own lens. My happiness (or lack thereof) is entirely a product of my lens. No circumstance, situation, or person is responsible for my happiness or peace. In other words, our experience of life is entirely dependent upon the lens through which we view it. The mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy.

Taking Our Mental States to Be Who We Are

Taking our stories to be who we are is the root cause of our suffering. Recall that our neurohormonal pathways are forged in early childhood and are based entirely on our life experiences and what we are taught about ourselves. We learn who we are based on what our caregivers tell us, such as “I’m good in math, I have pretty hair, I’m not a good singer,” and so on. These impressions and thoughts become the labels that define us. In adolescence the labels become more complex, such as “I’m unlovable, I’m not as good as my peers, I’m shy, I’m an extrovert,” and so on. As we age, we add more labels to define ourselves based on our life experiences: “I hate people who whine, I love selfless people, I’m a pretty good citizen, I’m a Republican, I’m a cancer survivor, I have joint pains, I’m anxious,” and so on. What we call I is nothing but a mish-mash of stories, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. And this misapprehension is a result of judging a situation according to our definition of truth and how it should be different. We take the “should” thoughts seriously because we are unable to see that our reaction to the situation is merely the product of our lens. Our judgments form our I and thrive on validation and justification.

Validating and Justifying the I

Stop for a moment and contemplate why you do what you do. How many times a day do you think to yourself why you “need” something? What happens when you send a thoughtfully composed email and don’t receive an acknowledgment? The bottom line for why we do what we do is that we are constantly seeking validation from others for our experience, and this need for validation is supported by justifying our actions to others and to ourselves. I “need” a third cup of coffee because “I’m used to it and I can’t function without it,” and so on, each need based on how I define myself. Having a third cup of coffee defines who I am, and so I justify my need for it. If I don’t have the coffee and get a headache, it validates my label of being the one who needs it. See? So we go about our lives justifying our actions based on who we think we are and seeking validation to make it seem true. If you validate my choices and actions, my sense of I is fortified and I like you. If you don’t, I get upset and dislike you. Seeking approval and validation from others (and ourselves) is the only way this false sense of I is kept alive.

Witnessing: The Prelude to Self-Inquiry

In order to be free of suffering, we need to be able to look at our thoughts and beliefs in a nonjudgmental fashion. This is known as witnessing, where we stand apart from our experience and simply watch it as it unfolds. The most effective way to cultivate witnessing is through meditation. When we can watch the mantra as it arises and subsides, we notice that we can watch our thoughts and actions. The following practice helps with the deepening of witnessing. Do this practice every evening, preferably after your meditation and just before resting. Alternatively, you can practice this technique before bed.

As you become adept at observing your mental processes without becoming entangled in them, you’ll be able to notice your thoughts as they arise in daily life. This phase of this path is a key turning point, when self-inquiry can begin to make the most difference. Unless we can disengage from our mental processes, we cannot effectively inquire into them. You must be able to see your mind’s activity like a movie and know that it is a movie!

Once you are able to stand apart from your thoughts, you can delve deep into the following self-inquiry practices. Here we will inquire into each aspect of suffering as we defined it above.

Assigning Truth to Experience

Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is is based on inquiring into the presumed truth of our experience. A superbly effective self-inquiry practice, I recommend this book and technique known as “the Work” to anybody who is interested in loss of suffering. In this practice we examine our beliefs and thoughts in a unique fashion using four questions.

Say, for instance, that I have a gripe with Fred, who, in my opinion, does not treat others kindly. This bugs me. So I work with this situation in the following way.

I notice the thought that says “Fred should be kind.” This thought causes me stress because I see that Fred is not behaving appropriately, and I think he should be. The first question I ask myself is, “Is this true?” Do I know with certainty that Fred should be kind? The brutally honest answer is that I don’t know what Fred should be doing with absolute certainty. When I think about it some more, I find that I’m not absolutely certain that kindness looks a particular way. 


Next I ask myself whether this thought causes me peace or stress. It causes stress because I’m trying to dictate Fred’s actions, which only he has control over. The only truth of the experience is that Fred behaves the way he does. When I try to change reality to be other than what it is, I suffer. Reality doesn’t change because I think it should be otherwise. It will always be as it is. In this inquiry, then, I suddenly realize that the source of stress is not Fred’s behavior but my thought that it should be different.

Then I wonder who I would be without this thought. When I sit quietly with this, the silence within shows me that without this dictatorial thought, I am at peace. 


Finally, the Work asks us to do the turnaround, which is to find an opposite statement that is equally true. Here, one turnaround may be “Fred should not be kind.” This is equally true because he isn’t kind according to my definition. Another turnaround is “I should be kind.” This statement is even truer considering the violent nature of my judgmental thoughts about him. The important thing to realize is that whatever we don’t like in others arises because we possess the same quality within ourselves. What is really bothering me about Fred is that I am unkind, and it is easier for me to project it onto him than to look at my own process.

With this inquiry I come to see my business versus Fred’s. When I stay in my business, I’m at peace. When I meddle with Fred’s (or anyone else’s) business with my shoulds and should nots, I suffer. So I choose to stay in my business, allowing things to be as they are and working on my own thought processes.

Exercise: Assigning Truth to Experience

Here is one way you can practice this form of self-inquiry:

Taking Thoughts Seriously

While questioning the truth of our experience is a critical step in the process of self-inquiry, it is only the beginning. Many of us can continue to take arising thoughts to have inherent meaning. Our clever minds can devise ways to continue believing in some thoughts and question only those that cause discomfort. In this all-too-common situation we tread the thin edge of suffering and can fall off the cliff at the slightest provocation. The key to freedom from the tyranny of thoughts is to see that they are arisings in our awareness and that they come and go without voluntary control.

For effective inquiry into thoughts, it helps to understand the difference between arisings and awareness. Greg Goode’s The Direct Path: A User Guide is a fantastic resource for inquiry into our experience, including thoughts. The preparatory exercise for this type of inquiry is called the heart opener, and I recommend this practice highly.

Exercise: The Heart Opener

An innocent mistake we tend to make is to try to “find” awareness or want to experience it. However, awareness is the sole subject of all experience. Anything that we find in it is an object, including all experiences, sensations, and thoughts. Awareness cannot be known or found as an experience because it is what knows. Awareness doesn’t say yes to a pleasant experience and no to an unpleasant one. Even our darkest thoughts, experiences, and feelings are welcomed into awareness with sweetness and love. This practice is called the heart opener because of this inherent sweetness that it evokes.

The heart opener can initially feel difficult and forced, and we can keep getting caught up in the objects arising in awareness. This is natural. As we practice, we will come to see that the mind is itself an object that arises in awareness.

Let’s now take the example of memory and examine thought closely.

Let’s break down this inquiry. You had the experience of the meal yesterday, which was a group of sensations arising in your awareness: the smell, taste, and sight of the food, of feeling full, and so on. Today when you think of it, it is a group of thoughts arising in awareness—the memory of the smell, taste, and sight of the food, how it made you feel, and so on. All sensations and thoughts come and go. You, the common denominator as awareness, are always here now. The memory of yesterday is arising as a thought here now.

When you examine thoughts about the weather, they too occur as arisings in awareness here now. To awareness (you), thoughts about yesterday, tomorrow, or today are all the same arisings. Let’s see how a thought appears to make sense or feel like truth.

We take thoughts seriously because thought says it is true, not because there is inherent truth to thought. Examine your biases and beliefs closely and you will see that all thoughts are mere arisings in awareness—they come and go. If we learn to take a stand as awareness rather than as a mass of thoughts, we lose the ability to take thoughts seriously.

Taking Responsibility for Experience

The main reason that we suffer in relating to the world is because we think that the world is “out there” in contrast to the self that is “in here.” However, standing as awareness shows us that everything in our experience is always occurring “in here” and that there is nothing “out there.” You’ve probably heard the story of a group of blind men that encountered an elephant. Each person feels a different part of the elephant and comes to a different conclusion—the one touching the trunk calls it a rope, the one touching the limb calls it a tree trunk, and so on. Similarly, you and I would interpret an object, behavior, or situation differently based on our particular neurohormonal pathways. Neither of us would be absolutely right or wrong. However, both of us would be wrong to assign objectivity to experience, which is always subjective.

To be completely objective, we would have to step out of awareness and “look in.” Could we ever step out of awareness? Where would we go? Wherever we go, we are always “here” in awareness. Whatever we see, hear, touch, smell, and feel is in awareness.

Let’s examine this principle with a simple exercise. For this, let us use an object you use in daily life, such as a cereal bowl. Keep the bowl at eye level where you can see it clearly.

In this exercise we see that the function of seeing is only capable of perceiving color and shape. Seeing cannot see a bowl, which is a label given by learning. Patterns and depth are deduced by shades of color and contrast between the bowl and the surroundings.

There is no separation between seeing and color. There is no unseen color; the only way to verify color is to see it—you can’t smell it, taste it, hear it, or touch it. Color implies seeing. There is no point in our direct experience where seeing ends and the color begins.

Further, there is no separation between seeing and awareness. As soon as you say “I see,” you are implying that you know that seeing is happening. In your direct experience, then, color arises in awareness as awareness, just as the wave arises in the ocean as the ocean. If you observe all of your senses, you will come to the same conclusion: sound is not separate from hearing and hearing is not separate from awareness, odor is not separate from smelling and smelling is not separate from awareness, touch is not separate from feeling and feeling is not separate from awareness, and taste is not separate from tasting and tasting is not separate from awareness.

This discovery leads to a sense of relief and wonder. When you see that the way you sense the world is not separate from your awareness, your relationship with the world changes. There is no separation between you and the world. It is all occurring in you; there is nothing outside of you. When you extend this observation to your inner processes, you see that your thoughts, emotions, memories, and moods also are never separate from awareness. You are that in which all these arise and fall—you are the knower of all states, sensations, thoughts, and emotions. Like the movie screen that remains untouched and pristine whether the movie is a romantic comedy or a scary horror flick, you, awareness, remain unaffected and blissfully aware. All characters occur in you. It is only because you forget that you are the screen that you suffer.

How do you experience another person? Through your senses, of course. You see, touch, smell, hear, and feel them. Whether the sensations evoke attraction or aversion in you has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you and your conditioning created by your neurohormonal superhighways. Based on your conditioning, you decide whether you like them or hate them, whether they are worthy or unworthy, whether they can be trusted or not, and so on. Your judgments are also arising in awareness. Thus, the person is arising in your awareness, and your judgment about them is arising in awareness. There is nowhere else that they can arise.

To take responsibility for our experience is to own that nothing and nobody is responsible for our circumstances, thoughts, and actions except ourselves. We stop viewing ourselves as victims in this great understanding, the result of which is total forgiveness of others and harmony with the world.

Mistaking Moods and States for Identity

Once you get the hang of standing as awareness, you will realize that there is no such thing as objectivity. Despite this understanding, there can be a subtle identification with our moods and states, taking them to be who we are. Once again, we can investigate our darkest moods and our greatest ecstasies to see if that is who we are.

Think of a pink elephant. Where was this thought a moment ago? Was it hiding somewhere and surfaced into your awareness? Examination of direct experience shows us that the thought of a pink elephant arose in awareness, lasted for a while, and subsided back into it. One analogy for this is the ocean and its waves. Are waves hiding somewhere outside of the ocean and jump in to manifest? No. They arise out of the ocean and subside back into it. Similarly, sensations, thoughts, emotions, and moods arise and subside in awareness.

Awareness is knowingness. To be aware is to know experience as it arises. As you read this, your focus might be on the words on the paper. However, notice that we can read or see words entirely because of the white of the paper in the background. Similarly, awareness is the light of knowingness of all states and moods. Knowing is neutral and without judgment. It is the suchness or is-ness or being-ness of experience. Can there be an experience of objects (and here we define every arising as an object, be it a physical, mental, emotional, psychological, or other experience) without awareness of them?

Take a bad mood, for instance. It arises in awareness, stays for a while, and subsides back into it. You are always present. How can you be your mood if you don’t come and go with it? Similarly, ecstasy, joy, and pain arise and subside in you, awareness. The classic teaching in Vedanta is to see that whatever you think you are is not you since all thoughts and beliefs about who you think you are are objects arising in you, awareness. You, awareness, are the subject. Objects come and go, but you, as awareness, are eternal, untarnished, and ever blissful.

Validating and Justifying the I

If you become vigilant and critically observant of your thoughts, you will notice how your neurohormonal superhighways reinforce themselves through constant validation and justification. Even as you read this, your superhighways are being reinforced by agreeing or disagreeing based on your previous experiences but mostly based on what it means for your I. We are inherently self-absorbed and self-centered simply because of the way we are wired. Just as we had innocently taken our subjective experience to refer to objectivity, we are programmed to keep our individual I alive to facilitate our primal instincts of survival and reproduction (see Can We Get Off
the Superhighway?).

The mystery of the I is that it is shaky and unreliable. Ordinarily, we define the I to be made up of likes and dislikes, the roles we play, our life histories, and so on. If my life history was one of struggle and disappointment, I will interpret all my situations to reflect how I got through it. If I’m ridden with resistance to struggle and my idea of an ideal life is one of no struggle at all, my I is one that is always disappointed or unlucky. In everything I do, I validate the I, unconsciously finding struggle. In an innocently twisted way, finding situations difficult satisfies my belief of what my I is. If, for instance, I put in a lot of work on a project and don’t get the credit I deserve, my I is validated through my history of struggle with thoughts such as “This always happens to me. No matter what I do, I never get credit. I’ve been dealt a bad hand by fate,” and so on. Even having a serious illness can become a way to validate the I, with the suffering acting as an anchor for who we take ourselves to be.

Each of us is always seeking validation for being who we think we are. When we are not seeking validation, we are justifying the I with explanations to ourselves or others about why we need/don’t need, want/don’t want, or like/don’t like something. Notice the constant drone of the voice in your head that is veering you toward seeking validation or justifying your actions. Why do you agree to take on a project? How does it validate you? How do you justify your waking up late, having another cup of coffee, choosing a meal or clothing or one course of action over another? Notice that all the choices we make are based on validating or justifying the I. Is there really freedom in our choices if we are bound by our neurohormonal superhighways to feel validated or justified?

The antidote to validation and justification is to see the true nature of the I as a collection of memories and labels that create a story. Who are you without your story? We can investigate this with the following exercise.

Exercise: Who Are You?

As we learn to take a stand as awareness, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are begin to disintegrate. We gradually come to see that we are not our stories and that who we are is open, ever-loving, and blissful awareness in which the stories come and go.

Self-inquiry is the scalpel that digs up and excises the tumor of suffering. Through the various practices in this chapter, we come to see the root cause of suffering, which is identification with the body-mind. Through self-inquiry we question our most treasured beliefs and truths that subtly bind us to suffering. Questioning them opens us to the light of our true identity of bliss, resulting in a paradigm shift. Then we see that who we are is never separate from all of creation.

When we start delving into self-inquiry, it is common to mix up two different levels of experience: the relative and the absolute. For instance, discovering that no two thoughts are related can cause confusion—how can we sustain our lives if there is no continuity in our relationships or interactions? This is the predicament of mixing up levels. On an absolute level and from the standpoint of awareness, there are no two related thoughts. Paradoxically, when this truth becomes well-established in our experience, we open to great joy and freedom on the relative level. We can have intimacy in interactions and relationships because our heart is wide open to all possibilities.

Thus, it is best to try to not mix up the absolute and relative levels. We can continue to live our lives and simultaneously inquire into our experience. Soon, the seeming contradiction between them will dissolve into blissfulness in our daily lives. Awareness is all there is—blissful, eternal, and ever-pure. This paradigm shift opens us to a sweetness of being where we remain engaged in the world like before, but whereas in the past there was a sense of separation and pain, we are now in unity and wholeness with all. In this joyful model we stop taking our stories seriously because we have seen through them. This is the end of suffering.

Summary

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