Drawn Into Life, Activity Rather Than Object
Dear Friends
We do not need to be too much of a psychologist or scientist to look, see, notice and note, how and why we stress and suffer. With mindfulness we can observe the process of the mind becoming identified with objects of awareness and becoming them, turning mental-physical phenomena into the personal self. With Mindfulness for Insight Meditation Practice – Satipatthana Vipassana, we can not only see this occurring but allow the mind to remain in knowing the Activity of knowing or perceiving, rather than becoming caught up in and as the Object of knowing or perceiving.
My verse below offers reflection on this.
John B.
DRAWN INTO LIFE – ACTIVITY RATHER THAN OBJECT
The ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘we’, is drawn into life!
The ‘I-self’, ‘my-self’, ‘you-self’, ‘me-self’, ‘we-self;
Is both metaphorically and literally;
Drawn into life!
Certainly we are attracted and distracted;
Driven and drawn, into life’s situations and circumstances;
Yet more accurately and more acutely;
The ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘me, ‘we, is drawn into becoming and being, into aliveness and into life!
Like a picture drawn, like many pictures drawn;
The mind collects and creates, conditions and compounds ongoing pictures.
These pictures form and function as a single moving image picture;
A movie picture, a motion picture, a self-movie, ‘selfy’.
The drawn picture becomes;
Animated as an animation; becoming the appearance of;
An apparent being, self;
A someone-self, person.
In this process, the mind identifies with an object of awareness;
Seen or sought through the Five Physical Senses and the Minds Mental Processes – thinking;
Then the mind identifies with this mental or physical object;
Then the mind identifies as this object; creating and making a seeming self-identity, the ‘me-I’.
The mind identifies with a great thought;
‘I am bright’.
The mind identifies with a mental state;
‘I am confused’.
The mind identifies with a feeling;
‘I am agitated’.
The mind identifies with an emotion;
‘I am happy, sad, angry, afraid’.
The mind identifies with a body state;
‘I am sick, fit or healthy’.
The mind identifies with a body shape;
‘I am tall, short, thin or plump, beautiful or not’.
The mind identifies with a role;
‘I am a parent, partner, professional’.
The mind identifies with a career;
‘I am a miner, machinist, manager, merchant’.
The mind identifies with a place or country;
‘I am Australian, European, British, Asian’.
The mind identifies with a religion;
‘I am Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu’.
The mind identifies with a political ideology;
I am Liberal, Labour, Nationalist, Democratic, Socialist, Communist’.
All these, any of these, even other than these are simply the mind making a me;
Through the process and activity of identification with the object of awareness.
The ‘self’, stress suffering and sorrow;
Will occur at whatever place or domain
That the mind has identifies with and as;
And to the degree of the minds holding, binding and becoming as that.
Our Mindfulness Meditation Practice;
Through Satipatthana Vipassana creates;
The objective mind space to see and know;
How the process and activity of identification and identity self-making occurs.
Simply and surely by the mind mentally noting the activity of perceiving
Rather than being drawn into and as the object of perception;
This whole becoming and being process of self-ing, stressing, struggling;
Of sadness, sorrow and suffering within Samsara, is slowed and finally stopped forever!
