Dec 2 1990
Although in the west the word mind has a connotation of intellect, I would like you to find the word mind as being the full extent of your conscious being. Within that context we are still focused on conscious experience or the mind as a consciously experiencing entity. And not on small mind or intellectual mind, but to move into the full consciousness experience of reality. There is not a lot of need for many teachings if you identify that as the principle object. Most spiritual teachings are to bring you to work in that realm. In that way there is a graduated process that one goes through in one's spiritualization. The initial phase is to practice generosity, morality and then patience. But if you want to get to the core of it, those practices although important and instrumental in the development of your spirituality, but the principle focus is the realization of your mind, conscious experience. When you realize that, then all of what you are doing has a very real basis for it and you no longer need a dogma any more. You have reality as the reason for why you are practicing because you have a direct perception of your own existence, your own conscious experience.
The analogies we have been using are vastness of space, solid like a mountain and the depth of an ocean. I always bring you back to those if you would like to gain better experiences of mind, of conscious experience. I want to talk about the vision of the external as in the external phenomenal world we have around us and the internal which are the images which we always apply to those objects, and the conscious interplay between those which are our eyes looking and seeing visual objects, ears hearing sound and so on. The sense doors in which information comes to us, and then there is the mind which is the processor which deals with the information and then the sense data objects, the outer external objects. So you can refer to that which is external, that which is internal, and the various doors which that information interacts with each other.
There are two things. One, it is said that the external world is a pure manifestation of reality. And so the outer world, whether you are looking at me physically or looking at any other object, all of those are a pure manifestation of reality. There is nothing tainted about them, nor is there anything pure about them. All the external phenomena is just as it is. There is no alteration needed to made to the outer world. The outer world is pure in all of it's manifestations.
The point we need to be more conscious of is the inner mind because that is what colors things to the way that we see them. And so we have to put more awareness to our mind. The best is to start to realize how mind sets itself up to appraise any situation. When you become a developed meditator, you quickly pick up on particular things which set you up in a particular perspective. For example, when you enter into a particular relationship, that person manifest certain things. If you are unconscious, or not very conscious of what is going on, your mind will automatically will adopt a certain preconceived conceptions of the person. That he has these sorts of limitations and such. You have actually stopped communicating with the outside object and are only communicating with your own projection. If you are very thick about it, really the external object has no way at all of expressing itself in it's purity. Rather it has to come through your filter system. YOu are completely twisting or coloring the information totally. So it is important that we start to realize that. That we do actually color a lot of the information that comes into us.
We have to realize that our mind picks up on something. Often it grabs to that. For example, this person is not as truthful as seeming. So we immediately project everything they say as a falsehood. That sets us up in a position of being suspicious and difficult to see anything outside of that because the mind is getting very fixed that way. We have to be more conscious of what particular set of our mind that gets stimulated and colors a lot of information and materials we are going to get from a conversation or meeting with someone. Or in a particular environment which immediately sets your mind off on this is a bad place and I do not want to be here any longer, and so on. The mind stops seeing the environment for what it is, but is projecting out more strongly some image of what the environment is rather than what it is for it's pure reality.
The meditation is to become more conscious of what our mind is manifesting as it's preconceived ideas about something. What you see might be accurate. It might be a bad place. But you have to realize is not to fully adopt that attitude. There might be some wonderful things to be seen and experienced there. But because our mind is not very sensitive or subtle, we will completely color it and not see anything beyond what we projected out there. We have to learn how to let the information be within us, but not buying into that fully so we stop relating to the situation. Our mind easily gets shut down totally. There is no possibility of anything beyond that.
The outer world is a pure manifestation of what it is. It isn't good or bad, just a pure manifestation. That we have various sense doors information comes through, and then we have principally based on ignorance, our own unawareness, a lot of preconceived conceptions of things. Those preconceptions are what we have to be conscious of. That when they start to arise that we do not buy into them fully, that we allow ourself to be more open minded than that. You do that by allowing yourself to settle into being open like space, stable and deep. And if you can hold your mind in that position, then those particular thought patterns arise and you can observe them as being stimulated from some sense data that you have. But you just allow them to pass through and you still keep an open link of communication going on. It is not like you immediately assume that position. You let them pass through and do whatever they do and even cease but your allow yourself to be in equanimity as they function. You start to establish a broader basis for conscious experience. You stop being closed minded and such and become greater than what you have previously allowed yourself to be.
The only way you can do that is to allow yourself to identify a broader state of mind. It is conscious awareness that allows itself to be open like space and deep like the ocean.
Awareness in itself has the quality of being energy and knowingness. As you sit there and meditate, you can experience that by understanding that at various time you have different thought patterns or attitudes about things. But you find as time changes, the attitude changes. A previous resentful attitude can ago away and you will be in another head space and not even think about how you could have had such a resentful head space earlier. If you start to understand that, that is the mind which is knowingness and energy assumes positions. But it only assumes them because of grasping at a particular experience and clinging to it. So we are trying in this meditation to experience that knowingness and mind consciousness energy. And if we start to become more identified or recognize it, then we do not buy into a particular attitude or perspective. We allow our mind to become greater. In that there is realization. In that there is a greater opportunity to experience reality.
That is the meditation for this evening.
Meditation:

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