MINDFULNESS CREATES HAPPINESS - tHE EXISTENTIAL “SELF”

Humans alone wrestle with a profound paradox: our self-awareness. It compels us to turn inward and ask, “Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my purpose?” All too often, we take the path of least resistance—adopting inherited religious answers without question, that are passed down through our familial ties generation after generation. True spirituality, however, compels us to dig deeper than any doctrine can reach. The insights we seek aren’t found in books or the adherence to rituals; they’re uncovered in the stillness of our own hearts.

SPIRITUALITY

Whatever we have been deprived of in early childhood, the formative years of our life, always tends to be our highest aspiration as adults. Growing up in poverty and instability, money and creating financial security for ourselves often tends to be our greatest aspiration. Deprived of love and affection, finding a loving relationship tends to be our greatest pursuit.

Once we recognize the fleeting happiness of consumerism and move beyond society’s ego-driven trapping—especially if we’ve benefited from a stable, nurturing upbringing—our greatest pursuit often becomes realizing our fullest potential, which naturally includes deepening our spiritual selves.

Though people associate the term spirituality with their highest aspiration, they often conflate the idea of spirituality and religion which by contrast, teaches us to export our happiness, well-being, and security to Heaven, believing a power much grander than ourselves will intervene should we need it to. This perspective or outlook can feel a bit fatalistic, as it places our destiny in the hands of an unseen deity. It can imply that lasting inner peace is postponed until after we leave this life.

That is not the goal of life! Life in the physical plane is one of duality, contrast, and struggles that serve as a catalyst in the transformation and expansion of our soul, our spirit, and ultimately, the development of our conscious evolution.

If we look outward, it is an endless journey to finding happiness. If we turn inward, it is just one moment where everything changes. We are no longer in pursuit of joy, but rather our lives become an expression of the joyfulness overflowing within us.

“He who looks outside, DREAMS. 
He who looks inside, AWAKENS.”

Carl Jung

Since spirituality is a word ascribed to experiences that lie beyond our 5 senses, this area deals with our conscious perception, or lack thereof, of the non-physical aspect of ourselves that we loosely interpret as “I” or “me.”  The proverbial ghost in the machine, we call our body.

Deep roots and intimate ties with this dimension of ourselves often fail to take hold, because the mystics’ inner teachings, so rich with wisdom that seems to the modern person ethereal and unattainable, have been overshadowed by dogma and religious doctrine—which divides creation from its creator, even though they’re inseparable.

And society? It obsessively grooms us to fixate on the surface—our bodies, our wardrobes, our meticulously crafted online personas—while sidelining the deeper currents of who we really are. The sacred teachings that once awakened children from cradle to coming-of-age weren’t mere curiosities; they were lifelines to higher consciousness. Our ancestors moved through the world with an intimate, almost reverent understanding of self—an inner compass piercing the veil of reality. Today, we’ve traded that profound legacy for an endless scroll of screens and sound bites, binging on only the thinnest veneer of reality and starving the luminous core essence of our true nature.

In Hindu philosophy, this facet of our being, the English equivalent of what we would call “ego,” is referred to as Maya—“the illusion of self”—referring to the false identification we form with our physical body and our thoughts as separate and independent of all that surround us. We habitually equate our physical, emotional, and mental experiences with who we are, rather than seeing the body as a vessel we inhabit briefly and thoughts as processes that run independently of our core self. Our true nature—our essence—remains untouched by these transient phenomena.

From this perspective our body is seen as a sophisticated technology of sorts, woven out of the fabric of the universe; an amalgamation of soil, water, air, and fields of energy that have coalesced into physical form, housing our consciousness. The body is ours, but it is not “US.”

And here is where spirituality, truly seeking the immaterial, deeper dimension of what you really are, requires a brief discourse on how “reality” isn’t exactly what we’ve been taught.

As a prelude, a distinction between the brain and the mind should be made here because all too often we identify with our thoughts as being US or at the very least emanating from us. Neither of which is really true. Scientific research has revealed that less than 2% of our thoughts are deliberately conscious, guided, intentional thoughts. The other 98%+ are all occurring spontaneously as we simply observe them, not really understanding where they emanate from or why they occur. The very fact that we are observing “our” thoughts means we cannot be “our” thoughts. We are the Observer of our thoughts.

From this perspective, the brain and the mind present a bit of a conundrum. Modern science and medical research will have us believe consciousness arises from the brain, a vast network of lipids (fat), proteins, and amino acids, all of which individually do not possess consciousness, but somehow produce consciousness. I think it’s important to share here, science, although built entirely on this precept, has never been able to actually explain how this happens. Science has been searching for consciousness in the human body for 180 years. Sadly, we’ve never found. Yes, you read that correctly! We’ve never found the source of consciousness “in” the body.

Consciousness isn’t a hidden faculty embedded in our brain, nor is it a spark ignited by the brain’s chemistry. Rather, it’s an endless, effulgent river flowing through us—its source far beyond the confines of the space behind our eyes. Picture the brain as a crystalline prism, or lens, vectoring a sea of consciousness into the kaleidoscope of your individual thoughts, feelings, and sensations. In this grand exchange, you are less a container and more a conduit—an exquisite receptor channeling the infinite dance of consciousness into the singular symphony of your lived experience.

Think of the brain as the dazzling hardware of a supercomputer—three pounds of neurons, synapses, and chemical messengers bristling away in your skull. The mind, by contrast, is the rich software and immersive display that this machine renders: your thoughts, emotions, memories, and that silent “you” seated in the theater of awareness. Every idea you conjure, every feeling you feel, is akin to a virtual scene projected onto an inner screen—complete with actors (your thoughts) and an audience (your witnessing self). Yet mainstream science often collapses this distinction, describing the mind merely as patterns of brain activity and overlooking the fact that consciousness itself—the very act of observing those patterns—cannot be reduced to hardware alone.

The brain our doorway to experience in what is “perceived” as a physical plane of existence.  It's simply a technology created by nature/consciousness itself, that vectors fields of energy into “perceptual experiences” observed in/with our mind.

All perception unfolds in the theater of the mind—it’s all happening within you. Joy and sadness happen within you. Light and darkness happen within you. Hope and disappointment happen within you. Our bodies never “feel” or “see” apart from the consciousness that animates them. The body has no experiences. No sensation, no memory, no emotion can exist outside of this ever-present witness, for you cannot experience anything without first being aware of it.

Perceptions, preferences, perspectives, and biases with respect to every event in our lives is forged in the mind through past experiences and the indelible impressions those experiences made in our mind. No two people, and for that matter, no two species are living in the same reality, at least not from a perceptual perspective.

Although invisible to our dulled, macroscopic senses, everything we perceive—what we see, taste, touch, hear, or smell—is composed of vibrating fields of energy and is, at its core, almost entirely vacuous, empty space. Even the solid objects around us are illusions of density. What we call “reality” is not solid or fixed—it’s an experience generated within the mind, shaped by perception, not substance.

How can I say, “perception, not substance?”

Atoms and molecules are mathematical constructs. But, atoms don’t really exist and the mathematical construct showing what we believe is the atomic structure of things, are overwhelmingly “nothing” — over 99.9999% of their volume is empty space. For example, a hydrogen atom is about 99.9999999999996% empty space, with its tiny nucleus occupying only a vanishingly small fraction of the total volume.

Nothing multiplied a trillion times is still nothing.

Simply stated, there’s not enough mass to the elements to make anything in our reality, “REAL,” in the sense we’re taught it is.

What we see is illusory. We don’t see with our eyes, we see with our minds. Colors and sounds aren’t inherent properties of the world but creations of our minds. Light of different wavelengths stimulates retinal cones, which translate those signals into neural patterns—and it’s the brain’s processing of those signals that “paints” our experience of red, blue, or green. In other words, color lives between your ears, not in the objects themselves.

It’s no different with sound. Sound is the vibration of air, ripples in a sea of energy or vibrational frequencies that upon vibrating the tympanic membrane of our ear, subsequently vibrate the three delicate bones of the inner ear, the incus, malleus, and the stapes. These vibrations are converted through nerve conduction into sound by the temporal lobe of the brain.

Taste and smells? Again, both occur in tandem and are various vibratory frequencies of chemicals interpreted by the receptors in the tongue and the nose that are sent along the glossopharyngeal nerve to the olfactory cortex and are interpreted as a range of tastes and smells. All tactile senses are vibratory fields of energy, virtually devoid of any mass as well, even though we believe we’re touching static, solid, physical objects.

Why belabor the point of going to these lengths in explaining this and what the hell does any of this have to do with happiness and well-being? I do it to illustrate a point.

Reality is ONLY happening WITHIN you, as a projection of the mind based on the brain’s interpretation of immaterial vibratory frequencies.

There is no substance to reality. It’s quite literally tantamount to a dream state. Because you can observe these sensations, YOU are not the senses or sensations themselves, but rather the observer and ultimately the interpreter of them.

Everything we experience, we experience because we are interacting with a narrow bandwidth/range of vibrational energies or frequencies that are commensurate with our 5 senses. As we do so our mind generates sensations, thoughts, and feelings in response to them.

In every moment, we are viewing thoughts, emotions, and sensations automatically generated by our mind. What we are witnessing is the mind sifting through information it has gathered from previous experiences, as it tries to tie or associate present experiences to what it has experienced in the past. This is how the brain wires itself and allows the mind to navigate through the experiences we're having in the present moment. It does this to create predictions, because the only thing we know as "truth" is experience. The brain attempts to foreshadow what’s coming next and that is based entirely of what we've already experienced. Every new experience is categorically coded and associated with other similar experiences from the past.

So, to see ourselves as the body, this rather sophisticated technology, is to neglect and fail to see a much more expansive dimension of ourselves . . . the immaterial aspect of our self and our connection to everything that those unencumbered by the distractions of the modern age, have access to.

You, and for that matter, your body is part of a much larger system that your very existence is completely dependent upon. Consider the fact that half the capacity of your lungs is outside in the trees. The entire water content of your body is derived from the ocean. The energy powering your cells originated in the sun and was converted into physical mass by plants. Ingested by you, this stored energy is enzymatically converted by your body into the physical mass you identify with as being "you." So where do you really begin? If half your lung capacity is external, is your body (and all the experiences you’re having) a product of not just the body, but everything surrounding you? The body is just a cog in the wheel of a much larger construct creating all the experiences you’re having. We’re not independent of the universe and environment surrounding us, we’re intricately woven into and out of it, immersed in it, and an intimate part of all of it.

Knowing the history of the universe is to know that Earth and everything on it, including your body, is made of stardust and is entirely "solar powered."  The Sun is at the very heart of your existence in the physical plane and is what is powering every aspect of you. Let me repeat that. The Sun is at the very heart of your existence. One might even say that the Sun is your power cell, and is therefore, an aspect of your physical system. The point being, we are connected to everything that surrounds us.  This acknowledgment of our connection to everything was expressed as far back as the 1st century in the ancient Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in which Hermes wrote: "As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul."

For a more expansive understanding of this concept, I encourage a reading of one of the most beautiful explanations I have ever read in describing reality, which I came across in a book called THE SECRET OF SECRETS by OSHO. It is a collection of talks given by OSHO, filled with detailed explanations of what Master Lao Tzu referred to as the “Golden Flower;” an allegory for the blossoming of one’s wisdom.

The link is on the Shift Ethos home page, titled "The Universe Within and Without" or you can click here:  https://shiftethos.com/2018/12/30/the-universe-within-and-without/

So, what does it mean to identify with our body as being us when in fact we, or perhaps I should say our body, is an amalgamation of the elements and fields of energy that surround us?  Where does the physical and the energetic aspect of ourselves begin or end?

We tend to think that the boundaries of the body are well defined by our skin, which separates our inner environment from our outer environment. But, in reality, we are an intricate piece of a much larger system that is interacting with itself, just as the molecules within us are part of a much larger system: our anatomy and physiology and all the chemical processes occurring within us.

As mentioned in earlier writings of mine, our physical body is just a scoop of the Earth held together by breath. As an extension of the Earth itself, which is itself the product of the burnt-out crucible of a star predating the Sun, we are literally composed of stardust.  Our body is a highly organized aggregate of everything surrounding us (the air, the oceans, the plants, the soil, and minerals from the Earth) and is in constant interaction with it. The body is simply a medium that allows life to temporarily flow through it while housing the ethereal, immaterial, non-physical aspect of what we are for a brief time.

It’s easy to hold to the belief that we are living on Earth, when in fact we ARE the living Earth. We believe we are living IN the universe, when in fact, the physical form we take on, emerged from and is enmeshed with the universe, just as a drop in the ocean cannot be isolated and retrieved from the ocean once it enters the ocean. We are vessels made from and housing the universe itself.  We are not separate from the universe surrounding us, we “ARE” the Universe!

That is the physical aspect of ourselves.  Our housing so to speak.  But what about the spiritual, non-physical aspect of ourselves?

As Rumi once so elegantly stated:

"I am not a drop in the ocean.  I am the entire ocean in a drop."

Just as a droplet of rain, or a dewdrop on a leaf or a blade of grass, is formed by the coalescence or aggregation of moisture in the air, the moisture it's pulling out of the air ultimately came from the ocean. Inside every drop of rain lies the entire constituency of its source; the ocean. Though it is separate from its source; the ocean, it IS the source; the ocean, and will someday return to its source; the ocean. There is no beginning and no end to this cycle. It is simply a system endlessly recycling itself.

So it is with physical form. The physical aspect that you identify with as being YOU, is nothing more than focused consciousness. It’s provisional, temporary, fleeting.

Fields of energy or sensory stimuli, interacting with the body’s fields of energy or senses, are consolidated and integrated into an experience you’re having, which creates the perception of what we believe is physical mass. This is all happening in your head, or more specifically in your mind, through your body’s operating system, we call a brain.

You, the immaterial you, the conscious awareness reading this blog post with the body you occupy; you’re in here . . . behind the projection screen and underneath every experience at the surface of the body’s sensory organs, every perception, every emotion, every thought . . . deep, very deep beneath your skin, your tissues, your bones. You are in here, but you are NOT this body you currently reside in, creating the experiences you’re having.

Birth and death are only illusions and are a product of form, something finite, with a beginning and an end. But at our core, our essence, we are formless, eternal, infinite.  We have no beginning and no end . . . just endless transformation in a provisional body (every changing, never static), and if we choose . . . reincarnation. We don’t inherit eternity, we’re living in it in what is NOW. Eternity is only an endless series of “NOWs.”

Understanding this oneness with everything is the beginning of one's spiritual awakening!

Our spirituality (not to be conflated with religion) is where our life’s purpose and meaning comes from. I consider this aspect of the Human Experience to be paramount to our well-being because how we experience life is largely determined by what we 'believe' the Human Experience is about. To delve into true spirituality involves looking deeper inside ourselves, past the surface image in the mirror. It takes time and a little devotion to see beyond the veil of illusions stemming from our ego that we’ve created about ourselves to discover what lies beneath this skin we wear. That’s because the stories and illusions we’ve created in our head have so many feelings associated with them.

These are deeply ingrained, often unshakable beliefs we’ve wrapped ourselves in that we feel define us in a pragmatic way, or so we think. In reality, we’re not limited by anything but the beliefs we hold about ourselves.

Another author who I absolutely adore, and give so much context to this idea is Michael Tellinger who has written two books in my Top 10 ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOKS category: THE UNTETHERED SOUL and LIVING UNTETHERED. I would definitely encourage reading these two books for those seeking inner peace, and looking to transform the relationship they’re having with themselves. I feel his writing style is very similar to mine.

See Mindful Living Creates Happiness - Mind

I would love to hear from you and hear your own personal thoughts on how you practice mindfulness or would like to in the comment section below. Let me know if the content of this article resonates with you, provides perspective, or helps you see things in a different way that empowers you to make different choices or see life and relationships through a different lens. I value your thoughts and feedback and look forward to hearing from you.

Love & Light to You in your continued Journey of Self-Discovery! 

David