We encounter the movement of the mind with the flame of total
Attention. Without the light and serenity provided by Attention, nothing
can be understood in a real way.
Through silence, the mind in its totality had become an immense
mirror in which the outside world was reflected. And the world I was
perceiving directly through my senses revealed its own reality to me. My
fellow beings, close friends or complete strangers, were being regarded
indiscriminately, with a feeling of love I had never felt before.
If any reaction of the mind surfaced, it disappeared immediately in
contact with the sparkle of impersonal Attention. A state of quiet and
all-encompassing joy characterized me in all circumstances, whether
pleasant or painful. My behavior was that of a simple witness, perfectly
aware of what was happening around me, without affecting my
all-encompassing state of peace.
The State of the Sublime is, of course, difficult to
describe, but not impossible to experience by someone who authentically
practices awareness. In order to communicate it, a simple and direct
language is used, which is not filtered through reason, because the
“ego”, with its subjective perception, is no longer there. To put it
this way: the psychological emptiness is the one who lives the present
moment, expresses this encounter into words and still remains present
and available to the next moment.
As a result of this direct encounter with the moment, always new and
renewing itself, I felt the need, initiated and fueled by intuitive
impulses, to express “Self- knowing” using verse. It was a natural thing
to do. In few words I could encompass and communicate the essence of
the experience. In the first year I wrote 300 poems. Later on, their
number reached 1000, of which 600 are accompanied by prose explanations,
such as the ones in this book.
I would also like to describe a few effects which, as a result of
becoming aware of the reactions of my own thinking process, have
completely disappeared, without any other intervention from my mind.
After experiencing this phenomenon, I felt like a broken vessel, from
which the following started to disappear: my interest in astral
journeying, my religious beliefs, my egoism, desires, fear, envy, pride
etc. My awareness remained open all the time, offering me the
possibility to pass from the finite dimension into Infinity.
After encountering this extraordinary phenomenon^ with the help of a
global perspective I understood the whole human tragedy, caused by the
misinterpretation of life in its constant mobility and newness from one
moment to another.
Faced with the freshness and the aliveness of life, each individual —
according to his own conditioning, as a result of wrong education —
behaves completely inappropriately, because the structure of the mind
cannot in any way comprehend arid embrace the beauty of life. The shadow
of the past is actually a memory pattern, clouding and distorting the
reality of the present moment.
Life cannot be encountered and understood objectively, unless we are
in a state of complete freedom and serenity of the mind. Life is
newness, moment by moment, and it demands, even forces us to encounter
it with a new mind, with a new brain and with new brain cells, which
have not been used previously.
It is a well-known fact: scientists claim that man, during the whole
span of his life, uses no more than 10-15% of his brain cells and memory
potential. As you can see, our psychological possibilities are almost
unlimited.
After these explanations, it will be easier to understand the process
of our own conditioning, as well as the phenomenon of breaking the
shell of the “ego”.
As I had shown previously, life demands that we encounter it
directly, without any memory baggage. How do we lose the memory baggage?
It is all very simple! Here is how:
We encounter the movement of the mind with the flame of total
Attention — requested by the aliveness of life in its continuous flow.
Without the light and serenity provided by Attention, nothing can be
understood in a real way. In the light of Attention, any reaction of the
mind (thought, image, fear, desire) — which functions chaotically,
obsessively and dominates us — is instantly dissolved.
In the psychological void that follows, a new mind appears, expanding
into Infinity, as a state of Pure Consciousness, pure understanding as
well as transformative action. This simple state of “being” is in itself
an action in which the entity who performs the action doesn’t exist
anymore. The old man, conditioned by his behavioral patterns, loses his
authority as the chaotic, uncontrollable reactions dissolve — energies
which sustain and fuel the “ego”.
Only in this way, by a simple encounter with the reactions of the
mind and its subsequent demise, the barrier of the “ego” is broken.
Through a momentary opening, our real being is revealed, transforming
and healing us. This all-encompassing Attention, without any purpose, is
the Sacred itself in action.
There is, in fact, another type of attention directed by will, which
behaves subjectively by limiting itself to one object. By its very
nature, this type of attention defines itself as lack of attention.
Beware, nevertheless, not to make a mere theory of this simple
meeting with yourself! Simply becoming aware of “what is”, of what we
encounter, brought about by the flow of life, without having any purpose
or expectations, places us in a state of simply “being”, which
transforms us by itself. That is all there is to it.
~ From: The silence of the mind by Ilie Cioara pp 131-134
source text HERE
