Life, what would you do without it?

Not a question we would normally ask ourselves. Yet it does pose an interesting situation.

When we are alive, in a body on this beautiful planet we have a discriminating mind, or what passes for a mind. I have mentioned often that I do not believe we have a mind per-se. Rather we have a nervous system that accesses the Mind.

If Mind is indeed non-local, as first presented to me in a book “Recovering the Soul” by Dr. Larry Dossey, then it cannot be confined to time and space. Your perceptions are normally very confined to time and space, a product of our conditioning. So, Mind is everywhere at all times, no past, no present, no future. Yet the association we have with the body limits us in time and space.

We perceive the world through our rather unique nervous system, but do we create the reality within which we appear to live? Or is some other force at work here?

I strongly believe that the ‘other force’ that is contributing to our perceived reality is the sub-conscious. All the time the sub-conscious exists and plays a part in our unfolding reality we will remain victim to unseen forces. We are all too quick to blame, or attribute outside forces for the world we live in, all the time we do this we remain a victim to these unseen, unknown forces.

Which, to quote Carl Jung, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious”. ie, bring the shadow aspects of the self, basically the sub-conscious aspects of our being into the light of conscious awareness.

I do not know but I suspect Jung was heavily influenced by the teachings of the Buddha (if in doubt read his introduction to the Tibetan Book of the Dead). The Buddhist claim that it is our karma and our obscurations that prevent us from know the true nature of mind. Karma and can also be understood as Jung’s shadow. Obscurations are the attachment and identification with the body, thoughts and feelings.

Approaching this issue from Jung’s point of view we would gradually begin to understand and accept the shadow aspects (Clearing can help with this)

Approaching this from a Buddhist point of view we would slowly reduce our identification with body consciousness.

Either way, the result would be that same. One cannot exist without the other.

For example, the Shadow cannot exist if there is no identification with body consciousness. And, without a Shadow there can be no identification with body consciousness.

Karma no long applies either, as now there is no ‘one’ to whom Karma can apply.

Obscurations fall away as well, for while there is still any association with body consciousness there will always be shadow, always be some Karmic charge.

Reaching this state of being / awareness, when the body dies, as it must one day, there would no longer be any attachment to the form or the feelings or emotions. This essentially liberates the ‘soul’ so that it returns to the true nature of mind, no longer separate from the Mind which gave birth to it.

This would be the Death-Less State referred to in Buddhism. Nibbana, or Nirvana. A recognition of the true nature of Mind, something that cannot be realised while there is still any association with body consciousness. This ‘association’ by its very nature implies a state of being asleep. Subject to the charge / Karma / shadow which then implies a state of victim consciousness, still lost in the dream that you are the body rather than seeing the body as a temporary suit of clothes that the soul inhabits in order to experience this profound sense of separation.

Any attachments at the moment of death will, according to the Buddhist teachings, take the soul, or what remains of the consciousness into a Bardo (A State of Becoming) thus by-passing the one-ness of being a conscious, but not separate, part of the Mind.

So, life then can be seen as a training ground, as well as any other meaning you would like to give it, life in a physical, human, body lost in its own unique Bardo, a victim to what appears to be fate, or chance but is in fact the result of past thoughts words and actions.

Any identification with body consciousness will prolong the experiences, always seeking more, which in turn delays the inevitable return home.

So, Life – What would you do without it. Who knows but the possibilities are endless when you are no longer confined to the prison of the physical body.