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I’d like to ask you to help us out by spread­ing the word to your friends. Send them to this page, and encour­age them to sign up for our blog postings. Tele-seminar on drop­ping the things that do not work I’m want­ing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to be on the call. I’ll be on line and on the phone, talk­ing about how to iden­tify and change your thought patterns—how to shift from auto-pilot to Sim­ple Pres­ence. There will be a free, one hour sem­i­nar on Wednes­day, May 27, start­ing at 5 Pacific, 8 East­ern time. There will be 4 addi­tional one hour sem­i­nars, on the fol­low­ing 4 Wednes­days, same time. You’ll learn the details on the May 27th call, but broadly, I’ll be dis­cussing the acronym NAIL–Noticing, Accept­ing, Inte­grat­ing, and Let­ting Go. Please click here for more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for the event. Reserve your space now as space is limited!

“Imag­ine a mul­ti­di­men­sional spider’s web in the early morn­ing cov­ered with dew drops. And every dew drop con­tains the reflec­tion of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflec­tions of all the other dew drops in that reflec­tion. And so ad infini­tum. That is the Bud­dhist con­cep­tion of the uni­verse in an image.” — Alan Watts
Wikipedia

Jewel Gaz­ing

In my new book, Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall, I tell the story of Indra’s Net. You can read all about it when the new book becomes avail­able. Today, I want to have a look at an aspect of the story—to look at our propen­sity to “jewel gaze”—to see what we expect to see.

Here’s the basic ver­sion of Indra’s Net: The idea is that there is a 3-dimensional net or web, thrown into the uni­verse, and extend­ing infi­nitely in all direc­tions. At each junc­ture of the web, where the strands cross, is a jewel. This jewel per­fectly reflects all of the other jew­els, as well as the strands, so each jewel con­tains an image of the web, stretch­ing infinitely.

Infi­nite strands, infi­nite jew­els, con­tain­ing infi­nite reflec­tions, stretch­ing infinitely.

The typ­i­cal use of the story of Indra’s Net is to remind us of the inter­con­nec­tiv­ity of every­thing. I am you and you are I, and we all con­tain and reflect every­thing in the uni­verse (which pretty much matches quan­tum the­ory to a “T.”) This ver­sion of the story punches holes in the idea of a per­sonal ego, a sep­a­rate self, and indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence, is very Zen, and actu­ally is “so.” We might con­sider this the “essen­tial” view of our lives.

The exis­ten­tial view is the one we actu­ally expe­ri­ence, and it’s a wholly dif­fer­ent one. It’s the norm.

In this inac­cu­rate view, I am sep­a­rate, we are in com­pe­ti­tion, and what and how I believe is right, good, and true. I believe there is right and wrong, good and bad, and that I might be flawed, but am “work­ing on myself.” I judge myself harshly, but believe I am nowhere near as bad as oth­ers are.

In this Nor­mal view, my judge­ments, com­plaints, and blam­ing are end­less and deep.

In my forth­com­ing book, I talk about this side of the equa­tion, and describe it as “star­ing into your jewel,” or “jewel gaz­ing.” This process is ego-centric—

• you think that your world view is correct,
• that all other views are wrong, and
• you think that what you are star­ing at is the one and only accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the universe.

Now remem­ber, each jewel reflects the infi­nite net, as well as all of the jew­els. If you’ll allow me some lib­erty with the story, you might imag­ine that, at each jewel, is another per­son, and that all 6.5 bil­lion of us are star­ing into our jewel with the same thought:

I am right, my view is the only view. And, the peo­ple I see in my jewel are the real “rest of the uni­verse of people.”

I am thus so fix­ated on my ego, my story, and my per­spec­tive that I totally miss what’s actu­ally going on. Every­thing I see in the jewel right in front of me, is a reflec­tion of real­ity, not real­ity itself!

the girl in the mir­ror is not the girl look­ing into the mirror

If you look into a mir­ror, you know the things you see in there are not real, right?
It’s the same with your view of reality!

Repeat after me: my life and my per­spec­tive is just the story I’m telling myself. It has noth­ing to do with any­thing. It’s all a fig­ment of my imagination.

You can see the truth of this eas­ily, if you look. Imag­ine that a friend is vis­it­ing, and tells you about an expe­ri­ence he had. You lis­ten, and then you say, “Well, here’s what’s going on.”

Surely it is obvi­ous that you have no clue what is “going on” for your friend. You would be bet­ter off say­ing, “So, as you tell me your story, here is what I am imag­ing, based upon my life and expe­ri­ence. Take it for what it’s worth.”

But it’s even weirder.

Your friend also has no clue! He is see­ing the story he is telling him­self through his expe­ri­ence, and is choos­ing what he sees, how he acts, and how he describes things. It has noth­ing to do with the other peo­ple in the story—it has every­thing to do with him and his life.

Indra’s Net is a great illus­tra­tion for how life is,
but only if you see the net.

In other words, you have to break your fix­a­tion with your story, your view, your jewel. If you can make your­self turn your head to the side, away from the jewel you con­tin­u­ally stare at, you start to see “the real thing.” It’s like Neo wak­ing up in The Matrix—every­thing he believed to be so dis­solved right in front of his face. It was all an illu­sion.

I was talk­ing with a friend today, com­ment­ing on her fix­a­tion with find­ing fault. I noted that she seemed to slip out of that when she brought her­self into her body and became present. She told me of an expe­ri­ence like that, and imme­di­ately started grin­ning and being chargy and present. I said, “Yeah. That. That’s being present and in the moment, and alive.” For pur­poses of this arti­cle, she pried her eyes away from her “jewel of judge­ment and com­plaint,” and saw through the illusion.

She sighed, and said, “I want more of this, but let me tell you what my hus­band did this week!” And she shifted back to jewel gazing.

She has much invested in being right, in detect­ing oth­ers’ flaws, and in point­ing these flaws out. Because of this, her “jewel gaz­ing ego” only sees flaws and wrongs. These things are obvi­ous to her (they’re right there, in her face!) and her game is to end­lessly be drawn to them. She breaks from this by look­ing away from the game, by see­ing the wider pic­ture, or what I’m call­ing the real­ity of Indra’s Net.

The oth­ers that sur­round her are mostly star­ing away at their own jewel, into their own sto­ries, and are try­ing des­per­ately to get her to agree that their view is accu­rate. “Here! Stare into my jewel! It’s the real one!”

Reli­gions are famous for this. Fight­ing over who has the real, cor­rect, accu­rate view, while point­ing to a reflec­tion or shadow of reality.

If you look, you see the star­ing, the fix­a­tion, and you say, “Hmm. Every­one caught, star­ing. Maybe all I can do is look away, know noth­ing for sure, drop try­ing to con­vince oth­ers, and sim­ply see.” Maybe.

Maybe you could just let all of the dual­is­tic, judg­ing, force­ful foot-stomping go, and sim­ply engage in liv­ing life with­out judg­ing it.

Maybe you might choose to act because that’s what you choose to do, with­out seek­ing approval and with­out try­ing to force other peo­ple to do as you tell them.

Maybe you could notice when the sparkle of your jewel becomes entic­ing and begins to draw you back into iso­la­tion and victimhood.

You can let go of cling­ing to your world-view,
and there will be no harm, no foul.

You can see the inter­con­nec­tions and the energy that is all around you, and you can choose to be present with all of it. You can find other playmates—just look up and away from your jewel, and you’ll notice oth­ers who are also look­ing away, tak­ing a step back and work­ing on see­ing the whole thing, as opposed to a tiny fragment.

You can, in short, get the joke, and live within the laugh­ter, never tak­ing a moment of it seri­ously, while fully engag­ing with bring­ing peace, com­fort, and clar­ity to a jewel gaz­ing world.

It has been said that life is 10% action and 90% reac­tion. How are your reac­tions in your life serv­ing you?

This Could Be Your A-HA Moment

What if…

* you could dis­con­nect your auto-response mech­a­nism and live with full aware­ness, pres­ence and intention?

* you were always act­ing with your high­est and best self in mind?

* your mind was con­stantly filled with lov­ing thoughts?

* you could instantly rem­edy unde­sir­able states of being?

Are you ready to move “Beyond Beliefs” and rethink a new life for yourself?

Are you will­ing to com­mit to notic­ing your think­ing and ques­tion­ing your thoughts?

Are you will­ing to let go of the wor­ries that are out of your con­trol and accept what you can­not change?

If you are inter­ested in mak­ing a last­ing pos­i­tive change in your life, please join Ther­a­pist, “Sim­ple Zen Guy,” and Author, Wayne C. Allen for a FREE tele­sem­i­nar and web­cast hosted by TheSelfHelpSchool.com on Wednes­day May 27, 2009 at 8PM ET, 5PM PT. We will dis­cuss the for­ma­tion of self-responsibility through explo­ration of how we cre­ate our lives.

Please click here for more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for the event. Reserve your space now as space is limited!

We look for­ward to work­ing with you at the Teleseminar!

PS. For­ward this email to any­one who could use a change in their lives because there will be many A-HA!s dur­ing this call.