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What is this freedom from suffering everyone participating in diverse spiritual traditions talks about? Easily we end up imagining some disembodied state of purity that is unencumbered by the trials and tribulations of a solid body doomed to illness and decay. We may also silently hope for the disappearance of pain or equate freedom with the ability to get and do what we want. Nothing could be further from what freedom is all about as this old Asian story tells us.

A citizen goes to visit the king, who has a vast reputation for being wise, and asks: “Sire, does freedom in our lifetime exist?”
“Absolutely it does”, responds the king, immediately proceeding with the question: “How many legs do you have?”
Surprised by this question the citizen looks at himself, then answers: “Two, my Sire.”
The king: “Are you able to stand on one leg?”
“No problem”, says the citizen.
“So try and decide on which leg you want to stand”, invites the king.
The citizen reflects for a while, then lifts his left leg, remaining standing on only his right leg.
“Very good!” says the king, “now lift also your right leg!”
“I beg your pardon, Sire? That is impossible!”
To which the king responds: “You see, that is freedom! You are free, but only to take the first decision, none after that!”

Freedom is not liberation from reality. Quite on the contrary. It is liberation into reality, the ability to ‘be free and easy in the market place’ as they say in Zen, a sense of great flexibility in the face of life’s unpredictable waves of challenge. Freedom means that we have learned to get out of our own way, out of the way of how things are whether we like it or not, out of the way of how nature unfolds according to patterns all of its own beyond our comprehension. When we are free, we embrace the inevitable with ease and graciousness, and when we fail to be so gracious, we don’t become aggressive towards ourselves, but lovingly hold our limitations in the healing womb of awareness.

Freedom is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, because no stretch of the imagination can conceive what freedom is except for making it seem what it is not … easy. Freedom entails taking on the responsibility for the recreation of our lives in every moment we can remember to do so. Because no moment is free of defilements, every act of recreation is an act of purification. Freedom is the equanimity we find in the inevitable human condition of purgatory. Freedom requires suffering the way Nelson Mandela’s liberation required 27 years of imprisonment. The liberation from purgatory is not another place somewhere else such as we imagine paradise to be, but paradise is the full acceptance of purgatory, while hell is its stubborn rejection.

Only the infinite spaciousness of awareness, combined with a loving stance towards what is, can give us access to the deep peace that comes with realizing that hell and paradise are just the two masks of freedom.

Copyright © 2015 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

A student recently made an astonishing discovery. It was not astonishing by virtue of its monumentality, but by virtue of its subtlety. He had practiced mindfulness for several years by examining the different domains of experience in detail, such as physical sensations, emotions, thoughts and perceptions of the external world. Attention and equanimity were the main tools with which he explored. In this year’s course on non-duality, the focus has been more intensely on awareness itself than ever before. He struggled at first with this different emphasis, because he realized his intention to be mindful focused mainly on how he could focus attention. In comparison to attention, awareness seems so ephemeral and intangible.

It suddenly dawned on him that he had practiced concentration and differentiation of experience phenomena without really realizing to what extent awareness itself was available to him. Harnessing the power of attention had been his main focus, and awareness became unconsciously available to him ‘through the backdoor’ so to speak, but not directly and consciously. Awareness being unconscious may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it is not, because like tunnel vision we may not have access to the internal reflexivity of awareness. Let me explain.

Awareness has what I would call an internal and external reflexivity. The internal reflexivity is the fact that awareness is aware of itself; external reflexivity means that awareness is aware of anything else.

Let’s begin with external reflexivity, since it is the more familiar and accessible of the two. Awareness being aware of anything else implies that awareness is aware of objects of awareness. Awareness, the subject, is aware of its objects. The knower is aware of the known. We become more closely acquainted with objects of awareness by momentarily focusing awareness on them. This focusing of awareness is how attention is defined. As we pay attention, a subject (me) pays attention to an object (say the chair). This stance is how we are used to facing the world we live in and is characterized by dualism (from Latin ‘duo’ meaning ‘two’), the dualism of a subject apprehending objects of experience. Thus the expression ‘awareness (subject) of whatever we are aware of (object)’. The metaphor of the mirror can be helpful here: The mirror reflects all the objects that happen to show up in front of it. The moment you (the subject) stand in front of a mirror (awareness), there suddenly appears a second you (the object) inside the mirror you now can see and know as an object. The moment an object enters the field of awareness, it becomes known as an object.

Internal reflexivity of awareness is a completely different kettle of fish. When we refer to awareness being aware of itself, it only superficially appears to be a relationship between two entities, awareness and awareness. The limitations of language and conceptual thinking do not afford us any other way of expressing an experiential fact that is difficult to capture in any other way. In truth, when we talk of awareness being aware of itself, we mean awareness being aware as itself. We mean an identity of awareness as awareness, not a relationship between two aspects of awareness. There is no duality of a subject called awareness being aware of an object called awareness. Instead, we denote a non-duality without a subject-object distinction, whereby awareness is inherently aware in a reflexive way both as itself (internal reflexivity) and of anything else (external reflexivity). For easier comprehension this internal reflexivity can be pictured imagining standing and taking a step towards yourself, or the sun illuminating itself. It is only possible by making an orthogonal shift into a new dimension, the dimension of being. The way to take a step towards yourself is to drop into the awareness of yourself as Being. The same applies to the sun, which is self-illuminating and unlike the moon does not require any other source for illumination. To come back to our mirror (awareness), it is self-reflexive in that the mirror can not mirror itself. It simply is itself, and as such inherently reflexive.

We can go through life never having conscious access to the internal reflexivity of awareness. You may wonder ‘so what’? The answer is as simple as it is profound. Without that access you will never know who you really are, and by not knowing that, you don’t know the instrument with which you live your life. You thus perpetuate a profound split in your being, which naturally comes with a lot of suffering and all its consequences.  We can go through life only partially aware, meaning that we are aware of all the ten thousand things of the world, of all the contents of awareness that are seen through the dual lens of the subject-object split, without knowing that we are aware, and thus not knowing who we are. Our habit of creating a split between the observer and the observed is so deeply ingrained that the moment we focus awareness in the form of attention, we focus on something, and awareness of awareness is lost and inaccessible. The unified field of awareness, its unity and self-reflexive nature beyond the dualistic subject-object split, remains for most people inaccessible to be realized, even though it is always there. The defining moment for my student was to realize that by focusing attention he could not only become aware of subjective experiences, but that he could also become aware of being aware.

Awareness is a bit like the light in the fridge. Whenever you open it, you are usually hungry and look for the objects inside the fridge. You do not notice that the only reason you can actually see what’s in the fridge is because the light is on. You notice even less that the light is on whenever you open the fridge, and when the fridge is closed you have no way of knowing whether the light is on or not. Whenever you ask yourself whether you are aware right now or not, the answer is always ‘yes’, the same way the light is always on when you open the fridge. If you do not ask the question, or you are not aware of being aware, you have no way of knowing whether you are aware or not, the same way you have no way of knowing whether the light is on when the fridge door is closed. Awareness is more than awareness of things, it is also awareness as Being. Without access to this fundamental aspect of awareness, we lose access to vast swaths of the infinite context within which we exist, of the infinite context we actually are.

Whatever we focus on becomes the object of our attention, and awareness itself, also referred to as awareness of awareness, can never be an object of attention, of its own focusing or knowing. It is always the subject that knows itself as subject, thus eluding us as long as we look for it the way we look for things. As strange as it might seem, we cannot pay attention to awareness; attention being the focusing of awareness, we can only pay attention as awareness. Whatever we pay attention to becomes an object of attention or awareness that can never be awareness itself. The astonishing part, therefore, is that we can be intensely steeped in using awareness through its focusing aspect of attention without realizing that awareness itself is directly available to us. The way it is directly available to us is a highly unfamiliar process this student only just discovered. It is not by focusing on it, but by realizing that we have all along already been it. This discovery made my student realize to what extent awareness is also the defining force for inner peace.

Awareness reveals context to us, the fact that we are intricately interwoven in a vast web of infinite causes and consequences beyond our wildest comprehension. Context gives us a sense of belonging that relaxes us and opens the door to discovering complexity. Complexity breeds humility, because we realize there is an intelligence at work in the universe far greater than what we can ever imagine. Humility leads to wise and skillful action, which in turn manifests as love.

The meaning of our lives may just simply be to seize the opportunity to use awareness as our guiding light. Life is our opportunity to bring awareness into motion, and not let it slumber in the darkness of unconsciousness. Awareness in motion is not about what be pay attention to, but what we discover we are all along. Not surprisingly, this turns out to be love.

Copyright © 2015 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

Arnaldus de Villa Nova (1240-1311 AD), a physician, theologian and alchemist of the Middle Ages, wrote that verse. The words refer to the philosopher’s stone, the unseemly pebble lying on the side of the road – despised, neglected and rejected by those not in the know. What is the hidden mystery so easily overlooked in the stone? The Tibetan story of the dog’s tooth gives us a clue.

A merchant travels to India. His mother asks him to bring back a relic. He forgets. Before his next trip she asks again and again he forgets. About to return home from his third trip and having again forgotten to pick up a relic, he removes a tooth from the skeleton of a dead dog at the road side and brings it home to his mother, telling her that it belonged to a great saint. Delighted, his mother worshiped this tooth; other women join her from everywhere, and eventually they all see bright rays of light radiating off this ‘relic’.

Thus the old Tibetan saying: ‘When there is veneration, even a dog’s tooth radiates light’.

This is the story of the extra-ordinariness of the ordinary. It does not matter where you are, at church, around the kitchen table or on the battle field, or what you do, walking, working, cleaning, parenting or meditating – it is the manner with which you are attentive to this moment, with which you hold an object, touch the world around you and act in your life that determines the healing power of your influence. If you realize that with awareness and presence everyone of your actions becomes a gesture from your Being, the sacred reveals itself in every detail of your everyday life.

You don’t need to travel to India, visit the pope or go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes to find the sacred. “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet” (Kafka).

Seek moments of stillness and solitude to make space for feeling the movement of your arm as your hand brings a piece of apple to your mouth. Don’t wait until it is too late after you had a stroke and your arm cannot move anymore, to regret not having seen the awe-inspiring perfection and sacredness of your capacity to move. Everything within and around you is waiting to be felt, heard and seen like a flourishing child seeking her parents’ loving recognition. When you bring this kind of dedicated attention to your life, the ordinary comes alive as the sacred expression of your timeless Being.

Copyright © 2015 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

‘Hanging out’ is an important principle to follow in meditation. Sustaining attention with COAL (curiosity, openness, acceptance and love) is in fact what hanging out is all about. Yet hanging out denotes something more.

There is an element of ease and ‘no care in the world’ in it, yet also filled with presence. It emphasizes lingering in time, letting the fire of time cook the meal of awareness to perfection. It is a bit like going whale watching. You take the boat (use your tools of concentration with COAL), then bop around on the waters of the ocean waiting for these magnificent creatures to emerge. Except that when you hang around in meditation you do not know what you are waiting for; in fact you are not waiting for anything except perhaps Godot. You hang around to be burned alive, to be dissolved by the wear and tear of time, and to be devoured by truth. Hanging out means relinquishing control and allowing nature and reality to speak, allowing emptiness to manifest. Here is a quote from F. Kafka describing something similar: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

Hanging out includes just being without any attachment to what it is supposed to be. Find pleasure in living in a world that is not supposed to be, or that is already there as it is, and that does not have to be anything. Deeply listen to yourself and be OK with what you like and don’t like. As you hang out, anything can happen. You don’t have to make yourself be like what other people want you to be or what is going to be accepted. You don’t have to do something that already exists because so many other people are doing that. Enjoy the isolation of your own inner world of complex experiences and don’t worry about what people think. Respect yourself, your instincts and your emotions. Every day you do everything you can do be a good person, so why should someone else with their trials and tribulations, their thoughts and ideas affect you more than you affect yourself? Hone the ability to be in touch with genetic memory and instinctive patterns that we all secretly know from thousands of years of evolution.

When you hang out in this place of respectful and sustained attention, your expectations shed like the colored leaves of autumn, and you find yourself there, just there, for no reason at all. Even your attention softens. Rather than fleeing back into its distracted jerky mode resembling the activity of a fruit fly, attention softens into its quiet pool of stillness, not moved by you, but gently rocked by the siren call of the source. You just hang out, patiently letting time extend its tentacles in all directions towards eternity. Wherever you hang out, you wait; no you don’t even wait, you make your home there.

Copyright © 2016 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.

2 weeks ago I received an email from one of my Mindsight Intensives students I will call Paul, an older gentleman in his seventies I believe. Here is what he wrote:

“I think I want to withdraw from the group. I feel that I have nothing in common with group because of my age. It became apparent to me when you asked what each wanted to accomplish. As you may have noticed I made no comment! My age and time frame is not compatible with theirs. I would feel more comfortable if others the same age as me were in attendance. I kept asking myself over and over during the session why is no one my age in attendance! Thank you for your assistance during our time together. Keep up the good work ….. Sincerely, Paul”

The course of our journey towards mindful living is everything but smooth. To encounter hurdles, and often serious ones at that, is par for the course. They always create an interesting, but predictable set of psychological constellations we have to learn to meet with discernment. Fortunately, the essence of these constellations is mostly similar from one occasion to the next, even if their displays vary, so that once we have debunked the trick the mind plays on us, it is relatively easy to not fall into the trap the next time.

The ‘lethal’ constellation here is called identification. Caught in it, we believe anything our mind tells us. Identification means that we tell ourselves a story that is accompanied by powerful emotions, and like at the movies, we are so absorbed in it that we forget it is a story we tell ourselves. Instead, it appears like a story we live, which then appears real; and when it seems real it appears true; and when something appears true, we stop questioning or inquiring and act according to the reality it seems to present. A real cascading comedy of errors.

Whenever life seems so real and inexorable, I suggest remembering to explore and bring awareness to the fact that this alleged ‘reality’ you are experiencing is a complex cluster of interwoven physical sensations, feelings and thoughts that, like the Wizard of Oz, combine to create a mirage. The moment we disentangle the elements of this mirage, it dissolves into smoke and mirrors, and as Shakespeare said, ‘what you see is not what you see!’

“You are bound to have everything in common with everyone else because you are human”, I told Paul. “You may be older and feel you have less time, but don’t forget that some people in the group have cancer and may have even less time than you do. If you feel you don’t have much in common, it is because somewhere within yourself you are cutting yourself off from parts of yourself, and you end up not seeing your own humanity. Whether old or young, your age is not an issue, but a boon, allowing you to explore your awakening across the span of time. In developing that perspective, you discover your timeless nature. Besides, you are an inspiration to young folks who do not know their parents to be as open and adventurous as you are.”

Our work in non-duality increases in its importance the older we get. We come to realize that we have all the time we need, since all we need is this present moment. Relax, because this project, the project of awakening from the distortions of our monkey mind, is a thousand year project!

I was glad Paul reconsidered.

Dr. T.

Here are two vignettes that highlight our endless human capacity for self-deception.

A patient I will call Laura came to me because she has an enmeshed relationship with her mother, which ruins her life. At 37 years of age, she was still living at home with her mother and her abusive alcoholic brother. She could not sustain any relationship with a partner because her mother systematically undermine any such attempts, essentially putting her down all the time, giving her the message that she is incapable of independence. In addition, it was her duty to help her brother when he got himself into trouble. Previous attempts at becoming independent and move out had failed.

She moved out shortly after I started to see her in psychotherapy. This time she began to enjoy her independence, particularly because she was starting to learn how to develop healthy boundaries towards her mother. A few weeks after having moved, her mother’s house was broken into and many valuables were stolen, including expensive jewelry she had left at her mother’s place. Now she became scared of living alone. She told me how afraid she was to be alone in her new house, and that she was thinking of moving back to her mother’s. What if she got broken into – she felt her mother’s place would be safer, because there were two people living there, plus a dog. Her left brain had created a disembodied story with a false logic, because she is emotionally (right brain) in such inner turmoil when it comes to her mother, that she has to dissociate herself from her body (right brain) and all the painful signals it tries to send to her consciousness. Not until I asked her the following question could she see the pseudo-logic that drove her: “Don’t you find it curious that the very place you find would be so safe, with two people and a dog, is precisely the place which got broken into, and from which all your jewelry got snatched?” I asked. My question hit her like a ton of bricks. She realized that her sense of safety ‘at home’ with her mother was in her case an integral part of her enmeshment with her mother, and that she needed to direct her energies into another direction: How can she increase her sense of safety as a single woman living independently in her own home?

The second vignette involves the following note I posted in my office for my patients before I went on holidays:

MEMO
August 5, 2015
To all patients,
Dr. Treyvaud will be away on summer vacation for the following period:
Monday, August 17, 2015 to Friday, September 11, 2015.
Dr. Treyvaud will be back on Monday, September 14, 2014.
Thank you.

A couple, husband and wife, whom I see independently, missed their first session after my holidays, because they were absolutely convinced I had posted my return for September 17. Until I showed them a printed copy of my note, they could not believe me.

These two vignettes are a reminder of the challenge our left brain poses, when it is disconnected from the right brain. Here are its unsavory characteristics with which it tyrannizes our lives when left unchecked by the right brain:

THE LEFT BRAIN:

1. Constructs a self-consistent world of pure theory that always reflects back on itself and confirms itself;
2. Controls the voice and the means of argument, such as logic, linearity, detachment and language;
3. Parses reality into bits – if no clear bits are available, it will invent them.
4. It only re-presents the world after the fact and creates a (sometimes) useful fiction;
5. Is only capable of black and white thinking;
6. Does not perceive stories, but a mass of discreet episodes, often out of sequence, thus maintaining distortions;
7. Needs to always feel in control;
8. Is competitive;
9. Thinks it can go it alone without the right brain;
10. Thinks it knows it all;
11. Is overly optimistic and unrealistically positive in its self-appraisal;
12. Is in denial about its shortcomings and unreasonably certain;
13. Is prone to paranoia and mistrust.

As you can see, these scientific findings about the left brain are not just interesting knowledge floating high up in the clouds of academic knowledge. We can observe and directly experience these characteristics in our everyday life.

Copyright © 2015 by Dr. Stéphane Treyvaud. All rights reserved.