It’s Sunday, so no clear answers today. Using the tools of the world of form, to try and describe the formless essence of life… you’ve basically failed before you begin!
But I’ve been thinking about this—‘having innate wellbeing’—and what it means, in a practical sense. Here are those thoughts.
Who has it?
We have to address the elephant in the room first. That ‘you’ that looks as if it ‘has’ stuff like wisdom and wellbeing… yeah, that’s not actually a thing. It’s just more thought – a collection of ideas, memories and beliefs. There is no ‘you’, driving the bus, so to speak, there’s just life, and then the mind, observing and commentating.
‘Wisdom’ itself is just a label the mind places on an experience. It’s not ‘yours’, any more than gravity is ‘yours’. (We discussed this recently, with Syd Banks reminding us that “Wisdom is found before the formation of form.”)
So there’s that. You don’t ‘have’ innate wellbeing, because there’s no ‘you’ to take possession of it.
🤷🏻♂️
This kind of schizzle bent my brain so badly when I first heard teachers talking like this, that I opted out for some time, and don’t blame you if you do too.
I mean, I say ‘I’ opted out, like ‘I’ had a choice, which is just the same illusion of self, all over again, isn’t it? (Endlessly frustrating to a mind.) But in the same way it looked like ‘I’ opted out, ‘I’ also found myself coming back to explore this stuff, and if that’s you… well, here we are. 💖
On your watch
The best way I heard it described—that allowed my mind to give up the ghost complaining about it all the time, and return me to the necessary openness and curiosity for change to occur—was that experience is happening ‘on my watch’.
I like that.
This localised manifestation; this wave on the ocean of vibrating energy that we collectively label as a ‘Giles’ has a view on things – a perspective, or ‘watch’.
It’s this body that’s experienced, not yours; it’s these thoughts too. They’re not ‘mine’ because there’s no is no ‘me’ (beyond thought), but there’s an experience—an awareness—that is uniquely ‘mine’.
In short, I am aware of what it feels like to be a ‘Giles’, but not what it feels like to be a ‘You’.
So what is ‘innate wellbeing’?
Isn’t it just more of the unexplainable, unknown stuff? The formless energy that drives the show. Which makes it sound mystical. (And it's certainly possible to have really big realisations and shifts in consciousness that deliver a quite mystical experience.)
But in an everyday practical sense, I think it's more about not being freaked out by our experience of the form. I don't claim to understand too much, but I know that whenever I'm feeling worried or panicky, that that doesn't signify anything more than a passing, conditioning-based thought. It doesn't mean anything more than that (however much the mind insists that it does).
And I think sometimes it's this thinking-it-means-something malarkey that gets us into real trouble, because it gets the ball rolling with analysing things… which ultimately only ever makes matters worse.
There is something much deeper and more powerful and comforting and magical that lies beneath our experience, but I don't think we feel that very often (not directly, anyway). But the evidence is all around us: hearts that beat themselves, cuts that heal, moods that settle.
Knowing it's there is good. It’s helpful. It’s practical. Knowing that there’s this illusion ‘me’ that ‘has’ innate wellbeing.
If worry and doubt and panic arise, it's not that I spot them, drop them and feel instantly ‘good’, it's that I spot them and I stop making them all much worse, by applying layers of meaning, analysis and additional negativity (which are all thought forms).
It's really helpful to have seen that for yourself. It’s what I point to all the time in the Daily Reminders.
The way that this is seen will be unique to ‘you’ – it might even involve some moments of extreme peace and presence (‘good’ experiences, if you like), but they’re still just experiences. They’ll pass.
Whereas that ‘innate wellbeing’ isn’t going anywhere!
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft
A bit more on the search for ‘me’