An Explanation of the Spiritual Use of Teachings Orientated Towards Wholeness ...
Some men see things as they are and ask, ""Why?"" I dream things that never were and ask, ""Why not?" (“Forbes Quotes”) – Robert Kenedy Overview
Your Freewill
This article provides the reader or seeker with an understanding of what meta-teachings are, how they can benefit us and why we should use them. This article is especially important to those spiritual seekers, who believe that any form of belief system or intellectual pursuit, is to be regarded as a mental construct or a story and is to be shunned or avoided at all costs. Now, I fully appreciate where they are coming from, as I see how if viewed in isolation, they can hamper one’s progress. But I also see the stop sign, on their closed doors, that needs to be examined for the obvious and stubborn hallmarks of resistance, which I also believes impedes headway. The good news is that I propose that the intellectual constructs that they could be referring to, are the products of what is sometimes called the lower-mind or Separate-self. They are used to justify its existence, to maintain its primary form of separation from the connected Kosmos, or from what is generally known as Wholeness (another term for non-dual awareness). The Separate-Self is a spectrum of individuals, who at one end are entirely focused upon on the external world of objects and materiality (objectivity), and at the other end, are seeking a deeper inner connection and harmony with the Whole (subjectivity). Generally, the experience of those that move towards objectivity regard themselves as completely segregated from each other and from objects of their perception. They experience themselves as limited in their intellect, action, space, time, and form. The issue is that the Separate-Self is extraordinarily sneaky and downright underhanded, in its attempt to maintain control, of what it knows cannot be controlled. It believes (or has to believe) that it has everything all sussed out and does not need another mental construct, because it wants to drop all mental constructs or stories. It is so admirably adapted to maintaining its separateness, or playing small, that it does not realise, or refuses to realise, that the certainty of that perspective, is the very construct or belief that they are actually trying to avoid. For any sort of position or thinking is a mental construct or belief of the Separate-Self. For instance, an example of this is “I don’t believe in anything!” Well, actually the belief in nothing (Nihilism), is a belief itself, which is tautologically absurd. Believe you me, my Separate-Self has been fooling and controlling me for years, with its strange mixture of contrived and haughty superiority and self-judging, broken, unworthiness. Yes, any sort of opinion, story, belief, position, or concept that disconnects us from wholeness, is a mental product of the Separate-Self. However, my friends, let us be absolutely honest with ourselves, it is exceedingly difficult not to have these mental occurrences or events, for with the exception of a few enlightened folk, are we not all on the spectrum of the Separate-Self? How often do we forcefully hang onto a belief, or adamantly trust that we are right, or refuse to budge from the position that is the safest, or we consider to be the ethically or morally correct one! I know I’ve been there and perhaps this article is just another attempt to do just that! The challenge is if you do not believe in anything in particular, or have not adopted a coherent overarching, self-consistent belief system, one runs the risk of allowing oneself to become dominated by our conditioning, by the patterns and biases of the unconscious. These have an extraordinarily strong influence on how we act, what we believe, how we communicate, and what we attract in the world. In fact, we could say that this position plays completely into the hands of the Separate-Self, for it suits it entirely to run a mile from meta- teachings, or anything that is used to examine itself. I also want to introduce the two principal energies at work in the Kosmos: the masculine and the feminine. These can be characterised respectively as being and seeing, feeling and perceiving, receiving, and giving, and principally, love and awareness of love. Where somatic (body) practices are seen as the feminine in pursuit of love, meta-teachings can be perceived as masculine practices, in pursuit of truth and understanding (wisdom), using the power of awareness. When we allow ourselves to feel our emotions, we are using feminine energies, when we just observe our emotions, pulling back and seeking the presence in recognition of universal oneness, we are using masculine energies. This article addresses the development of what is known as the higher-mind (masculine practice), which uses the power of its intellect’s discernment, to continuously re- contextualise the Separate-Self’s experience of itself and the world beyond. The higher mind recognises who and what it truly is. It does not let the Separate-Self off the hook, it does not relent in its pursuit of freedom from separation. Now of course, the Separate-Self is going to say, well that’s just another mental construct, which in a sense (on one level) it is. The difference is that the higher-mind is only concerned with directly seeking and attaining only Wholeness, which only comes from an open, loving and accepting basis, through service to others. The method it uses is to continuously purify, by releasing everything that blocks or inhibits its realisation of wholeness. If you are resistant to intellectual stuff, I ask you to please bear with me and allow the Separate-Self to be persuaded as to the merit of meta- teachings. I also ask you to look beneath what that resistance is and where it arises from. I believe in part that it may result from the mistrust of the Separate-Self’s primary shield, which is rationality, personified by science and philosophy. We are stepping beyond these conceptual and restricting behemoths and are going to use the higher-mind’s rationality or logic, which is called Holologic, which is a tool for thinking and acting holistically, in pursuit of wholeness. Meta-teachings are to be used in conjunction with presence practices, which focus upon direct recognition of and experience of our true innate nature. If the individual is fully rooted in the presence, experiencing life without ever letting go of the connection to its deepest being, then meta-teachings are no longer needed, as the destination (as such) is realised. However, if direct and conscious connection with the presence is intermittent, then meta- teaching provide a context for the journey, which supports the individual in the external world, in the moments of direct disconnection from the presence within.
What Does Meta Mean?
When we think about thinking, we are using a very sophisticated process called by academics, metacognition. This is a very fancy word indeed, so let us break it down into something we can understand. The word ‘meta,’ has three primary meanings: it refers to a change to itself (the subject under consideration), beyond its normal limits. Cognition means to think; therefore, metacognition means knowledge and understanding of your own thinking, which is considered to be one of humans' most sophisticated cognitive capacities.
My own visual take upon the use and understanding of ‘meta,’ is to shell-out from where one is, into a surrounding layer or state. Some call it ‘thinking outside the box.’ In other words, it is to step up to another next level or vantage point and take a look at the level that we were just in, to see how we were perceiving that level or layer. Another way of representing it, is the expansion of perspective, by taking in hitherto conflicting ideas or positions and attempting to find resolution between them. As Einstein once stated: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Whenever we start to discuss or focus upon ourselves, we become caught in a self-referential loop, where the self seems to be excluded from the process, by creating contradictions, such as Russell’s famous paradox (the set of all sets, which does not include itself). This provides us with an initial inkling that something core within has been excluded from form part of the layer that is under examination.
A central understanding of this process is the recognition that there is always a level, realm, or to be more precise, a state, beyond where we are focused, which perhaps has the answers to what we are seeking. The word ‘meta’ implies that in order to understand something more deeply about our own perspective, we need to change position, to view ourselves outside or beyond of our normal limitations of our previous perspective.
What are Meta-teachings
"The more students are aware of their thinking processes as they learn, the more they can control such matters as goals, dispositions, and attention." Self-awareness promotes self-regulation.” — Marzano, etal, 1988
Let me categorically state from the off, that meta-teachings are not in themselves the truth. The search for absolute truths is a construct and pursuit of the Separate-Self’s mind, seeking answers. All life commences and finishes in mystery. All teachings are finite, limited and at best approximations or half-truths. No teachings are the ultimate truth, they are just steppingstones, allowing one to look at where one has been, and contextualise it in a broader setting. So right for the start, the higher-mind disavows the pursuit of truth, for it is not searching for truths – it is focused upon realisation of its true nature of wholeness, through opening up itself, to itself.
The Separate-Self, as the word suggests, feels, thinks, and believes that it is separate. However, it is always looking for something, in all the other objects that its mind perceives, to satiate it. It is unwittingly: searching for wholeness, to belong, to know what it is, to be safe. Meta-teachings are a concession to the Separate-Self, which is always seeking for answers to its challenges. The Separate-Self represents the lower-mind, the one that is caught in finiteness, materiality and objectification. Your essential self is not the Separate-Self, you are the one that is experiencing, hearing, and feeling what the Separate-Self is perceiving. The only thing that is real for you is your experience of the Separate-Self.
Meta-teachings are expressions that are aiming to break down the control and domination of the Separate-Self. They are designed and encoded with wisdom, infinity, and wholeness. Meta-teachings contextualise what you are experiencing, they provide the Separate-Self with more of what it is looking for. Ultimately the Separate-Self will dissolve into you, there to be fully integrated. You are the one that is experiencing this journey. These words, your life, and all meta-teachings, help you to break out of the rut or level of ‘stuckness’ that you are in.
All truths are but half-truths because they are dualistic constructs of the Separate-Self. This statement is just a splinter designed to create a crack in the edifice of the belief in truths. Once accepted, it is to be omitted. Each meta teaching enables you to examine the experience of your current life, step by step. They are just steppingstones, which are to be disregarded one-by-one, for meta-teachings are not the truth. They are just the path that allows you to let go of the Separate-Self, one step at a time. When you have a waking experience of the whole, or a mystical insight, a feeling of expansion, whatever form it takes, when the experience is over, the Separate-Self wants to understand what just went on. It wants the mystery of the experience to be unravelled. Meta-teachings provide a placeholder, which allows the Separate-Self to ground itself into a new level of or state, allowing more of its old conditioning (or former limitations) to drop away.
Meta-teachings provide a basis for the breadcrumb trail for the Separate-Self to follow. The trail leads to wholeness. It leads within to your true nature. That trail leads to your source, connection with absolute infinity, the place from which all arises. An infinity within you is exploring the finitude of your individuation.
Meta-teachings are a type of purification of the Separate-Self. They complement the feminine approaches and practices. Slowly, through the use of meta-teachings and other presence-based practices, the Separate-Self begins to realise that its time is running out. It may play along. But ultimately, the dread of its own dissolution begins to set in. Meta- teachings are the handrail by which we move past the fears and contractions of the Separate-Self.
Meta-teachings are designed to break one out of the limitations of where one is at. For example, if one was viewing a situation from a Universal perspective, not just in space but also in time, then that perspective would cancel out or diminish the importance of practically
any challenging event that one could care to name. The broader the perspective, the less relevant any discrepancy, as opposites dissolve into the expanded resolution of awareness. Ultimately one would arrive at a point of perfect stasis, the still point of the bhindi, the absolute, the source of all, where all duality is resolved.
The reason or purpose for meta-teachings is to raise the level of perspective, so that existing challenges are resolved. The teachings themselves continuously answer to an even higher level (ad infinitum); so, it is only a steppingstone, which eventually will be discarded. Answer, in this context, means that that it relies upon it, or draws its potency or form from a broader perspective.
Meta-teachings instruct the Separate-Self, illustrating how it can free itself from its mental attachments, from the bondage of its separation from itself. Bit-by-bit, the Separate-Self relaxes into the knowing of what it truly is. Meta-teachings hold the vision of the virtue of that liberation, constantly reminding the lower-mind of the limitations that it is placing upon itself.
Meta teachings become useful, when one appears not to be progressing as quickly as one would like and is looking for supplementary paths, to enhance ones focus or progression.
The ultimate meta-teaching is to release and let go of all teachings and surrender to the process of being, without pursuing any goal, destination, or practice – allowing everything to be exactly what it is without resistance. If you are still practicing or using a technique, the Separate-Self has something to keep itself alive, even if it has agreed to its own dissolution.
The Higher Mind & Wholeness - Meta -Teachings
“Mind: a beautiful servant a dangerous master” - Osho I believe that Osho in the quote above, was referring to the difference between the lower- mind of the Separate-Self, which believes it is the master, and the higher-mind, which believes it is but a servant, a tool, a bridge to the infinite, a whisperer of meta-teachings. The development of the higher-mind is I believe an essential progression of the practised adept. The power of the higher-minds intellectual discernment (the power of knowing) is essential to maintaining focus upon wholeness and integrating the disparate parts of itself. When it is directly coupled with will-power, this becomes the solid platform of power, upon which to realise and actualise Wholeness. Without this dynamic duo, the Separate-Self, which hides itself, inside of all sorts of practices, cannot be spotted, routed out and integrated. The higher-mind feels the light of oneness, it intuits wholeness in all objects, it acts holistically and is not defeated by the actions of a world dominated by the Separate-Self. Why is wholeness so important? Wholeness is an example of a meta-teaching. It is a declaration that creation (all that is, both physical and non-physical) is an undivided, infinite, eternal, Whole. Nothing or anything exists or stands outside of this Wholeness. This suggests that creation is composed of just one constituent, which is called consciousness or awareness, manifesting in an endless variety of modulated and adapted forms or parts. It appears that creation is divided, made up of a multitude of separate and distinct parts, but that is just an illusion of perspective. We, as sentient individuals, are contracted aspects of that Whole, assisting the whole to know itself subjectively. We appear to ourselves and others to be separate, but that too is an illusion of our point of view. The current phase of evolution of humanity, is the realisation and recognition of this belief or higher truth, which is at best, an approximation provided for the purposes of healing. The meta-belief in wholeness, as an overarching, self-consistent explanation of the journey of evolution and growth, which provides growing comfort to the lower-mind of the Separate- Self. It allows it to relax, soften and let go of it playing small and hiding out. Bit-by-bit the search for objective gratification, diminishes, as the pursuit of wholeness becomes all- embracing. Now we can get on with the somatic and presence practices to enable one to fully realise the potential that exists within us all. This type of meta-teaching begins to dissolve our Separate-Self, providing it with a handrail to the infinite. Summary & Conclusion “Whereof one cannot s peak, thereof one must be silent.” -
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The experienced spiritual practitioner may have undergone meta-teachings whilst sitting in Satsang with a master teacher. What is shared in that setting will be a series of meta- teachings, which will activate in the moment a great sense of freedom from the Separate- self, at first incrementally, and then as the teachings are practiced and integrated, exponentially… The intellect represents the masculine and the somatic are feeling based practices, which represent the feminine – a balance of both are required to achieve wholeness. I believe some of the fear that arises in the Somatic (body-based) community, regarding the intellect, results from the abuse and suppression of the feminine, by the overt masculine, Separate-Self, patriarchy. This fear, trauma and guilt runs deep within the collective psyche. It is time to release that stuck energy, let it go and move beyond that stage and forgive these indiscretions. When the masculine intellect can provide a higher-mind perspective then the feminine can relax and trust more deeply. When that masculine intellect surrenders its absolutist approach and recognises that all roads lead to oneness, beyond rationality and conceptualisation, then the feminine within and without comes into balance with the masculine within and without. Meta-teachings depend upon the acceptance, recognition or knowing that the observer within, is our true identity, is always outside of or beyond, any finite system that it temporarily believes that it is within. Any system is always finite by virtue of its definition as a system. Infinitude is not a system, it is open-ended! As soon as the illusion of separation is realised, the containment it previously offered dissolves, revealing layers or states beyond or above,
without limitation. In order to achieve a single journey of ten feet, we must traverse an infinite number of measurable gradations always reducing the distance to go by half, which according to Zeno is impossible. However, it is always achieved, which suggests that something infinite within us, is always transcending the apparent finitude of what we believe we are, or what we perceive we are limited by. Meta teachings dissolve the human boundaries of finitude, which are created by the Separate-Self, in order to maintain its solidity as a mirror, enabling the Universe to observe its own reflection, however limited that may be. Evolution is the process of refining that mirror, to ever greater degrees of perfection ad infinitum, knowing that Absolute mirroring cannot be achieved but is always the objective. The infinite journey, which has no beginning or end, clad in ultimate, impenetrable, and insuperable mystery, is taken one step at a time, forgetting the previous steps and the knowledge of an infinite number yet to come. The finite Creation, endowed with free will, eternally evolves towards the infinite absolute of its source, seeking the Creator, which is freedom from boundaries and containment.
Meta teachings are in the words of the penultimate ‘proposition’ of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, proposition 6.54: “propositions serve as elucidations in this way: he who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to climb up over them. "(He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)." He must overcome these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.” (“Solipsism and the Limits of Sense in the 'Tractatus'”)
Meta-teachings are elucidations upon the ineffable nature of wholeness. To overcome the propositions, we must experience, or be shown wholeness in its infinite capacity, without words or concepts, allowing anything within us that is limited or separate, to dissolve into being. In talking about the limitations of language, I appear to breach my defined constraints, by talking about the ineffable. This is the crux of the nonsensical statement that “all truths are but half-truths’’ because truths are constructs of the Separate-Self” and not facts, but a practice, of continually letting go. Meta truths are not philosophical quantitative facts, but qualitative practices, for letting go of limitations.
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