This isn’t about putting anyone down, in fact, for practically 25 years of my life I was the walking dead until I had been enlightened.
I still have dead moments, which is fine, but the more alive I become from awakening the less I walk dead and for shorter periods of time.
All words in general are in a relative context, so from the start, words should not be attached to just what they are pointing to.
Usually, the term “dead” means that your body/mind has passed away from this world.
In this context, it means a physical body is here, yet there are no signs of being alive on a deep conscious level.
The reason that I was dead is because I didn’t realize it. Now sometimes I fall dead asleep but awakening catches me.
Trapped in Thought
Until you have distinguished the difference between “‘you” and your “thinking,” you will remain a servant of your thoughts.
Consider when you go to bed at night and you dream, but when you wake up you don’t know what you dreamed about, because you didn’t realize you were dreaming.
This is similar idea to that of someone who is “thinking“ and yet they don’t realize it, because they are not aware something is beyond the mind, which is really nothing.
People go their entire life without realizing how addicted the mind really is to thinking.
They don’t realize this because thinking, no matter what, is the only logical reality that there is.
They don’t realize that being aware of what reality is only happens from beyond the mind, and that reality is not logical, because it is.
Logic is born directly from the mind and what it perceives, whereas, reality is the nothingness awareness in between the thoughts that are perceiving.
The mind that this thinking happens through is a great tool that we can use for great use but only if we truly and deeply understand that it is only a tool and not the master.
How do we do this?
Well, firstly, there is nothing to do. Doing takes time and anything that takes time, takes mind.
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” ― Eckhart Tolle
Find out what is beyond the thoughts through the non-movement of thought. Whatever you find happens right now without a second and does not need a second.
Belief That Thought is The Absolute Truth
Where do these thoughts of the mind come from?
Consider how developed your mind has become from the second you were born.
It was likely that your parents, or whoever raised you, taught you how to walk, talk, eat and all the very basic essentials for you to survive on this planet.
All those essential are a form of conditioning and rightfully so.
Then you go from the very basics, the essential survival conditioning and then the stages of how to think and how to feel begin.
What to think/feel comes from family, friends, school and the media.
In fact, if you take a look at this writing, it is a form of conditioning.
Any kind of information that has an impression on you and gets filtered through the senses is making an impact, influence and effect on the mind.
This is why your mind is simply not being conditioned; it is the conditioning.
You are sharing a single part of the entire collective mind, or collective conditioning.
You use these thoughts in your own creative way, but they are hardwired from the foundation of all the other thoughts of today and throughout history.
Most of this collective mind will tell you all the ways that you should be living but not enough about being internally free.
They will tell you to get good grades, go to college, get a job or career, get married, save for your old age and all the ways of creating a life, but rarely will they tell you of finding freedom within.
Most people say “No matter what I do, I just want to be happy.”
And yet, being happy is so illusory because it is passing, which is why, in order to find internal freedom, you must find out what is not illusory and, thus, what is not changing.
Freedom can be directly and most significantly correlated with internal peace, the internal feeling that I am OK in this moment.
This can either deepen your pleasurable experiences or lessen the emotional pain that you go through.
If you weren’t aware that you take yourself to be the mind, then you were unaware why you were suffering with emotional pain in the forms of anxiety, feeling overwhelmed or being angry.
When you start questioning your thoughts and whether they are based out of absolute truth, which is, then you will then begin to find that inner peace, that aliveness.
“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu means that instead of evaluating, interpreting, analyzing, grasping life, to observe life through the non-movement of mind with complete neutrality.
Life cannot be lived; it can only be realized.
Trapped in Time
Mind and time are synonymous with each other. Dead people believe that they are their mind, therefore, they believe that time (past, future) does exist and that (past and future) they are based on absolute truth.
What thoughtless, timeless space between thoughts observe in this present moment is where absolute truth and existence are revealed.
A dead person is someone who thinks that the present moment is based on time, but, in reality, you cannot and have never directly experienced past or future.
The only thing, that you can be directly aware of, regardless of what time is, is your inner body awareness of this neutral present moment.
This moment is eternal; it just appears to be in the form of past and future because the mind makes it appear that way.
The direct awareness of this moment with every cell in your body is only revealed when you aware of that which does not think.
Life cannot be lived, it can only be revealed as you, and if you think that it can be lived, then you’re dead.
If someone thinks that who they are is their mind, then they will probably think that they can live life and that it can be lived through the mind.
Mind and time are inseparable, so if you think that you are the mind, then you will be trapped in time and trapped in mind.
You are not a someone or a something. You are the neutral observation through stillness.
On a logical level in this world, time (past and future) is absolutely necessary to get around in this world, for practical reasons.
You need past (memory) to do basic things that you have learned and anticipation (future) for general guidance in order to survive.
Yet, because the past and future used for practical uses does not make them the absolute truth.
When you make the present moment the utter foundation of your life, then you can use past and future for a more enriching experience in your life and be more fully alive while doing so.
Live passionately, intimately within this moment for what it is, which is.
Following The System
What do you consider when you think about the system?
- Elementary School—to middle school—to high school. Graduate.
- Then graduate from high school and then go to college.
- Then go from college to career;
- Then go from career to retirement;
- Or from retirement to physical death.
I’m not saying that I agree or disagree with this lifestyle, but to say that it’s based on absolute truth would be really far.
In the reality of your inner truth, you are not bound by the limits of any system, any structure, rules or ways to live.
When someone believes that they are their mind, then there is nothing else but to follow the system that has been put in place—handed down through history.
When you allow yourself to act from who you are in the absolute sense, which is the timeless, thoughtless space, then spontaneity will come through you and whatever comes out of that is a spontaneous lifestyle.
“When you walk out on the way, the way appears.” – Rumi
The Need for Material Gain for Fulfillment.
- I will be happy with a brand new house…
- I will be happy with a brand new car…
- I will be happy with a brand new boat…
- I will be happy with that next material…
Materials are not bad, in fact they can make our lives much more fun and have given us a certain comfortability level.
They should be greatly appreciated for what they are, however which way we are perceiving them.
However, the borrowed thoughts from the world that make us believe that we will find lasting peace and happiness once we achieve or acquire such materials, will ultimately make us suffer.
Consider the presents that you get at Christmas time.
You are super happy when you got something that you so desired, but as time passes your happiness based on that material, ultimately will dwindle.
The best way you can look at a material is with gratitude, for once wanting them and for now holding them in your possession.
Gratitude, however, is much deeper than with the material itself, it is being fulfilled in this moment, as the thoughtless space that wants and desires nothing else.
Materials may make you happy for a moment, but thoughtless gratitude will make you a more fulfilled person forever.
Living Comfortably
At face value, it seems like comfortability makes you happy, makes you peaceful.
It is only the mind that is comfortable however, the mind has made its mission to be comfortable.
How and why would the mind, who so desires to make you it’s servant, want to be uncomfortable?
Absolute aliveness comes when living on the edge; being pushed out of your comfort zone helps you to snap into the moment.
When facing your fears and going out on a limb, you will feel a sense of aliveness trickling throughout your body.
Not always thought.
Fear can actually hold you back and put you into comfortability or by facing it, it can make you feel fully alive like nothing ever has before.
And the more that you face your fear and feel the aliveness from it, the more you will go out on limbs.
And fear itself is nothing but psychology, nothing but the mind created from the fears of the collective conditioning.
And now because you know that you are not your mind, then you can detach from what the world deems fearful.
Remember the word of the title of this article, “dead” person?
Death makes so many people cringe; the world doesn’t want to recognize death as a blessing and so has made the human race afraid of it.
Now nobody wants to face their death awareness; this would be wiping away everything that is subject to death, the body/mind, and finding out what’s left.
Facing your fears means you will eventually die to the false thoughts that originally caused fear.
This will teach you that all thoughts are not based on reality, giving you a sense of intense aliveness.
“You’re not living until it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to you whether you live or die. At that point you live. When you’re ready to lose your life, you live it. – Anthony De Mello
Being dead means that you aren’t willing to face the death of everything that is untrue, including thoughts, belief systems, past, future and anything the mind interprets.
Being alive, means that through the absence of thoughts in this very instant that you are no longer separate from life and that it can’t be lived.