As someone who enjoys the online marketing world, I have found that, after peeling off the layers, what marketing truly is…
..it is selling.
And going even deeper into selling, I found that selling is all directly related to human psychology.
Understanding the way that the human mind thinks, behaves, and acts are your keys to making a sell.
No matter what you sell, your product or service comes down to two basic principles, either….
— You want to move your potential customer closer to pleasure
— You want to move your potential customer away from pain
I have found, however, on my spiritual journey within that there is a very basic challenge when it comes to moving someone away from pain and/or towards pleasure.
And for the most part, both are a result of looking outward.
The reason I say that is because it comes down to your service or your product, which are both physical phenomena.
Both a service and a product are about rewarding you in a material or experiential way. Both material and experiential are a part of this physical world.
And anything of this physical world is limited to time.
What does this mean?
The best a product or a service can do is just to give you pleasure for the time being or take away the pain for the time being.
But both pain and pleasure are coming and going as time passes. Both pain and pleasure are going to continue coming and going to some degree so long as you have a human mind.
So, what a product/service can do for you is only temporary unless it successfully points you in the direction of that which is not temporary.
Hoping that by moving away from pain or towards pleasure, it will last, is like putting a band-aid on a broken leg…
What is the broken leg in this example?
Until you realized your true nature with that inner formless dimension, even in your pleasure, there will be a little pain looming, and sometimes your pain will turn to absolute suffering.
Most products and services are limited in that very rarely do they talk about finding peace from within.
Why?
Because….
Peace is not sexy.
Most marketing and selling come down to being entertaining. Showcasing the sexy. As long as your mind is looking for what is entertaining and what is sexy, you will continue to be a beggar.
Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer. – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
People are not concerned with true peace because they don’t know what true peace really is.
And even if a lot of humans have gotten small glimpses of peace, they are so seemingly small and minute glimpses that peace barely seems to be there.
And yet as Eckhart Tolle said…
“You have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is INFINITELY GREATER than anything the world can offer.”
What this means is that….
When you realize more than just a glimpse of that timeless nature in you, then you will not only recognize peace, but the peace will become so infinitely intense within that it will be pure Nirvana.
When this happens, everything that seemed sexy or entertaining prior will practically hold almost no weight in terms of what you really want.
Nirvana does not happen as a result of doing.
The world is so fixated on what we are doing in the hopes that through doing, we can eventually be free.
This is the result of being so fixated on being dominated by thought that it misses the internal freedom it’s looking for.
Internal freedom is NOT something that is right in front of us. It is our true nature already.
Nirvana is not something that you search for, acquire, or achieve. It is realizing your essential nature that hits you out of nowhere.
A great number of humans only know their experience because they only see thought. Thought and experience are almost one and the same.
Realizing who you are means realizing what the present moment actually is.
So, what is the present moment?
Everyone claims that you should live in the present moment.
Live in the present moment. Live in the present moment. Rinse, wash and repeat.
On and on, to the point where it becomes a cliché. It has become a positive affirmation of sorts.
Something that sounds intellectually pleasing, but the fundamental challenge is that until you truly know WHAT the present moment is, you will continue to try and live here.
The reason that you continue to try and be in the present moment, or to live in the present moment is that you don’t realize that you have NEVER been outside of this moment.
The reason you think that there is a past and that there is a future is again that you don’t truly know what the present moment is.
If you did know, then you would know that the most absolute, most concrete reality is!
And that the past exists as memory and the future exists as anticipation, both thoughts in the mind.
But neither have DIRECTLY been experienced except as thoughts, but not felt in deepest part of your existence.
Let’s start with what the present moment is NOT.
*It’s not your present moment circumstance, although your circumstance is contained within it…
*It’s not what you are “doing” during this moment, although what you’re doing is contained within it….
*It’s not what the present moment “clock time” is and is being observed by timelessness…
*It’s not a moment in between the past and future….
*It’s not a thought. And thoughts are contained within it.
All of these aspects exist within it, but not outside of it, meaning they don’t actually have a separate isolated existence on their own without the one omnipresence within which they all appear and disappear out of…
In fact, if you go even more granular, it’s not the present moment that you don’t know, it’s the present moment AWARENESS that the mind does not know.
People equate knowing something like knowledge, intelligence, specialness, worthy & admirable. But the truth is NONE of these truly matter if you are not internally free.
So, how is one truly aware of presence?
Well, aside from feeling the moment inside your body without a second and without a thought, let’s take a look at what David Carse has to say about it in the book Perfect Brilliant Stillness.
A metaphor…
“In the retina of your eye, there are two kinds of cells: cone cells and rod cells. The cones are clustered toward the center of the retina; what is in the center of your field of view is focused on them, and they register shades of light and, especially, color.
The rods are more numerous around the edge of the retina, and they pick up what is on the edge of your field of view, in your peripheral vision.
They do not distinguish color, can discern only black and white, but pick out contrast better than the cones.
This is why the rod cells are important for night vision and explains an odd phenomenon; that night vision is better in your peripheral vision.
Walking in the Vermont woods at night, I learned at a young age that WHAT YOU COULD MAKE OUT IN THE DARKNESS, WHAT YOU COULD SEE DEPENDED ON HOW YOU LOOKED.
Repeatedly, you would see a movement in your peripheral vision and turn to look directly at it, to see only darkness.
Eventually, one learns not to turn, NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY, but to keep it just in your peripheral vision, JUST AT A POINT WHERE YOU ARE ALMOST NOT LOOKING AT ALL.
THAT IS WHEN YOU CAN SEE BEST.
Subtle….
It is lost, overlooked if there is positive movement, direct searching, active thinking, anything but profound stillness.
FOCUS ON IT, AND IT IS GONE.
All of the talking, all of them asking questions, reading books, thinking, focusing, seeking, is all counterproductive because it is pushing in the wrong direction, creating activity and turbulence, and noise.
Just as there is Wei Wu Wei, the action which is not action, action which is not willed, is not volitional but witnessed as spontaneously happening: so too there is a seeing which is not seeing, a seeing which happens without trying, WITHOUT LOOKING.
Asleep in the dream, the everyday activity is to look without truly seeing.
What is called for is seeing without looking, the seeing happening WITHOUT THERE BEING A ONE WHO LOOKS?
So, what did David Carse mean by “Without there being a one who looks?”
What he means is that it is NOT YOUR MIND that is aware of present moment awareness.
The mind can only grasp, interpret, and comprehend past and future because both of these are thoughts.
So, when you think with memory, you’re thinking about all the situations and circumstances that your self-image has been through.
When you anticipate what you’re going to do, or what’s going to happen, you are anticipating the self-image or thought-identity.
The mind sees this self-image as a separate, isolated someone.
Being aware of present moment awareness is not about what your self-image sees.
Because the mind cannot comprehend presence, there is no self-image, no someone to see.
Also, if you take a look at the word nowhere, within it, you will see the words now and here.
How can the present moment be nowhere?
Again, you think of yourself as a self-image in a certain location right now, relative to someone or something else which is over there.
But because there really is no self-image here, no someone, no “me,” then present moment awareness is not a certain location.
Consider it like space. Space is not a specific location, so thus it is nowhere, and yet occupies everywhere.
Present moment awareness is not a location, but being aware of the one who is looking when ALL THOUGHT dissolves.
I want you to pay closer attention to something else Carse said….
“Peripheral view:…
The mind is so fixated on things and labels that the mind cannot see beyond what the mind can see.
The fixation on its experience is such that it creates a separate seeming reality based on its lone experience.
But not ABSOLUTE REALITY, which cannot be seen from thinking about it.
That’s why Carse says
“Walking in the Vermont woods at night, I learned at a young age that WHAT YOU COULD MAKE OUT IN THE DARKNESS, WHAT YOU COULD SEE DEPENDED ON HOW YOU LOOKED.
Repeatedly, you would see a movement in your peripheral vision and turn to look directly at it, to see only darkness.”
There is nobody to be aware of the present moment because you keep trying to be aware of the present moment through your mind, from the self-image or thought identity.
With eyes WIDE OPEN, you can only be aware of the presence, with no thought, to the point where there is a peripheral view of everything already, but really no specific thing seen through the eyes.
Everything is seen as no-thing when there is no mind here to label.
Let’s take a look at a few more examples…
Before we move on, I just want you to understand that meditation is nothing more than the conscious effort to do nothing and allow present moment awareness to be…
Nothing more, nothing less…
According to Sandy C. Newbigging on Meditation…
“To meditate and tune into your peaceful awareness practice GAAWO – which stands for being Gently Alert with your Attention Wide Open. Gaze straight ahead and notice what you see, then allow your field of vision to open wide, not moving your head or eyes, but notice what you can see in your peripheral vision, up and down and left and right. Just rest into this feeling for a while and allow your mind and body to rest into this peaceful awareness.”
And from Cloe B of a Calmer-You.com
“Focus on using peripheral vision
To activate your parasympathetic nervous system, use this simple meditation technique: focus your gaze on an imaginary point in front of you; relax your focus, and use your peripheral vision, as if you are trying to take in everything around you with soft focus. It signals to your brain to relax. The more you practice this technique – the faster it will help you to relax in any situation.”
There were two key points in both of these statements…
#1. Gently alert
#2. Soft Focus
The reason why these two terms gentle and soft are used is that until the human mind is aware of present moment awareness, it is producing so much energy, so much effort, and straining on thinking its way through life situations and circumstances.
A WHOLE lot of energy is required of the mind to remember things from the past and to focus on what it’s going to do in the future.
It ends up becoming draining, tenses up the body (creating stress and anxiety), and simply becomes exhausting.
Gently and softly being aware of your peripheral vision AS present moment awareness is essentially what it means to unlearn.
Being aware of who you are through present moment awareness allows your body to take a break from the mind, from the obsessive-compulsive stream of thoughts.
Moving back to pain and pleasure, rather than seeking to move away from pain and towards pleasure through the things of this world that are going to give potential satisfaction, allow the mind to dissolve, to find what it truly wants to know itself.
Find that perfect brilliant stillness from within that does not leave you even in pain, and that does not rely on the way your mind interprets the way that the world should or should not go.
And even deeper than that, the way the world should or should not be, which already IS beyond the mind.
