Recuperar la claridad mental - Taoísmo

Maybe you're walking home with a guy you really like after a night in the college bar, or maybe you and another fella are heading back to his and a taxi after meeting in a club, or perhaps you've gone home with someone after a really great fourth date. There are lots of times and places where we need to say what we want and what we don't want. Whatever the moment, have the consent conversation. A message from Kuhn, a government of Ireland agency. When somebody has a seizure, it all becomes clearer when you know what to do. Time the seizure. If it's over five minutes, call an ambulance. Keep the area around the person safe. Stay with them after the seizure passes. Time, safe, stay means you can make a real difference. Be clear on how you can help. Visit epilepsy.ie and learn more about time, safe, stay funded and sponsored by UCB Farmer. The clarity is not the absence of darkness. It's that ability to see injustice in the heart itself, the perturbation, not simplifying the world so that it becomes fast, but developing a quality of look that made it essential, even in the apparent confusion. A mountain lake does not leak the clouds that pass through the sky. The reflection and, however, the water remains transparent. The true clarity works like this. It takes everything without disturbing. This clarity does not belong to anyone in particular. Wait in each one of us, like the clear water, wait under the ice, removed. It is not built by the accumulation of knowledge or the analysis taken to the extreme. It simply revels when the agitation is heavy, when we create the silent space of its manifestation. The ancient masters compared this clarity with the moon that reflects in the calm water. The moon does not make any effort to appear in the stank, and the stank does not make any effort to receive it. When the conditions are reunited, the reflection naturally appears, perfect and luminous. We live in a particularly beautiful world. The information is contradicted. The options are multiplied without the criteria to be clarified. The relationships are complied in a constant mutation. Each day brings its notice charge that looks like annular las de la víspera. The advices that contradict what we had received. The requirements that take our attention in opposite directions. In front of this modern confusion, the two temptations are given to us. Refuge us in artificial certifications that calm us, but do not follow us. Or resign us to a permanent fog that paralyzes us and cuts us. However, there is a third life, which has explored the wise, Taoists and the masters in, since thousands of years ago. The clarity that makes the mental void. The simplicity that reveals the essential. The pure tension that sees things as such as they are, and as such that we laugh as they were. This had required a particular learning, not to acquire something new, but to learn, patiently, what darkens our natural vision. We all do this with this capacity to clearly see, as the recent has been, that look at the world with new eyes, without the filters that the experience and fear will gradually deposit its gaze. An Anciano was found at the edge of a stank, agitated by the wind, and served by the cites and blessed of the animals that came to see. A young searcher approached and asked him how he could see the background of a water tank. Anciano smiled sweetly and simply told him to sit and wait. They remained in silence for an hour. Progressively the agitation went on, the wind went on, the water ran into its tranquility, and suddenly the background of the stank appeared with a perfect nose. The murmurus knew then that the clarity had never been absent, which was only more expensive for agitation, and that our mind works exactly the same way. The water has already been clear. We didn't need to learn the transparency, just to stop being enturbed. Our confusion rarely comes from the complexity of the outside world. In addition, frequently from our agitation inside, which projects its turbulence on reality. We look at the world through a water that we agitate ourselves, and then we follow nothing distinctively. This agitation adopts several ways that we all know intimately, although we are not always aware of them. This first thing, the insesante of the mind, which comments, judges, compares, anticipates and lies without ever resting as a market where all the vendors cry at the same time. This interior commentator has an opinion on everything, an interpretation for each event, an inquiry for each possibility. Never falls truly, even through the night in our dreams, continues its monologue. In this old interior, the subtle messages from the present are lost, like a delicate melody that can't be heard, when the radio sounds to all volume. We lose the nuances, the discreet signals, the quiet evidences that would guide us if only we could perceive them. After all, the emotions that remain in the shadow and color our perception without us being aware of it. Fear brings us to see danger everywhere, transforming each uncertainty into threat, each novelty in real potential risk. The ira does not perceive us, agressions where perhaps there was only darkness or indifference. The sadness fills all the nuances of loss, making us anticipate separations in each meeting, in each beginning. These emotions are not bad in itself, they are even precious messages when we know to listen to them, but when they remain unconscious, they act like wild gaffes that we have forgotten on our nose. Deforming everything we look at, without us realizing that distortion comes from us and not from the world. And then there are our wishes and sorrows that make us see what we want to see, the place of what is really there. We project our hopes on situations, we interpret the signals according to our wishes. We force reality to correspond to our expectations, and so we lose the information that our preferences contradict. How many times have we ignored obvious warnings because they did not correspond to what we wanted to believe? How many times have we seen promises where there was only our own desire to reflect? A teacher observed a day of his disciples who debatable passionately to know if a flag floating on the wind, if it moved or if there was a vehicle. Some argued that the flag was moving because it was going to be a dollar. Others had the flag that was on the wind that was moving, and that the flag only responded to its movement. The debate started every one defending his position with conviction. The teacher interrupted him gently, saying that neither the flag nor the wind moved, it was his mind that it moved. The silence that followed was more eloquent than all his discussions. This intervention reveals that our confusions are frequently of our incapacity to distinguish between what is really happening and what is happening in our interpretation of what is happening. Most of the time we do not see the situation directly but through the filter of our concepts, of our mental categories, of our experiences, pasts, of our future projections. This permanent mediation creates a distance that forms our perception and generates unnecessary complications. We do not debate truly about the flag or the wind. We debate about our ideas about the flag and the wind, which is very different. The Taoist tradition teaches us to re-encontact the natural clarity. We must first recognize this tendency that we have to complicate what is simple. The教 says that the path of the wise is to act without fighting. And this教 applies first to our way of perceiving. See, without forcing, understanding, without training. Let the truth be revealed in a place of extortioning it through the analysis. This effort can seem passive to the first view. But it really requires a very fine attention quality, a very alive presence that knows to take without winning. This emphasis requires a particular quality of attention that the contemplative traditions call "the mind a mirror". As a perfect mirror that reflects everything that is presented before it, without deformation, without movement, and without preference, this state of pure consciousness can lead to reality as it is in its complexity and its simplicity without changes. The mirror does not choose what it reflects. It does not prefer the beautiful images to the ugly. It does not retain the agradable reflections to reject the others. It takes everything with the same equanimity and precisely this equanimity that allows it to reflect with exactitude. Cultivating this mirror begins to learn to calm the mental agitation that is in our vision. This pacification does not be mediated to the pressure forced by thoughts, which would only add agitation to agitation, but for a more subtle process of decidentification and relaxation. Want to have your thoughts by force is like wanting to calm the waves of the ocean by copying them with a baston. Each blow creates new waves and agitation only grows. The first step consists of developing what the masters call the "silent observer". That capacity of giving a step back respect to the flow of our thoughts to look at them as phenomenally passengers in places of absolute truth. This position of observation creates a space of freedom where we are already drawn automatically for every thought that arises. We can see a thought appearing, recognize it because it is a thought between others and let it pass without closing us to Him and reject Him. This observation is blurred, quickly reveals a true liberator. Our thoughts are not us, arise and disappear in the space of our consciousness like the clouds in the sky. We are no more our thoughts of what the sky is the clouds that they atravies it. This sense of consciousness, simply in appearance, is transformed deeply into our relationship with our mental life. Let us identify ourselves with every thought, every emotion, every passing humor. We discover, in ourselves, a more vast, more stable space that can contain all these movements without being erased by them. An average Taoist explained a visit to the clouds that passed up there. They do not ask for the sky its permission to appear or disappear from the sky and the sky attracts them all with the same serenity, the dark, like the luminous ones, the quick ones, like the slow ones. Do not try to retain the white clouds nor expel the clouds of torment. Simply remain what it is, empty and open and the clouds pass. Turn as this sky for your thoughts, spacious and welcoming. But never dragged by none of them. This metaphor of the sky reveals the nature of the true clarity. It is not the absence of mental phenomena, but the presence of a conscious space is quite vast to contain them all without being erased by none. This inner space allows the situation to be revealed in its true nature without being formed by our automatic reactions. When we offer this space to the events of our life, we can show ourselves as we are, without the veil of our fears and our desires. This spaciousity adheres to the patient's practice. What the Taoists call it, the "Woo-Way-Mental", the art of not intervening in the natural flow of thoughts and emotions. The place of struggle against the state of buildings or to close us to the sacred states, we learn to maintain a stable presence that allows everyone the inner phenomena to unfold and be resolved naturally. This enfoque confies the idyllic wisdom of the mind, which is known to find its balance when it stops to disturb it. A old story tells that a great man had a horse that had a day towards the hills. His neighbors came to console him for his bad luck. The great man simply replied, "Who knows if it's bad luck?" The next day, the horse returned with three wild horses. The neighbors came to congratulate him for his good fortune. The great man replied, "Who knows if it's good luck?" The next day, his son tried to mount one of the wild horses. He was raised and broke his leg. The neighbors returned with his condolences. The great man replied again, "Who knows if it's good luck?" A week later, the army passed through the town to recruit all the young horses. The son of the great man, with his leg broken, was forgiven. This story teaches us the wisdom of not just too much, fast, of not letting the events like good or bad, before the time has revealed his true nature. This suspension is the same in a clear way. The non-intervention demands a particular courage, to remain present with incomodity without looking immediately to resolve it or escape from it. Many of our confusions are just from this tendency to avoid the unpleasant sensations. What makes us go towards activities, thoughts or emotions that leave us even more clearly. We are afraid of the void, fear of silence, fear of what could emerge if we were to agitate ourselves. However, it is precisely in this void and this silence where clarity can manifest itself. The conscious breathing offers a precious anchor to develop this capacity of non-reactive presence. Going back regularly to the simple observation of the blow that enters and that comes out, we create a reflection of simplicity in the heart of the mental complexity. The blow is always there, always available, always present, don't lose anything, don't just want anything. Simply, it continues its natural movement of inspiration and inspiration, by putting us on this movement. We find a point of stability in the middle of the interior tempestres. A meditation teacher advised his students that when the mind is agitated like a crazy monkey jumping from a branch to a branch, there is no need to persevere it in its acrobatics if not to return to the sky like a solid tree and let the monkey be agitated with its eyebrows. A long time later, he will be able to rest. This image reveals a fundamental strategy to counter the clarity. In the place of fighting against the agitation, we simply learn not to feed it with our attention. This indirect blow reveals frequently more effective than the direct confrontation. That, generally, only feeds what pretends to fight. This wisdom of the new food is applied particularly to the radiations and concerns that darken our vision. When we find them, trapped in bubbles of anxious thoughts or in endless analysis are returned in circles. Back to simplicity of the present moment it can break the cycle and restore a clearer perspective. Feel our feet in the sky hear the sounds that surround us, breathe consciously. Observe the colors and our shapes around us. These simple gestures come back to what is there now and dissipate the bubbles of what only exists in our imagination. It is notable to notice how many of our inquiries concern in situations that will never be produced. How many of our repentance recapture over a past that we cannot change. How many of our energy is spent fighting ghosts? The present is frequently much simpler and much more manageable than the catastrophic scenarios that our mind works. Going back to the present we discover frequently that we have the resources to face what is really there. Although we feel overpassed through everything that our imagination had added. This practice reveals progressively that clarity is not an extraordinary state to reach but our natural state that manifests when we are aware of darkness. As the sun always shines behind the clouds our capacity of just vision is constantly present simply shining through our temporary agitations. We do not have to create clarity we only have to be aware of interpreting it. A story tells the story of a man who was looking desperately for his gaffes everywhere in his house. Each time he was anxious for not finding them. He was looking for the cagons and looked down the clouds and went back to the dogs of the sofa. His frustration growing every minute. His wife observed it for a moment. Then he said to himself that they were on his nose. This anecdote that makes us smile describes, however, our condition ordinates with a stable precision. We look in the outside the clarity that is already in us. We complicate what is simple we lose what we have never left to be. This recognition of our innocent clarity transforms our focus of complex situations. In order to lose us on the detailed analysis of all elements we learn first to create the interior space necessary so that the understanding can emerge. This creation of space passes through a relationship aware of our need to control everything and to understand everything immediately. This relaxation does not mean abandon or passivity but the adoption of a more receptive attitude that allows the solutions to arise naturally. As a patient hunter who waits the right time to act as a hunter who knows that pulling the line will not come faster we learn to trust in the intuitive intelligence that operates beyond the analytical mind. This intelligence does not work according to our ears and our requirements. It has its own rhythm frequently slower than our impatience but also more safe and more profound. This intuitive intelligence manifests frequently at those moments of understanding its life where everything becomes of course, of course. Those distances where the solution appears as an evidence while we had cessated of looking for it. These revelations cannot be forced but they emerge naturally when we create favorable conditions, mental calm, careful presence, to solve the need of controlling the process. How many times the answer to a difficult question has come to us in the shower during a walk when waking up? In those moments in which we had stopped to think consciously on it. The Taoist tradition shows that this form of direct knowledge is more reliable than conceptual knowledge because it emerges of our union with the situation instead of our separation of it. When we analyze a problem we put it in front of us as an example object. When we contemplate it, we enter it we avoid it from inside and this intimacy reveals the dimensions that the external observation cannot reach. When we assess to avoid the problems as adversaries to overcome to get them as mysteries to explore our perspective changes radically. What we took for complexity was frequently only a complication created by our focus. Many situations are quickly returned when we assess to avoid them with our preconceptions and our urges to find them with an open curiosity and patient curiosity. A master of money explained a day to his apprentice before a farm plant that could happen analyzing the problem. Consulting manuals and testing different treatments or could simply sit close to it in silence and let his attention disposes it completely. Frequently I said "The own plant will tell you what you need if you know to listen to it." The apprentice was skeptical but tried it. He felt close to the plant. He breathed deeply and left that his attention was put on her without looking to understand nor to solve anything. After a moment he noticed that the earth seemed particularly compact around the roots. He floated gently to the ground and a few days later the plant had found his vigor. The diagnosis had come not from the analysis but from the attention presence. This deep speech applies to all the domains where we look for clarity in our relationships our professional elections our important decisions or our existential questions. The situation has its own intelligence its own logic, internal which reveals who knows how to listen to them with patience and respect. Our relationships we don't know if we know how to go. Our bad things guide us if we go away from them. Our streets have gone out. They teach us if we accept to have them. This hears and reads a particular quality of inner silence not the silence of the absence but the silence full of a total attention. This active silence creates a space where the subtle signals can be perceived where the hidden connections can be revealed where the depth of the situations can appear. It is not a empty silence but a vibrant silence of presence as the king in a voice that will lead full of a total attention. Cultivate this silence demands practice and patience because our mind is used to noise and agitation and we resist first to this immobility. The silence is uncomfortable almost threatening to seek to fill it, to move it, to go away from it but progressively we discover that this silence does not get angry we enrich ourselves with a way of perception more refined and more fair. It becomes a friend a refuge a source of renewal. This refined perception transforms our relationship with the difficult emotions that often darken our vision. In order to suffer them as molestias or to fight them as enemies we learn to take them as gatekeepers' messages of precious information. The ira can reveal important limits that have been overpriced essential values that have been violated. The sad can show a process of dual need a loss that asks to be honoured. The anxiety can indicate a desalination between our actions and our deep values a direction that does not really come to us. When we feel rejected automatically these emotions to hear them with compassion can become in guides to more clarity about ourselves and our circumstances. These are of being obstacles to become annihilated in our search of understanding. This transformation of our relationship with the difficult emotions is one of the most precious of contemplative practice. This enfoque requires what Buddhists call "equanimity", that ability to remain centered and present even in the heart of the inner obstacles. Equanimity is not the indifference. It is not the displeasure that no longer feels anything. It is more well that stability of the heart that can take all the emotions without being submerged by none. That amorous presence that remains available even when everything seems to be broken. A wise man says that the one that remains calm in the temperament is the one that enters panic cannot perceive. And that clarity does not come from the absence of challenges but from our capacity to remain centered in the heart of challenges. The Spirit-experimental is not the reason for the sea to be always calm. It develops the ability to navigate in all the times. In the same way, we do not seek a life without difficulties. What it would be, even if not the ability to cross difficulties, with presence and discernment. This stability inside is acquired by the regular practice of this return to the center that meditation, contemplation or simply the moments of silence aware of our daily life allow. These practices are not reserved eyes who have time to lose. They are needed for anyone who wants to navigate in the complexity of modern existence without losing. Some minutes of conscious presence can each day transform progressively our relationship with the world and with ourselves. This presence is increased. It reveals that many of our confusions make our tendency to project the past and the future about the present moment. We interpret the current situations through the filter of our previous experiences seeing the repetitions where perhaps there are situations entirely new. We complicate the present with our previous and anxious passions adding to the real difficulties all those we imagine. This temporary projection allows us to lose simplicity and the evidence of what that moment is. The return to the present is not a life to the moment but a recognition that is here and now where life really splits and where clarity can manifest itself. It is in the present where decisions are taken where relationships live where creations emerge. The past does not exist but in our memories the future still does not exist but in our projections. Only the present is real. Only the present is alive. Only the present is the place of our power of action and transformation. A fisherman observed the water of the river and saw her at the same time her depth and simplicity. The water does not seek to be deep reflected. It is natural. It is not strength to run towards the sea simply follow its slope. In the same way clarity is not achieved by force it is revealed by simplicity. This observation does not remind us that clarity is not a achievement but a revelation not a construction but a discovery we do not manufacture clarity. We allow it to manifest by impeding it. This understanding transforms our relationship with the challenges and problems in order to save them as enemies to overcome force. We learn to find them as opportunities to develop our clear vision capacity. Each confusion becomes an invitation to return to the center. Each difficulty a vocation to practice the presence. Each journey is insolent. A call to release our usual strategies to stop emerging a new answer. When we cease to resist our difficulties to examine them with benevolent curiosity. We discover frequently that they take at least the keys of their resolution. This discovery does not come from the external analysis but from the respectful intimacy that we develop with our situations. We approach to our problems with sweetness in the place of aggressiveness. We create the conditions for them to reveal their nature and their possible solutions. This intimacy is characterized by the enfoque Taoist knowledge knowing, joining the place separating understanding, embracing the place of dissectioning. This contemplative union reveals the aspects of reality that remain inaccessible to the enfoque purely analytic. The analysis is divided to understand separate the elements to examine them one by one. This enfoque has its value but it can also make us lose sight of the set. The movement the life that animates everything. The contemplation maintains the unity between the details. See the parts without losing everything. This revelation does not decrease the importance of the reason and the analysis but the place in a more wide perspective where they become tools to the service of wisdom in a place defined by themselves. The true clarity integrates the intellectual precision and intuitive justice in a unified vision that lowers the complexity without losing in the complication. It knows how to use the analysis when the analysis is useful and when it becomes an obstacle. This integration demands what the teachers call the art of the balance. Know when to analyze and when to solve when to think and when to simply be present when to act and when to wait. This art does not learn through fixed rules but through the development of a fine sensitivity to the needs of each moment. Each situation is unique. Each instant requires a fresh answer and this freshness can only come from a tense presence that is not blinded from the recipes of the past. This sensitivity transforms our relationship with time and patience. The place of wanting the clear, immediately we learn to trust in the natural process of maturity that allows the comprensions to be deeply grounded. Some truth can not be learned from Golpe and for time to dive to integrate to reveal all his dimensions this patience is not resignation but a conscious participation in the natural rhythm of the revelation. The fruit lasts faster because it takes away from him. The child does not learn to walk faster because he sleeps. Some processes have their own temporality that our impatience can not accelerate without hurting them. Learn to respect these rhythms to accompany the maturity in a place to strengthen them in a part of the art of clarity. This patience is not passive. It is a very subtle action that consists of creating and maintaining favorable conditions while leaving the process following its course. This wisdom shows us finally that clarity is not a state that we reach once by all but a quality that we continue to cultivate. As a gardener who takes care of his garden with constancy we learn to keep the favorable conditions in the flowering of our vision, clear. The garden has never been finished. It demanded a regular attention, a amorous presence, a patient's work that is renewed with the stations. Our clarity interior works in the same way. These conditions include the regularity of our contemplative practices. The benevolent vigilance makes our tendency to complicate the cultivation of qualities like patience, humility and compassion that is not our capacity of perception just. This cultivation does not demand its heroic forces but an constant and sweet attention to the movements of our inner experience. Some minutes of conscious presence each day it is worth more than time or occasional meditation intense. It is the regularity that transforms not intensity. The humility unites a particular role in this cultivation. Do you remember that our vision is always partial that our certainty can be illusions that reality always surpasses our conception of it. This humility is not lack of confidence but an opening an availability to be surprised to learn to review our comprensions when the experience invites us to it. It protects us from the rigidity that is enemies of clarity. Our vision is also clear in compassion. When we look at the world and ourselves with compassion eyes we see things that the critical look cannot perceive. Compassion lets our eyes open our hearts. It allows us to understand from within what the analysis is cold cannot capture and lighten the motivations or cults. The wounds that express aggressiveness the fears that see the most face of arrogance. The art of clarity reveals itself as one of the most direct days towards wisdom and inner peace. The freedom of the tyranny of confusion connects us with our natural capacity of just vision. It transforms our relationships revealing the beauty simply hiding behind the relationships. It enriches our work allowing us to act from the understanding in place from the agitation. Our inquietudes show us that most of our fears concern ghosts in place of realities. More deeply this clarity is found. We reveal that we are not condemned to errors in confusion but that we pose in ourselves all the necessary resources to navigate with wisdom in the complexity of existence. This revelation is deeply liberating. We return our power our dignity to be conscious capable of participating lucidously in the mystery of life. In this navigation knowledge is perhaps the most precious teaching of the Taoist tradition. We are not separated from the wisdom we seek. We are not exiled from the clarity we wish. We are this clarity temporarily washed by our agitations but always present, always accessible, always ready to rebel. The stank fangous never left to be clear water. The ice was only a beautiful passenger and when the agitation began, when we created the silent space of the manifestation. The clarity appears by itself, naturally, as always has done. As always will. [music] Maybe you're walking home with a guy you really like after a night in the college bar. Or maybe you and another fella are heading back to his and a taxi after meeting in a club. Or perhaps you've gone home with someone after a really great fourth date. There are lots of times and places where we need to say what we want and what we don't want. Whatever the moment have the consent conversation. A message from Coon, a government of Ireland agency. The Go-Miles supported by AIB has been helping families around the world for over 40 years. This year we are asking you to step up together with your community to continue one of Ireland's favorite Christmas traditions. Search AIB Go-Miles to see where you, your family and your friends can find your local Go-Miles event. AIB for the life you're after.