Problem of a Seeker

 

Photo Credit: Quotefancy | Adyashanti

Problem of a Seeker

The basic problem before a spiritual seeker is not how to know, but how to be, how to exist. Knowing is easy, that it is not the problem. The real problem is how to be, how the being should be strengthened. Knowing can grow easily; knowing has its own ways of growing.

Knowing grows in the memory and memory is mechanical, hence we have mechanical devices such as computers and mobiles with computing ability which have more or less taken over the brain’s functions. These gadgets are more efficient than the human brain and they can do things much faster than the human being. Because of such gadgets the brain is used less and less, some of the functions like remembering phone numbers and addresses, simple mental calculations – people have stopped remembering or doing these things. As a result, that part of the brain has become weak.

The mind is a mechanical device – one can go on feeding it with knowledge and information, and it keeps growing. One may not be aware, but nothing comes out of the mind which has not been put there earlier – nothing. Thus, as far as the mind is concerned nothing is original, everything is just a repetition. At the most, one can make fresh combinations, that’s all. This is one kind of parasitic growth which happens at the cost of our being.

Our being, means our consciousness with which we are born. The mind means the accumulation of information in our consciousness since childhood – from society, through education, through culture and so on. We do not take birth with a mind but with consciousness, the mind comes later.

The mind seems infinite in its own way, and one has to use it constantly. We don’t remember when we were not the mind, and that’s the problem: to remember that we have to create a space, a gap, when we are not the mind. Try to remember our birth, when we were actually no-mind. We get involved with the mind to such an extent that we start identifying with it, we become the mind. The mind becomes the master and we the slave.

Meditation helps in creating that gap so that we can again become the master, the master of our own mind. By controlling the mind, we control our thoughts, we live in the present moment, awareness becomes sharp, soul consciousness comes to the fore. We slowly become one with existence, with our own being. The mind is no more a problem.