“How’s it going?” This is an interesting question often used when we greet each other. On the periphery it seems like an innocuous question, but is it? What do we really seek when we ask this question? Are we really interested in another person’s “life” and if so, why?

Are we secretly comparing our lives to theirs as a measure of how we are “doing” in our own? Or are we merely voyeurs who use the pain and difficulties in other’s lives to support our own self-righteousness in having avoided their “foolish” entanglements and disasters so we can convince ourselves that we are living a “better” life? Are we attempting to “learn” from others how to avoid pain and sorrow? Or are we trying to feel “normal” or “accepted” by commiserating over similar issues or problems in order to validate our pain?

We live blithely and recklessly unaware. We are so consumed with living by the instincts of our body and emotional fears that we cannot hear the music nor see the Light of this Life that we all live within. This reminds me of a joke my master told once during a Discourse on the Dhammapada:

A little girl was being driven very erratically in a car by her grandmother.
“Don’t go around the corners so fast, Gran,” she pleaded.
“Do as I do, dear,” said the sweet old lady, “just close your eyes!”

So, what exactly constitutes the meaning of the word “life?”

We “live” at two levels. The first level is body memory, sometimes referred to as “cellular memory.” The second level is the unconscious mind that produces incessant “automatic thoughts” that come and go without any apparent logic or reasoning.

Both are rooted in “survivor psychology,” which is focused solely on how well we believe we are or are not surviving in this world. So the question of “How’s it going?” sets into motion a revealing admission of who and what we have allowed ourselves to become – a mechanism that is functioning to a great degree without our conscious permission. Sad to say, most of us have no clue how our lives are going because we have not yet discovered what Life is. We are so busy being clever about how to rationalize our “mischief” that we merely “interpret” life through the misconceptions of our body memories and the unconscious mind.

BODY MEMORY
The human body is capable of storing every event that occurs during our lifetime. This means from womb to tomb our bodies are absorbing events and storing them at a cellular level, which causes our emotions to act and react the way they do. Emotion exists at a cellular level within our bodies, which makes fear and hate seem “organic” due to the body’s ability to remember what is “pleasurable” and what is “painful.”

These body memories affect the unconscious mind by sending it continuous, desperate emotional messages that tell us we need to live in a survival modality in order to “avoid” any sign of danger. As the body ages it becomes more and more susceptible to these messages creating a psychology of paranoia. This paranoia can vary from mild to extreme depending on the perception of seeming danger in any given situation and often becomes obsessive. It creates deep, abiding fears that prevent us from living in the present and exploring the deeper realms of inner life.

In order to live as a being with a sense of consciousness beyond the survival mentality, we must first realize that we are not “living” this life. We are functioning as a mere extension of the lives of our ancestors, the legions of unconscious people who lived before us and whose genetics and DNA we carry within our bodies.

A spiritual practice is about being ALERT to and CONSCIOUS of the psychosis of the mind, thus dispelling its logic and reasoning through the rhythm of energy cultivated through meditation. This energy overtakes the body’s cellular messages and offers a third-person perspective from which to consciously observe the body’s automatic, emotional impulses rather than acting upon them.

The moment we begin to realize the paranoia we have cultivated through indifference to our body memories is the moment we begin to transcend the excessive anxiety that preoccupies our unconscious mind.

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
Our unconscious mind is influenced by two main factors: emotion, which creates many types of psychosis that deeply influence our behavior, and the collective unconscious, which is the accumulation of emotional influences from the collective whole of humanity. It is deeply important that we understand the premise of our personality is built upon our unconscious mind, which is both personal and open to the collective.

When our human emotions are dumped into the unconscious mind as unresolved pain, disappointment, cruelty, etc. we formulate a psychology of persecution where we take no responsibility for these emotions. This causes us to live in very self-destructive ways.

The unconscious mind is a powerful part of our living that, when left to it own devices, can affect our psyche so deeply it can actually prevent the powerful overtones of consciousness to prevail within us. Meditation is the only antidote to heal the pain and sorrow of the unconscious mind. Within the energy of the practice of meditation we realize a healing bliss that creates a new synergy that allows a great Love to pour out of our being and into the life we live.

The movement of the mind, where thoughts precede Life itself, becomes the illusion of our existence through experiences we conjure up from our ignorance and fear. The mind we have cultivated is very small due to our relentless pursuit of gratification as the futile attempt to avoid “death.” We have no respect for Life because we are solely focused on “death” as ever-present in the distance. Our small minds need a beginning and an end so we can experience what we “think” is “ life” in the middle. All of this is insanity.

The very meaning of the life we are here to realize thrives within each of us and can only be realized by cultivating Loving energy and allowing it to heal our entire lives. It is useless and unnecessary to allow our minds to make us feel pain and sorrow. Once we become willing to live beyond the hypnotic suggestions of the unconscious mind, all sorrow is resolved within. When the mind is still, such thoughts are no longer necessary and Life becomes present.

“What are we allowing to live us?” THAT IS THE REAL QUESTION.