The Tree

Who I am, as I understand myself now, can be illustrated by a tree. But before about the tree, if I say, “I am hungry.” or “I am thinking.” “I have hunch or an intuition.” you would know, if you think about it that I am referring to different aspects of me.

When I say, “I am hungry.” I refer to my body and the body communicates to my mind by feelings and action e.g. a feeling of hunger, thirst, pain, comfort and so on. To make my point clearer, let’s represent the body as the leaf on the tree.

When I say, “I am thinking.” I refer to my mind or ego and illustrate it by the stem of the leaf on the tree and the mind communicates by thoughts and words e.g. reasoning, logic, imagination and so on.

When I say, “I have hunch or an intuition.” I refer to my 6th sense as I illustrate it by a twig or a brunch that connects the tree to the stem of the leaf and it communicates to my mind as knowing. We just know and our mind usually responds to that knowing as it has been trained to do. This knowing can be interpreted by the mind into thought or words but it is only and approximate interpretation colored by the cultural upbringing.

All or most of my knowledge and experience seem to be nicely illustrated by a tree as I began to depict it above. I began with a body representing a leaf of the tree. But what is the tree? Tree in my illustration represents All That There Is. That is – God, as some call Him or Perception or Consciousness. It is that which is expressing itself in every form it can.

When I think of “All-That-Is”, represented by a tree, then my body is a leaf and your body is another leaf. In this analogy we could say that I am the leaf plus the stem of the leaf representing my mind, plus the sub-branch representing my soul, plus the branch representing some higher aspect of me and the trunk of the tree representing even higher aspect of me.

Some consider themselves to be just the leaf of the tree in my illustration and that is all that they will experience in their awareness. Yet there are those who consider themselves to be a soul having a body and a mind and so on.

The real you and the real me is one and the same. The highest of you and me can say, "I Am All That there Is, expressing myself through everyone and everything. I am expressing myself with these words, using the mind and the body that is writing them and experiencing these words using the eyes that are reading them."

I like Steven Harrison's answer to: “what do you mean by the addiction of separation?” From the "Dialog with a Religiously Inclined Inquirer"

“The mystic is tempted by his love for God, even after he discovers that maintaining that duality separates him from the totality, which, of course, is the manifest God. So the poor mystic is in a real dilemma. He's been fasting and praying and doing all kinds of austerities for all these years. He loves his God with all his heart. He prays to God every hour of every day. God returns his worship with words of love. One day he asks God for insight into the nature of the absolute and the bounddryless nature of life is revealed to him. God shows the mystic that the God he worships is the mind's projection. God shows the mystic that there is no mystic who worships, and no God to be worshiped. There is no separation. There is no difference. The mystic is in rapture. He calls to God his thanks, his praise, his ever lasting love. But, there is only silence in response. In the mystic's realization of non-duality God has vanished.

So, after a very long night of consideration of the boundrylessness of life, the mystic calls to God once more. This time he asks for one last boon. The mystic asks God to take away the knowledge of that true nature of life and to return as his object of love.

Of course, the boon is granted, the mystic once again can worship his God. He soon forgets the totality. He is addicted to separation.

In our lives we have built our social constructions around our separation. These are the concepts through which we organize and communicate our reality. We have forgotten the totality of our existence, and, yet, the pain of our lives, the gnawing emptiness and the compulsion to fill it, are reminders that there is something beyond separation. But, we can never remain still enough to see what is beyond. We can never quiet our mind or our lives. We are addicted to separation.”

Steven Harrison has spent years looking for answers from politics, psychology and spirituality, Harrison followed teachers from East to West and discovered that what he was searching for was right in front of him in his day-to-day life. He is an international speaker on the topics of consciousness, human development, relationship and alternative education. Steven Harrison is the author of doing nothing: coming to the end of the spiritual search (crossroad publishing: ny 1997).

See sections in other articles related to this subject

Who am I or what is "I" or "me"? =>
What my God was like =>

My perspective

I’ve gone through many teachings and as I understood the principles behind the system of their teachings, I’ve realized that at least some of us need to have our own system. My latest world view perspective makes it clear to me, why there are so many teaching that claim to be the best and maybe it is so for them, for now.

Here is the summary of my perspective in 2004:

Imagine, if you were to ask each part of yourself to share something about itself, what would they tell you? What would you body, mind, ego, emotions and your soul would tell you?

I received their communications by just asking the question and intuitively writing down the answer on the behalf of that aspect of me.

I’ll begin with my soul since that is where the human-being begins. But remember, each soul has incarnated to experience something different and it will express itself differently. Just as you and I know that we have a mind and a body, I assume that our soul knows what it is. I believe that my soul has said something like:

Soul

Different minds refer to me by many different names such as: Creator, God, Christ within, the Higher Self, Spirit and by many others. The name that is given to me reflects the understanding of me by the one who names me and not who I am. Each culture or religion is naming me from their own experience of me. To different people I have chosen to reveal different aspect of me so as to have different experiences of who I am.

I can do all that you have heard that God can do and much, much more, but I have limited myself to your body and your mind to experience what can be experienced uniquely only through you. I’ve created you for myself as a vehicle to experience life or it can be said that I’ve put us together to enjoy a game. I am playing a role of being human, not only through you but through billions of human-beings.

When you say, “I am hungry.” you are identifying yourself with your body and when you say, “I think…” you are identifying yourself with your mind or when you say, “I feel …” you are identifying yourself with your emotions, but in reality, it is me who is identifying myself with that aspect of my creation.

I have placed your mind to be in charge, to be as the chairman or spokesman with full possibility to take over the whole human. Each part of this vehicle is interdependent, they depend on each other, like a symbiont - an association for mutual advantage.

It is not my intention to tell you what to do every step of the way, for then it would be my life – perfect in every way and boring. I want your full participation and that is why I’ve limited my communication to you through intuition for now. We are out to play a game. Nothing is serious, fatal or fearful and we are not in the hurry.

I have basically done what I wanted to do through you in your present incarnation and now Wally, you can do what ever you want. I’ll just experience what ever you will experience. When I think it is appropriate, I will advise and help you to attain your goals, but as a whole it is your life to do as you wish. I am always available, all you need to do is ask and listen.

Mind

I have collected much information and experience in 53 years of my life. I have concluded that it is better for me to depend on the knowledge and help of my soul, the creator or even better to let him run the whole simbiont. I really do want him to take over but he gave the job to me. What he wants, it seems, is a delicate balance of all of us working together in harmony for mutual enjoyment of life. This is very difficult for me, because before I understood my place, I was bulling and bossing every aspect of us.

Usually when I am in a mess or make a mess of things I turn to my creator but I do not always hear his response. It could be because the connection to the intuition is week (because I am not still enough) or the soul wants to see what I will choose or it wants me to sweat it out.

Note: The above perspective is not what I would naturally choose. I am more inclined for someone greater than me to direct me and tell me what to do. I suppose when I was a Christian, I was trying to be a love slave to God as Saint Paul was in the Bible.

Emotions

There are many of us. Each one has his own desires. We are created by the mind and we reside in the body. We support each other and live in clusters like a family. Our life span depends on what the mind does with us. If there is no support we gradually disappear out of existence.

In essence, Levinson found that people have three usual ways of handling a feeling:

The first way is to suppress the feeling. But suppressed feelings don't go away - they build up and fester inside, causing anxiety, tension, depression, and a host of stress-related problems. The repressed energy (or 'charge') these suppressed feelings create eventually drives you to behave in ways you don't like or understand, and which you cannot control.

The second way is to express the feeling. By 'blowing up' or losing our tempers we relieve the pressure of the accumulated emotions. This can feel good because it puts the feeling into action - but it doesn't get rid of the feeling, or the roots that create the feeling; it simply relieves the pressure of it momentarily. Negative emotions may also be unpleasant for the person on the receiving end, which in turn causes more distress and guilt.

The third common way to cope with feelings is by attempting to avoid the issue by attending instead to distractions - by talking, watching TV, eating, smoking, drinking, taking drugs, having sex, etc. But despite our attempts to escape them, the feelings are still there - and still take their toll in the form of stress.

But there is another option for handling a feeling - you can focus on it, fully experience it, and then let go of it: release it, discharge it.

Note: the last three are positive feelings - it is important to release on even very good feelings such as serenity, love and enthusiasm, for driving these feelings are sometimes hidden and compulsive needs and desires. When you release these good feelings you feel a physical and emotional release, just as when you release negative feelings. What lies behind the emotion is something even better, an imperturbable serenity, the Higher Self.

Ego

I like the Remez Sasson’s thoughts on ego: “The ego is not an independent entity. It is just the union of the spirit with the other three components, the body, emotions and thoughts.”
“The ego is dependent on the thoughts that the mind thinks. These thoughts evoke feelings and desires, which evoke action. If a desire cannot be fulfilled, anger, unhappiness or hostility arises.”
“The ego is the erroneous identification of the limitless spirit with the physical body, the emotions and thoughts. The perfect homogenous spirit expresses itself in the world through these three, and identifies itself with them.”
“Believing we are this ego, each one of us enacts the role of a specific actor on the stage of life. This ego is the mask hiding the real Spirit that we are. Identification with the role we play makes us forget who we really are, and go on thinking we are this or that.”
“Forgetting our true essence is due to seeing through the eyes of the ego. This is the reason for suffering, unhappiness, depression, anger, conflicts, lack of satisfaction and every other negative feeling. But these negative feelings and situations are sometime the reason for the awakening of the desire to find who we really are, to come home and to return to what we really are - The Pure Spirit.” www.SuccessConsciousness.com

When I began to observe my mind and became more aware, I've noticed different "personalities" clamoring for my attention and at that time I pictured them as "The Board of Directors".

Recently I came across a teaching that helped me to see even more clearer that each one of us is a big group of "personalities" and those that we suppress in ourselves, we judge it in people who give them freedom.

The Work of Byron Katie is a simple process of self-inquiry that can help you see your problems in a radically different light. The Work is a gift to the person who is tired of suffering and is ready to live a more harmonious life. It's simple enough for a child to do and can satisfy even the most dedicated seekers of enlightenment.