• The first obstacle to letting go is thinking that you need to do something, and even more, that you need to think of what to do, when all you really need to do is to stop thinking and stop doing.     
• The second obstacle to letting is remembering. Letting go is just too simple, too counter intuitive, and in a weird sort of way, too difficult to remember when you're caught in your thoughts and of course, your emotions.
• The third obstacle to letting go is wanting to.  It is easy let go in theory.  But it is hard to want to when you're caught in your emotions.    
• The fourth obstacle is the ego.  The ego continually plays tricks to keep us from letting go (of it).  There are two basic kinds of tricks the ego plays.  The first is to convince us that it is necessary, and that letting go of it is counterproductive and even dangerous.  The second is to convince us that we have, in fact, let go.  And that it is what we have let go to.
• The fifth obstacle to letting go is knowing how to.  It is relatively easy to relax that which you’re consciously of, but far more difficult to let go of what you are unconscious of.  The mind is like an iceberg with only it’s tip jutting into awareness.  You can let go of what you are thinking and doing, but you can't let go of the memories that you are holding in your unconscious mind, the Karma of conclusions and beliefs, until you have some way of accessing them.  For this deep letting go, the letting go of unconscious contents, relaxation is not enough.  You need presence, skill and technique, both for identifying the contents of your unconscious and for letting go of them.  The sacred technology of PsychoNoetics™ develops the consciousness and the techniques for successful letting go.  www.PsychoNoetics.com 

When you rest, where do you rest? Is it emotional pain? Is it in anxiety or downright fear? Is it in a panicky feeling that there is something important that you have to do but you don't know what it is? Most of us feel something like this. Either there is something terribly and mysteriously wrong with us, or something that is lacking. We feel inadequate or defective in some way, or sometimes just feel worthless, even like a "piece of shit"

Whatever form it takes, this thing that we have suspect is wrong with us is our dirty little secret and we spend most of our waking hours not only keeping others from finding it out, but denying it from ourselves.

Which is a shame because I am here to tell you that it is never true. It can't be! Not real-ly. In all of my years counseling people who knew there was something wrong with them, I never encountered one who was right about it. As a matter of fact, I can reassure you, on the authority of my long experience, that your fears are unfounded. However, with only my experience to go on, it is possible that there could be an exception, and if there was an exception, you would probably think that you were it. So I'm not going to speak out of my experience. Instead I'm going to speak from logic and scientific principles. This nothing wrong with you. There can't be, because there can only be something wrong with a thing and you're not a thing. In fact you are nothing at all and no-thing has no qualities. It can't take an adjective; it can't be labeled, described, located, improved upon, created or destroyed. There is no possibility of anything being wrong with no-thing, or, for that matter, right with it! In the same way that there can be something wrong with your car, there can be something wrong with your body and your brain, because they’re things. There can even be something wrong with your ideas, actions and intentions because, in an abstract way, they’re things. On the thingness level, things can be wrong with things and frequently are. But ultimately there can't be anything wrong with you, because you are not a thing. Ultimately you are just consciousness and that is the one thing that isn’t a thing. Consciousness is your real identity.
 

A BEI, (a Belief/Emotion/Intention) is a unit of consciousness.  When BEI's are held in consciousness they create egoic and enoeic (soul body) forms that define and direct the conscious self in question.

A BEI can be likened to an electron in a magnet; each one has a negative and positive pole and force field.  The electrons in a piece of iron, before it is magnetized, are incoherent or in disarray.  They face every which way. Because they are in disarray, the forces cancel one another out and their net force is neutral. However, if you subject the self same piece of iron to a strong magnetic field, the electrons line up, i.e. they become coherent, and in becoming so, the piece of iron becomes a magnet i.e. it has a negative and positive pole/field/force. In the same way, an individual consciousness can be coherent or in coherent, and is intention powerful or powerless, depending on whether it's BEI's are in coherence.

An additional metaphor can be found in light.  Light from an ordinary source is incoherent, the photons are in disarray and the light disperses as it travels from the source.  As it disperses, it loses power.  However, a laser beam is not incoherent and does not disperse; it holds together and can travel great distances without losing power. 

So coherent mind or coherent consciousness is like a laser; it holds together and the power of its intention is not dispersed over distance.  It can be called laser mind or laser consciousness.

The ordinary person who has not undergone both awakening and a course of psychonoetic clearing has an intention like an unmagnetized piece of iron or a candle flame, incoherent, internally conflicted and easily dispersed.  However the person that has integrated, awakened and cleared has a mind is like a strong magnet or a laser beam, forceful, brilliant and coherent.    Because their intention is forceful and focused and they can have effects on consciousness, both their own and others, both proximal and distant, that seem both astonishing and paranormal. 

The Mind, a metaphor for incoherence

The mind is like a living fossil record.  It consists of strata of consciousness of varying densities laid down over time -- in both the enoe (Karmic self or soul body) and ego.  Embedded in these strata, these layers or levels of consciousness are BEI's, fossilized but still active beliefs.  These BEI’s, like electrons, are not only in disarray, facing every which way, but they are also specific to the level of consciousness in which they are embedded.  It is a corollary to this that when they are activated (by association) they activate the level of consciousness in which they are embedded.

The dagnostic process of PsychoNoetics detects and excavates these BEI's from the strata of consciousness in which they are embedded, and opens them to examination and revision at the highest, (hopefully awakened) level of consciousness/realization that the person abides in.

This gradually transforms the mind of the individual from an incoherent mix of BEI's on multiple levels of consciousness to a coherent hierarchy of BEI's headed up by an consciousness awakened to its real identity.

Whereas the old, incoherent mind has its intention nullified by inner disarray and conflict of the BEI's it holds, the cleared, coherent mind amasses the energies of its innumerable BEI's and directs them with intention.  This is potentially so powerful that the consciousness of one coherent mind creates a field capable of affecting the consciousness not only of another individual, but of the collective consciousness of humanity.  (Subject to certain limitations of course.  For instance, nobody, no matter how powerful, can directly determine the intention i.e. free choice, of another.)

Jeff Eisen Ph.D.    805-637-1197   www.Omnius.com

We would do well to start all spiritual investigations and most psychological ones, whether of ourselves or of others, with the question, where do we rest?  When there is nothing that we are doing, nothing we have to do, where do we rest?  In other words, what is our customary experience of ourselves?  This is not only the most central question of all; it is the most profound, and the answer is the most revealing!

Resting in unrest

First, ask yourself the question, do you rest at all?  Many of us are usually in a condition of unrest, of having something urgent to do, some wrong to right.  And usually, though we may not admit it, we fear there is something terribly wrong with ourselves.

Look at what you are feeling when you're not doing anything.  Are you at rest, or are you feeling driven - to do something, to change something - ultimately to change who you are, to be someone else?

Also, consider what things you do when you are feeling this way?  What things do you do when you want be resting? Do lists of shoulds arise unbidden in your mind? Do you worry, obsess, make plans or at least lists, clean the house or argue?

And, for that matter, what things do you do to rest?  Do you drink, smoke marijuana, take tranquilizers, overeat, veg out in front of the TV, jog, or have sex?

Resting in a belief system

Most of us, when we rest, rest in a belief system.  Within this belief system we become all right and let ourselves rest only when we have fulfilled its conditions, when we have gotten the grades, lost the weight, gotten the job, made the money, married the person, gone to church, got the house, mowed the lawn, accepted the social beliefs and in turn have become accepted by the society.

When we achieve all-rightness, or have at least accepted what it is to be all right, we make a position out of it, and we rest in that position.  Once we have taken our position, we perceive from it and filter reality from it. Which, of course, means that we judge ourselves, evaluate others and even raise our children from it. As long as we’re in a belief system, there's actually no way to proceed.  We have to clear the belief system.

A question of identity

This question of where we rest is ultimately a question of identity.  And identity, for most of us, emerges out of our beliefs about ourselves.  Who would we be if we were free of any urgency, any compulsion to change something, particularly to change something about ourselves? Who would we be if we were free of any belief system and most of all, free of any belief that there is something wrong with us?

Ideally, when there is nothing to do, we would be resting in emptiness, in alert beingness, fully present in the present, de-void of any pain, uneasiness, anything that has to be remedied, any defense of our identity, any fear, anxiety or self-doubt, any voices in our head. We would be aware, but aware of nothing, of no-thing.  For this awareness of no-thing is presence, is inner freedom, is inner peace, and is the gateway to the Self.  This awareness of no-thing is the nondual state that spiritual teachers and nondual psychologists are talking about.  It is the eternal now; it is presence.  It is Christ consciousness and Buddha mind.  It is the God within.

It is also our real Self, our ultimate identity.

When we rest in it, we are resting in a place other than our belief identity, our ordinary, personal identity, self-concept or ego. 

The goal of any true transformational practice, whether spiritual or psychological, is to be able to rest - and when resting to rest in this nondual space.  At the same time, because only resting in nonduality lets us see what positions we are holding, our transformational practices have to encompass the goal.  For only when we let go to nonduality, to emptiness, can we notice what we have been (habitually) holding, what we have been resting in, and what we were doing to endure or avoid it.  Paradoxically, it is only in emptiness that we have a place to stand in and to notice from.  And only when we notice what we have been holding, can we let go of it.

So accessing nonduality and resting in it is the true goal of all spiritual practices, all forms of meditation, Advaidic inquiry, Yoga, chanting, spiritual music, Sufi whirling and the like.  When they bring us nonduality, then and only then do we become aware of our usual states of being, feel the way they have been imprisoning our spirit and appreciate the desirability of letting them go! 

The evolutionary dialectic of psychospiritual transformation, then, is to access emptiness, notice our usual states of consciousness by their absence, resolve to let go of them when they arise again, and by letting go return to emptiness.  As this process is repeated time and time again, our consciousness spirals upwards, our belief identity unwinds and our real identity becomes realer.  In addition, less of our time is spent in the former and more in the latter, until ultimately whenever we rest, we do so in nonduality.

When the final goal is reached, meditative practices and therapeutic techniques cease to serve any transformational purpose and can be reserved for maintenance.  The practices are the means, never the end.  Once the far shore is reached, the raft can be chopped up for firewood.

The selfless self

Resting in our true identity, in nonduality, in the selfless Self, is the starting point, the point of the origination for all true human endeavors, individual, collective, and even evolutionary.  For if we are not in our true identity; we are not coming from truth.  We are in a belief system, a position, a self-concept.  We are in a false identity and anything that we say, think or do, whatever its merits, is a defense of that false identity, a compensation and a reaction.  As such, it cannot be wholly true.  Only when we build on the foundation of our true identity, do we build on reality, and only when we build on reality, can we build a viable personality, viable relationships, and a viable society.