enlightenment

Enlightenment is breaking the shell of "the world" in our mind
breaking the concreteness of this world
pain is breaking the shell of understanding, said kahlil gibran
identifying with the story in our mind
where we frighten ourselves or stop ourselves
like a chick break out of the egg shell

physical shell (before birth), autistic shell (infant), narcissistic shell (childhood, development of self), "ego/world shell" (adulthood)

WE LIVE IN THE SHELL BECAUSE OUR LIVE OUTSIDE THE SHELL IS UNDERDEVELOPED. LIKE A CHICK WHO WAS JUST BEEN BORN, HIS INSTINCTS TO SURVIVE AND LIVE IS LOW AND IS DEPENDENT ON HIS PARENTS. HE MUST DEVELOP INSTINCT AND SKILLS TO LIVE OUTSIDE OF HIS SHELL. TO SEE THE INTERDEPENDENT OF THE TRUE NATURE, THE UNIVERSE OUTSIDE OF THE SHELL. WE LIVE IN A COCOON

  SHYNESS, COMFORT ZONE ARE BOUNDARIES OF SHELL

KATAK DALAM TEMPURUNG, SHELL OF LESSER SELF.

MUST LEARN TO BE ALONE, TO TURN LONELINESS TO ALONE. LONELINESS IS A PAIN IN THE SHELL, A SYMPTOM OF ALONENESS. MUST LEARN TO DETACH FROM MIND AND FOCUS ON SENSES. WAKE UP FROM DREAM, STOP DAYDREAMING. LIKE A ROBOT PHYSICALLY THAT DREAM THAT HE IS HUMAN.

RELATIONSHIP IS HARD AND FULL OF ILLUSION. STEP AWAY FROM IT. SEE ANOTHER PERSON NOT THE RELATIONSHIP.

OUR EYES SEE ONLY TO SEE AND TO RECOGNIZE (FAMILIAR). AUTISM CHILDREN ONLY SEE TO SEE WITHOUT INTEREST IN OUTSIDE OF THE SHELL

WE ARE STILL ATTACHED TO THE SHELL BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW HOW WE ATTACH TO THE SHELL. WE DON'T KNOW THAT WE STILL LIVE IN THE SHELL. WE DON'T SEE THE SHELL. WE ARE SO ACCUSTOMED TO LIVING IN THE SHELL, WE FEEL SAFE, LIKE A FISH IN AN AQUARIUM. ASK YOURSELF WHO I AM AND CATCH YOUR SELF IN THE ACT. IT HAPPENS IN THE FLASH THAT WE ONLY SEE THE EMOTIONAL REACTION AND BEHAVIOR.

It calls on us to break out of our shell, the personality-husk surrounding the seed potential of all that we could be.  The purpose of a seed husk is to protect the tender life within until the time and conditions are right for it to burst forth.  Our personality structure serves a similar function.  It provides a semblance of security, as a kind of compensation for the loss of our larger being.  But when love's warming rays start to wake us up, our ego-shell becomes a barrier restricting our expansion.  As the germ of life swells within us, we feel our imprisonment more acutely.....The brighter love's radiance, the darker the shadows we encounter; the more we feel life stirring within us, the more we also feel our dead spots; the more conscious we become, the more clearly we see where we remain unconscious.  None of this need dishearten us.  For in facing our darkness, we bring to light forgotten parts of our being.  In recognizing exactly where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious.  And in seeing and feeling the ways we've gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively

Once unshackled from the life-sucking demands of ego, we clearly see the unformed creatures we had hitherto been, like children.  Not children in the happy, lyrical sense, but in the abrasive, self-absorbed, discordant sense.  What we consider bright and beautiful in children is the inherent nature of the fully developed human.  Our true state is one of playfulness, innocence, lack of guilt, unboundedness of spirit, robust health and inner light, a natural confidence and unerring sense of right, imperturbability, grace, a calm eye and easy good humor, balance, fgreedom from malice and pettiness, the absence of fear, the presence of largesse and a permeating sense of gratitude.  Creativity.  Connectedness.  Correctness.  This is the clear and rightful state of the human being.  One must die of the flesh to be born of the spirit.  One's life energy, formerly squandered by ego, can then be turned to the higher purposes and potentials of life in the magnificent amusement park of duality.

How to Break Out of Your Shell

Imagine what it would be like living in a shell and you’re just bursting to get out—like a chick about to be born. Then, all of a sudden you break out of the shell and you see a whole new world. Now, we all have had this experience when we were born. We were comfortably living in the shell of our mother’s womb and then all of sudden broke out into a new brave world.

Unfortunately, we “forget” this experience. We don’t remember our birth and for that matter the entire first few years of our lives. Our rational and intellectual abilities were not yet developed. Therefore, we remain in a state of awe and wonder with everything we come into contact with. We reach out and touch things, people, our parents, for the first time. Everything is fresh and new! We have great curiosity and are on an endless journey of exploration. What a beautiful and exciting state of being to live in!

Back then, we simply enjoyed a state of play. Life was play because we were innocent. We had no idea of the ways of the human world. We did not understand our complex social systems. We had fun exploring in the moment. We lived in the moment.

As long as we remained in the shell, we were very comfortable. We developed and grew in our shell. Through our shell, we even got to hear and feel the outside world a little. We couldn’t yet run, walk, see, taste, touch and really feel the outside world. And of course, our hearing was limited to the filter and interference of the shell.
Now, what is interesting is that I have spoken to many people that describe the same very limited sense of experiencing the world as if they were in a shell. But obviously, they are no longer in the shell of their mother’s womb. They are adults! What happened?

Well, what happened is that we developed a new shell as we aged and then we unfortunately became trapped again. What is this shell, you ask? It is simply the shell of the ego. Yes, we developed our personality, our habits, our patterns, our way of seeing and hearing the world around us. We developed judgments, criticisms, expectations, desires, anxieties, perceptual filters, comfort zones, and on and on. We do not need to be psychologists to understand the layers and layers of “hard” ego material that make up our shell. For some of us it can go very deep into the past and for others it consists of lighter, shallower layers that make up their shells. In any event, we ended up back in a shell again. One thing is that even though shells seem hard, they are breakable.

The hardest thing for us to acknowledge is that we are indeed in a shell—an ego shell. We all admit we have an ego or personality. We do things a certain way. We like things a certain way. We certainly developed a certain perspective on the world. And most people will argue until they’re blue in the face that this is not a shell at all. It’s just me. It’s who I am. And many more will say, I like who I am. Well, this is all well and good. But, I will be the first to say,

“Absolutely, this is who you are and I do not want to take anything away from you. In fact, even since you broke out of your shell the first time, you are still pretty much the same person. You had the same seed potential and nothing changed. Yet, you saw a new world. A world filled with awe and amazement because everything was fresh and needed to be discovered and explored. As you grew, somehow the world lost its freshness, its newness, and things became a little more routine and monotonous. The things that you were so excited about at first, you became habituated to and then those things lost their sparkle. The fact is that it’s all-normal.

Then I would ask you: What if you can break through your shell one more time?”

It is possible? Yes it is! And this is not some sci-fi Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World idea. Throughout human history, people have been doing exactly that—breaking out of their ego shells. The Zen master’s call it: Satori; the Buddhist’s call it: Nirvana; the Hindu’s call it: Samadhi; or Realization, or enlightenment. Psychologists have called it, self-actualization. Religious people have called it: mysticism, such as Kabbalah, Sufism, or Christian Mysticism. It doesn’t matter what label you put on it, it is all the same!

And all it simply means is to break out of the shell of your ego.  Like the first shell you broke out of when you were born, you will remember the freshness of the world and revitalize your curiosity to explore the world again. There is no doubt about it! It’s an ability that we have and should cherish—ability we all share in as humans. We bump into these kind of people many times in our lives—people free of their shell. They are open minded, filled with life, happy, risk-takers, and balanced.

It is not that they are completely free of their ego, it is just that they are no longer trapped in the shell of their ego. They can see a new world. A world in which they no longer need to defend themselves to others with the answer, “this is who I am” or “this is the way I like it.”

That is simply it in a nutshell (no pun intended). Those people who have broken out of the shell for the second time, see a world with fresh eyes and an open mind. It’s like a parallel universe, where everything is the same, yet your perspective has changed. You are NOW looking at your own shell from the outside instead of only seeing the inside. But remember that we are like crabs, and we use our shells to survive in the world. Sometimes we change them and sometimes we are free of them.

If we ask those people who have gotten out of their shell to describe it, they say, “if I do what I did, I’ll get what I got, so I’ll explore what I didn’t to find what I couldn’t, and now I’ll live as I haven’t as long as I don’t live as I did.”

If you’re seriously interested in learning the technique of mindfulness you can contact me to schedule a free seminar at your company, private group, or attend one of my scheduled seminars, see http://wheresmyzen.com/seminars.

You can also download one of my books in PDF format for FREE from my site above or go to Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com for a Kindle, Nook, or Hardcover version. The short version of the technique appears on page 49-56 in Where’s My Zen? and a full detailed version appears on pages 386-430 in The Ten Paradoxes: The Science of Where’s My Zen?

…if your practice is full practice, you know, it means that you are ready to break the shell and jump out as a small chick, you know…  So, you know, at that time there is no self, you know.  It looks like he is in a shell, but he is ready to break the shell, and at that time, you know, mother hen will peck, peck.  That is oneness of your practice and enlightenment.  Fffft!  At that time there is no hen or no chicken—chick.  They are one.  They—he is one with everything.
Shunryu Suzuki

TEETH DON'T BITE ITSELF, KNIFE CAN'T CUT ITSELF, THE KNOWER DON'T KNOW ITSELF, THE SEER DON'T SEE ITSELF BUT THE REFLECTION, PELAKU TIDAK PERLAKUKAN DIRI SENDIRI.