We are obsessed with forms. Forms can be anything from thought or emotional forms to physical forms. Forms are all transient, they come and go, they are impermanent. Through our obsession with the transient, we miss the permanent.
Surely the permanent is what matters most?
We do not tend to see it that way. There is much more excitement and drama in the transient. The transient seems to be far more obvious to us – it is what we can perceive, inside and outside. We become lost in what we perceive, and lose awareness of what is perceiving everything.
What is permanent is the foundation of all things. It is untouched, untroubled and free from the ups and downs of life. It is who you are.
The transient is what the ego loves and is where it can thrive. It does not know permanence. The ego itself is transient, and requires obsession with the transient to stay alive. It is the ego's tendency to be obsessed with forms. If your attention was on what is permanent, your ego would not be able to survive for long.
You Are The Permanent
You are the permanent. The awareness that you are is unchanging, ever free and eternal. The transient is everything that you can perceive in the world, including your own mind.
We tend to have more respect for what we believe can hurt or trouble us, than we do for what is free from hurt or trouble. Rather than be in a place of freedom from external forms, we tend to try to manage and fret over every form in our lives, so that when everything is as we wish, we will be free. Then things change again or people do not act according to “our” wishes, and the cycle repeats itself.
Breaking The Obsession
Just for now, give less important to what seems to be happening. Fully allow it to be, do not be dependent on it. This includes both your outer and inner experience. Allow them for a moment and just be a nonjudgemental witness to them both. Yet show no interest. From this place you can experience yourself as the unchanging awareness of all that comes and goes. After the body and the world have left your perception, you will remain untouched.
Rather than losing all of your attention in the mind and the world, keep some attention within. Holding some attention on the movement of your breath, inner stillness or inner energy field will mean that you will be able to notice the tendency to become lost in form...
Notice the tendency to become sucked in to your thoughts, emotions and the external world. Just noticing is enough, you do not have to do anything else. Remain as the simple awareness of what happens. As you do this you become automatically aware that what is obsessed with forms is not who you are, and so the tendency weakens by itself. This also opens you up to inner peace, as well as becoming available for any useful action if it is required.
Amongst the changing transient forms, there is something that is not changing. The space in which everything arises and plays out is unnafected and untouched. Get in touch with this space, it has no limit, is beyond the idea of inside or outside the body. It is still, yet subtly alive.
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