Ben Ralston

WHAT IS GROUNDED SPIRITUALITY?

Grounded spirituality is an approach to life founded on an experience of reality. It’s for people who have a ‘healthy skepticism’, but are nevertheless faithful.

It is a way of life that simultaneously embraces rooted-ness (being ‘down to earth’), and star-gazing. This wonderful quote from Oscar Wilde comes to mind…
“we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars…”

We are not really American, or English, or Slovene, or any other nationality.
First and foremost, we are Earthlings.
Whether you were born here or there; whether your skin is black or white; whether you speak this language or that language, or many languages, or none at all, I don’t care.
You are the same as I am. We are separate only by appearance, and through perception.
Another wonderful quote comes to mind, from Shakespeare:

King Richard II:
“Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence:
throw away respect, tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends:
subjected thus, how can you say to me, I am a king?”
Whether you are a king or a beggar;
CEO of a multinational business, or the cleaner who sweeps the floor;
a teacher or a student:
you live with bread, feel want, taste grief, and need friends. 
Just like me.
We are all, basically, the same. We all want to be happy. And for all of us, the ultimate happiness is the true experience of love.
Grounded Spirituality is for you if  you recognize that heaven is a place on earth. Sometimes, for us to accept that, we have to first know hell – and it’s also a place on earth. 

“… if you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on earth…” (Bob Marley)

Grounded Spirituality is for people who want to change the world, one step at a time, by embodying that change themselves.
It’s for people who know that the world is in them, and not the other way around.
It’s for those who know that in order to realize our divine self, we first have to realize our humanity.
Ancient Zen saying:
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

Grounded Spirituality is not an escape. It is not a fantasy. It is not a new-age airy-fairy get-away.
It’s the opposite. It’s about ‘keeping it real’ and upholding your responsibilities; being able to stand up in any situation with your head held high, knowing that you are doing the right thing, even though sometimes that can be painful.
It’s about being a ‘peaceful warrior’, having the courage to stay open to every possibility; closed to none.
It’s about knowing that truth is beyond perception; 
but going ahead and trying to perceive truth anyway.
Grounded Spirituality, to me, is a challenge and an invitation and a call to arms.
What is it to you?

HAPPINESS

1. Realise consciously that the only thing you REALLY want is to be deeply happy.

2. Understand that happiness is an inner experience. It is inside yourself, or nowhere! Therefore nothing and no one can give it to you.

3. Look  inside for that happiness, and cultivate it consciously, doing (as much as possible) only things which make you happy!

4. Accept your mistakes, failings, and so on… don’t resist them, it will slow you down (in other words, if you have a bad day, and you really struggle to be happy,  don’t worry!. Tomorrow is another day: every day you get better and better in every way)…





Most people spend ALL their time trying to either: seek pleasure, or avoid pain.
This is because we remember pain in the past. And we choose (obviously) not to repeat that pain. And we imagine pleasure in the future (also based on our memory of it in the past), and choose (obviously!) to repeat it.

However, memory (past) is not real. It is just an idea. It has no substance. Two people remember the same thing differently – it is not fixed. So our memory of pain is also not real. Trying to avoid pain is like running away from your shadow – it’s pointless.
And the same can be said for the imaginary pleasure – imagination is not real, in the same way that memory is not. So, most people are living in the past or the future, and not being present.
Happiness is not outside you. It is not in the new car, the beautiful partner, the lottery which you might one day win – actually studies have shown that amongst the highest risk groups of suicide are those people who suddenly get rich!
It is either within you, or it DOES NOT EXIST in a meaningful way. It is an experience. Our motivation for avoiding pain and seeking pleasure is that we really want to be happy. But we didn’t stop to think – where and when is happiness? Is it in the future imaginary pleasure, or the past remembered pain?
If we really think about that question, the only possible answer is – it is here and now, inside us. Or not. But it cannot be anwhere, or ‘anywhen’, else!

So, if happiness is what we want, and happiness is HERE AND NOW, what to do about it?

BE HAPPY! Do what makes you happy! Follow your JOY! Let go of all else. Buddha said: “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”
Is it easy? No, not if, like me many years ago, you have a habit of doing pretty much the opposite. But if we practice it, it gets easier and easier, like anything.
And imagine a world (this is what the imagination is REALLY for!) where everyone did only what made them happy… every person would be PRESENT. That means that there would be no room for jealousy, resentment, anger. All the negative emotions are in the memory or the imagination of pleasure and pain… they DO NOT EXIST here and now. To be present; to BE HERE NOW; is to experience peace, love, and simplicity: true happiness.



10 years ago I was in India on a long train journey. At one station a young boy, about 10 years old, came along cleaning the floor with a cloth – the dirtiest cloth you’ve ever seen! He was wearing only a filthy pair of pants, and was begging for money from the people whose feet he was cleaning around. They were mostly paying him no attention. All of my western education and conditioning led me to ‘feel sorry’ for him – “poor kid, no money, dirty, probably hungry, no future, what a terrrible situation”… and then he came to me, and I saw his eyes. To this day I have seen very few people with the joy and happiness and shinging light in their eyes that he had in his. I deeply realised in that moment that external circumstances are unimportant. All that matters is to be happy.

EGO 1 – What is ego?

I want to talk about ego, and whether or not it is real. This will be a series of articles. First, we’ll discuss ‘What Is Ego?’
In the next article we’ll talk about the implications – namely, that much of the spiritual ‘work’ that many people do and have done (including myself) for many years, is almost a waste of time.
It’s a complex subject, so I will try to keep it as simple as I possibly can. I also want to keep it interesting, so that you stay with me to the end!


The reason I want to write about this now is that I see so many people struggling with what they think is ego – so many people get caught up in the idea that we have an ego, and that we have to ‘conquer’ it, and that it’s difficult. This is simply giving power to the thing which they think are fighting with!
My belief is that the ego is nothing. It doesn’t exist. It’s not real. It’s just a mistaken belief that we get caught up in, and because we get caught up in it, we fight it, and the more we fight it, the more real it seems… like being caught in a net – the more you struggle, the more you get caught up…

I was prompted to write this by a discussion on Simon Rose’s blog. ( Simon is the creator of Reference Point Therapy – the alternative healing method )
First I want to define ego. What exactly IS ego?
Ego is that which we identify with – what we think of as ‘I’.
So when I say:
“I am Ben”, or “I am an Englishman”, or “I am a man”, it’s my ego speaking.
Let me explain…
Of course my name is Ben. It’s what people call me, it’s what I call myself. But AM I BEN? Is that really what I am? Or am I much more than the label?


Of course my body was born in England – my Mother gave birth to me there. But am I right in labelling myself as English? Of course legally, my passport, my background etc… all makes me English to an extent. But surely my true nationality, if I look at the ‘BIG PICTURE’, is not so easy to define.
For example, I have lived in many countries. At the moment, I live in Slovenia. Why should I not say I am Slovene.
Or why should I not simply say, “I am an Earthling”… 
Because by stating that I am English, I cut myself off, I make myself different from all people who are not English. And this has been a big problem in the past – this issue of nationality has caused wars!


And if I say “I am a man” – even this statement is not wholly accurate. Biologically, I am of course a man. But biology is only one aspect of me. Body is nothing without emotions, thoughts, instincts, deeper feelings, intuition, reasoning, senses… and so on. Every man has feminine aspects – and every woman has a masculine side to her. So it would be more accurate to state:
“I have a male body”, or better still – “in this lifetime, I have a male body”.


So the ego is what we think we are when we stop simply being. When we allow our attention to be distracted from our full being, we start thinking, and then the ego arises.


In reality, there is no ego. The ego is just what we THINK we are. What we THINK we are is not real – not really what we ARE. Because when we think, we stop being fully present – and reality; being; is only in the present.


Let me clarify this:
Thinking happens in the neocortex – the part of our brain that analyses. The part of the brain that compares. So when I think of myself as male, I am by implication also thinking of myself as ‘not woman’. That is what the neocortex does: it compares and analyses. It views the world in terms of opposites. It cannot do anything else. That is it’s nature, what it does.
Animals and small children (look at the picture!) don’t have much ego – why? Because their neocortex isn’t fully formed yet.


The present moment has no opposite. What is the opposite of NOW?…
Got it? THERE IS NO OPPOSITE OF NOW! Therefore the neocortex, the part of us that compares opposites, cannot grasp the present moment. The best it can come up with is past and future. So the neocortex is constantly analyzing our experience in terms of time.


What we truly are is timeless awareness. Consciousness. PURE BEING.
We experience this BEINGNESS ( a wonderful word I learnt from Simon Rose, who learnt it from Soleira Green ) fully only when we are living in balance. Only when we are completely ‘real’: centered in our body; emotionally present; and not caught up in the analytical processes of the ‘head’, but simply allowing it to do what it does… process information, like a computer.
This is what all the great masters describe: living in the present moment, feeling in balance with the environment, being spontaneously joyful. It’s what is known as an enlightened state.


I believe that enlightenment is the natural state of no-ego. When we are completely at one with ourselves, we lose that sense of ‘I’-ness. We become fully present, and we stop thinking of ourselves as this or that… we just experience, and that experience is what we are. That experience is what we really, truly are. Not what we think we are, but what we truly are. So we are all already enlightened – we just lose sight of it sometimes, because we think about what we are, and identify with that – ego!!


The great spiritual teacher Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (whose incredible talks in the book ‘I Am That’), said:
“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing.
Love is knowing I am everything.
In between the two my life moves.”
Wisdom is knowing I am nothing.
Love is knowing I am everything.
How beautiful.


Ego is thinking I am something.


When we let go of the idea of what we are (which is really based on our past experiences – ie – what we were), we are free to really BE. We are also free to become more than that past idea.
That ‘beingness’; that state of awareness at the heart of our existence, is REAL.
The ego is not: the ego is just an illusion.


Part 2: http://benralston.blogspot.com/2010/06/ego-2-dont-fight-it.html