Transcendence: what it is, difficulties, warnings and opportunities that brings us

Our mental frame by which we are guided

We all have ideas, opinions, mental schemes, about what surrounds us, about our life and everything it contains; it is natural in the human species to form concepts, projects, dreams, to have ideals, etc. The process of creating all that mental frame begins very early in our life, and does not stop, in any case slows down in old age. And that mental frame is necessary to guide us in life, to make decisions, to undertake vital journeys, embark on projects, take risks.

 But on the other hand, if we look at it reflexively, we will see that our functioning, natural as it is, has its limitations, its defects; surely everyone will have heard of "leaving your comfort zone," or "reinventing yourself," alluding precisely to leave a mental scheme that is limiting you, one that you were following, for which you guided, with a unsatisfactory result. And is that every mental scheme, being formed by ideas, which are not absolute truths but always relative, can be changed, flexibilized, adapt to changing realities; in part that's what a life coach does, make you reflect on yourself, what really motivates you in depth, from there to readjust your mental frame, reorienting it.

Transcendence

But this blog is not dedicated to coaching or positive psychology, but rather to the transcendence of habitual mental state through relaxation, meditation and mindfulness. Transcendence is not about changing mental frames, but about acquiring a higher, more expansive point of view, from which you observe all ideas with detachment, evenly, without identifying with any of them. We do not seek an optimal mental framework to succeed in the work, or in our personal goals, on the contrary, we loose, loosen our hold on ideas, and we are released, disconnected from any idea, ideology, concrete vision.

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To give a simple example: two people who live on the same street work in the same company, and both go to work, but do not follow the same route, each has chosen, by personal preference, a different route between the streets. Sometimes they coincide when leaving home, and go together to work, and either one of them follows the other, or they make a mixed path; the person who has to change his route feels an uncomfortable point, since it is not his natural route, although not one is "better" than the other, it is a "personal" question. This is a simple example of mental frames with which these people, unconsciously, are identified, is part of their comfort zone. The trascendence  in this case could be to climb one day to the roof of the house, from that height observe the area, observe the paths, and see that there are many possibilities, all with their pros and cons, and that is ultimately totally without transcendence  to choose one or the other, that does not make sense to attach to any of them; so loose that psychological attachment not because you want to attach yourself to another better layout, in fact you do not want anything in particular, you simply see clearly, from the height of the roof, that the choice is inconsequential. Is such a state desirable? Can we really live that way, without a personal frame of mind to guide us in life?

Difficulties and warnings

"Everything good in life comes from jumping to the void"
http://minutoaminutoblog.blogspot.com.es/2014/10/otono.html

Actually with the transcendence happens a little as with coaching and his abandonment of the comfort zone, but we are talking about something much more radical: not only leave your area, is that also you do not enter any other area, you stop having "zones". It's like a leap into space. If already leaving a mental area to which you have become accustomed to enter into another presents difficulties in the form of psychological resistances and fear of the unknown, fear of change, we can imagine what it feels like to jump into the "nothing", releasing everything.

Behind each psychological attachment there is a certain amount of personal identification: we believe that to be what we cling to. If we are what we do and think, then we are our mental frame, which is what we think and guide us in our decisions, opinions and in our doing. Therefore, any major change in that mental frame we live as a profound personal change, of our own identity, that changes, we stop being in a way to happen to be of another form. These changes of oneself are always a little, quite, or very traumatic, because a more or less important part of what we were is dissolving.

In the transcendence of all mental frames, which come to be seen as relative, we also release all identification with them, to a greater or lesser extent, since transcendence also has degrees, it being very unusual for a person to have transcended all 100% mental frames In any case, in transcending ideas, transcends also identifications, and is a process that can be especially hard, at least at first, because you feel that your own self is weakened, dissolves, that self composed of ideas, opinions, tendencies, ideals, dreams, all that, is seen in perspective, is released, loosens, and there is an experience of dissolution of oneself.

It is a process that should never be undertaken unless one feels the real need to do so; and the only way to feel that need for total detachment is through the desire to know reality as it is, even at that price of losing oneself. Because reality itself is transcendent, it can not be known by being limited, closed, within a particular personal mental frame. When the person awakens that need, that longing to know, to live the total reality, that force is so great that it is capable of destroying everything that was once lived, that it was a partial reality, our small personal world.

Opportunities that give us the transcendence

Even our noblest and most beautiful ideals and dreams, those that seem so right, being personal, are transcended; did we believe that our profession would make us happy, fulfilled? That following our vocation was the ideal? That forming a close, happy, loving family was our goal? Maybe get to excel in some sport? Have a lot of friends? To live in a just society? To change the "system" for a more just and balanced, more respectful with Nature? To treat our companions better animals? All of these are mental frames, they are partially true, and therefore, by identifying with them, they limit us. Transcendence we can see as a center, as being in a central position, equidistant to everything, from which we see all that with equanimity, with detachment, but also with empathy and tolerance.   

From that central position we understand in depth all the possible approaches, and we have the opportunity to act as moderators of all of them. For human suffering is largely produced by the clash between reality and our mental frameworks: when what we believe, what we want, and what we identify with, does not coincide with what happens to us, being rigidly attached to our beliefs, makes us suffer. That is why the practice of mindfulness, for example, diminishes suffering, since it makes us act as observers without judgment of what happens, both outside and in ourselves; also the experiential relaxation, when practiced in depth (physical, emotional and mental) helps to loose all ties with our ideas, and in fact any type of meditation goes in that same direction.

It is important to note that we are not talking about a "mystical" transcendence, for monks or nuns, or even spirituality at all; we are at an absolutely practical level, "touching the ground, landed" as mindfulness expert Fernando Tobias likes to say, it is a transcendence of which we are very much in need, for the extreme attachment to personal mental positions is producing much suffering in the form of unhappiness, frustration and chronic distress, depression, suicide, clashes between relatives, between social sectors, between countries.

So the reward for the possible temporary uneasiness produced by the abandonment of any rigid mental position, the release of mental identifications, is the attainment of equanimity of mind, mental and emotional stability, centered view of reality, detachment and misidentification, which lead us to go lighter for life, and a decrease in the suffering caused by the "adversities" of life, of reality. As we have said before, it is not necessary to reach 100% transcendence to experience those benefits; the majority of people will be placed in an intermediate degree: they still maintain mental frames that are useful for their life, but at the same time they have achieved a certain degree of transcendence, so that their attachment is not very strong, they are therefore adaptable , flexible, know that they should not cling to rigid mental positions, flow with situations and adapt their mental frameworks to that changing reality. Whether we practice serious relaxation or any type of meditation we will be promoting the establishment of that state of transcendence, to the degree that we feel comfortable, we never have to force beyond.