Robots are stepping out of science fiction fantasy into the reality of humans. Japan has the scoop of the first human-robot marriage. Europe considers civil rights for robots. Technicians all over the world are developing robot dolls with sensitive skin and ‘real’ facial features. These dolls will become our techno-slaves. But as they, with the support of artificial intelligence, transform into humanoid robots; who will then be slave and who will be master?
But man is not a robot! Every person is unique and has free will. Isn’t it?
Consider for example the use of computers, smartphones and tablets. What
appears on the screens sucks our attention in, and in no time we are in trance.
Exaggerated? Just ask a motorist who caused a fatal accident by peering at his
smartphone while driving, if he is still able to report.
Illusion
We keep these electronic pixels in place of reality because the speed, the
images, the sounds and the vibrancy of what appears on the screens equals what
occurs between our ears. Our thoughts, beliefs and emotions – reinforced by our
endless inner dialogue – create an enchanting illusion of reality. It makes us
believe that what we feel and think is real and right. Because we identify with
it, we think this is what we are. Therefore being mechanical is no problem for
most people.
Until it hurts, as it does in my college years. I often feel abandoned,
lonesome, desperate. One day as I am crazy in love, but the girl doesn’t show
up in our first weekend together, I am lost in self-pity, falling on my knees
on the wooden attic floor. All of a sudden the scene turns inside out and I
witness myself from behind. The deep peace and silence of this observation is
so dearly familiar to me that I know, ‘This is me. Not that emotional
chaos.’
Order
This marks the start of all kinds of attempts to create order in myself. Many
years in an Ouspensky school, meditation, Gurdjieff’s movements, chi kung,
rebirthing, the Journey, you name it. Ultimately meditation offers me the only
freedom that humans have: the freedom not-to-do, not to pick up the next
thought, not to follow the next impulse, but to surrender in the silence of
what never moves, what’s always here. Unfortunately negative emotions and
compulsive behavior still dominate the rest of the day.
The turning point, in retrospect, is the teaching of Eli Jaxon-Bear. It is in
my experience a rare combination of the Enneagram ‘of liberation’, Erickson’s
hypnotherapy, meditation, Papaji and silence above all. Over the years it is
like a journey from outside in. At first I am so fixated that I cannot see my
ennea-fixation. I spend three years researching almost all ennea-points. It
becomes obvious how various people with the same enneatype have common ways of
feeling, thinking and acting, and have so many similarities in body, hair
style, voice, gesticulations and even in life course. I recognize various
strategies of the fixations to cover basic emotions such as anger, fear and
neediness which emerge from the urge to survive, to be safe, to be loved.
In daily life all this knowledge gives meaning to puzzling behavior of people
at work, in the street, in politics, in my family. It’s amazing to see
robot-like humans everywhere. However the imprisonment in fixation brings up
compassion of my fellow man. For example when I recognize the enneatype of my
son, I understand why my everlasting and forceful attempts to get him to move
to action are always fruitless. Since then I am very happy to apply an approach
that takes ‘his machine’ into account and causes no harm anymore. Actually it
changes me from a serious father into a loving friend for my son.
Relief
When I finally recognize my fixation I am astonished to see that certain
beliefs and behaviors which I thought uniquely belong to me, are simply
described in Eli’s book, ‘From Fixation to Freedom’. ‘Speaking the truth’ in Satsang
stimulates me to ‘overhear’ myself. It reveals how I feel and think via
well-trodden paths leading to predictable, boring outcomes. And how they
originate in hidden beliefs controlling my life. As if a robot is inside me. These
discoveries give me such relief – ‘I see this for the first time, but I am
doing this already my whole life!’
Despite ongoing attempts to overrule, the fixation is losing ground and what
remains is existence of some ‘me’ in harmonious space. It leads to new insights
like that sunny early morning at the beach where I expected to meet my wife.
But the beach is empty to the horizon. The situation calls on the moods at the
time of my college years. In no time that heavy emotion of being so utterly
lonely penetrates my cells. Instead of losing myself in this negative energy
like this used to be, I focus my attention on not moving body and mind. Holding
on to being unmoving, I don’t express or suppress the hot, fiery desire of the
emotion to possess me, but I face it, I meet it.
The encounter reveals this emotion is not something just happening to me as if
a robot inside me is controlling my life. It is actually me who is pressing buttons
of emotions, beliefs and opinions to come to expression. It is my choice to be
a victim of inner suffering, or to be responsible for everything I feel, think
and do.
Ultimately the emotion is discharging into free-flowing pure energy. What a
relief, I am not in hell. I am in bliss. Looking around, feeling united with
the beautiful surroundings of mother nature I know I was never alone and will
never be alone. I am bliss.
Maybe this sounds mental, or like an inner war or a technique to fix something. But its none of that. Actually this ends all wars, it ends all self-made stories and it’s not a technique at all. Because there is no doing in unplugging. It is a prostration like these words Eli once spoke: ‘Don’t move. As you don’t move, you’ll meet what never moves, what’s always here. Abide to That.’
~ Henk Engelenburg, 2019