Luminosity & Bliss Has Two Veils

Luminosity and bliss is the natural state of the mind – before it reaches turbulence. In order to keep the mind from being in a state of turbulence, one has to let go of two veils which generate all our machinations. The two veils that generate turbulence are:

1. Conflicting Emotions
2. Primitive Views

Conflicting Emotions

Conflicting emotions are almost always based on early conditioning from your early childhood.  The conflicting emotions resulted from not getting the attention you wanted, not getting the love you needed, feeling abandoned, etc.  This is not to blame parents in any way. No child will ever feel completely loved and no child will ever not feel abandoned. This is just the human condition.

Your ego structure was built as a method for coping with this feeling of abandonment and unlove.  A child will always experience the inevitable pain of separation from mother – if only because she can’t be with the child 24/7.  To the child, when it is crying and mother is out hanging the laundry, there is a sense of ‘abandonment’. And with the sense of abandonment comes the feeling that there must be something wrong with you. So this feels like unlove.

Every negative emotion in your being is two years old. That’s just the way of it. If you look closely at your negative emotion when you’re in it, you’re a two year old. You’re either “pouting,” or having a “temper tantrum,” or saying “I’m not playing,” or “exploding,” or something, but fundamentally, it’s two years old.

Primitive Views

Primitive views, here, fundamentally speak to the idea of trying to find refuge where refuge can’t be found. We try to find luminosity and bliss through some kind of object reference.

We try to find refuge in money. We try to find refuge in power. Another one is fame. These are the so-called “lower chakra” goals of people – power, money, fame.

The other choice for refuge is family and relationships – the object of a husband, or the object of a wife, or the object of children.

Then you have the “higher chakric” refuges, like art and music, which is a kind of beauty motif. Or science, which is knowledge and information, a kind of higher knowledge motif.

All of these things are an attempt to find luminosity and bliss. You try to find luminosity and bliss through family, you try to find luminosity and bliss through wealth, you try to find luminosity and bliss through your art or study.

Now we need to say at this point that these choices of where you seek refuge are not bad. As long as you understand that family doesn’t produce luminosity and bliss. That money doesn’t produce luminosity and bliss.  Those things may trigger an entry into the state, but they are unreliable, impermanent objects that do not hold luminosity and bliss in and of themselves. Thinking that they do is a primitive view.

The Natural State of Luminosity & Bliss

If you can practice letting go of the two veils of primitive views (refuge in objects) and practice letting go of clinging to conflicting emotions (feelings of unlove), you will begin to experience more luminosity and bliss.  You will recognize that luminosity and bliss is the choice to be present in this moment, regardless of conditions and object “supports,” or object “failures,”.

Luminosity and bliss is chosen in this moment and again chosen in the next moment.

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Doug Duncan & Catherine Pawasarat are modern day teachers of transcendence. Their work with students draws upon Buddhist, Western Mysteries, modern psychology and other traditions.

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