“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
-The Buddha
These words of the Buddha are as true today as they were 2500 years ago. They are especially relevant to the practice of when-which-how because the Buddha, in his search for truth, did not adhere to any particular faith or spiritual practice. He experimented with various approaches to God or some ultimate reality, but found none that satisfied him. So, he finally sat down under the bodhi tree until he saw the truth as he understood it. He then declared the now famous Fourfold Truths and the Eightfold Path leading to the end of suffering.
The word, bodhi comes from Sanskrit root budh which means to awaken, thus the Buddha is the awakened one. Basically, this means that the Buddha awoke to his own higher self. In turn, if the practitioners of when-which-how can learn to quiet the mind, be present in the moment, and observe, they can also awaken to the higher self. Thus, in the stillness created by this practice, the sound and light of the higher self can be experienced as it is transmitted through the energetic heart. Interestingly, we could say that the Buddha was practicing the when-which-how technique of his era. His conclusions about the nature of life were essentially faith agnostic.
This path is not owned by anyone or any organization, and those who travel it are essentially faith agnostic, which is to say, they do not look upon this practice as affiliated with a particular religion, spiritual inquiry system, scientific endeavor, New Age belief system, or spiritual master. It is a framework as old as the soul itself, and its chief principle is the ongoing practice of the six heart virtues in one’s daily life. In doing this, the reality that surrounds you will assemble its own path to a higher understanding, suited specifically to you.
Technically speaking, the Buddha’s approach to truth may not be exact in every detail when compared to this quotation from “Living from the Heart.” Nevertheless, the spirit of the Buddha’s approach resonates with the spirit of when-which-how. This is evident by his enlightened re-cognition that a framework for approaching a higher spiritual reality always, already exists, prior to and independent of all religious, spiritual, philosophical, and psychological forms and systems. These systems of belief are spacetime reflections of a transcendent reality, a Source Intelligence, an Underivative Information Structure, a Domain of Unity.
Thus, as one who was faith agnostic relative to his own era, the Buddha practiced his own approach to spirit and sat under the bodhi tree in meditation until he was enlightened in regard to the cause of human suffering and how to end it. As a result of his perseverance, patience, and effort, to paraphrase the last quotation—the reality that surrounded him assembled its own path to a higher understanding, suited specifically to him.
So what is the Buddha advising us to do? He is advising us to test whatever practice we feel attracted to and then to observe and analyze the practice. If it “agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
We might conclude from Buddha’s words that:
• Observation is made possible by the quieting of the mind’s thoughts, resulting in hearing the heart’s voice.
• Analysis is the responding activity of the mind after listening to the heart’s voice.
Out of this symbiotic relationship comes the possibility that, with persistence, patience, and effort, reality will eventually assemble “its own path to a higher understanding suited specifically to you.”
If we are willing to test the theory of practicing when-which-how, then we should observe and analyze our internal attitudes and external behaviors in relation to our practice. If, through our observations and analyses, our practice seems reasonable to us and “contributes to the good and benefit of one and all,” then our confidence in the practice will grow and so will our belief. This approach agrees with the advice of the Buddha.
There are, however, two paragraphs in “Living from the Heart” which suggest that the when-which-how technique is part of a larger plan. This passage goes on to suggest that a belief in this larger plan will increase the power of our practice, thus making it more effective and of greater service to humanity. Section three of “Living from the Heart” is entitled, The Heart-Mind Intention. Here is an extract from the end of that section.
Simply practicing a new discipline doesn’t attract its full power. There must be an attendant belief—a genuineness in the practice—that what you are doing is part of a larger plan; that it is connected, like bricks in a wall, to a larger purpose.
This attendant belief often takes a while to accrue its power. It is not something you can manufacture artificially. In a sense, it is part of the learning curve and grows over time as you become more comfortable with the practice or technique.
These are interesting comments about the role of belief in the practice. At the initial stages of this work, there must be “a genuineness in the practice” based on a belief that the practice is connected to a “larger plan…to a larger purpose.” Notice that we are not being asked to believe in the practice itself, but to believe in a larger plan which contains the practice. (It must be said here that belief plays an important part in the practice, but this passage is pointing us to a wider belief.) This plan or purpose is described as an attendant belief. We will discuss this larger plan shortly.
The quotation goes on to explain, that when we begin to grasp the larger plan—the macro-vision level related to our purpose and destiny as a species—we accrue greater power to our practice at the micro-vision level as individual soul-personalities within the species. In other words, when we, as individuals, intentionally contribute our positive emotions to the collective human energetic field or CHEF, we are directly serving the fulfillment of our species’ purpose and destiny at the macro level.
If the vision of this greater plan and purpose resonates with you, if it makes you feel good inside, if it seems right to you, if it excites you and awakens your desire to involve yourself in its goals, then there is some part of you that believes it. That part is most probably your own higher self. You feel this in your heart.
If you are attracted to the WingMakers/Lyricus material, with its macro-vision of a larger plan and a larger purpose for humanity, then there must be something in this material that you believe in. If you feel this magnetic draw, then your energy field is in resonance with the energy signature set up by the WingMakers and Lyricus materials. Although we have no physical proof that this material is true, many of us have all the proof we need because we feel the rightness of it by the feelings coming from our hearts. In these feelings lie trust and recognition.
Up till now, the material has demanded little from us. Indeed, I know that many people have criticized the material because it has not seemed of practical value in helping us to solve the world’s problems. That position is debatable, but now that debate is unnecessary because of the Event Temples concept and the new materials related to emotional self-mastery. These materials take the WingMakers community to a new phase of activity that is eminently of service to humankind through the specific practice of when-which-how.
