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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
 Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 11:54:30 AM
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I was deeply longing in my heart today. In fact I have been for some weeks. All these desires and fears that arise...
Desires for pleasure and fear of pain. The fulfillment of desire so temporary, transient, unsatisfactory. As soon as one is fulfilled another arises. Even spiritual experiences, joy, bliss, all of these just pass. One may rest in the silent illumination of one's being, but ignorance soon follows. Nothing lasts.
The fears are so ultimately meaningless and self-centered. Loss of money, or disapproval. Why all these stupid fears. Is it necessary to be afraid? Desire contains the seed of fear, fear contains the seed of desire. Pleasure and pain chase each other. Why be ruled by this cruel master?
My heart cried out against it. No spiritual materialism, no states, experiences, satoris, bliss, temporary illuminations, flashes in the pervading darkness of ignorance.
I want the absolute truth. Not some passing experience. Not a half-hearted conviction I don't live by. Can my body put its neck under a guillotine, fearless, knowing that when the blade comes down, nothing will be lost? No? Then there's still ignorance.
I need a truth known in the core of my being, something which won't ever pass away, soon forgotten like childhood memories of happiness.
And these words came into my heart, demanding truth and honesty.
Be peaceful, beloved one.
Enlightenment is quite simple.
Do you really want to know who you are?
Do you want this very, very deeply?
Are you this experience of a person, breathing, thinking, sensing, perceiving?
Is that who or what you are?
Would you like to know the answer to this question infinitely more than you desire anything else, with all of your soul, all of your heart, all of your being? Will you sacrifice everything for an answer?
Be absolutely truthful with yourself. Completely honest. If there’s a single lie, a tiny hesitation, a minor reticence, you won’t get the answer.
If it’s not what you desire, that’s completely fine.
There’s no should or shouldn’t here. Just questioning. Just truthful examination.
See what it is you want. What it is that you want from spiritual practices? Why do you want it? Why do you do these practices? What is the nature of what you get out of them?
Look at everything you desire in life. Write it down. Look at it. Why do you desire it? What happens when you get it?
When you want to know who you are more than life itself, more than everything in life itself, just come back and ask again.
Take the question into your heart, into silence, and stay with it, unremitting, demanding absolute certainty.
Then you'll know, there will be no doubt, and you'll have no need of faith. |
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 12:04:33 PM
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Very nice!
"Enlightenment is quite simple."
... another way to look at it...
Enlightenment is not "real" (and hence very simple or very complicated, your choice) ("real" as in object, goal, concept, idea, destination, endpoint, threshold)... if you think you have it you don't... if you can define it.. that's not it.. if it can be reached... that's not it... if it can be defined it is still an "idea"... it is always just beyond. 
....
So...
When you want to know who you are more than life itself, more than everything in life itself, just come back and ask again. |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 2:43:59 PM
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Hi Shanti,
Yes, that's very true.  Bhakti is highly paradoxical. What is it we're longing for? We are already That, there is nothing to be attained. So therefore enlightenment must surely be a giving up, a letting go. Of what? Illusions, notions, goals - a letting go of the very belief, feeling and idea that we are a separate, physical object that needs enlightenment, rather than the undivided non-dual awareness that the person appears in!
Yet without Bhakti, there wouldn't be this movement toward letting go, towards abandoning what is false and not in harmony with the truth. So that longing for freedom, even though by default longing is dualistic, it demands integrity when choosing what we want: To chase desires, or let go of them?
As of late, the inner guru is asking me to let go of identification with the opposites of pleasure and pain, desire and fear. When forceful and self-centered, these desires are tending to arise from the sense "I am a separate body-mind who needs/wants ____". So am being asked to see and let go of this. Let go of identifying with the body-mind and all its control strategies for getting pleasure and avoiding pain.
Love,
Josh |
Edited by - mr_anderson on Aug 07 2013 4:20:57 PM |
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 5:43:58 PM
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Beautiful!
Bhakti is a key component of this path and truthfully Bhakti is not dualistic when we fall into the flow of it. The thing to be aware of is frustration. Frustration is ego driven (i want to be one with all and i want it now dammit )and when we allow it to grow we are only feeding the ego which takes us further away from where Bhakti is taking us. When in flow of Bhakti, a closed off phase and an open phase is thy will, something the inner guru or whoever our Ishta is, is trying to show us. We go through both the phases as more carrots dangling in front of us to take us into frustration or into being blissed out. Again, extremes. When we can separate the frustration from Bhakti, a phase of seeing who I am is the same as realizing I am everyone. Like you said above, right now your inner guru is trying to show you the way out of extremes. Don't be in a rush to see, let the seeing happen and then the frustration will dissolve. And maybe I am wrong, maybe you are not frustrated, maybe you are in the flow, do forgive me if I am saying things you already know.
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 6:02:01 PM
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Hi Shanti,
Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it
No I'm not too frustrated, I could see how my post might be read as frustrated though. I am at the point of taking a very sincere review of what behaviors and so on within me are in line with the truth, and which aren't. There is definitely an urgency to the bhakti. I have a repeated sense of myself, almost every day for some period of the day, as being unconditioned awareness, within which the collection of sensations, thoughts, feelings and so on known as "Josh" are arising.
It's very hard to get identified with frustration, because if thoughts try and contract into a frustrated, separate self, I just turn back attention to awareness within which those thoughts appear, and immediately there's space around the desires and thoughts and they relax.
However, even have awoken to this unconditioned awareness, which happened in 2012, the bhakti wants to go deeper. As a person, I've been enjoying resting in unconditioned awareness as its very blissful and totally free. The person just dissolves and I'll be walking around and there's no person, just This. Totally free. But then the person comes back, and sometimes I'm confused. Am I a person? Or am I nothing and everything? It seems to change.
But the bhakti wants to go deeper. The person has been using spiritual practices to get the experience of temporary freedom from the person/ego! Dipping its toe in the water, if you will. This also feels a bit disingenuous. The ego is kind of using practices to temporarily be free of itself, then jumping back in and saying That was nice, let's do it again! Or getting upset if the experience doesn't repeat. So there's an awareness and releasing of this control attempt.
Bhakti is saying: Jump in to the water! Let go of the person altogether. What is binding you is the person's attachments to using spiritual practices to get a pleasurable experience of being free of itself. In fact, all your identifications with pleasure and pain give one the tendency to manipulate experience. To hide out in the transcendent state, for a time. In fact, what you are is not a state, and both transcendent and immanent.
The bhakti is trying to take me beyond identifying as a person altogether, not just for short time in the form of a pleasurable experience.
It's very strong. A kind of dying feeling, just letting all the old patterns and habits that come from identification die. Seeing through them, and seeing how they lead one into continual suffering.
Do you see what I mean? I guess some of it is genuine bhakti, which is really making me be very honest about the antics of the relative self.
I guess on reflection, some of it may also be ego, which is trying to go at 150mph like it's on a superhighway.
Love,
Josh |
Edited by - mr_anderson on Aug 07 2013 6:23:08 PM |
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 7:54:08 PM
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That is what Bhakti/inner guru/life does, takes us deeper.
Practices do not just give us temporary relief from ego (relief comes when we have seen through/let go a block at the level we are at, which is a part of the practices), it makes us keep digging till we reach the lower most tips of the root (brings up more layers of conditioning (finally ego is just a cluster of conditionings that defines "me" and keeps "me" in place) to see through, also part of practices). Anytime we feel we have seen through a block and experience freedom from ego, we are not deluded, we really have seen through it at the level we are at. But practices take us deeper and the deeper we go, more layers of the same block is revealed. The form /degree of the conditioning is not exactly the same. Take a look at any current block/conditioning you are trying to see through, is it really the same as it was a few years back or even months back? Do you really invest that strongly in that condition as you did a few years back? Do you react or give the stories around the block/conditioning as much weight as you did a few years back? Why is that? It is because with every layer we see through, the story/conditioning loses a bit more of its grip. That is what practices do. The roots of ego/conditioning run deep and the deeper we go, more of the roots are exposed and removed.
Again what you are doing is 100% what I do. So please dont take anything I say as I am trying to discourage you from what you are doing or telling you what you are doing is wrong. I am writing things that may rub the wrong way bringing a linchpin to light that we miss when we start looping in inquiry. We feel we have seen it all, why can I not let this go, then we hear/read something that makes us react, that is where we have to look. And you my dear are so honest and ready to see, you will see what you need to see, even if i don't say anything.
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 8:17:00 PM
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No not discouraging at all, I really appreciate your input! It's very good and useful to have an outside opinion
It's hard to see one's own blind-spots most of the time, I only wish to have them pointed out as much as possible!
It's the stuff that you don't see objectively and understand deeply & clearly that imprisons you.
Thank you for your advice! I think I need to watch this current bhakti surge to ensure it doesn't turn into a non-relational monster.
Love,
Josh
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Aug 07 2013 : 8:20:55 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_anderson
It's the stuff that you don't see objectively and understand deeply & clearly that imprisons you.
Amen to that!
You sum it up in one sentence what I have tried to explain to myself and others in many many words.
Thank you!
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Finding out who you are
