An Advaita Vedanta realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga site discussing non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, and dwelling in the natural state as taught by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Received 22 March 2008] A woman in my office sent me a copy of what you wrote today. When I read the words from the woman who said she’d never been anything but Waynes wife, I froze I felt paralized. I got a chill because I’ve felt the same way since my husband passed. You helped her in a retreat but I can’t get off work to come there. I feel like my life has been on hold since his funeral and that has been years ago. I go through the motions, but I do not feel like I am even there. I want peace. I had to get a job and I got busy with work and church but here I am years later and nothing has changed. I have read some other things from you but I can’t begin to understnd what youre talking about but if you helped her I figure its worth asking. Can you help me?
F.: Thus it is with persons who think that they have lost something: the loss is not about the body or the breath but is about “the mind’s” manipulation of (supposed) reality during this manifestation of consciousness.
Thus, when a concept of “loss” is triggered (often as a result of archetypal influences), it is “the mind” that magnifies the emotional pain and perpetuates the sense of “loss” far beyond reason.
The pointer was offered yesterday that “even the consciousness must be transcended and abidance as the Absolute must happen” if one is to be free of the pain and suffering generated by an ego-state’s perceived loss.
Ultimately, to speak of “higher” or “lower” levels of consciousness is duality. Maharaj said, “There is no question of elevating to a higher level. Here it is only a question of understanding.” In fact, You Are in Your True State—You cannot be anything other than Your Real Nature—but because of the duality of “the mind,” you are blocked from knowing that.
Yet believing that your false nature is real (even though that is a totally erroneous belief), such a belief will nevertheless prevent you from knowing and dwelling in your natural state. As a result, the relative existence will unfold in an unnatural fashion or in a supernatural fashion (which is equally unnatural).
To be free of the pain associated with roles and ego-states and false identities requires freedom first from belief in all roles and ego-states and false identities. Thus the dance between the seeker and an Advaitin teacher:
as pure awareness leads in the dance, the movement can liberate the consciousness of the seeker from the effects of the programming and conditioning that have prevented persons from enjoying the music and moving spontaneously with the natural rhythms that happen when abiding in the natural state.
As the dance continues, liberation from the effects of “the mind” can happen. By the end of the dance, there is freedom from “the mind” and even from consciousness itself since it, too, is relative. While the consciousness is an attribute, it is awareness that is beyond all that is relative…beyond the beingness…beyond the non-beingness.
So, this current consciousness is all relative. Yes, the body is required for the “experiencing” of consciousness, but what is the body but plant food? Once you transcend consciousness and abide as the Absolute, where is any “experiencer?” Where is “anyone” who gained? Where is “anyone” who lost?
The state before this Am-ness, and any consciousness of the Am-ness, that is the Real State. Dwelling in that original natural state, WHO was there to own or gain or lose? There was no one. WHO was there to do or to “be this” or “be that”? No one.
After the knowledge of the Is-ness happened, it was then that identification with body and “mind” and personality followed. After identifying with the body and “mind” and personality, periods of fluctuation between happiness and unhappiness began.
All of the misidentification which triggers instability is accepted to be real by the programmed consciousness and the resultant “mind,” but none of that is your original and Real Nature.
If you understand that Your Real Nature has no identity, no form, no “Who-ness” and no name, then the falsity of such concepts as “owning,” “possessing,” “gaining” and “losing” becomes clear. Then, the role played by the conditioned consciousness and the “mind” in generating a sense of suffering becomes obvious.
Eventually, the seeker can understand the words of the Advaitin poet: “…There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” All duality, including “good or bad,” is rooted in “thinking,” in the fiction-filled “mind” that thinks…and that thinks it knows when it does not.
All involving the conditioned consciousness is impure, adulterated, limited, unstable, shifting, and ambiguous. That is the unnatural state. That is not Your Real Nature. Your Real Nature is uncontaminated, unconditional, unconditioned, unqualified, pure, unadulterated, unlimited, and unambiguous. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON TODAY’S POST:
Click LIBERATION
and
Click THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (There Is Only Peace If You’re Out of Your Mind)
Notice: Because of requests from people who want to limit the time away from their job, some weekend retreats will be offered in ’08. You arrive on Thursday PM or Friday AM, depart Sunday PM or Monday AM. All of the content will be presented, just as during the retreats that take place during the week.
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