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FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Received several weeks ago]: First off, thanks for your blog. I thought about some things you write about when I went to see the movie Doubt. I thought about how doubt had to come before I was willing to question anything. Before that, I never had any doubt at all that everything I was told by my preist and my parents was completely true. But I still have a few concepts lurking around back there that need to go. And just when I think they’re all gone, one will show up. Any advice? Please keep up your blogging. Chris
F.: It was seen yesterday that it matters not if the “mind” or a culture tells a person that she/he is important or impotent…a king or a beggar. All identities are false as are all of the concepts that are stored in the fiction-based “mind.”
Whether considered by self or by other persons to be powerful or powerless, the end fate of the body is guaranteed to be the same. Either (1) Realization will be that which flattens the imaginary hierarchies that are generated by ego-states and egotism or (2) bacteria inside the body will ultimately level all which cultures and persons arrange according to their relative pecking orders.
In an exchange with ginny yesterday on that subject, it was shared that understanding the eventual bacteria-controlled outcome awaiting all bodies should reset the ego to neutral, at least until the very last assumed ego-state dissolves.
Today, this second pointer from an earlier post will be discussed:
B. To continue the search might require “an understanding of what the relative results would be if The Understanding were to come, including independence, freedom, peace, and a relative existence marked by lightness rather than darkness and heaviness.”
Your e-mail is describing a seeker who has removed many obstacles that were blocking the pure consciousness, yet abidance is still continuing as the consciousness rather than as the Absolute. As long as abidance happens as the ever-moving consciousness, then peace cannot come.
The fixation in the no-concept, non-dual Reality that you seek can only come when abidance happens as Your natural state and Your original nature. Even the ever-in-motion consciousness must be transcended; then, abidance will happen as if already abiding "in" that which is an ocean of awareness without awareness of.
Suppose for a moment that you own a home in a bustling, noisy city but enjoy spending the weekends in a getaway cabin in a quiet, secluded forest. In that analogy, you have moved far enough along the “path” that you are only spending a few days a week in the city but spending the majority of each week in the cabin.
What you are seeking is to move permanently to the cabin and enjoy the peace and quiet of that locale. Such is the difference in visiting the Absolute while continuing to abide as the ever-in-motion consciousness. That will assure that those "lurking concepts" you would be free of will remain instead.
In the West, these matters are seldom discussed. Even in the East, many speak so highly of the consciousness that it is prized. Is it not the case that all non-Realized persons are attached to their belief in the possibility of eternal continuity for the consciousness?
When teachers speak of the consciousness as if it were the be-all and end-all, then the seekers who accept that teaching will always be in the state of flux you describe—maybe not living with all of the fluctuations and chaos of the non-Realized but nevertheless moving here and there, touching the Reality of THAT at times but still overly-involved with, and attached to, the I-Amness as well.
To fixate and be done with those "lurking concepts" that remain, abidance must happen as the original state, as Your original nature. Only by abiding as that state can independence, freedom, peace, and lightness be known; and ironically, it cannot be known post-manifestation but can only be known NOW.
What is the relative existence like when the Full Understanding manifests? It becomes an existence that is free of all of the troublesome things and persons that make the relative existence troublesome for most. You are freed of belief in any concepts.
Would you be free of the lingering effects of abandonment? Would you be free of the effects of words spoken that could make a persona feel as if it has been torn to shreds? Would you be free of the misery and suffering that accompanies a sense of “loss”?
Fixated as Your original nature, not only will there be no “Abandoner” there; neither will the one who spoke such bothersome words be there; neither will the one be there who took away what you once cherished.
And how is this for a piece of news: the one who has been the most troublesome of all to you throughout your relative existence—namely, you—will not be there either. Be done with it all; be done with “them” all. It is the unloading of all of that and then abiding as THAT, which bring about the lightness.
Talk of peace! Talk of freedom! Yet what will try to “pull you back” to the realm of concepts and away from the peaceful state of total freedom? Exactly that which prevents most from ever questioning their learned ignorance in the first place. Consider the pointer offered in this excerpt from the book FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO THE NOTHINGNESS:
Persons are so sure of all they believe. After being challenged to question it all and not being so sure, they nevertheless return to that state of being certain at the third step on the “path” after assuming religious or spiritual roles.
Many at that point think that they have found the “Advaita Understanding.” They have not. They have substituted one egotism-generating persona for others and have substituted several egotism-generating belief systems for another. They are mistaking the dawn for high noon.
Revisit the blocks that prevent any person from fixating as the original, natural state if you would gain insight into what you are up against as certain "lurking concepts" yet remain. Find which ego-states are involved with those concepts and then question the reality of not only those egos but also the concepts that are supporting them as well. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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