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Maybe the drop has dissolved into the ocean, but has the ocean yet rushed into the drop? If so, then the next question must be: after the drop dissolved into the ocean and after the ocean rushed into the drop, did both the ocean and the drop eventually dissolve as well?
THE IMPURITY OF FOLLOWING THE “I AM” WITH ANY WORD, Part B
[You may review the
F.: Yesterday, this pointer was offered (but only for those at the last steps on the “path”):
If you are claiming certain “positive traits” as a result of your religious or spiritual efforts and practices and disciplines, then the question to ask is “WHO is making such claims?”
This e-mail from a regular visitor to the site included a question that elicited a response that might clarify the teachings at this level. The visitor began by looking at the concept of “peaceful” and the exchange unfolded as follows:
L.: Peaceful – does that count?
F.: Peaceful counts relatively speaking (yet have You considered this: in the end, WHO is peaceful vs. who is anxious)?
L.: So who? The Advaitan. The One Without Attachments. The Wise One. The One Who is Unruffled by Events in the Relative – including deadlines. The Recluse. Yes – so here is a Someone with an Attribute: peacefulness.
[Note how "peaceful" follows the "I am" construct. Note too the way she realizes that “peaceful” is a descriptor, a trait, a characteristic and sees that descriptors are all personal…all about a person and not at all applicable to a quantity of energy.] She continues:
L.: If I look more closely at the “peacefulness,” I see it masks a variety of old programmed “anxious” behaviours: nail biting, forgetfulness, over-eating. Usual deadline pressure stuff.
In fact is this really peaceful at all? Is it just that irritability, panic, self-criticism, self-pity and being reactive with others under stress (old anxious behaviours that seldom show up any longer) are absent from the mix? It “feels” peaceful, but perhaps what I call “peacefulness” could actually be described as “anxiety”. Just depends what benchmark is used.
I am starting to “get” that non-duality means … um … well …. non duality. Why then, do You talk about joy or sweetness – aren’t these dualistic terms?
F.: Excellent question, and yes, those are dualistic terms, level-appropriate for some seekers; now, it is time for You to move on beyond that level. Understand that the pointers in Your case are now being offered at a different “level,” fitting for seekers that are as far along the “path” as You.
Conditions or states (sweetness, peace, patience, joy) are all attributes that can only (1) be thought to have been “experienced” by persons or that can (2) be known by a knower. And in either case, that is happening only during the relative manifestation. Too, they often inspire denial, such as, "I'm so advanced along the 'path to peace' that none of this is affecting me."
"The Religious One" and/or "The Spiritual One" ego-states can generate misery while inspiring a claim that their dogma or practices are providing peace, thinking their "journey" into the (day) light has led them to noontime when it is really only dawn for them.
Seekers seek sweetness and peace and patience and joy and some few find them, but what they have found is all a part of the relative, and what is known is known via the manifested consciousness. Since the consciousness is ever-moving, then the seeker that knows sweetness and peace and patience and joy at times will also know bitterness, disharmony, impatience, and misery at other times.
RECEIVED RECENTLY FROM A SITE VISITOR WHEN THIS SUBJECT WAS LAST DISCUSSED: Youre wrong about the mind and youre wrong about seeking pleasure. Maharaj asked what’s wrong with the mind seeking the pleasant and avoiding the unpleasant. He said “Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows.” Michael
No disputing that Maharaj said that to one particular seeker, Michael; however, if you read the entire transcript of that talk, rather than one extracted quote, you would see that Maharaj eventually offered a different set of pointers to that same seeker.
You would see that the same seeker’s questions and comments revealed that he might be ready for an understanding available to those farther along the “path" then Maharaj's first assessment. If you review the transcript, you would see that M.’s later pointers changed from the one that you are quoting. He said,
“Desire is the memory of pleasure, and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. Moments of pleasure are merely gaps in the stream of pain. How can the mind be happy?” Later, he added, “…Joy is joy only against a background of pain.”
Then, even later he pointed out that “…pleasure and pain are all in the mind. The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned.” In due course, he taught: “Pain is the background of all your pleasures. You want them because you suffer. On the other hand, the very search for pleasure is the cause of pain. It is a vicious circle.”
You have been told here that whatever gives pleasure will surely give pain. You have been told that whatever gives the greatest pleasure will surely give the greatest pain. Many persons who have visited this site and read those pointers believe that is enough...that it is worth putting up with such fluctuations and tolerating pain in order to have some pleasure. So it is. Others will minimize the frustration of constant seeking and flux and chaos, even justifying the “negative” by upgrading the “positive.”
Some have written here to say the nisarga yoga is all wrong, that their yoga is right for it has led to bliss now and will assure eternal bliss as well. Though Easterners, their belief systems have a rather Baptist or Presbyterian ring to them.
It matters not if your "god of bliss" is imagined to look like a corpulent elephant or like old man Zeus, the key word here is “imagined.” The reality is that neither bliss nor misery will be known post-manifestation. The unmanifested consciousness will merely be absorbed into the pool of awareness that is not aware of anything. There will be neither bliss nor misery, neither reward not punishment.
Furthermore, the paradox is that those states of peace and joy and sweetness—once known—are (A) fleeting and thus frustrating and (B) are capable of making the opposite, former states all the more miserable when revisited. Then, seekers write to complain, “I'm sick of all of this ‘I’ve got it—I’ve lost it—I’ve got it—I’ve lost it’ cycling.”
Only being free of the knowing, the known, and the knower does the fluctuating end. Persons/the non-Realized will never know sweetness, peace, patience, joy; some seekers will know those, and will then take those as indicators that they have reached the end of the “path”;
yet they will still experience the annoying fluctuations if not abiding as the natural, original state. In that awareness that is not aware of abidance, then happenings associated with "the Am-ness mode" will actually be rooted in "the THAT-ness mode." Then, there will be no claims about any attributes or traits or characteristics—all of which are aligned with personality.
Now, all that said, the paradox is that when Reality is overlaid on the Am-ness, joy or pleasure can happen NOW without any notion that there is an experiencer, without any of the constant fluctuations that mark the manifestation, and without any return to the no-joy misery state—an all-relative state that cannot be registered in the awareness that is not aware of state.
The stability of the THAT state becomes overlaid on the otherwise unstable Am-ness state. Further, just because Reality is overlaid on the Am-ness does not mean that I—this consciousness—am not at One with your pain, with your suffering, with the anguish and affliction that mark the existence of so many persons on the planet.
This awareness after the At-one-ment is understood and after Real Love manifests is what moves this space to take the morning’s cup of cappuccino to an in-house office each morning, is what moves this space to sit before a screen, and is what determines which keys are spontaneously struck.
And if you should reach a point along the “path” before Full Realization happens, and if at that point you write (as many seekers do) to describe a level of freedom that has, in turn, generated what most certainly seems to be a sense of joy or bliss, then this space will nod…yes. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
[The discussion of the concept of “patience” will continue tomorrow]
FOR AN IN-DEPTH TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT:
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