Saturday, October 02, 2010

REMOVING FALSE CONCEPTS – HOW POINTERS PURIFY THE MIND AND CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR YOUR TRUE NATURE TO EMERGE. PART 2– SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

Table of Contents

Today's Considerations
Recent Posts and Archives
Tools for Realization
Author's eBooks
Author's Paperback Books
Free eBooks

An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Nothingness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

The mirror can do nothing to attract the sun.

It can only keep bright.

As soon as the mind is ready, the sun shines in. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Imagine a vast room – enveloped in darkness. It is impossible to actually see the room, to examine what it contains. All is black. If a single candle is lit, the room will be partially illuminated. In the faded light, another candle may be discerned and lit, then a lamp, then another lamp, and so on. Slowly, more and more light will fill the room. While there is now more light in the room, it still has the character of darkness or night. Perhaps the artificial light in the room reveals heavy curtains covering every window, and these curtains are drawn back. Eventually, the sun rises, and the sunlight pours into the room through those unobstructed windows. The room is completely illuminated with natural light.

In this analogy – the room of course is the fiction-filled mind. The candles or lamps illuminating the room are pointers to truth. The sun that floods the room with light is the final understanding.

In this relative life, seekers attempt to empty that dark room by removing the darkness teaspoonful by teaspoonful. If each drop of darkness is a concept, how can that vast room be emptied by this method? A few ideas, concepts, beliefs may be discarded, but usually they are replaced with other ideas, concepts, beliefs. The room is too vast, the darkness too overwhelming. It is a hopeless exercise.

The Advaitin approach does not focus on the darkness – which is really just false understanding. Why search through what is false to find what is true? This is like looking for a pear on an apple tree. A futile pursuit.

As Maharaj explains: What you see as false, dissolves. It is the very nature of illusion to dissolve on investigation. Investigate - that is all. You cannot destroy the false, for you are creating it all the time. Withdraw from it, ignore it, go beyond, and it will cease to be.

These words are like lighting a candle in the darkened room. They are a pointer to truth. In other words, they are not themselves true as they are conceptual – and pitched towards a particular level of understanding; however they point to or direct AWAY from the false and TOWARDS truth.

Bound at the level of mind-body-personality, the seeker is entranced by the darkness. The person is hooked into the desires and attractions of the glittering experiences of the relative world and pushed and pulled by the fears and anxieties and troubles of the negative experiences.

At this level, the seeker will search for light within the darkness – looking for opportunities to grow, transform, find happiness, uncover truth, escape suffering, stabilize happiness; usually through attending courses, seminars, reading, devouring, and acquiring, or through adopting practices. All that is experiential is the false – so these activities are meaningless.

Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experiences and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends them both. (Maharaj).

How can you find what is beyond experience? See, once and for all, that this question points outside of the playground of experience – there will never by a technique, book, course, or practice that takes you there, for these are themselves at the level of experience. This is not a logical conundrum – it is a pointer to freedom.

So – a pointer to truth is not a technique or a practice. It is a light that shines so that what is false can be seen and ignored or dissolved, creating the conditions for your true nature to be revealed. It is not something to be grasped on to, and repeated endlessly. All that is required is to take the pointer into silent consideration and allow it to have its effect. When the light is cast, the darkness evaporates. The false is no more, and the pointer is superfluous. Both are discarded.

Take for example, the pointer “I am not my personality”. This pointer, in silent reflection, will shine a light on the ebb and flow of desires and fears that are bound up with personality identification. You will see that while desires and fears may arise, they are not who you are. In this way, they lose their power to entrance and hypnotize you and draw you into the experiential maze of everyday life.

Remember, Maharaj explains that what is seen as false dissolves. When you know with complete certainty that you are not the personality – those false labels are seen as false and become irrelevant. Their power as ties that bind evaporates. In other words, the truth of the pointer persists – and those false notions that once imprisoned you are abandoned. You will never be fooled by them again.

In the absence of these false beliefs, what need is there any longer for their antithesis via the pointer: “I am not my personality”? No need at all. You are stabilized beyond the mind/body/personality construct. The pointer is discarded as it has no function. When you have reached Paris, do you need the directions to Paris? Of course not. The map can be thrown out.

The Advaitin Teachings are freely available to all who seek. However, most seekers are not ripe or ready. They are still entranced by the world of experience and do not wish to let go of it.

This is why those who are drawn to Advaita are often veterans of the spiritual / mystical game. They are not pushed and pulled by attraction and aversion to other teachers, methods, paths. They have tried the other methods and given up hope. They have stopped accumulating the false, and the mind is relatively stable and calm. The pointers are recognized – and therefore there is more chance they will have an effect.

Let’s end with some questions:

· Do you understand that the mind is filled with false concepts?

· Can you see how all false concepts block the understanding of your real nature?

· Do you understand how pointers to truth cast the light of understanding so that false concepts dissolve?

· Can you understand the effortless effect of the pointers to truth – no effort is necessary?

· Do you see how in the absence of the false, “reality can rush in”, and who you are can be known?

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – and the removal of the false that obscures Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.


Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

Recent Posts and Archives

Tools Used by Other Seekers of Realization

WATCHING an Advaita Vedanta Retreat: Watch a Downloadable computer file version of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat (Downloadable on PC only, not Apple.)

ENROLLING in the Online Advaita Classes For information, visit Information on the Advaita Classes on the Internet To enroll visit Enroll in the Advaita Internet Course

ATTENDING an Advaitin retreat with Floyd and being guided through all seven steps. For details of the retreats offered, please visit the retreat information site.

ARRANGING a one-hour session via Skype or telephone with Floyd. (Skype is a free service.) Click the button to pay and you will be contacted to arrange a date and time for the call.

Five Free eBooks

Compliments of Andy Gugar, Jr.,
the following eBooks are available without charge for you or for friends:

I.
"GOOD vs. EVIL?" or "IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY, and INSANITY?"

The content of this eBook deals with one of the most common but erroneous beliefs that the non-Realized masses cling to and which they will fight about (and even kill over), namely, that there is a planet-wide duel going on between “the forces of good and evil” in the universe.

Either (1) the ancient view is spot on: that the "ills of the planet" are rooted in evil people, in people not being religious enough or spiritual enough, and are caused solely by bad morality; or, (2) the "ills of the planet" are rooted in ignorance, stupidity and insanity and "being good" or "being moral" does not put an end to ignorance, does not eliminate stupidity, and does not treat insanity in any way.

II.
"THE VISION"

Comments regarding the free eBook entitled “THE VISION”:

“My thanks to you and Andy.” – Andrew “Mac” McMaster

“Thanks so much for the book! And, by the way, it is brilliant and the most effective pointing that you have done. It has served to help clear the remaining blockages.” – Stan Cross

“Greatly appreciate having “THE VISION” added to my Henderson resource library that is situated on the right side of my bed for easy access! Eternally grateful for what was received and what was given.” – Robert Rigby

“‘THE VISION’ is such a well-written, condensed version of the Nisarga Yoga approach to understanding and enjoying Reality that I feel it can serve as a must-read ‘meditation guide’ for all earnest seekers.” – Andy Gugar, Jr.

III.
"Sapolsky, Maharaj, and the Non-Dual Teachings"

Dr. Robert Maurice Sapolsky is an American neuroendocrinologist; a professor of biology, neuroscience, and neurosurgery at Stanford University; a researcher; an author; and a Research Associate at the National Museums of Kenya.

There is much that a non-dualist or Advaitin or Nisargan can relate to by comparing and contrasting what Sapolsky reveals about the way certain troops of baboons live in Africa with the way that humans abide all around the globe.

This 152-page eBook catalogues the common, non-dual message shared by Sapolsky and Maharaj and reveals the ways that Sapolsky’s scientific research supports the non-dual pointers offered by Maharaj.

IV.
Seeking

In “PART ONE” it will be seen that most persons on the planet are not seeking, and most will never seek, but for those who are seeking, most will face several obstacles:

In “PART TWO” of this book, it will be seen why many criticized Maharaj for “changing his message in his later talks.” It will be seen that the changes were not about changing the message per se as much as about changing his methodology as he experimented with one version of the Ultimate Medicine after another in order to try to find an effective means for addressing the Ultimate Sickness.

He tried a religious version of the Medicine, a Spiritual version of the Medicine, and finally settled on a version which addressed to Sickness at its core . . . at the mental and emotional level.

V.
"THE MOST DANGEROUS BELIEF OF ALL"

“Dangerous” is a term that can only apply during the relative existence, but of those who do commit suicide, for example, how many shoot themselves in the foot over and over until they “bleed out”? None. They shoot themselves in the head. Why? In order to try to stop the noise - to try to stop the chatter of a thousand monkeys – to stop the noisy mind which is the area that stores the ideas, notions, concepts, mind-stuff, etc. which drives them into the depths of insanity.

And what are those ideas, notions, concepts, etc. called, collectively? "Their beliefs." The irony? They are not their beliefs at all. They are the beliefs of “others” that were set in place via programming, conditioning, etc. and which persons then think are their own.

And what are those beliefs rooted in, and what reinforces those beliefs and convinces persons that they are sacred and worth fighting over and even sometimes worth dying for? Blind faith.

This 337-page eBook discusses those issues in detail.

To read any or all of the free eBooks, please double-click the "FREEBIES" link at the top of this page