F.: In Monday’s post, the list of what is required to be ready to embark on the Advaita “journey” ended with:
11. Doubt must inspire questioning it all.
12. Then, at the same time persons must be tired, very tired of it all.
The Realized poet Shakespeare wrote: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep." Before the consciousness manifested and before programming inspired the “mind” to take the “stuff” to be real, there was sleep. After the consciousness is no longer manifested and all the “stuff” dreamed up disappears, there is sleep. That is the “rounding out,” the cycling, the movement from the state of consciousness-at-rest, into the manifestation, and then to the unmanifestation of consciousness as it returns to the earlier state of rest. It’s a “rounding,” a cycling, but Shakespeare provided two options for the “in-between”:
1. The relative existence can be passed miserably, being distorted into “much ado about nothing.” That process of making much ado about nothing—of making mountains out of molehills and then having to live in the darkness of the valley you created as a result—eliminates any chance for happiness. And Shakespeare explained that making much ado about nothing—blowing the relative happenings out of proportion—happens because “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women…merely players.” Those caught up in their roles, playing their parts in “The Drama of the Lie,” become exhausted, tired, and very, very bored, trapped in the 40-hours-per-week-50-weeks-per-year routine that accumulation requires for its maintenance. Much ado about nothing results in complications, and complicated lives never provide the opportunity to differentiate true from false, to cast off the mental bindings of enculturation. Yet the alternative exists for all persons.
2. Shakespeare also wrote, "There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Why? Because persons are trapped in the limiting dream, and because there is no “your” philosophy. There is, instead, “their” ideology, and the pointer that was offered in the 7 June 2005 posting on this site said, “One must either find a working philosophy or be doomed to adopt their ideology instead, and nothing is more destructive than buying into their ideology.” Advaita is a working philosophy, but at the end of the “path” that leads to the final revelation, all work ends. Jobs can continue to happen, or not; accumulations can continue to be held, or not; “relationships” can continue, or not. If persons are tired of all of the “much ado about nothing,” they may be ready for the Advaita teachings. If they are doubting the value of others’ ideologies—having experienced the shortcomings and failures of them all—they may be ready for the Advaita teachings. If persons abandon all their desires-fears and want nothing above happiness and peace, then the opportunity via Advaita Vedanta is available. Persons can be free of the limitations of false-self identity—that “stuff as dreams are made on.” Then, a “little life” that is “rounded with a sleep" need not be limited to sleepwalking through it in a “walk of the living dead”-style of boredom and tiredness, marked by the self-generated chaos that boredom inspires. The awakening can happen, dishonesty and falsehoods can be cast aside, and then the poet’s advice can be followed: “To thine own Self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
The Advaita “path” offers the opportunity to be free of the “I” and to know that You Are the Absolute; to be free of the contaminated consciousness and to be returned to the condition of purified consciousness; to be free of the insanity of “a mind” and revel in the bliss of “no mind”; to escape the false body-mind identification and to know that “there are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Then, upon realization, it is known that there are no dualities of heaven-earth, heaven-hell, good-bad, okay-not okay; or self-Self. The work ends, and the peace and bliss of AS IF living begins. Yet the readiness is all.
11. Doubt must inspire questioning it all.
12. Then, at the same time persons must be tired, very tired of it all.
The Realized poet Shakespeare wrote: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep." Before the consciousness manifested and before programming inspired the “mind” to take the “stuff” to be real, there was sleep. After the consciousness is no longer manifested and all the “stuff” dreamed up disappears, there is sleep. That is the “rounding out,” the cycling, the movement from the state of consciousness-at-rest, into the manifestation, and then to the unmanifestation of consciousness as it returns to the earlier state of rest. It’s a “rounding,” a cycling, but Shakespeare provided two options for the “in-between”:
1. The relative existence can be passed miserably, being distorted into “much ado about nothing.” That process of making much ado about nothing—of making mountains out of molehills and then having to live in the darkness of the valley you created as a result—eliminates any chance for happiness. And Shakespeare explained that making much ado about nothing—blowing the relative happenings out of proportion—happens because “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women…merely players.” Those caught up in their roles, playing their parts in “The Drama of the Lie,” become exhausted, tired, and very, very bored, trapped in the 40-hours-per-week-50-weeks-per-year routine that accumulation requires for its maintenance. Much ado about nothing results in complications, and complicated lives never provide the opportunity to differentiate true from false, to cast off the mental bindings of enculturation. Yet the alternative exists for all persons.
2. Shakespeare also wrote, "There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Why? Because persons are trapped in the limiting dream, and because there is no “your” philosophy. There is, instead, “their” ideology, and the pointer that was offered in the 7 June 2005 posting on this site said, “One must either find a working philosophy or be doomed to adopt their ideology instead, and nothing is more destructive than buying into their ideology.” Advaita is a working philosophy, but at the end of the “path” that leads to the final revelation, all work ends. Jobs can continue to happen, or not; accumulations can continue to be held, or not; “relationships” can continue, or not. If persons are tired of all of the “much ado about nothing,” they may be ready for the Advaita teachings. If they are doubting the value of others’ ideologies—having experienced the shortcomings and failures of them all—they may be ready for the Advaita teachings. If persons abandon all their desires-fears and want nothing above happiness and peace, then the opportunity via Advaita Vedanta is available. Persons can be free of the limitations of false-self identity—that “stuff as dreams are made on.” Then, a “little life” that is “rounded with a sleep" need not be limited to sleepwalking through it in a “walk of the living dead”-style of boredom and tiredness, marked by the self-generated chaos that boredom inspires. The awakening can happen, dishonesty and falsehoods can be cast aside, and then the poet’s advice can be followed: “To thine own Self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
The Advaita “path” offers the opportunity to be free of the “I” and to know that You Are the Absolute; to be free of the contaminated consciousness and to be returned to the condition of purified consciousness; to be free of the insanity of “a mind” and revel in the bliss of “no mind”; to escape the false body-mind identification and to know that “there are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Then, upon realization, it is known that there are no dualities of heaven-earth, heaven-hell, good-bad, okay-not okay; or self-Self. The work ends, and the peace and bliss of AS IF living begins. Yet the readiness is all.
Are you sick and tired of their dishonesty, of their fooling you? Are you sick and tired of your own dishonesty, of fooling yourself and others, of playing parts rather than being True to Self? Are you ready to follow the “path” to its end so that you can stop allowing them to fool you and so you can stop fooling yourself? Are you tired of it all? Have you experienced enough of the results of believing “them” that you’re finally doubting and ready to question it all? Then you may be ready for the “Seven-Step Journey to Reality.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]
