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.: “Gain” and “loss” are dualistic concepts. The non-Realized do not understand the conscious energy or they would know that the True Self can neither gain nor possess nor lose anything. Yet the belief in the dualistic pair of gain/loss subsequently drives persons to experience the instability that results as the shifting between “having” and “not having” is taken to be real.
It also generates emotional intoxication among the non-Realized as well as all of the subsequent misery and suffering that accompany that relative condition.
Some 93 million miles from earth is a nuclear furnace called “the sun.” From the sun, solar energy reaches the earth. What could that energy possibly possess? What can it gain? What can it lose? Similarly, how could a temporarily manifested speck of conscious-energy own, gain, or lose anything?
To understand that specks of consciousness cannot own or gain or lose is to be free of belief in the concepts of doership (such as "I got married") and ownership (such as "my spouse"). Can energy own anything? Can energy “marry”? Of course not. Can breath marry? No. Can the elements of the earth marry? No.
Just as the rhetorical question “Who told you that you were naked?” is an invitation to consider the source of shame and guilt, so the philosophical question “Who told you that you were married?” is an invitation to consider the effects of enculturation and the way it generates false beliefs when persons do not question what they are told.
So WHO believes he or she has married? Who told you that you are married? A man in a robe? Another man in a robe can as easily tell you that you are not married. And the non-Realized on the planet will unquestioningly accept that the statement from the first man in a robe is true and they will as readily and unquestioningly accept the statement from the second man in a robe as truth:
“I pronounce that you are Mrs. Jones.” OK. “I pronounce that you are no longer Mrs. Jones.” OK. To the contrary, truth is truth. It is Absolute and unchanging. What is true now has always been true and always will be true, so anything based in the “relative” is a lie.
The consciousness can witness such happenings, and the bogus “mind” can conclude that what is said by corrupted or blocked specks of consciousness is truth. Yet all pronouncements rooted in corrupted or blocked consciousness are always false, and all identities assigned or assumed by the corrupted or blocked consciousness are also false.
Thus, it should be understood that the pain that persons suffer is not about anything or anyone that they think they have lost. It is about (1) the loss of identity—namely, a false identity—or it is about (2) cellular memories or mental impressions, many of which—when traumatic—are stored at the atomic level.
Much of the suffering that the non-Realized speak of is rooted in the memory of traumatic childhood trauma or in distorted memories formed and recalled during adulthood and based (A) not in the way things really were but in the delusional way that things were thought to be or (B) not in the way things were but in the delusional way that abnormal things have been normalized, relatively speaking, as the desirous “mind” rewrites history and ignores truth or suppresses the recall of the reality surrounding certain happenings.
The Advaita teachings, if understood, will not only remove belief in all that is false but will also remove the “one” who thinks he/she has beliefs and has been “doing” things.
Post-Realization, “thoughts” generated by a fictional “mind” end; words generated by the corrupted or blocked consciousness end; and any belief in a “do-er” (or a “gainer” or “loser” or “owner” or “husband” or “wife” or “widow”) also end.
All of those false identities are about your false nature. The invitation is to find Your Real Nature and thereby be free of all delusions. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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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