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.: Just as people and places and things in your dreams seem real while dreaming—but can be seen to be fiction upon awakening—so too can all of your “wake state” dreams be seen as fiction upon Your Awakening.
That includes the “good” dreams you like when they seemingly come true as well as the “bad” dreams—the nightmares—that generate such relative misery. If you choose to celebrate that which you think is “good,” be prepared to mourn that which you think is “bad.”
Such is the instability of living with a concept-filled, dualistic belief system. That which brings pleasure will bring pain when trapped in duality. That which brings the most pleasure will eventually bring the most pain. That is the relative curse of entrapment in duality.
If you awake from a dream and know that you were, even prior to being fully conscious this morning, then You might glimpse the Absolute. Were you to abide as the Absolute—as the unalterable, unchangeable, no-mind, no-body, no-personality awareness—then only would You be free of the volatile and erratic and unpredictable periods of happiness and misery.
To know “I am manifested energy” is to preempt any claim that “I am a person who is in pain and suffering because I had this but I lost it.” The energy at a wall plug in your home can move through a plug-wire-appliance, but it cannot suffer or lose or gain. So it is with the energy that You Are.
You can move through this relative existence, but You cannot suffer or lose or gain. That which you think is suffering is a case of mistaken identity.
Consciousness speaks, and when it states that it is energy, it speaks factually. When it says, “I am suffering,” it speaks emblematically, as if symbolic roles assigned or adopted are real. Can light suffer or not suffer? Can any form of energy suffer or not suffer?
I tell you that Your Real Nature cannot suffer, nor can it change. It transcends all that is circumstantial (that is, phenomenal); conversely, all that is not your Real Nature will be subject to circumstance…subject to functioning under the relative Laws of Thermodynamics that make clear that all which comes together will eventually come apart.
That which is Real is the Oneness, and that which is One cannot “come together” or “come apart.” One is one, not two. That is the no-concept, non-dual Reality.
These teachings can set you free of believing in any of the false “you’s” and can allow You to know Your True Self—Your Real Nature—and to dwell as that/THAT.
There was no suffering prior to manifestation and there will be no suffering post manifestation. Similarly, there was no ecstasy prior to manifestation and there will be no ecstasy post manifestation. Can you be OK with that?
The answer to that question for non-Realized persons is "No, I cannot be happy with the notion that I won't continue to exist and experience bliss for eternity after I die." On the other hand, You can be at perfect peace with that understanding. Know the “You” and be done with the “you”—the false “you’s.” If it is bliss you seek, find it now, for only now can it happen.
To be free is to understand the Truth and thereby understand the functioning of the totality. Such understandings accompany the Realization of the True Self, a comprehension of the True Nature of consciousness/awareness, and an understanding of that which Is temporary and THAT Which is eternal. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON TODAY’S POST:
Click LIBERATION
and
Click THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (There Is Only Peace If You’re Out of Your Mind)
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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