An Advaita Vedanta philosophy site, focusing on Realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga, non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, dwelling as your natural state, and the teachings of Maharaj.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: You witness feelings rise and fall. How long can your feelings last, for example, if you lose a friend? Would the feelings simply rise for a minute, a day, a week, etc.? Where do you draw the line?
F.: Of course, your question deals with relative issues…with “loss,” with “friend,” with “time,” with “memories about the ways things were in ‘the past’ that have an enduring effect now.” The response, then, will have to look first at the manner in which relative issues are processed by relative means.
“Psychological processing” refers to the means by which a person who has become upset or hurt or bothered or enraged is able to (1) consider all aspects of a happening and its “personal effects,” (2) get free of any ensuing anxiety or angry or resentment, and (3) return to a peaceful and stable state.
[NOTE: “Psychological” involves “the mind,” that fiction-filled part of the brain that generates among persons any and all sense of being upset or hurt or bothered or enraged. The natural, original state is peaceful and stable to the degree that no person/persona exists that can experience offense and emotional intoxication. If abiding as the natural state, all of the "relative factors" in this discussion will be moot.]
Obviously, processing is a relative means of dealing with relative issues. Among the Realized (specks of Pure Consciousness) all is merely witnessed—including feelings that rise and fall. If abidance is happening as the natural state, then happenings in the unnatural (relative) state cannot generate periods of agitation, annoyance, or irritability.
[NOTE: Because the cause of all is all, the Realized would not speak of any “appropriate amount of time” for “mourning” any more than a Realized teacher would answer any speculative question such as, “What would you do if this, this or that happened?” What happens, happens, and what happens "in the future" will be caused by all that happens between now and any “future” happening.]
Next, see that agitation, annoyance, or irritability are the providence of persons caught up in a relative existence in which personal attributes are considered real, in which the false perceptions that mark the relative existence are considered actualities, and in which it is only ego-states that can believe they have really been offended.
Until Full Realization happens, processing is required if one would limit to some degree the chaos and vacillations between “being happy” and “being unhappy” that those identified with ego-states will face.
Until Realized, persons must use processing to return to a stable condition after egotism engenders agitation. As far as your question about a time-line—“minutes, days, weeks”—understand this:
Some persons process quickly the perceived threats or offenses that they took to be an actual assault. Other persons take a considerable period of time to process the offenses that ego-states take to be real assaults. And some persons never complete the processing at all.
The latter will experience and re-experience their anger and resentment for the remainder of the manifestation as their “minds” churn over and over again the details of their perceived offenses.
Do you know some persons who have been “wronged” by someone and, years later, still have not gotten over the slights, the offenses, the hurts and then “moved on” (that is, returned to a condition in which they are free of their agitation, annoyance, or irritability)?
The length of time required to process a threat perceived as real by an assumed identity (such as “The Spouse,” for example, an identity which is perceived to be real by that persona), and to see that “What happened is not truly a threat to Me—to the True Self”—and to thereby “let go” is an indicator of either (1) the degree to which one is in touch with reality and the degree to which one is free of egotism or (2) the degree of psychic [mental/”mind”] unhealthiness and the degree to which egotism is in play.
See, therefore, that psychological processing involves (a) taking information received through one of more of the senses and (b) reorganizing it so that a differentiation can be made between what is true and what is false and then (c) being restored to a calm and stable condition.
Next, if the processing continues effectively (again, relatively speaking) then what can follow is at least some temporary level of freedom from the misery and suffering that are generated by the delusion that “It is I—the True Self—that is being interfered with or injured or threatened or assaulted or even destroyed.”
[Only with Full Realization, however, can consistent freedom and stability happen. That occurs when it is seen that “I have not be hurt” and that “It is only ‘the false I’ that is believing it has been hurt.” The seven-step "journey" is moving from identification with that false "I" to abidance as the Absolute.]
If processing happens in a very brief period of time, then there is evidence of a shift toward selflessness…evidence of increasing ego-lessness. Again, the longer it takes a person to process the effects of relative happenings, the greater the evidence of psychic unhealthiness (that is, attachment to “the mind” and its content) and the greater the evidence of egotism.
If the attachment to the offended ego-state continues, then so too shall continue the misery and the restlessness and the hurt and the resentment, all of which can manifest when a false identity takes itself to be real.
Remember the pointer offered before: while the body can register pain, it is “the mind” which registers perceptions (mis-perceptions) of offense and misery and suffering. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
WHILE THE PREFERRED, TRADITIONAL METHOD FOR OFFERING/RECEIVING ADVAITA POINTERS INVOLVES SITTING ONE-ON-ONE WITH A TEACHER, SOME HAVE BEEN ABLE TO COMPLETE THE SEVEN STEPS TO REALIZATION WITH THIS GUIDE:
click FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)
