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: If the glass I drink from is not real, then how is it that I'm able to drink water from the glass? Michael
F.: Yesterday's post ended with this question:
"How is it that the relative existence is made miserable when I don't know the truth about What I Really Am as opposed to what my culture tells me that I am?"
FROM A SITE VISITOR: If the glass I drink from is not real, then how is it that I'm able to drink water from the glass? Michael
F.: Yesterday's post ended with this question:
"How is it that the relative existence is made miserable when I don't know the truth about What I Really Am as opposed to what my culture tells me that I am?"
If your original nature and your natural state are not understood, then fluctuations and chaos will eventually lead to misery and suffering during the relative. If you do know Who/What You Really Are, then you will not abide as that natural state but will abide in the delusional, unnatural state that results when you think you are that which You Are not.
The fluctuations mentioned above will come when you become erroneously identified with relative roles. Why? Because any role that initially brings happiness will eventually bring as much unhappiness since all roles are finite. The chaos mentioned above will come when those constant swings eventually take a toll on the relative body and the fictional "mind" which always generate the emotional intoxication and emotional hangovers that persons experience.
The misery mentioned above will come as the effects of the dependency and co-dependency that are at the core of all role-playing squash the basic instinct to be free. Not knowing Self, the suffering mentioned above will come as each relative role ends and as persons take that end as the death of Self instead of as the end of the playing of another self.
Trying to abide as that which is perceived will result in fluctuations, in chaos, in misery and in suffering, plagued by endless doingness. Only abidance as the Real is stable, marked by endless beingness.
There can never be any lasting sense of freedom if the relative game of role-assigning and role-acceptance is being played. There can never be any stability if you do not know the Reality of the Oneness but believe instead in perceived dualities and perceived multiplicities.
The Realized, knowing the Absolute and abiding as THAT, know stability and peace and can enjoy the beingness. The non-Realized, tapping into the illusions of the relative, believe they know the dozens and scores of selves that they take to be a definition of who they are;
thus, there is no stability or peace or enjoyment of the beingness. There is the instability and effort and toil of doingness as all of the work and effort required to try to sustain each false image results in a most unnatural state.
If you take the glass to be real as it is perceived, Michael, then you can as easily take a role to be real as perceived. In that, you will lose all freedom and thus all happiness. Why are persons guaranteed to be at the mercy of the slings and arrows of the relative existence if they do not know the Real and abide as That?
Because then a man in a robe can lie to you and pronounce that you are "husband" or "wife"; then, you will no longer have any freedom of choice but will act in the way that the "husband" role or the "wife" role was modeled for you and the way you were programmed and conditioned to believe that such roles are to be played.
Instead of just being in the peace of beingness, you will become caught up in all of the relative illusions of persons...of personas. Participating in that "Drama of the Lie," you will meet all sorts of "characters" as you play your own assumed or assigned roles.
In the "Theater of the Lie," you will be exposed to every extreme of duality. You might meet some men you think are "kind," but you will also meet on that stage certain men who are vicious and brutal to degrees that are unimaginable. You will meet women who will say in anger the most hateful and hurtful words that can be conceived.
You will sting for the entirety of play as your "mind" will register memories of "good" times that have been "lost" and that have been replaced by painful memories that will not go away because in the play you were subjected to the most unjustifiable abuse and neglect by the sociopathic characters you shared the stage with for a time.
Your suffering will continue as long as you stay in the perceived drama as you remain in a co-dependent relationship with long-departed abusers, still allowing them to determine how you feel, still at the mercy of pathological characters who not only could not care less that they inflicted such harm but in fact delight in your unending misery.
Are you seeing why peace can only come from identifying with the Real and ignoring all that is perceived via the warped, conditioned, fictional "mind"? If your (relative) play presently seems to be a comedy, just wait. As long as you are embroiled in the play, someone can always rewrite the ending and make it into a tragedy. Only outside the play are You guaranteed to be free of all such fluctuations.
Continue with the example mentioned earlier when persons allow men in robes to tell them what they are. Taking that role to be who you are, you will feel as if you are dying if a second man in a robe strikes his piece off wood with a gavel and proclaims that you are not a husband or wife.
First, the culture will tell you what you are, then they will as readily tell you that you are not that anymore. Welcome to the fluctuations of the relative existence where perceptions are mistaken for Reality. In fact, What You Are cannot be proclaimed by any man, but it can be understood by all that Realize.
Realized, the label goes, the form remains...temporarily. You know the Real as opposed to the perceived. You understand the following: THAT which is Real is only temporarily manifested via a space. The elements and the air of the glass you mentioned will remain, and the conscious-energy that is in movement at a subatomic level will remain, but the form of "glass" cannot last forever.
Tossed about in the relative, that glass can be in continual movement until is dropped and shattered. The form or space called "glass" is gone, but the elements remain. See the difference in Real vs. perceived? See the constant fluctuations in the relative?
Identified with the relative instead of the Real, all will be marked by the constant movement of doingness and by continuously fluctuating periods of stability and instability. Peace and stability only happen if You know the Real beyond the perceived and abide as THAT. Please enter into the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
The fluctuations mentioned above will come when you become erroneously identified with relative roles. Why? Because any role that initially brings happiness will eventually bring as much unhappiness since all roles are finite. The chaos mentioned above will come when those constant swings eventually take a toll on the relative body and the fictional "mind" which always generate the emotional intoxication and emotional hangovers that persons experience.
The misery mentioned above will come as the effects of the dependency and co-dependency that are at the core of all role-playing squash the basic instinct to be free. Not knowing Self, the suffering mentioned above will come as each relative role ends and as persons take that end as the death of Self instead of as the end of the playing of another self.
Trying to abide as that which is perceived will result in fluctuations, in chaos, in misery and in suffering, plagued by endless doingness. Only abidance as the Real is stable, marked by endless beingness.
There can never be any lasting sense of freedom if the relative game of role-assigning and role-acceptance is being played. There can never be any stability if you do not know the Reality of the Oneness but believe instead in perceived dualities and perceived multiplicities.
The Realized, knowing the Absolute and abiding as THAT, know stability and peace and can enjoy the beingness. The non-Realized, tapping into the illusions of the relative, believe they know the dozens and scores of selves that they take to be a definition of who they are;
thus, there is no stability or peace or enjoyment of the beingness. There is the instability and effort and toil of doingness as all of the work and effort required to try to sustain each false image results in a most unnatural state.
If you take the glass to be real as it is perceived, Michael, then you can as easily take a role to be real as perceived. In that, you will lose all freedom and thus all happiness. Why are persons guaranteed to be at the mercy of the slings and arrows of the relative existence if they do not know the Real and abide as That?
Because then a man in a robe can lie to you and pronounce that you are "husband" or "wife"; then, you will no longer have any freedom of choice but will act in the way that the "husband" role or the "wife" role was modeled for you and the way you were programmed and conditioned to believe that such roles are to be played.
Instead of just being in the peace of beingness, you will become caught up in all of the relative illusions of persons...of personas. Participating in that "Drama of the Lie," you will meet all sorts of "characters" as you play your own assumed or assigned roles.
In the "Theater of the Lie," you will be exposed to every extreme of duality. You might meet some men you think are "kind," but you will also meet on that stage certain men who are vicious and brutal to degrees that are unimaginable. You will meet women who will say in anger the most hateful and hurtful words that can be conceived.
You will sting for the entirety of play as your "mind" will register memories of "good" times that have been "lost" and that have been replaced by painful memories that will not go away because in the play you were subjected to the most unjustifiable abuse and neglect by the sociopathic characters you shared the stage with for a time.
Your suffering will continue as long as you stay in the perceived drama as you remain in a co-dependent relationship with long-departed abusers, still allowing them to determine how you feel, still at the mercy of pathological characters who not only could not care less that they inflicted such harm but in fact delight in your unending misery.
Are you seeing why peace can only come from identifying with the Real and ignoring all that is perceived via the warped, conditioned, fictional "mind"? If your (relative) play presently seems to be a comedy, just wait. As long as you are embroiled in the play, someone can always rewrite the ending and make it into a tragedy. Only outside the play are You guaranteed to be free of all such fluctuations.
Continue with the example mentioned earlier when persons allow men in robes to tell them what they are. Taking that role to be who you are, you will feel as if you are dying if a second man in a robe strikes his piece off wood with a gavel and proclaims that you are not a husband or wife.
First, the culture will tell you what you are, then they will as readily tell you that you are not that anymore. Welcome to the fluctuations of the relative existence where perceptions are mistaken for Reality. In fact, What You Are cannot be proclaimed by any man, but it can be understood by all that Realize.
Realized, the label goes, the form remains...temporarily. You know the Real as opposed to the perceived. You understand the following: THAT which is Real is only temporarily manifested via a space. The elements and the air of the glass you mentioned will remain, and the conscious-energy that is in movement at a subatomic level will remain, but the form of "glass" cannot last forever.
Tossed about in the relative, that glass can be in continual movement until is dropped and shattered. The form or space called "glass" is gone, but the elements remain. See the difference in Real vs. perceived? See the constant fluctuations in the relative?
Identified with the relative instead of the Real, all will be marked by the constant movement of doingness and by continuously fluctuating periods of stability and instability. Peace and stability only happen if You know the Real beyond the perceived and abide as THAT. Please enter into the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
