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Some write to share what has happened as a result of a certain awareness that came while reading a post. Those are entertaining, a part of the dance shared here. However, far more e-mails are received without any questions at all but are chock full of pronouncements, with declarations of what the writers think they understand, with attempts to put their knowledge of Advaita or the Vedas on display.
Some write to challenge a pointer with which they disagree, but others write to endorse the dogma of their religion, to point out the rightness of their ideology, to affirm that I am an agent of satan, or to report that I am going to burn in hell forever.
Others write just to be writing, taking a brief respite from the talking they engage in all day long. The content is readily seen to have been written in the vocabulary of mind-language, and their writings are much ado about nothing (which they take to be something) and are inspired by the motives of any number of ego-states that are still very much “at work” via a “mind.”
When roles are assumed, mind-speak must follow. Personality-driven words must be spoken in an effort to support identity. When ego-states go, silence comes. The deer make little noise, having nothing to prove, having no mind-language with which to think, having no vocabulary with which to engage in mind-speak. That is what nisarga functioning looks like. Today, you are invited to witness your self/selves as talk happens. Was everything that was said really necessary? What was the motive behind the words spoken? What are you trying to prove? Why does talking and impressing have more appeal than the quiet? WHO feels the need to speak, to be "loved," to be admired, to be respected, or more often, just to be heard?
[Continued from yesterday] The complete exchange referenced yesterday unfolded as follow:
Visitor: My wife’s sister in law, a real nut if I were into labeling people and things, has hit a financial crisis since her husband just lost his job. She said the weird thing is that she "turned it all over to God" and now is not worried. You know, when I have "bottomed out" I have done that in the past and felt relief. What has happened, I realize, is that she simply stopped her mind from driving her crazy / from worrying. When you do that, whether you feel you have to turn it over to God or just stop worrying, the end result is that you will always feel relief from the mind.
[So one can receive “relief from the mind” by using "the mind," which is what caused the anxiety or distress or worry in the first place? Interesting concept, yes? Pardon the graphic illustration, but it does provide an exactly parallel example of the reasoning fallacy being used in that bit of illogical thought:
Once, “floyd’s dad” went into a rage around this incident: to start with, he had not approved of the fact that a stray dog had been adopted. The anger came when dad stepped into a bit of that dog’s defecation and tracked it into the house and soiled the new carpet.
Now the approach to solve that problem did not include a belief that “the stench and the defecation can be removed if you will go back outside, traipse about the yard, and bring in even more defecation.”
Similarly, “relief from the mind” cannot come about by traipsing about “in the mind” and tracking in more of the same stench that “the mind” came up with in the first place.
Anything generated from “the mind” is going to be nonsense, and nonsense does not remove nonsense, any more than the source of a stench can be used to remove the stench. Thus, what came from the “mind”—which is the very source of all “worry” and “bottoming out”—cannot possibly provide relief from worry and cannot possibly put an end to the “bottoming out.” That which appears to be a brief respite does not equal actual relief. Being relieved of the content of the mind that generates "dis-ease" is what relief is really about.]
You are speaking the language of the mind. Understand that every word uttered using the vocabulary of mind-speak is just so much hogwash. Try re-reading this: “When you do that, whether you feel you have to turn it over to God or just stop worrying, the end result is that you will always feel relief from the mind.”
That is totally false. First, the effects of any traumatic experience are stored at a cellular level throughout the body—not only in “the mind” or the brain. In fact, the fewest effects are accumulated in the "mind" since the toxicities of trauma are scattered throughout the entire body.
Thus, the impact continues even if denial is practiced; the effects go on and can manifest as unexplained illnesses, as an immune system that functions inefficiently, and as all sorts of PTSD effects which manifest at levels that persons can only seemingly dissociate from. The effects remain nonetheless.
You have shown one more way that people are prey to the beliefs of others that they hear and then adopt as their own, and that has come in your case after four years of exposure to Advaitin pointers. No wonder it is heard so often, “I’ve got, I’ve got it…oops, I lost it.”
Further, such “turning it over” to any dreamed up, other-world entity or entities only delays or stymies the process of addressing relative issues, not unlike what happened with a man who had been unemployed from January to November of 2007.
He had been living off withdrawals from his 401k retirement fund, withdrawals that were accompanied with penalties and forfeited earnings of interest. He said that he only had enough money remaining in his 401k to pay the bills for one more month.
“After that,” he said, “I don’t know what my wife and child and I will be doing in January for food and housing, but, you know what, Floyd? In God's time, not mine.” [His wife’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling in a show of total disgust, and it is a sense of disgust that is always the final indicator—the near-indisputable marker—that the end of a relationship is imminent. Later, it was seen that such was exactly the case with his marriage.]
The reply at that moment: “Now understand that this response to that magical thinking is admittedly steeped in the relative. Also understand that it is offered in the truest sense of what you might take to be ‘tough love,’ but the fact is that you could not be any dumber if you cut your head off.
“It is suggested that you get up off your rear, quit waiting on a god to rescue you since you’ve waited for eleven months without results, refine your resume, and understand that when someone has no job, his full-time job is not to sit on a couch as you’re doing, is not to play video games while waiting patiently for god, but is to go search for a job.”
As noted above, the effects of his “turning it over to God” was that it delayed and stymied the process of addressing relative issues, it inspired a “head in the sand” attitude, and it generated a sense of disgust with its relative but subsequent consequences.
Realization and nisarga-style living are not about ignoring relative happenings and “requirements” of the Is-ness; are not about relocating to a new “mental residence” in the ether (that is psychosis), and are not about denying the Am-ness for the period of manifestation.
Nisarga living happens when Reality is overlaid on the beingness, when all ego-states and magical/supernatural thinking ends, when believing that a relationship with a mirage can be real and can be empowering, and when all that happens unfolds in a mode of living that is as sane and logical and reasonable and natural as that of the deer. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (The sharing of the transcript of the dialogue will continue tomorrow)
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