REFLECTIONS on ADVAITA: PART 16 – GUEST WRITER: LOUISE STERLING

Everyday Life and the Movement towards Silence, Stillness and Nature

Everyday life is busy – self-employment, busy writing business, single parenting a teenager. This is just the way it is right now. Before this understanding permeated, this life often created stress and tension. There was the idea that the work should be “meaningful”, that “louise” should work harder and more efficiently, that a life purpose needed to be found, that the teenager should be motivated and assisted to be a great student, a brilliant magician and have a great life etc, etc. After the shift, everyday life contains the same components – but the perspective is radically different. The ego-driven agendas of what life should be have fallen away. The stability and stillness of the depth of the ocean floor is felt rather than the constant, chaotic tumbling through the waves at the surface.

Spiritual movements emphasize special sacred spaces and special sacred meditations for stillness to be experienced. (Note the “tell” here – WHO experiences? A spiritual persona.) This is unnecessary. Stillness is always present. In stillness, awareness turns inwards – into the fathomless depths – instead of outwards towards the myriad of things in the relative. It does not require anything special. No special clothes, or music, or cushions. In fact, this deep stillness points to Who You Are – the awareness in, through and from which writing, parenting and busyness happen. If we return to the ocean analogy – Who You Are is the ocean – in, through and from which waves form: lapping gently or wildly crashing on the surface.

For many years as a spiritual seeker, erroneous thinking kept “me” hooked into this surface experience of the relative. The thinking was that “correct” spirituality meant that life would always be experienced as peaceful and calm, filled with kindness, generosity and compassion, moving along at a relaxed pace with no tension (spot the duality?). Identified as the waves on the surface, “I” felt spiritually on track when the waves of life were peaceful and lapping gently. However, when the waves of life were stormy and crashed and pounded, I felt spiritually off track, as if “I” was somehow doing something wrong, that “I” was not spiritual enough.

Can You see the hopelessness of erroneous thinking? Imagine a massive pounding, crashing wave trying to be “quiet” and “calm” and “gentle” and “peaceful” when there is a storm at sea and powerful currents are pushing wild turbulent torrents of water to the ocean surface? Imagine a mild, gentle ripple of wave on a flat mirror-like sea in a dead calm trying to be “active” and “energetic”? In the ocean, the waves form naturally and spontaneously – determined by a wide range of climactic factors. The relative gentleness or wildness is not determined by the wave itself, but by the natural conditions that give rise to the wave itself.

Life in the relative unfolds spontaneously. Without the patterning of desire and fear, there is no attachment to things happening one way or another way. However, there does seem to be a strong movement towards what is SILENT, what is STILL and what is NATURAL. This silence allows a seeing with the interior eye – a dance of Love with the mystery of life expressing in this constantly changing show. This affinity to where silence and stillness are naturally present is like LOVE drawing itself to itself.

Cape Town is a relatively small city – one of the most beautiful cities in the world and one of the most violent; a mixture of developed and developing; third and first world – whatever the politically correct parlance is nowadays. Duality on the doorstep. How many living here will seek the stability offered by Advaita? Few. For most, the egoic gaze is not drawn to interior silence; it is drawn to the bright, flashing lights in the exterior – the constant movement and madness of the unpurified or corrupted consciousness in motion. This global society perceives noise, motion and what is fundamentally unnatural to be “natural” and “normal”. This is observed, but there is no movement to “change” or “fix” or “teach” or “improve”. There is this absolute trust in life unfolding – that the natural spontaneous response will play the chord that is required – with no effort or planning or motive.

This too is an interesting "shift" as in the relative past "louise" was an anti-apartheid activist with a strong social conscience agenda. Can You see that these are labels - that personas were at play? Can You sense the uncompromising freedom of acting without persona-driven agendas? (Note: liberation of the drivers of personality does not mean that injustices like those witnessed during apartheid are ignored; but that responses are natural and free and do not attempt to "fix" while meeting selfish personal hidden agendas like being a Rescuer, a Saviour, a Radical, a Martyr, a Compassionate Helper, or just an All-round Great Person.)

Where is Your gaze focused? Are You drawn into the motion-filled turbulence of this egotistical society, or are You turning inwards -- into the stillness, silence and stability that point towards Your True Nature?

Please enter into the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

(For extending teaching on the steps from the corrupted consciousness to the Realized state see the ebook: From the I to the Absolute and the DVD of the Advaita Retreat -available soon)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com – a temporary email address available for the duration of these guest postings.