An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Nothingness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Also, as for Maharaj, you will find more of the message that he offered in his later talks. During his last years, he said of I AM THAT: "That book and whatever was expounded at that time was only relevant for that period. I am speaking differently today" and am "emphasizing different aspects." His final understanding, quite different from what he offered early on, is the basis of pointers offered to seekers well along the "path." Maharaj made clear at the end that the pointers in I AM THAT will take you to the midpoint of "the race"; only the pointers in his final talks point the way to "the finish line."
F.: Today, the invitation is to review some of the key pointers so far and then sit with them in the silence, not seeking a samadhi state but entering instead into a state of focused awareness that will allow for additional understanding.
** Just as "bliss" is totally misunderstood by most (leaving most desiring "more" even as they claim devotion to this philosophy or that philosophy which touts de-accumulation), the same happens with the search for happiness.
** As long as the ever-in-motion consciousness inspires motion / doing / going / zooming and fluctuation, the stage will be set for emotional and / or feeling intoxication.
** Freedom - the prerequisite for peace - comes only when one moves off that stage (located in The Theater of the Lie) and witnesses all that happens from the platform of awareness.
** Since when is lightness not enough? A few fawn occasionally racing and kicking and jumping their way back and forth across the front yard notwithstanding, few of the trillions of species living naturally on this planet appear to be "blissful" or "exceptionally happy," but most of the time their existence does seem to be marked with a sense of lightness.
** The deer laze about, grazing here, dozing there, doing the work they must to survive but balancing that out by also pausing to lounge in the cool blue shade, relaxing, basking in the ecstasy of occasional sexual contact, just being and being natural. But persons believe they must have more than that? Really?
** An ever-present urge for accumulating more and "getting" more is often set up in childhood. In cultures of accumulation and capitalism, the vocabulary early on reinforces getting: "Get a good education so you can get a good job and get a good house and get a good spouse" or "Get this or that augmented and get these clothes and that 'look' and then you'll get a good life because you'll get someone who will provide that."
** Just as "bliss" is totally misunderstood by most (leaving most desiring "more" even as they claim devotion to this philosophy or that philosophy which touts de-accumulation), the same happens with the search for happiness.
** As long as the ever-in-motion consciousness inspires motion / doing / going / zooming and fluctuation, the stage will be set for emotional and / or feeling intoxication.
** Freedom - the prerequisite for peace - comes only when one moves off that stage (located in The Theater of the Lie) and witnesses all that happens from the platform of awareness.
** Since when is lightness not enough? A few fawn occasionally racing and kicking and jumping their way back and forth across the front yard notwithstanding, few of the trillions of species living naturally on this planet appear to be "blissful" or "exceptionally happy," but most of the time their existence does seem to be marked with a sense of lightness.
** The deer laze about, grazing here, dozing there, doing the work they must to survive but balancing that out by also pausing to lounge in the cool blue shade, relaxing, basking in the ecstasy of occasional sexual contact, just being and being natural. But persons believe they must have more than that? Really?
** An ever-present urge for accumulating more and "getting" more is often set up in childhood. In cultures of accumulation and capitalism, the vocabulary early on reinforces getting: "Get a good education so you can get a good job and get a good house and get a good spouse" or "Get this or that augmented and get these clothes and that 'look' and then you'll get a good life because you'll get someone who will provide that."
The programming trains persons as children to "get" and then sets them up to believe that the source of bliss or happiness is always external, not internal. Yet the lovely house or any other externals - which persons have "gotten" by whatever means - cannot be carried about 24 / 7 and used as a comfort blanket the way that a child drags about its favorite cover. That which is carried about 24 / 7 is internal, never external, and what is carried about 24 / 7 is what will determine whether a sense of lightness or a sense of heaviness is also being carried about.
** Maharaj: "Nothing can make you happier than you are." How the masses hate that pointer. How quickly they react and how quickly they protest about how false that statement is, citing example after example of the things and people they have which "make them happy." What an unnatural and impossible task to be strapped with, to be the one responsible for making someone else happy and then assuring that she or he stays that way.
A woman about to marry said, "I have promised my husband that I will never make the mistake I see in other marriages where one partner bores the other." The reply: "Ah, so you are going to become his own professional entertainer? You are the one who will assure that he will never be bored, even though you are never likely to find his deepest secret which would reveal what he would truly desire from you if he were totally honest? Interesting." Talk about co-dependency, yes?
Program a child to believe - as 97% on the planet do - that there are gods or a god who is all-powerful - but who can be made sad or glad, made happy or unhappy, made proud or disappointed by you - and as an adult, the belief will be accepted without question that, "Well of course all relationships with not-all-powerful persons can surely be co-dependent. If I have the power to make god glad or happy or proud, then surely I can make any person the same."
Thus, the agreement becomes, "I'll make you happy, but you be sure to make me happy." As some Easterners suggest: "You might as well search for an eagle's nest on the bottom on the ocean floor as search for someone or something external to make you happy."
If "A" is enjoying the lightness and "B" is enjoying the lightness, then "A-B" will enjoy the lightness of each other's companionship. If either or both are fixated in the heaviness, head out to the ocean floor.
** The light - which can allow the false to be exposed as being false - is omnipresent. While the surface of the moon reflects the light of the sun and appears to be surrounded in darkness, the fact is that there is as much light surrounding the surface as there is striking the surface. Persons can close their eyes and not see the light, or they can cover their eyes with their hands and block the light, but the light is there nevertheless, ready to facilitate the seeing of Truth if the love of all things false (and all persons false) is set aside.
** Maharaj: " ... To find the immutable and blissful, you must give up your hold on the mutable and painful. You are concerned with your own happiness and I am telling you that there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own; it is where the ‘I’ is not. I do not say it is beyond your reach; you have only to reach out beyond yourself, and You will find it."
** To abide in full awareness of the facts surrounding the composite unity, and to transcend all notions that you or You are "something more" than the elements and air and temporarily manifested conscious energy, calls for the question: "WHO is happy? Earth elements? The air? A speck of energy? And WHO is sad? Earth elements? The air? A speck of energy?"
** To transcend all sense of personal, individualized WHO-ness is to abide in the sweet respite of beingness, and when the incredible lightness of just being manifests, and when all is merely witnessed from the platform of Your Original Nature, what WHO could be taken seriously when it thinks it needs more to be anything, including happy?
Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
Program a child to believe - as 97% on the planet do - that there are gods or a god who is all-powerful - but who can be made sad or glad, made happy or unhappy, made proud or disappointed by you - and as an adult, the belief will be accepted without question that, "Well of course all relationships with not-all-powerful persons can surely be co-dependent. If I have the power to make god glad or happy or proud, then surely I can make any person the same."
Thus, the agreement becomes, "I'll make you happy, but you be sure to make me happy." As some Easterners suggest: "You might as well search for an eagle's nest on the bottom on the ocean floor as search for someone or something external to make you happy."
If "A" is enjoying the lightness and "B" is enjoying the lightness, then "A-B" will enjoy the lightness of each other's companionship. If either or both are fixated in the heaviness, head out to the ocean floor.
** The light - which can allow the false to be exposed as being false - is omnipresent. While the surface of the moon reflects the light of the sun and appears to be surrounded in darkness, the fact is that there is as much light surrounding the surface as there is striking the surface. Persons can close their eyes and not see the light, or they can cover their eyes with their hands and block the light, but the light is there nevertheless, ready to facilitate the seeing of Truth if the love of all things false (and all persons false) is set aside.
** Maharaj: " ... To find the immutable and blissful, you must give up your hold on the mutable and painful. You are concerned with your own happiness and I am telling you that there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own; it is where the ‘I’ is not. I do not say it is beyond your reach; you have only to reach out beyond yourself, and You will find it."
** To abide in full awareness of the facts surrounding the composite unity, and to transcend all notions that you or You are "something more" than the elements and air and temporarily manifested conscious energy, calls for the question: "WHO is happy? Earth elements? The air? A speck of energy? And WHO is sad? Earth elements? The air? A speck of energy?"
** To transcend all sense of personal, individualized WHO-ness is to abide in the sweet respite of beingness, and when the incredible lightness of just being manifests, and when all is merely witnessed from the platform of Your Original Nature, what WHO could be taken seriously when it thinks it needs more to be anything, including happy?
Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
