TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
Maharaj: “It is the dance of the conscious presence.”
To be able to dance lightly, that is, to traverse the relative existence with a soft, smooth, and flowing motion and without running into others all around you, one must be conscious, awake, and aware.
Like a well-danced waltz, the relative dance will be marked by certain rising and falling actions, but the dancers that are awake and that dance lightly go with the flow and enjoy the rhythm of the movement without over-celebrating the rising actions and without feeling totally defeated by the falling actions. How silly that would be. It’s all just part of the dance.
Rather than disparaging about certain parts of the dance which one might not find totally appealing, going with the flow - whether it involves rising or falling - allows for a calm, relaxed, stylish action, as if gliding effortlessly through the dance, through the relative existence.
When one is dancing lightly, there is an even and confident manner of moving about, making the existence a simple (and even elegant and even beautiful) dance. Rigidity and inflexibility and firmness and severity and strictness and stiffness come to an end, and the relative existence becomes easy and effortless and efficient, whether in the middle of an upward swing or a downward swing.
Yet that can only happen if one is awake, aware, and conscious. If those prerequisites manifest, then a couple can glide around the floor, revolving gracefully around each other and all of the other dancers about them. Were the condition of being awake and aware and conscious to spread, then partners and spouses and states and nations could also glide around the floor, also revolving gracefully around each other and all of the other dancers on planet earth.
But Maharaj made clear that the condition of being awake and aware and conscious will never spread around the globe and that, to the contrary, only a few at any given time will be in that condition. So what. Those that reach such a condition and then enter into the dance and find the joy which it can bring might cross paths with those who are trapped in their traits of rigidity and inflexibility and firmness and severity and strictness and stiffness (and who not only like those traits but are even proud of those traits).
Those types might try to persuade the ones enjoying the dance to stop dancing and join them and enter into one kind of conflict or another (which the rigid and inflexible types so cherish), but the awake, aware and conscious need not join them.
When the U.S. Government ordered me in 1970 to report for a physical exam to determine whether I was fit to be sent some 9000 miles away to the other side of the globe to kill people in Vietnam who had never done a thing to me or the U.S., I determined for myself that I was unfit for that task. In fact, I have always been totally unfit for every aspect of every authoritarian's agenda.
I made certain that I would not pass the hearing part of their exam, thereby forfeiting the opportunity to be applauded by xenophobes who are always blindly loyal to their governments and who respect all who are willingness to march off to war and “fight and kill or die for their country.”
Had I been of an age in 2003 which could have allowed me to accept an invitation to leave the dance and help invade Iraq, I would have also known then that I was still unfit for another of their constantly-ongoing wars and would have declined the invitation and continued with the dance.
Now, there are over 900 groups in the U.S. which are classified as “hate groups,” and those are just the organized ones. The number does not include the millions of others who are “hating individuals” with “hating friends and relatives and associates.” I am not fit to be a member of any of those groups, either, having never bought into what Maharaj called "the ignorance and stupidity of insanity" of the prejudicial programming which was being spread all around me in the Deep South during my early years.
The ignorance-based arrogance which comes when led to believe that one is “different-from” others and thus “better-than” those others never took a firm hold because the many months out of each year which were spent with a Cherokee grandmother that shared and modeled the non-dual understanding was a shield of sorts, blocking such self-importance from taking a permanent, irreversible hold on my psyche and allowing me, instead, to escape from the bondage of self which did manifest at times.
Yet that arrogant and unawake and unaware and unconscious state is exactly the present condition of most persons among the masses. Of that, Maharaj said, “Desires and fears, envies and anger, blind beliefs and intellectual arrogance pollute and dull the psyche.”
To those who are convinced that they are important, Maharaj’s words offer an alternate view: It is only the waking up that is important.
A few years ago and again last year, I was criticized on separate occasions by two men, one who had proudly volunteered two years in a row to participate in the Vietnam War and one who proudly served in the U.S. military at the time and was engaged in that war for years. My transgression, in their eyes? They discovered that I saw no enemies so I had refused to fight people who were not my enemy, who had never done one act of harm to the U.S., and who would never do any harm to the U.S.
Why do such xenophobic and chauvinistic and nationalistic and blindly-patriotic types dislike all “foreigners”? Why are they racist and racially-intolerant? Why do they hate persons who rebel against the demands and commands of authorities who are driven by “duality, ignorance, stupidity and insanity”?
Because of personality.
Of the nine basic personality types which show up to one degree or another in all persons, the Type Six is "The Dependent and Co-Dependent Loyalist" whose thought-life is controlled by such beliefs as these: “My country, right or wrong; my race, right or wrong; my family, right or wrong; my religion, right or wrong; my political party, right or wrong; my beliefs, right or wrong.” The rub? Type Sixes make up 50% of the planet’s population.
On the other hand, the Type Four – which is the most likely to rebel against ignorant commands and nonsensical instructions and abusive authority and insane orders – only make up ½ of 1% of the planet’s population.
Rebel and you will be in the minority, often criticized, scorned, and rejected. Go along blindly and you will be welcomed with open arms by the majority.
The same will happen if you love rather than hate; if you endorse peace and negotiation rather than fighting and conflict as the first option (especially in the white, Anglo-Saxon-dominated cultures around the globe who hang on tightly to their warrior mentality); and if you prefer to dance lightly rather than to stand at attention or to stomp about and to pound the pavement and to march off to war.
In the book Dancing Lightly, this is offered for consideration:
Consider: in the light of Reality and Truth, ALL can be felt. An entire gamut of feelings can happen. But they can happen without shifting into personality-driven thoughts and words and deeds that blindly drive persons into acts that anyone not emotionally-intoxicated could see are going to generate tremendous suffering as a result of the consequences.
For those seeking the lightness of being, however, that light must come before, never after.
The person who walks into a barn that is lit only by a dim and flickering light can believe that he is seeing a snake coiled and ready to strike; that person cannot possibly know the incredible lightness of being. How could one in such a state possibly dance lightly?
If a light is turned on, and it is seen that what was mistakenly perceived to be a threatening snake is instead a harmless rope, only then can there be a sense of lightness in the subsequent relief of seeing what is real and what is not. But the light had to come before the lightness could come.
Yet an objective witnessing of the masses - who move through the relative existence under the auspices of a fiction-filled mind and under the influence of various personalities which they are not even aware of - reveals that few enjoy the incredible lightness with any consistency. The full light which allows for clear seeing has not yet come - and probably will not come - to most.
When trying times come and divert even formerly-clear-seeing travelers from the path of lightness and onto a path of darkness, it will be the full light that allows them to return once again from the darkness and find their way back to the path of Truth and sanity and freedom and peace.
This relative existence can offer enough trials and tribulations that a cumulative effect can begin to build as a result of a vestige of each of those events having been left behind.
When that is the case, there is not always one single, simple solution; usually, however, a solution can be found if one can be still long enough to let the emotions subside and if one is willing to seek counsel when the self-defeating mind and the self-defeating personas are having their way.
When my daughter was young during a visit to England, a beautiful tract of hedges had been sculpted into a living maze that provided a play area for children. Vantage points on a hillside allowed parents to watch over the youngsters at play; additionally, the park management had guides available in case some became lost along their way.
All of them entered readily and happily into what seemed to have the potential for guaranteeing great fun . . . with the potential to assure that something wonderful and enjoyable lay before them.
At some point, though, in many cases the original expectation that something was going to be wonderful began to be seen as something quite to the contrary. At some point, that which had been perceived to be potentially wonderful was seen in a different light to actually be quite horrible, generating such stress that some seemed literally to be going crazy because of the state of desperation they had worked themselves into.
How often in the relative existence can the same happen with adults? What seemed to be the potential for great fun, for something wonderful and enjoyable, can eventually be revealed in the full light to be nothing more than a big mess that leaves persons in such dire straits that the resulting sense of desperation blocks all former understandings and leaves them once again at the mercy of their self-defeating minds and their always misguided and misguiding personalities.
At that point, one can be so lost in the subsequent play of the attributes that unfold under the influence of the mind and the personalities that nothing can be understood; persons lose all sense of the unicity and all sense of feeling whole as opposed to feeling fractured; then, persons will simply move along blindly toward the false solutions that they had erroneously perceived earlier to be acceptable solutions.
Maharaj: "The homogenous understands the play of the attributes, the projection of the mind, but the play, the projection of the mind, cannot understand the homogeneous"
and
“You have some experiences and you try to benefit from them, but remember that whatever is going to be of use to you ultimately is going to harm you. Wherever there is use, there is also dis-use in this world of duality. Whatever you like is going to create harm for you. Whatever you like most is, in the end, going to be most harmful for you.”
In a state of desperation, driven unconsciously to act under the influence of motivators that persons are unconscious of, they will often begin to put a spin on why they are doing what they are doing - justifying and rationalizing it all - deceiving themselves sometimes or trying to fool others at other times.
In the end, though, the supposedly "easier way" that is often turned to will be revealed at some point to be the "most difficult way of all." They will enter a maze that appears to offer the potential for something wonderful and delightful to come about.
Only the dim and flickering light can shine at that point, the bright light of awareness having been blocked by the fears and desires of a variety of personalities.
It is at that point when persons that have moved away from the light will approach a potentially-fatal snake, certain that what they are seeing in the dull light is surely nothing more than a harmless rope.
Or they will look at a harmless rope and see a threat, and the most commonly-misperceived threat is always seen dualistically as someone who is “different”:
“A bad Vietnamese person” vs. “a good, well-meaning American who has come to help them be just like all of us good Americans” (or to kill them if they do not accept our ways)
“An evil black” rather than “a good white”
“A criminal and rapist Hispanic” rather than “a noble Caucasian”
"A progressive” rather than “one who wants to cling to the status quo”
“A good Christian” vs. “an evil Muslim” (or vice-versa)
“A good Sunni” vs. “an evil Shia” (or vice-versa)
“A good straight person” vs. “someone with a different sexual orientation”
"Someone who is rigid and inflexible and firm and severe and strict and stiff and anal" vs. "one who is laid back and relaxed"
“A woman who has had an abortion” vs. “A good woman who was impregnated during a rape but who kept her rapist’s child full-term”
Etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.
None who buy into duality will have even the slightest chance to dance lightly; none who buy into arrogant prejudices will ever have even the slightest chance to dance lightly; and none who are not fully awake and aware and conscious will have even the slightest chance to dance lightly.
Again, you are invited to the dance and to experience the unconditional joy of dancing lightly.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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