TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
Maharaj: "It is the dance of the conscious presence."
Recently, a few of the epochs of humanity have been discussed, and what was witnessed by reviewing those periods is that the relative existence of humans during the last 5000 years has been – more than anything else – unstable, unbalanced, unhinged, unsound, unsteady, volatile, and erratic when persons are most trapped in mental and emotional states of duality.
The mental and emotional states of billions of humans around the globe differ not at all from the typical partnership or marriage between two persons as described by Maharaj: “When you meet a man, he is a stranger. When you marry him, he becomes your own self. When you quarrel, he becomes your enemy.” Thus national and international relations are also marked and marred by instability which leaves the entire population of the planet being unstable, unbalanced, unhinged, unsound, unsteady, volatile, erratic.
The result is that humans are forever shifting between ages of peace and ages of fighting; between ages of enlightenment and ages of darkness; between ages of humanistic interest in the sciences and the arts and education and ages of ignoring education and embracing ignorance; and between ages when a sense of security prevails vs. ages when fear and anxiety and dread and stress and distress and terror reign.
Duality. Duality. Duality. Shifting. Shifting. Shifting. It is as if the entire population of the planet, with only a few exceptions, suffers from the Borderline Personality Disorder: "I love you . . . no wait, I hate you!" or "I hate you! No wait, don't leave me!"
Consider the shift in global attitudes during the relatively short span of 36 years from 1914 to 1950:
A. WWI from 1914 to 1918 was deemed to be a war so horrible that it surely had to be "the war to end all wars";
that was followed by
B. the “Roaring 20’s” marked by an uplifted global attitude of celebration and widespread happiness, followed by
C. Adolf Hitler’s moving from Austria to Germany and leading the planet into an even more atrocious war, WWII, in which an estimated 55,000,000 to 80,000,000 would die before ridding the planet of the chaos which ultra-right-wing, dictatorial fascists have always brought about;
then, that was followed by
D. the “Happy Days” of the 50’s.
Swing, swing, swing. The only thing consistent during those 36 years? Persons were continuously searching for a leader - for some external force - who would lead them beyond the heaviness and the darkness and back to safety and happiness. And there's the rub: humans are no longer prone to seek their own solutions for their own problems but are forever looking for some external power (or "Power") to rescue them, putting themselves in the hands of the most power-hungry, control freak, sociopathic, psychopathic types on the planet.
Thus, humanity is forever swinging between period of the light and the dark; between periods of "gains" and "losses" in terms of freedom and independence; between ages of advancement in education vs. ages of regression into ignorance; between ages when persons embrace some degree of awareness and ages when the masses are walking about in their sleep; between ages when persons embrace the “enemy which prefers darkness” and the "friend that brings the light"; and between periods of dancing lightly vs. periods of marching and stomping through the streets and through the territories of other nations.
We are currently, once more, in "An Age of Fear and Heaviness" (which always means to those who are awake and aware and conscious that the planet has entered "An Age of Ultimate Sickness" or "Another Age of Duality"). Those who are aware will not wallow in an age's fear and heaviness and sickness and duality but will seek a way out of the darkness, which - of course - requires light. Per Maharaj, the number of such seekers will always be small, but they will be out there.
[For example, 533 visitors came to this site yesterday, including guests from India, Russia, the U.S., Germany, China, France, the U.K., Ukraine, Brazil, Canada, Australia and over 45 other nations. Why? They are awake enough and aware enough and conscious enough to understand where humanity is at this point . . . to understand which age humanity is trapped in at this point. And they are awake and aware and conscious enough to know that a shift away from the prevalent sense of heaviness now and a shift toward a sense of lightness for themselves is being called for. They also understand that the shift can never happen on a planet-wide scale but can only happen with one seeker at a time.]
Using excerpts from the book Dancing Lightly, we have looked at some of the factors referenced in the previous paragraph which are guaranteed to trap person in a sense of heaviness which – short of realizing – will also guaranteed that persons will be blocked from enjoying any sense of lightness.
Today, the effects of attachments and how they block lightness will be discussed.
Maharaj: “Attachment is bondage; detachment is freedom. To crave is to slave.”
and
“All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient. And fear makes one a slave. This freedom from attachment does not come with practice; it is natural, when one knows one's true being.”
and
“Your attachment is your bondage.”
From Dancing Lightly:
ATTACHMENTS PREVENT LIGHTNESS
In the movie entitled "Love and Other Drugs," the word "drugs" is used in the title to reference the part of the film's subject matter that deals with all of the emotion-based motion / actions that persons experience around fear-or-desire-driven attachments, including: making them far-too-hastily; avoiding them; fearing them; running away from them; running to them; and - time after time - forming them only to break them . . . or forming them and suffering the consequences instead of breaking them.
The pace at which persons form attachments is astonishing as they can shift out of a formerly-peaceful state and enter at break-neck speed the mad race to find something external that they hope will make them happy or bring relief from whatever temporary obstacles they might be presently facing.
Some see the error of the way that they fell into during a time of fear or desire, so those will quickly break off the attachment after seeing that it is going to take a heavy toll and is going to block their former sense of lightness; others will tolerate for an entire "lifetime" the misery of an attachment that they think is raising them to what they perceive to be the new heights of an elevated lifestyle or the higher high provided by a drug or what they take to be a drug-induced "higher level of consciousness."
[Nowadays, the number of persons touting the latter is increasing, not unlike those heady days in the 1970's when a variety of drugs were being credited with having "consciousness-elevating properties."]
In "Love and Other Drugs," a relationship without attachment sailed merrily along; when one party began to attach, the relationship became rocky; when that party began to detach, the other party suddenly processed the fear of attachment and was ready to move forward. Such is the chaos that marks an existence that is caught up in the ever-changing flux of attaching and detaching as a result of personality-driven fear and desire. What is the answer?
Maharaj: "Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own."
For that to happen, there must first be an understanding of (a) the perverse functioning of the "mind" and (b) the relative consequences that will manifest in a "mind-driven-life"; also, there must be an understanding of (c) all of the false selves that rule from the "mind" where such emotionally-intoxicating mirages are stored and thought to be real.
Time and again the teachings remind seekers that they must know the false selves before being able to know the Real Self. Maharaj would eventually say that the former alone would be enough. How can one renounce toll-taking attachments if
(1) such attachments are not seen or if
(2) the toll of such attachments is being denied or if
(3) the toll is seen but justified by use of the many mechanisms that the excuse-making "mind" will employ - often unconsciously - to rationalize what amounts to senseless or even insane decisions?
Maharaj: "You cannot renounce. You may leave your home and give trouble to your family, but attachments are in the mind and will not leave you until you know your mind in and out. First thing first: know yourself. All else will come with it."
Maharaj: "Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience."
Questioner: "How does one go beyond consciousness into awareness?"
Maharaj: "Since it is awareness that makes consciousness possible, there is awareness in every state of consciousness. Therefore the very consciousness of being conscious is already a movement in awareness. Interest in your stream of consciousness takes you to awareness. It is not a new state. It is at once recognised as the original, basic existence, which is life itself, and also love and joy."
Questioner: "Since reality is all the time with us, what does self-realisation consist of?"
Maharaj: "Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are."
How to reach the non-dual understanding of simultaneously knowing that you are all and that you are nothing, for to be free of the fears and desires of personality, that must be understood? You must understand fully that you are all (a.k.a., Love) and understand that you are nothing (a.k.a., wisdom).
Maharaj: "Being all, what am I to be afraid of? Water is not afraid of water, nor fire of fire. Also I am not afraid because I am nothing that can experience fear, or can be in danger. I have no shape, nor name. It is attachment to a name and shape that breeds fear. I am not attached. I am nothing, and nothing is afraid of no thing. On the contrary, everything is afraid of the Nothing, for when a thing touches Nothing, it becomes nothing. It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it, disappears."
Freedom from attachment must happen to be free of peace-robbing fears and desires. Recall the pointer offered earlier: the light is omnipresent. The seeming darkness notwithstanding, there is more light surrounding the moon than is striking its surface. Allow the light to illuminate and to allow you to see how your fears and desires will lead you to race into attachments and entanglements that will always eventually take hostage both your freedom and peace.
Again, one of Maharaj's key pointers in this regard:
"There is no darkness in the midst of light." In the darkness, he said, "we are absorbed in other things, in the not-self" which comes "through excess of attachment."
Heavy, lightness-stealing consequences always follow those who race excessively into attachments that at first appear to be lightness-providing opportunities. Caught up in the storm of fear and desire, the selves convince themselves that lies are truth; only the Self can differentiate between the true and the false.
Why abandon the only tool available for relative constructiveness and allow one's selves to drive you to self-destructiveness?
If you find that you were moving along the "path" and took a detour, return to the "path" so that, in the end, you can come home . . . and stay.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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