TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
To review:
That which is natural is rooted in non-duality; all which involves unnatural thinking and / or supernatural thinking is rooted in duality.
Whether speaking of Maharaj's lesser focus on the Nisarga Yoga in the beginning or discussing his near-total focus on abiding naturally in the end (as opposed to trying to live supernaturally and / or unnaturally), it is granted that all of that is relevant only to the AM-ness, but presently, what happens in the AM-ness impacts every person far more than anything to do with the THAT-ness.
So, to continue with excerpts from the book Why NISARGA YOGA in addition to the Advaita Teachings? as considerations about the nisarga (natural) fashion of abidance are offered:
Being More in Touch with the Relative Existence, Not Less
The understanding puts the realized (per Maharaj, "those freed of learned ignorance") more in touch with "relative realities," not less; post-realization, relative happenings will still happen, but they can happen without being coated in a thick layer of ideological dreaminess or alternating dollops of positivity and negativity.
The understanding of the THAT-ness is 100% useless unless it is overlaid on the AM-ness and allowed to guide all relative happenings, so the understanding is 100% useless unless it is "applied" . . . now. With the coming of the understanding also comes wisdom and sanity, but understanding and wisdom and sanity can only come when all of what Maharaj called "learned ignorance" and "stupidity, verging on insanity" first go.
That is another of the "borderlines" that can be discussed during the teachings.
Some time ago, there was a U.S.-Russian spy swap involving 14 spies that was handled at an airport by using two airplanes; however, throughout the "Cold War" years, the exchanges often took place at bridges which crossed borderlines.
For example, between 1962 and 1986, Berlin's Glienicke Bridge was used four times as the site for a Soviet-U.S. spy swap. The bridge at the time was located at an isolated point where US-occupied West Berlin met Soviet-occupied Potsdam in East Germany.
Those "Iron Curtain" crossings, which were usually preceded by months of meetings between negotiators, were as orchestrated as any dance: usually taking place at night, the bridge would be floodlit and guarded by heavily-armed Soviet and U.S. soldiers with dogs, all standing at opposite ends of the bridge. As the U.S. spy or spies on one end of the bridge began walking, the Russian spies on the opposite end did the same.
All of those spies knew that guns were aimed at their backs and that they would be shot if either side tried to trick the other. The spies all met at the halfway point as they walked toward freedom, and as one spy or group of spies crossed the midway point headed to liberation, the other spy or spies did the same. The same scenario plays out during the dance of realization:
as the "learned ignorance" and the "stupidity, verging on insanity" which Maharaj spoke of cross the borderline between the relative and the understanding of the Absolute, the departing ignorance and stupidity and insanity meet and pass the arriving understanding and wisdom and sanity as the latter move across the borderline and allow the seeker, finally, to be totally free.
It is one thing to know only the AM-ness and to be imprisoned as a result, and it is one thing to be shackled to the AM-ness alone; it is another thing to know THAT but to claim to have abandoned the AM-ness and all that it will bring or toss your way. That is just another form of imprisonment.
The prison of the "mind" is a prison where each belief and concept and idea and desire and fear becomes one of the bars of that jail. Such a limited, no-understanding prison is the fertile ground where ignorance and insanity are conceived and will give birth to what will eventually become the guards that incarcerate, in the absence of "full realization," you and all among the masses.
The "realized teacher" is a negotiator as well, working for your freedom, arranging the means by which you can be freed from prison and can cross the borderline to logic and reason and clear-seeing and sanity, all of which come when the hidden agendas of personality's desires and fears go.
The Advaita "swap" comes when ignorance is seen to be ignorance, when one finally wakes up enough to say, "My history shows that I am insane, in terms of so-called spiritual or religious concepts that have been accepted without question;
"in terms of my beliefs about relationships and what makes them healthy or unhealthy; in terms of having a "broken picker" when it comes to choosing partners in business or in "personal relations"; in terms of my going through the existence with my head in the clouds and being a 'deep philosopher' and being overly-serious and boring and not enjoying what the relative has to offer;
"in terms of every decision made during the relative that reveals a deep-seated, self-defeating, self-destructive tendency; in terms of being in a prison but believing that I have been free; and in terms of every aspect of my relative existence, in fact."
You have likely seen film of some of the instances where people at a beach see the waters suddenly recede. Many rush forward to collect fish or shells. Some move to the newly-exposed wet sand in order to have a close-up view of this strange phenomenon playing out before their very eyes.
Standing there in their ignorance, witnessing without having a clue about what they are really seeing, a "Forewarner," unlike them, understands that the waters of a tsunami are about to engulf eveything and everyone on that beach.
That Forewarner might run along the beach shouting, "Get out of here! Run to higher ground. The waters will soon be coming back as a destructive force that will assure eventual suffering! You are putting yourself in a position to undergo great pain and misery!" Why is a Forewarner / Teacher required?
How can you know what you do not know, especially when that which you believe with such assurance is seen through a distorting lens which appears to normalize the abnormal? How can you know if your culture is among those that make people into cold and distant and unavailable persons if you have never interacted with anyone from a culture where children are raised to be adults that are warm and close and available?
Canadian physician William Osler wrote, "The physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient." That is why almost all persons require a teacher to break through the protective shield which has been set in place - a plastic, artificial shield that is distorting the view of those persons and preventing them from seeing Reality and Truth and rendering them "fools" instead.
The Teacher / Forewarner will say to those who will listen, "You are putting yourself in a position to suffer great pain and misery! You do not have a clue that you are being deceived by what looks to be safe and interesting and rewarding. You are going to pay a very high price in the end for the few fish and shells you're receiving now!" The Teacher might offer for consideration the following:
"Your history shows that you are insane. that you are attached to so-called spiritual or religious concepts that have been accepted without question and that you are believing lies which will block you from seeing Truth"; or
"you missed along the way the means by which you should know early on if a relationship that you are contemplating is going to have any chance of being healthy or if it is most assuredly going to be quite unhealthy, but your fears and desires are inspiring you to ignore the facts laid out before your very eyes"; or
"can you not see that your history shows that you are using a "broken picker" to select partners in business and / or in "personal relations?"; or
"can you not see that going through the existence with your head in the clouds and being a 'deep philosopher' and being overly-serious and not enjoying what the relative has to offer has rendered you an out-of-touch, overly-serious person who is robbing yourself and those around you of enjoyment?"; or
"can you not see how unstable and unpredictable you are and how maddening that is for you and all those trying to deal with you?"; or
"have you not seen, in terms of almost every decision that you have made during the relative existence, that your history reveals a deep-seated, self-defeating, self-destructive tendency?"; or
"can you not see that you are imprisoned by your false beliefs, twisted views, faulty concepts, and senseless ideas while believing that you are actually wise and brilliant and free?"
But the typical reaction to the teacher's invitation to undertake a fearless, teacher-guided inventory and a truly thorough self-examination is not unlike that of a petulant, rebellious teen: "What do you know? You're the one who is stupid!"
To come to a supposed understanding of THAT and to allow the supposed understanding to result in dissociation or in escape or in avoidance or in an imagined separation from the relative existence is no understanding at all. That result is as useless as being in touch with the AM-ness only.
The Direct Path Method and the Nisarga Yoga are about being in full contact with the I AM as much as with the I AM THAT. When the name of a teaching literally means "not two," then how can anyone claiming to understand the teachings attach to THAT only and ignore the AM-ness, seeing them as two and then supposedly choosing only one?
Again, the understanding of the THAT-ness is 100% useless unless it is overlaid on the AM-ness and onto all relative happenings; thus, the understanding is 100% useless unless it is "applied" now (even in the absence of a belief in any "applier").
All of that is another part of what the teachings and the Nisarga Yoga are about.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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