TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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To understand the Love which Maharaj was referring to in the pointer, "Love is knowing that I am everything" is to be able to see that . . .
telling anyone who or what they should love and who or what they should not love
is advice which is based in the height of arrogance and egotism.
To understand the Love which Maharaj was referring to in the pointer, "Love is knowing that I am everything" is to be able to see that . . .
the advice to "love what is" (which is just a co-opting and inflation of AA's "acceptance is the key" and "accept what is")
is advice which is based in boundless levels of ignorance. Why?
Because that advice is a camouflaged invitation to continue to tolerate the intolerable; to stuff one's feelings; to dissociate; to be so insane that persons take the advice to "love the one who raped you" and "love the one who killed your child" and "love the one who abused you and who continues to abuse you."
That advice has inspired thousands to avoid seeking the additional processing being called for to treat their long-lasting trauma and its effects and to accept (and even to love) the potentially-permanent, subconscious effects of trauma which will guarantee the continuing presence of internalized and / or externalized stress reactions which come with ignoring or accepting or loving one's unhealthy mental condition rather than taking the action required to be free of that condition.
And what can that condition - if untreated and ignored and accepted and loved - guarantee will continue? Everything which trauma generates, including stress; sadness; hopelessness; guilt; shame; fear; depression; confusion; denial; anxiety; irritability; anger; emotional intoxication; mood swings and unpredictability and instability and chaos; the capacity to explode; avoidance; disconnectedness; and the numbness which comes when trauma effects are not addressed.
What will also be guaranteed to come? The Addictive Personality Disorder. Why?
Because untreated trauma is the prerequisite for the manifestation of addiction. Addictive thinking and addictive behaviors can certain generate additional trauma, but addiction cannot begin unless preceded by untreated trauma.
Moreover, almost all humans are addicted to something (or, more often, to many things), so it is clear that almost all humans are suffering from untreated trauma which has led to the manifestation of an addictive personality.
That trauma is begging for the remedy which can come via treatment, though most will not seek a remedy or will believe that they have found a remedy though they have not. If the effects of trauma are not addressed, then there is no chance at all that the effects of the addictive personality will end.
(Can religion or spirituality provide a viable treatment? Well, 97% of all humans claim a religious affiliation. Millions more claim to be "spiritual, not religious." Yet almost all of those billions of persons still have an Addictive Personality Disorder nevertheless. So therein lies the answer. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, or in the near-total absence of pudding (a.k.a., "sobriety" or "freedom from their addictive thinking and their addictive habits and behaviors.)
Now, to continue with the reply to the question, "So what else is this non-dual deal all about?" some answers have already been offered in the eBook WHEN ONLY THREE HOURS OF MANIFESTATION REMAIN (The "Final" Talks Of Floyd Henderson).
Today, answer #16 to the question "What is this non-duality deal all about, anyway?" is this:
Above all: be love, but then live in an "as if" fashion so that you can enjoy Love as a relative expression of Absolute, Real Love as well
Part Five: Loving Without Any Object Of Your Love
Post-full-realization (that is, post-being-totally-freed-from-all-belief-in-the-learned-ignorance-which-was-taught) there also comes to an end the belief in Subject-Object pairings, after which there is the beginning of understanding of and the feeling of the Oneness throughout each waking hour of each and every day.
Thus, there is a woman in the U.K. who shared that she enjoys the bliss of sitting outdoors and watching her bees all day long as they do what bees do while feeling At One with them. My cuppa tea? Nope, but it's hers, so when she shared that, she was not asked, "So your joy is dependent on something external which happens to be dying out at alarming rates? Should you stop loving that and love something else?" Nope. Instead, the stance taken here is, "Want to watch bees all day? Rock and roll. Decide later on to stop watching bees all day? Rock and roll."
Also, there was a child that lay in the grass during the springtime and watched the clouds floating across the sky above him. It was from that position of rest that he saw a formation come together to shape "a profile of my grandmother's face during her last days, when she was so calm."
Though he and Grandmother are not "together" any longer, he feels the Love and the love nevertheless, and he sees the beauty not of a "world-class fashion model" but the beauty of a face which showed not only the wear and tear of decades of a relative existence but also the beauty of a face which reflected a readiness to accept the end of the manifestation with perfect serenity and dignity (à la Maharaj, yes?)
And there is the example here where, at some point there shall come to an end the morning walks and that silent gap between moving from point one to point two and back to point one, when an intermission is taken in order to watch the deer grazing nearby. There is something blissful about witnessing such natural abidance and feeling the Oneness, but that is all going to be temporary.
Meanwhile, though, post-realization, a sense of Oneness allows for such bliss-filled moments when the Awareness facilitates an awareness of the beautiful Oneness of All . . . allows awareness of the freedom of the Nothingness . . . and allows awareness of the sense of Love and love which comes with understanding the Oneness.
That awareness - which the realized do not merely know but actually are - will allow the relative expression of Real Love to be wholly and boundlessly bathed in Absoluteness to such a degree that there will manifest a realization of (and an "experiencing" of) a harmonious happiness ... an unsurpassed bliss ... a transcendent joy which can only happen in a "not-two," Advaitin manner. Meaning?
Meaning that the bliss registers on "this" level, so its force and passion and intensity are unequaled . . . incomparable . . . unparalleled. Such is the way it is when Real Love manifests and is allowed to flourish daily on a second-by-second basis.
Why would anyone settle for less? Why would anyone settle for false "love" rather than continuing the "path" to realization first and thereby providing an opportunity to find - that is, to know and then to be - Real Love?
Why would anyone settle for "not-Love" if they know that Real Love is an option (if only they are willing to realize and to be Love, which can happen with or without a "partner")? Because this message is offered only rarely and is seldom ever heard.
How many might admit - if they were totally aware and totally honest - that the internal toll of years of clinging to "false love" has far outweighed any of the supposed "benefits of being with someone" instead of "being alone"?
How many are avoiding the peace of being alone but free in the solitude as opposed to the many who are being driven to remain inside their mental and emotional prisons . . . but at least . . . with company?
Is it possible that you could find the courage to refuse to settle for less? Is it possible that you could be authentic enough to forgo even the greatest pleasures or "benefits" imaginable if you know or suspect those potential gratifications are based in something that is less than True Love?
The fully realized will never take any action which would inspire anyone to behave in a way that places at risk their contact with authenticity; additionally, is it possible that those that accept having no "love" at all (that is, the ones that refuse to settle for "false love") might be more content with that circumstance? Is it possible that you could be perfectly content without having to "have someone"?
After the spouse of Maharaj took mahasamadhi, there were continual efforts by would-be matchmakers to encourage him to remarry. Maharaj's response was that he was married, saying: "The day she died, I married freedom." Freed of all personality, he did not fear; he did not desire; he did not "need."
Taking a position of neutrality can apply to every facet of one's relative existence and will assure freedom. Freedom, in turn, will assure the manifestation of peace.
Stability and satisfaction come in not playing the games, in not playing in the play (in fact, in not playing at all) as well as in the refusal to settle for anything artificial which robs persons of their sense of peace and sense of fulfillment.
Little takes a greater relative toll than accepting "not-Love" as a compromise. Via the realizations that came by way of those past experiences, it can be shared that, though it might take years before the toll is accessed, it will be accessed.
Offered here is a Direct Path to contact with authenticity and truth and the ability to enjoy fully all of the various forms of "the essence" which can . . .
(a) initiate and sustain the manifestation;
(b) enhance the relative existence by always being in contact with that which is authentic rather than that which is artificial and phony;
and
(c) manifest fully when authenticity is overlaid on every aspect of the relative existence.
As long as the uninterrupted flow of the essence of plant food happens, then there is the possibility for authenticity to serve as the gateway to the essence of awareness; to the essence of sensing the Oneness and being the Oneness; to the essence of knowing Love;
to the essence of delighting in the physical expression of Love and the Oneness "with someone" or delighting in the feeling of Love and the Oneness even "without someone," resting in the solitude of "the all-one-ness" as opposed to a false sense of "the aloneness."
Next, there is the possibility for authenticity to serve as the gateway to the essence of sensing the Oneness and being the Oneness; to the essence of the understanding of all that is revealed via wisdom; and to the essence of the very beingness itself.
Without authenticity, there can be no stability, no freedom, no independence, no Love, and, therefore, no consistent happiness and joy and bliss. There can only be a series of counterfeit identities that result in counterfeit beliefs about one's self and one's motives.
Authenticity provides the only means by which the relative existence can be dealt with in a manner that provides consistent contact with Reality and which can, therefore, assure on-going sanity and stability.
Being authentic means that one will be in touch with the internal awareness of Reality rather than being swept along and swept about and swept away by external forces and / or internal fears and deceptions and delusions.
To give away . . .
any degree of the essence of Oneness; of True Love; of wisdom; of the phenomenal expression of True Love and Oneness; of the essence of full realization; of the essence of freedom from being driven by the agendas of personality / personalities; and of the essence of the very beingness itself
is to give away . . .
authenticity and freedom and peace as well.
To abandon authenticity - for self-ish pleasures, for relative gains, for self-satisfaction, for self-indulgence, for self-seeking, for self-centered desires - is to abandon any and all opportunity to be free, independent, fulfilled, contented, and at peace.
To be in touch with that which is authentic is to be in touch with the essence in all of its following forms:
The essence of food, which is Consciousness;
The essence of liberation, which is freedom from personality;
The essence of the Absolute, which is Awareness;
The essence of this existence, which is knowing and being the Oneness, the True Love, and Wisdom;
The essence of the Oneness, which is a "no-relationship relationship," the transcendence of the false belief in two (in an "A" and a "B") alongside the understanding of "Advaita" . . . of "not-two";
The essence of beingness via realization (that is, freedom from all learned ignorance);
The essence of authenticity via realization;
and
The essence of full realization, which is independence, freedom, happiness, joy, and bliss.
Originally, you were "at Home" - that "Original Home" being Your Original Nature and your "Present Home" being Pure Witnessing (which some call, "Your True Self," though no self-ness or Self-ness actually applies). Specifically, neither is a "place" that has anything to do with anything personal. Here, the invitation is offered Lovingly and lovingly: "Come home. Come back to Your Original Nature. Abide naturally"
When the poet wrote an ode on "Intimations of Immortality," or when Advaitins discuss "The Nectar of Immortality," the use of the term "immortality" refers to nothing with even the slightest trace of personhood. It refers only to the essence which you are invited to find, to understand, to relish, to be.
In order to understand what True Love is in the relative existence, several prerequisites exist:
1. As in all instances of traveling the Advaita “path” to truth, all currently-held concepts and ideas and beliefs (in this case, about “what love is”) must be seen to be false and must be abandoned in order for the truth to be seen.
2. The false must be seen, but that alone does not allow the truth to be known; thus, all of the steps in “The Seven-Step Journey to Reality” that are required to reach an understanding of the True Self must be completed if True Love is to be known.
3. All sense of duality must be abandoned, along with all past programming that has led to the belief in subject-object delusions.
4. In forfeiting all belief in the Subject-Object illusion, the Realized can be free of the concept of “personal relationship” and can understand that anything thought to be “personal” is about nothing more than a persona (the false self); can understand that the false self can know no truth at all; can know the unicity rather than the duality; can understand Advaita’s “not two”; and can therefore understand the falsehood of the concepts of “relating” and “relationship.”
5. For the understandings in #4 above to manifest, then all ego-states (personas, false identities, and roles) must be abandoned, and that cannot happen without completing the journey referenced in #2 above.
To know you is to know me, and to know me is to know you. To know that you are Love is to know that I am Love. Everything is matter or energy. Love is energy. You, in the relative, are matter sustained by energy . . . Love being one of those energies for some.
Today, if I tell you “I Love you,” the truth behind those words is in the understanding that Love is not an action verb. It is only a noun. It indicates that I know What I am, and that you are that, too.
Sane, I shall not behave in a destructive manner. Sane, I cannot harm you for you are me. Anything not the real you and the real me is illusion and is not Love. Love is that knowing, knowing I AM everything. For persons / personas, (false) "love" is about body desires and perceived needs stored in the “mind” after cultural programming and conditioning.
Thus, because "the mind" is conditioned, "love" in the relative is always conditional, always self-seeking (in spite of claims to the contrary), and always driven by agendas that are hidden from the one playing the role of “the lover” as well as from the one accepting the label of “the loved.”
Both are ego-states, and persons trapped in their egotism can never know truth. Ego, by definition, is the “false I.” That which is false can never know truth. Love, as known via being in contact with that which is authentic, is unconditional. What a conditioned person knows about Love is as far removed from reality as authenticity is removed from the false roles played out by ego-states.
Only the authentic - the authentic which is known as a result of the consciousness having been purged of all of the effects of programming, conditioning, etc. and which is, thus, once again functioning as “Pure Consciousness" (as "Pure Witnessing") - can know True Love.
Only in the relative can Love be understood, and that understanding can only happen via the Pure Witnessing (which is what some refer to as "the True Self"). All beliefs held by personas about what "love" is are merely more falsehoods taken to be truth by those absorbed in ego-states, in body identification, and in the trap of “the mind” (which is nothing more than the storehouse of all lies and misconceptions and falsehoods passed on via the culture).
If you know all of the above to be fact, you are likely realized. If you are willing to consider that the above is fact, then you are moving along the path toward Full Awareness. If you find the pointers above to be anathema, then more remains to be understood about ego and ego-states and about the differentiation between Real Love and Love Expressed as love and the (false) "love" which the masses talk of.
It is True Love (the True Self, the Pure Witnessing) that knows no difference, that sees no difference, that imagines no multiplicity, and that imagines no ego (false “I’s”) to be real or what is true; therefore, the Pure Witnessing is fully aware that no separation exists. The Pure Witnessing knows the unicity. And knowing the unicity, and being the Oneness, is the only means by which the bliss can manifest consistently.
To be continued.
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