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DANCING LIGHTLY
“And
heavy is the tread of the living, but the dead returning lightly dance.”
(Edward Thomas)
“The
desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
Not to be born is the best for man.
The second best is a formal order.
The dance's pattern; dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy.
The tune is catching and will not stop.
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters.
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.”
W.H. Auden
ATTACHMENTS PREVENT LIGHTNESS
A
decade or so ago, a movie that became a popular rental in the U.S. (called a
popular “hire” in some other countries) was 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 recognize the false
selves as being false before being able to differentiate consistently between
the true from the false. 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.”
Know your self - your false selves which are the source of all fears and
desires - and then understand what is authentic and what is inauthentic.
Caroline Kepnes wrote a novel entitled “You” which, along with other of her writings, have been made into a four-season series which is available on Netflix.
What do the message in her book “You” and the advice to “know yourself” have in common?
An additional implied part of that advice - to “know / recognize” your false selves - is to develop the ability to spot the false selves which others have assumed; otherwise, fooling people, stalking, manipulation, extreme control, and other misery-causing elements will be introduced into the relationship and physical danger (relatively speaking) may well manifest.
[Recall that 63% of all women who are killed annually in the U.S. are killed by a partner during a breakup.]
“You” is a ‘psychological thriller’ which offers a warning to the current generation regarding the danger of social media and social media dating and how both have allowed the assumption of false personal identifications to reach an all-time high in terms of disguising those façades and allowing sociopaths and psychopaths to assume an affect of being “a really nice person” when so many - male or female - are Ted Bundy types instead.
While the assumption in the past of false identities, roles, façades, characters, personas, guises, fronts, appearances, performances, etc. happened as if a normal part of the relative existence in many nations around the globe, the hiding of those façades now has reached an art form, and social media has facilitated the hiding of one’s truth to geometric degrees.
The title “You” comes from lines which many use as their relationships begin to deteriorate as the dark thoughts that are driving many partners become obvious.
It is then that some shout, “I don’t even know who you are anymore!” The less perceptive who want to try to “improve” the relationship and stay in it for whatever perks they are imagining they are getting might say, “This is not who you are.”
(The fact: Oh yes it is. Those speakers have been trapped in the depths of their wishing and hoping and self-delusion and fantasies and always-false-beliefs and self-deception to the degree that they have lost all ability to differentiate between the true and the false.)
Thus, the advice to see your false selves and see the false selves of all others as well. Make sure the batteries on your BS detector are always fully charged. If it is not sounding alarms all day long, then your detector might need to be repaired.
If your early programming, conditioning, etc. have left you with a “broken picker,” then you need professional assistance to help remove the hoping and self-delusion and fantasies and always-false-beliefs and self-deception which have set you up for buying into the BS put out by manipulators and users and controllers and abusers.
Additionally,
the Stockholm Syndrome may well be an influence that is driving you to destruction
and self-destruction, relatively speaking.
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. To take the world as
real and [to take authenticity] as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. To know
the [authentic] as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is
freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. 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 know you are all (via understanding
Love or energy / matter or, in physics, the “string framework”) and know that you are nothing (via 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. Self-forgetfulness is the darkness. When we are absorbed in
other things, in the not-self, we forget the [real]. There is nothing unnatural
about it. But, why forget the [real] 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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THE EXPLANATION
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
"There is no hell."
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
