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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3660, Saturday, September 19, 2009, Editor: Mark
Questioner: Yesterday when you said, "Okay, find somebody
next to you," I thought, "Oh gosh, not that
again." But of course, it ended up being exactly the help I
had asked for.
Gangaji: Yes.
Q: The question you asked was, "What is the danger of
stopping your thoughts?" What I realized was that I couldn't
stop them, but I could stop chasing them.
G: That's it.
Q: I have been chasing my thoughts and I am so exhausted. And I
just saw that the danger was in the anger and the grief, which
thoughts can kind of cover.
G: So you protect yourself by thinking. Yes, this is a common
defense.
Q: So when it came up yesterday I realized, "Wow! No wonder
I keep chasing my thoughts." And then I started to wonder,
"Am I willing to just stop?"
G: Are you?
Q: I have to be.
G: Good. And when you stop chasing thoughts, what is here?
Q: Grief.
G: Grief. Well, that is just right. So let this grief be here
without any thought about the grief, or what caused it. Just
grief, pure grief, pure energy: a form of shakti.
Q: It's like, "Let it just have me."
G: And if it just has you?
Q: It is finished.
G: And what is here in its place?
Q: There is a kind of calm and a knowing that there is no safety.
G: And what happened to the anger? Is the grief under the anger
or is the anger under the grief?
Q: I really don't know; it is all mixed up.
G: Then it really is just energy. It may be a very uncomfortable,
crazy-feeling energy. But to experience it as that, without
giving it a label, is to meet it. It is like waking up in a
nightmare, and meeting the energy of it. The dream of it is gone.
Maybe you can't even remember what the dream was, but just let
the energy be here. It may have nothing to do with you.
Q: Wonderful! Oh, to truly feel that, to know that it doesn't
have a thing to do with me!
G: Yes. Maybe it is coming to you for liberation, but it gets
stuck because there is some identification with it. And that
generates the thinking to avoid feeling it. This leads to the
chasing.
Q: The chasing.
G: Chasing is...
Q: Running from...
G: Chasing and being chased. But you know...
Q: I think the anger is underneath the grief. Maybe that is what
I am not finished with.
G: Good. That is telling the truth, so...
Q: Anger is not okay. Somehow grief is okay.
G: Grief is definitely more socially acceptable. So can you
experience this rage? Let's don't call it anger; that's a little
too nice. Rage is what a storm does. There is a raging energy. So
without indulging it and without repressing it, just meet it. Let
your consciousness fall into it.
Q: That is where the fear comes in. I want to stop this.
G: That is natural. So just meet the fear. What is that?
Q: It just went away.
G: Yes. It is liberated. So what is left? Is the rage there?
Q: No.
G: Just let it in. We are not trying to getting rid of it, you
know. We know how horrible rage can be. We know how it can cause
murder, and war, and violence when it is indulged. And we know
that when it is repressed it causes a murder of your life force.
This is an internal violence, a suppression of energy. Neither of
those strategies works.
Q: I guess I just want to cut it off.
G: Yes. But it doesn't work because then you aren't alive. So the
possibility is just to be here. It has come, so let it in rather
than playing the game of chasing and being chased. It's an
invitation. And it comes into your heart, because that is where
satsang is offered. The mind will say, "No, I don't think
that should come in. It isn't spiritual to be enraged." Yes.
That is when the mind is the leader. Well if you just drop that,
and let the heart be the leader, then you welcome this emotion -
this huge, negative force of the universe - into your heart. That
is inquiry: emotional inquiry. Most people will stop with mental
inquiry, because it is safer. What is that?
Q: I have been running from it all my life.
G: Well, this is a good place to stop. There is nothing wrong
with rage. It is how it is used that makes it wrong. Rage is a
natural phenomenon. I mean, look at the great teachers and
leaders of our time. Look at Christ. Wasn't rage one of his
strongest attributes? Look at God. Look at the goddess Kali. Look
at this tree that was struck by lightning: it is still growing.
There is a force, an aggressive force that is part of nature. It
becomes rage when it is tortured, or indulged, or repressed,
because it starts to build. But it is your life force. It is the
force to live, the force to be. It is the force to say, "No,
it's not right." It is the force to speak when it's time to
speak. It's not always pretty. Let's assume it is ugly. This ugly
force gives rise to the beautiful flowers in the spring. Let the
ugly in, the unspiritual...
Q: Yeah. Bingo.
G: Yes. So grief, fear, rage - let them in. The easiest, quickest
way to let them in, is to not take them personally. It has
nothing to do with you. Bring it all home, especially the parts
of yourself that have been sent off to the concentration camps,
the dungeons. Bring home the locked up ones, the ones in chains.
Set them free. This can cause some shaking. It can trigger the
tendency to chase your thoughts. But you can experience every
aspect of yourself without taking it personally. That is the
paradox. What is "personal" is still a thought, but
when you stop, there is no personal. You discover just this
energy.
- excerpt from a satsang with Gangaji
What if even your strongest emotions aren't personal? Is anything
personal? What if this experience we are having as a body and
mind is more like a radio that receives things rather than
creates or generates them? You need a radio to play the songs
that are passing through this room now, right? All this
experience is floating around, and this radio called
"you" is playing these songs called desire, fear, love,
envy. Even resistance is just one more song called "I want
to turn off the radio." What if your internal experiences
are not personal but more like something a musician recorded
years ago that is being played now?
Even the love songs aren't personal. Even the very dramatic, very
sad, very happy, or very romantic ones aren't personal. There is
nothing wrong with them; they just aren't yours. You can still
pay attention to them, but there is no reason to get invested in
trying to change them or get them to stay around. Every song on
the radio eventually ends - even "Bye-Bye Miss American
Pie," which was 17 minutes long. It would go on and on, but
eventually there would be another commercial.
A radio is a great metaphor because a radio isn't like a CD
player, which you can program to play what you want it to play.
What plays on the radio is not up to you. Sometimes, it is a
happy song, sometimes it is a sad one, sometimes it is an
inspiring one. The Mystery is so wise that it knows exactly what
song to put on in this moment. It decides what song gets played,
and once it has been played, you can't hang on to it. Just being
present while it is being played is the best you can do. That is
all you can do. Paradoxically, this recognition that everything
that arises on this radio called "you" is impersonal
makes it easier to pay attention to what is arising because, if
it's not personal, there is no reason to hold back from it.
Another huge mystery is: What is aware of what's playing on this
radio? Then, you can ask an even stranger question: Is there a
boundary between what is aware of what's playing on the radio and
what's playing on the radio? Is what is hearing the radio and
experiencing all of the experiences actually separate from the
experiences themselves? It turns out that the listener who is
hearing these tunes is not separate from this Mystery. Rather,
the songs are streaming forth out of the Mystery, and the
listening is streaming forth out of the same Mystery. There is a
huge ground, or Presence, in which everything happens. The
surprise is that this ground is not a place of knowing but rather
a place of open-eyed discovery. There is no knowing ahead of time
what will be played; you just discover in the moment the next
song comes on.
- Nirmala, from Nothing Personal
Let Everything End
There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every
spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance
which manifests as the experience of conflict and confusion and
which causes suffering. In order to discover the perspective of
liberation, which alone transcends this entire movement of
ignorance and suffering, one needs to let everything end.
"Letting everything end" means to stand in the moment
completely naked of attachment to any and all ideas, concepts,
hopes, preferences, and experiences. Simply put, it means to stop
strategizing, controlling, manipulating, and running away from
yourself--and to simply be. Finally you must let everything end
and be still.
In letting everything end, all seeking and striving stops. All
effort to be someone or to find some extraordinary state of being
ceases. This ceasing is essential. It is true spiritual maturity.
By ceasing to follow the mind's tendency to always want more,
different, or better, one encounters the opportunity to be still.
In being still, a perspective is revealed which is free from all
ignorance and bondage to suffering. From that perspective,
eternal Self is realized. The eternal Self, the Seer, is
recognized to be one's true nature, one's very own Self.
This is an invitation to let all seeking end, all striving end,
all efforting end, all past identity end, all hopes end, and to
discover That which has no beginning or end. This is an
invitation to discover the eternal, unborn, undying Truth of
being. The Truth of your being, your own Self. Let the entire
movement of becoming end, and discover That which has always been
present at the core of your being.
- Adyashanti