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Nonduality
Highlights: Issue #3038, Saturday, January 5, 2007, Editor: Mark
Concern yourself with your mind, remove its distortions and
impurities. Once you had the taste of your own self, you will
find it everywhere and at all times. Therefore it is so important
that you should come to it. Once you know it, you will never lose
it.
- Nisargadatta
If you will take a moment to recognize the peace that is already
alive within you, then you actually have the choice to trust it
in all your endeavors, in all your relationships, in every
circumstance of your life.
- Gangaji, posted to SufiMystic
Adya: Someone wrote me in a letter and in fact a few people have
written me and asked me to elaborate a bit more on something I
think I spoke about this morning. It was about the whole idea of
the letting go of self-will. Really if you think of self-will, a
more accurate way to describe it, to get the sense of it is, it
is maybe more accurate to say "the willful self." And
self-will is that which separates. To let go of self-will is in
no way disempowering. Actually self-will which is based on that
which separates is extraordinarily itself disempowering. To have
an abundance of self-will, self-will which separates which is
striving, grasping, having it's agenda quite apart from the
whole, often in seeming contrast to the whole, this is what I
mean by self-will.
Self-will is that within us which is always seeking to fulfill
itself by acquisition. Acquisition of love, or people or fame or
money or more, more, more spiritual experiences. It wants more,
more more. The sense of wanting more isn't of course wrong
because there's really nothing wrong but the sense of wanting
more comes from a separation from what we really are. A perceived
separation from what we really are, from our essence. As soon as
we experience the perception that we are separate then the
self-will is born. More, more, more, more. I want this, I want
that, I don't want this, I don't want that. My life the way I
want it. And its inherent that it's separate, it separates. And
its an expression of separation.
So going beyond self-will really means going beyond the willful
self, that self, that will, which separates. Thats what I mean by
self-will. That will which separates causes you to contract or
others to contract. That which is not love. And we exercise this
self-will in ways we all know in way that are very obvious. You
know hate, ignorance, greed, aggression. All of these are very
obvious forms of self-will and then theres much more subtle forms
of self-will. "The way we think the world should be."
It's sort of a hidden thing within human beings. I think almost
every human being has some hidden sense, maybe overt in some.
"If everyone just thought the way I did, it would be
okay." "If everyone just had the viewpoint that I have,
then everything would be okay."
That's a form of self-will. It's a form of ego delusion. It's
when we go around trying to win each other over. Win the world
over. Thinking that a particular viewpoint is the answer to
anything. So there's very overt forms of self-will, very subtle
forms of self-will...and of course the self-will is like a hungry
ghost, no matter how much you feed it, it's never satisfied,
right? It's like if you look in history, somebody who has a very
overt form of self-will, a conqueror, the great conquerors of
history, the great warriors of history. There's no satisfaction,
right, they take over a country, they want the next country, they
get the next country, they want the next country, they get a
whole continent, they want the world, right? They all keep going
until they fall down.
If the self-will wants money, how unimaginably rare is it for
somebody to go, "If I just had a million dollars, I'd be
satisfied," and then get the million dollars and end up
being satisfied. It's always, "Well, a million is great, but
two million, twice as good. I got 10 million, a hundred
million." I got a hundred million, well you know, still not
satisfied. Two hundred and so it goes. These are overt forms,
right?, that destroy or build various types of empires. And its
like feeding a hungry ghost.
On a personal level one can be looking for love, trying to fill
it, and it won't matter how much love you get. All of you lovers
will eventually realize that theres not enough love they can give
you because there isn't enough love they can give you when we are
coming from that place of separation. You could dump immense
amounts of love into somebody but if their need for love is
coming from separation, it'll never be enough. So these are overt
and subtle forms of self-will. And we are taught unfortunately,
we are taught that to let these go is somehow disempowering.
Somehow your life will become meaningless. Or you'll become a
doormat to every moron that walks through your life. It'll be
inherently unsatisfying. If I am not chasing around trying to
satisfy myself all the time, life would be a big bore. So we are
literally taught to feed this sort of pain that comes out of
separation. And very much of the spiritual path is about letting
this self-will go.
But you can't just let self-will go. You can't, can you? It
doesn't work that way. You can't just go, "I'll just let go
of my insistence for love. I'll just let it go. Please God help
me let it go." It never works. Not for long. You can't just
let something go like that because again that's dealing with the
effect. You deal with the effect, you are in the realm of
effects. Nothing will change. Get to the cause. The cause of it
is the perceived separateness. The perception of separateness
rips open this immense negative void inside of us that you can't
fill. And so that's why spirituality goes to the root of things,
the cause of things, the ultimate root which is the perception of
separateness.
When the perception of separateness is healed or awoken from,
it's very odd until you get used to it, that all of a sudden all
these things you were doing to fill this perceived void, all of a
sudden you have no desire to do them anymore. And those of you
who had this experience and live this know that it's actually
sort of odd until you get used to it because all these things you
were doing in you life to fill this perceived void, all of a
sudden the separateness is healed. You've woken up from the
illusion of separation and no longer do you feel you've got to
keep pouring things into yourself to satisfy yourself. And your
mind for awhile sits around going, "Well, that's strange. I
don't have the impulse for that or that or for that or for that.
I don't need to achieve that and I don't need grasp that and I
don't need receive that from that person." And also even the
inner seeking disappears. You think to seek seems ridiculous. Why
would we ever seek for what we already are, unless of course we
haven't realized what we already are.
So all these forms of suffering arise from various
misperceptions, right? It would be much better instead of always
trying to fill ourselves to look at how am I creating right now,
how am I literally creating with my thoughts and belief systems
the illusion of separation. How am I making myself feel like I'm
isolated. How is it that I pull off the amazing magic act of
making myself appear less than I am. What thoughts must I believe
to make myself feel separate? This would be much better than
trying to fill the void because there's no bottom to it. It has
an infinite capacity for you to put things into it, trying to
heal it. I often say to people, "Don't worry about looking
for enlightenment. Find out out how it is you unenlighten
yourself at each moment."
That's much more important since everybody's nature is
enlightenment, contrary to popular opinion, enlightenment isn't a
big deal. Illusion is a big deal. Enlightenment is just the
perception of the way things are. I mean it feels like big deal
for awhile if you haven't seen it. And it is kind of a big deal
in the sense that it's not anything that we suspect it to be but
illusion, that's the big deal. How it is that we could be the
One, the only One, whatever you want to call the One,
consciousness, spirit, Buddha Nature, Allah, it doesn't matter.
How it is that we could be the One and then delude ourselves into
imagining we are not the One, separate from the One, that's
impressive! That's not an easy thing to pull off. It takes lots
of training to do that. So much more valuable than chasing
enlightenment would be to really look, present time, right here,
right now. Since everything is One, since you are the One, how is
it that you unenlighten yourself, in any given moment.
Once you start to see exactly how you unenlighten yourself and
you see through it and you see the illusions of it, that any way
we unenlighten ourselves is based on ideas and assumptions and
beliefs and self-images that have no basis in reality. When we
see that, we stop unenlightening ourselves. You see we don't need
to achieve enlightenment, we need to stop achieving
unenlightenment. There's no such thing as achieving enlightenment
or achieving awakening or anything like that. We have already
plucked the prize of achieving unenlightenment. How is it that we
do that? And each person is a little different in how that do
that. Ultimately we do it through the perception of separation
but how is it that you specifically create that perception? How
do you pull it off? When you see how you pull it off, it can
begin to crumble. Mostly it's always going to be some form of how
we argue with what is and how we argue with what was.
- Adyashanti, Omega Retreat 2007, Tues evening satsang, posted to
adyashantigroup
It's really common to hear, "I really want to connect with
you." When we rest in this simple clueless nothing, there is
no connecting necessary. There's just connection.
So this is mostly about nothing. About daring to rest here as no
one in particular. As just this hereness, letting everything that
you hold or cling to just drop. Just completely unprotected and
seen.
- Jeannie Zandi, from the January edition of her
monthly newsletter, which you can join by so requesting
here... info@jeanniezandi.com
You are love itself when you are not afraid.
- Nisargadatta
It is Love,
unadorned
like naked poetry...
It is Love...
that
long last
compels
gospels of us
to face
the empty mirror
to go
to that unknown
fearful place
to drink
the dark waters
of our stillbirth
to fall back
down and through
the gaping hole
of our virgin birth
to set free
our Living Soul.
- Anna Ruiz, posted to NondualitySalon