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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3232, Sunday, July 20, 2008, Editor: Mark
Gangaji: Hi.
Questioner: Hi. I want to ask you about an experience that I have
been having. I have moments where I experience a vastness that
just doesn't have edges and it isn't really about me, and...
G: Aha, let's wait a moment. Let's not go too quickly. What a
statement. To be able to make a statement like this is so
beautiful. And to know, to recognize, that "it isn't really
about me".
Q: My suffering usually comes in when I experience a personality
that seems to have a lot of problems.
G: Personality means problems. It's a code word for problems.
Even charming personalities.
Q: Well, what do I do about the personality?
G: What if you do nothing about the personality?
Q: It just goes on being miserable.
G: I believe that you have never done nothing about the
personality. I believe that you have fought the personality, or
you have changed the personality, or you have sworn you are never
going to have that personality again, or you have tried on other
personalities, or you have adapted the personality, or you have
put on a façade for the personality, but to do nothing for the
personality is to really meet what is driving the personality -
which in the moment we were speaking was a huge fear. It is
usually fear at some point for everybody, huge fear, divine fear.
If you do nothing, this moment, about your personality; you don't
fix it, you don't deny it, you don't go to sleep over it, you
don't indulge it, you don't tell yourself some story about it,
then what?
Q: Well then it is gone.
G: What a mystery!
Q: But what is that? That is what I need the help with.
G: When it is there, that is when you have to do nothing. When it
is gone, do whatever you like. This is so subtle, but if it is
said any more explicitly it becomes some kind of dogma. And that
is not the point. Then we have the "do nothing's".
"I am a nothing, are you?" Q: There is a poem about
that. Something like, "I am a nothing, are you? But don't
tell anybody, because they will form a club of nothings".
G: Yes. There is a secret hidden in your heart that knows itself
to be no-thing at all. And we are at a point in time where
somehow that can be spoken, actually spoken in public.
(From the sangha.) Yea!
G: Yea! It is a celebration. Then the habits of personality,
which appear in time and disappear in time, are recognized to be,
gnats. Gnats. You can still see the light through the gnats, but
you don't take your shotgun out and try to wipe them out. It will
not work. And if you try, then you are a shotgun person. Then
what are we going to do with you? It is possible to just be
still. In the stillness there is the meeting of what is
underneath the personality and the desire to change the
personality. Are you aware of that?
Q: Yes.
G: What is that?
Q: There is a revulsion, disgust-to that personality.
G: Yes, it is a kind of hatred, isn't it? Are you willing to just
let your consciousness go into that, to really experience that
all the way? Are you willing to experience it without telling a
story about it? This is the challenge. We know the story of
self-hatred, but instead, go into the pre-verbal self-hatred all
the way, without fighting it. And, if you are fighting it, you
stop the fighting and just let your consciousness sink deeper
into that disgust.
Q: There is a belief that I am bad.
G: That is an insight that has bubbled up from the exploration.
That is fine, but I am more interested in the direct experience
of the revulsion itself. So let's say you are bad, that the
belief is correct. You are bad and it is disgusting. What does
that mean when met? Not fixed, but met. What are you
experiencing?
Q: I'm not sure.
G: What do you experience, what do you feel, without telling a
story? Just tell the truth right now, what is here?
Q: Just some blocking or something in the...
G: That is a theory.
Q: I don't know.
G: Is revulsion there? Earlier you knew immediately when it was
there. You did not have to question it. Now you can generate it
again. There is a strong attachment to this self-hatred as
identity.
Q: Yes, yes.
G: The, "That is really the core of me." And,
"That is what has to change for this limitless expansion
that has nothing to do with me to be in my life
permanently." I am saying that if you will just go into that
very core and experience completely all the disgust, you will
find that in the core of disgust there is limitless, perfect,
expansion. Disgust transforms immediately into that. But it
requires your willingness to meet it all the way. It is like
kissing the frog. You know a frog is a disgusting thing to a
young princess. But that is the requirement. Do you know that
story? You are a princess type. And we are talking about the frog
that lives inside, that is your perfect Beloved, but it looks so
disgusting to you. So your wise old fairy godmother is telling
you to go inside and kiss that frog. You got very close, you
actually couldn't even find the frog for a moment, and then you
began doing whatever it is you do, subconsciously or consciously,
to generate frogness, reptileness, disgusting, slimy, ugliness.
Perfect. That is what is waiting for your embrace. That is what
has to be set free. The limitlessness, the truth of who you are,
is already free. The frogness is appearing in you to be set free,
and it is your kiss that sets it free. Not your rejection, not
your clubbing it. You have tried that and it won't let you go,
because it needs you to be set free. What is that, what are you
feeling? It's right, it is good, it is beautiful.
Q: (Sobbing.) It is beautiful. Thank you.
G: It is good news, isn't it? Yes, such good news. It is not your
beauty that needs to be set free; it is your ugliness that you
keep hidden. That which cannot be exposed. Just a simple kiss,
which is an acknowledgement, which is a meeting, which is, at the
very least, a lack of pushing away. Just an, "Okay, you are
here, so come in." Very good, thank you for coming up.
- Gangaji, excerpt from San Diego, California, Intensive -
February 9, 2002 PM