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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3562, Saturday, June 13, 2009, Editor: Mark
The outside world is not really concerned at all in man's dilemma
of suffering. It is all within the fictitious 'me' of personal
identity.
Realization of this fact is the ultimate Understanding.
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
The changeful keeps on changing, while the changeless is waiting.
Do not expect the changeful to take you to the changeless--it can
never happen.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Q: To actualize our potential, it seems there's something to
learn or understand.
A: We must distinguish between learning, accumulation of
knowledge, and understanding or knowing, the immediate insight
into our real nature. Appropriation of facts is necessary when
studying a trade, an instrument, a language, and so on. But we
cannot acquire what we fundamentally are. We can only recognize
it. Recognition is an instantaneous happening.
Q: How can I come to this recognition?
A: In daily life there are glimpses of your primal knowing state.
There are brief moments when you are in quietness without the
dynamism of becoming. Generally, you overlook these moments
because you tend to know yourself only in relation to situations,
events and objects. When you acknowledge these moments of
stillness, you become aware of a new dimension in your living, a
dimension not related to any event or thought. Once you are open
to this dimension, it appears more often than you had ever
noticed before.
Eventually you will see that what seemed to appear as moments is
the continual background of all doing, thinking, feeling. It will
envelope everything you do and think like an all-pervasive echo.
It is this echo that brings you to look for the source of the
echo, and to be ready for a guide on your journey.
- Jean Klein, from Who am I? The Sacred Quest
Sometimes a little clarification or a little clarity about this
thing we call, whether we call the `me' or `ego' and if we really
look at what it actually is in experience rather than in theory
or a text book but if we really look at actually what the
movement of ego is we see it's a phenomena, right? And the
phenomena of ego is basically consciousness reflecting back upon
itself. It's like consciousness always doing a u-turn, it does a
u-turn, it reflects back upon itself and when it reflects back,
it talks to itself. So it reflects back and it says, `I am,
whatever, I am happy, I am sad, I am worthy, I am unworthy, I am
capable, I am incapable. So always there is this movement of
consciousness, self-reflective. It's like a reflex within
consciousness that we do a very good job training in since we
were very young to reflect back and we reflect back upon this
immense screen of ideas and self-concepts and beliefs and
opinions and judgments. You always notice when you reflect back
in your mind, your mind is more than happy to talk to you. It
always has something to say when you reflect back upon it, you
know? It has an opinion, it has an idea, it has a belief system,
it has all the rest. And of course in spirituality in one sense,
in a very simplistic sense, sometimes to describe things in a
very simple way makes them (Hey cool. I feel like I'm in
Hogwarts. (laughter) Doesn't this hall kind of remind you of
Harry Potter? I expect to see things flying around anytime.)
So there's this movement of consciousness, it reflects back. We
call it self-reflecting. Reflect on yourself. Look at yourself.
Of course that would be great if one actually did look at
themselves and reflect upon themselves. That's a great idea. But
when most people self-reflect what they do is they reflect back
into that chattering noise. One's self concept just chatters and
chatters. Often it's negative, sometimes it's positive. So
spirituality is in some way getting that movement of self-
reflection, consciousness reflecting back into the mind to tell
it who it is, and what the world is and how everything should be
and who's right and who's wrong. Consciousness always reflecting
back into the mind, which the mind is completely conditioned to
the hilt. Have you noticed? Your mind is completely conditioned
to the hilt. From top to bottom it's nothing but conditioning.
Mechanical. Does that make sense? That's probably stark enough.
That's why people who know you very well can predict your
behaviors with great accuracy. And the people that you know well
you can often predict their behavior with some accuracy. Because
you know given this situation it's going to trigger the
conditioning and it's going to unfold pretty much the way it
always does unfold and they are just going to live that out.
That's why when you get to know somebody you can predict them so
well. Because they're just you know a mechanical unfolding of
egoic consciousness. Totally mechanical. Uncreative. So in
spirituality actually endeavours to know ourself as we actually
are. When we know ourself we come to know the self, the greater
Self. To know ourself as we actually are, our existential being,
rather than our psychological conditioned phony sense of self
that rattles around in our brain structure. The phenomena of the
movement of mind. Spirituality is getting us to actually peer
into what we really and truly are. And so that sounds good,
doesn't it? And so when you look within, still consciousness
reflecting back and you look past or through the mind, `cause the
mind is actually, it's ephemeral. The mind is like cellophane
with writing on it or something. It's not actually a thing. It's
not like a barrier you bump into. It's like space with noise in
it all the time. And so you can actually look right through it.
And of course when you look through it, on the other side of that
mind is no-mind. Or no-mind also then gives you the experience of
no ego. Cause ego is just something that just swirls around in
the mind. Something that's beyond ego. Very simple actually.
And maybe there'll be a shift and you'll realize, `I'm not just
this swirling morass of thoughts, images, beliefs, opinions,
shoulds and shouldn'ts, blames and regrets. There's actually
something much more to you or much less to you. That often
triggers in someone a sort of a dual reaction. One of them can be
the intriguing, peering into your own nothingness. Intriguing
because it's kind of amazing to realize your own nothingness or
to look into it. Also it can trigger fear. Because from the ego's
point of view, the only way it knows itself is to be reflecting
on itself all the time. It's the only way it knows itself. And so
you stop doing that for a moment. You stop reflecting back into
the mind to find yourself. It may feel good, it may not. You
never know depending on how you're hooked up. But to your ego,
this is a type of death. It's a type of death because if it's not
reflecting and not defining, `This is what I am, this is what you
are, this is the world, this is what should be, this is what
shouldn't be.' All the rest. If it's not doing that, to the ego
that feels like death, because it is. It's the death of the idea
of you and me. It's the death of what we think things should be,
the world as it should be, and so for the ego this is very
threatening stuff. That's why it's often not too long, before the
ego will start again, reflecting back and listening to the mind
and recreating its whole sense of self and recreating its whole
world and spinning it around and around. Anything to avoid this
annoying emptiness. The great immensity of the void.
However if you can go through that barrier where the ego starts
to feel a little nervous, it loses its equilibrium. It starts not
quite knowing where it is, what's up, what's down, what's here,
what's there. For some people it's just a strange little
phenomena, for some people it might be some form of fear or
terror. If you can go through that sort of imaginary barrier then
there's a shift in consciousness.
Because when that shift happens, you're no longer the ego looking
into emptiness. You're actually emptiness looking into emptiness.
You're awareness looking into your own nature as awareness. And
then there's no fear and there's no problem. It's actually a
wonderful relief. To be relieved of this immense burden of the
`me.' So the only reason that I'm describing this cause you can't
necessarily stop this self-reflective mechanism from happening.
So I'm not describing it so you try to stop it from happening.
Once you see it, you just see it as something almost automatic.
It's very impersonal, is it not? It just happens. Until it
doesn't. But until it doesn't, it just happens. And there's not
much you can do about it, cause everything you try to do about
it, is more of the same self-referencing. `I have this problem
and what am I going to do about this problem and how am I going
to work with this problem.' It's like self-referencing thoughts
trying to get rid of self-referencing thoughts. It's enough to
make you feel a little nutty.
But when you see it's just a mechanical process, it's just
something consciousness does, sort of a phase it goes though,
like childhood or adolescence or all those phases you go through
as you grow up. Ego consciousness is kind of a phase.
Unfortunately most people never grow out of it. Probably because
they don't know there's any such thing as growing out of it. If
we don't know there's any such thing as growing out of it then we
may not. But once you just realize is just an impersonal phase
the something in you relaxes and you stop trying to control it.
And as soon as you stop trying to control it then you're no
longer controlled by it. Because you may have noticed, everything
you try to control you actually end up becoming a slave to. You
are controlled by the very things within yourself that you try to
control. So when you see the impersonal nature of it, the
automatic nature of it, it doesn't occupy all of your awareness,
`cause you're not fighting it any more. You're not defining
yourself by it anymore.
So again the key is always not necessarily what we do about
something but how clearly we actually see it. Once you see
something with absolute clarity, bringing light to darkness
dispels darkness. The light doesn't come into darkness and go'
well, gee, it's awful dark, how am I going to go about dispelling
this darkness?' The light dispels darkness.
When enough consciousness comes into any moment, it automatically
dispels illusion. So it's not so much a doing, its more just
being aware. Just being aware, just being very very conscious.
And withholding that tendency of the egoic mind to want to get in
and fix everything that it becomes conscious of. Cause when you
look inside of yourself you see a lot more insanity than you ever
imagined. The tendency is, `Good lord!' And if you don't see the
insanity inside yourself, you're too insane to see it yet. But
when you see it, it's shocking. It's like carnival going on in
there. And so the tendency of the ego is, `I've got to do
something about that.' Which is of course more of the same
carnival. When you se it for what it is and see `Oh, it's just
conditioning. I think of myself in the ways I think of myself
because I'm conditioned to do so. I think about the way the world
is, my thoughts about the world, I think that way because that's
the way I'm conditioned to think about it. The ego always wants
to convince itself that it has arrived at its conclusions and
beliefs through very logical, independent analysis of
information.
There is no such thing! There is no such thing. It's a myth. And
so when you see all this and you see even the tendency to try to
correct all this ego is actually just more ego then there is a
different state of consciousness that comes into being. For lack
of a better word. I'm saying a different state of consciousness
but its actually just consciousness comes into the arena. And
once you see a certain kind of insanity of mind and you realize
its just sort of mechanical conditioning automatically you stop
putting your reality into mind. You don't have to stop mind, just
stop putting your reality into your mind.
Stop believing your mind. Stop thinking your mind is telling you
the truth. Cause 9 times out of 10 its not. It's just telling you
exactly what it was conditioned to tell you. Like a computer.
Someone stuck a disk in you a long time ago and programmed you
how to act and react, your society, your parents, your friends
then you got so good at it you started to program yourself.
You're like a computer programming yourself based on of course
old programs. Old programs making new programs. So once you can
actually see this, really see it, cause again ego doesn't want to
see this. Ego wants to think its intelligent, logical, empirical,
objective, does it not? That's what it wants to think. `I've come
to my conclusion from pure intelligence.' That's ego. It's more
humbling to go, `I've basically come to all my conclusions about
myself, others, life, God and everything through sort of
mechanical very garden variety conditioning. It's humbling. It
doesn't mean it's bad, it's just humbling.
So when you allow that humbling to take place, you are not longer
finding or looking for what's true or real in the content of
thought. That's the most important thing. It's not that you stop
thought. You can't stop thought. Thought will stop whenever it
stops or slowdown whenever it slows down. But you can start to
see through a sort of innate intelligence that everybody has,
that everybody's born with, that intelligence that comes from
someplace other than thought. You can come to see that that whole
conditioned mechanism is not a good place to find the reality of
you, life, others, God or anything else. It's not a great place
to find it.
The mind has really good uses, don't get me wrong. Thought is a
fantastic tool. I always have to say that because there will
always be a defender of thought which is fine because thought is
a great thing. Without thought we wouldn't be sitting in this
building. It was a thought in someone's mind, engineers and
carpenters and all sorts of people using thought in creative
practical ways to construct this building, these microphones,
this technology, the cushions you're on, everything. All of that
started as a thought. So thought in itself isn't bad at all.
But in most human beings thought has become a cancer. It has
taken over the mechanism and its no longer a tool that
intelligence uses. Its masqueraded as the intelligence itself. Or
the great philosopher, didn't end up being that great, "I
think therefore I am." That's the ultimate statement of
thought. The funny thing is, even though its ridiculous, as the
flip side it has a certain truth.
From the ego's point of view that's true. No thought, no ego.
That's where you find your ego is in thought. So from the ego's
point of view `I think therefore I am.' Is very true,
self-references, looks to thought, finds its identity, `there I
am.'
But from Reality's point of view `I think therefore I am.' is
ludicrous. From Reality's point of view it usually will be
something more akin to `I think therefore I delude myself.' 90%
of the time. So again the only reason I'm talking about this is
cause when you really see it then spontaneously something about
you, something within you stops looking for truth, the truth of
you, in conditioned thought. It stops looking there and it looks
elsewhere. That's the beauty of it. That's all you got to
realize. And I'm sure a lot of you have seen this before but it
always helps to see it again. To be reminded. `The Truth of what
I am isn't to be found in the thoughts about me.' It's not to be
found there. It's beyond. Once you get beyond mind then you can
turn back and use mind as an nice tool. But until you do, you
usually going to be used by it. Tough way to live.
- Adyashanti, Garrison retreat 2008, transcribed by Mark
Scorelle, and posted to The_Now2