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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3935, Sunday, June 27, 2010, Editor: Mark
Because of our craving, the Buddha is saying, we want things to
be understandable. We reduce, concretize, or substantialize
experiences or feelings, which are, in their very nature,
fleeting or evanescent. In so doing, we define ourselves by our
moods and by our thoughts. We do not just let ourselves be happy
or sad, for instance; we must become a happy person or a sad one.
This is the chronic tendency of the ignorant or deluded mind, to
make 'things' out of that which is no thing. Seeing craving
shatters this predisposition; it becomes preposterous to try to
see substance where there is none. The materials out of which we
construct our identities become useless and broken when the
ridgepole of ignorance is shattered...
- Mark Epstein, from Thoughts without a Thinker
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear
at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of
course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
- Charlotte Joko Beck
Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is 'try'. Allot
enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to
go beyond the personality, with its addictions and obsessions.
Don't ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying
until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure.
What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really
have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent
need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a
bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the
unnecessary is the secret of success.
- Nisargadatta Majaraj, from I Am That: Talks with Sri
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Gangaji: What you can learn, what is learnable,
is the A, B, & C of how you re-identify. You cannot learn the
Self. You cannot learn consciousness. You cannot learn love. You
cannot learn trust. But you can learn how you deny all of that.
For this denial, there are techniques and strategies. There is
either indulgence or repression, and with both there is an
avoidance of simply experiencing the power and the immensity of
the moment.
There is a power; a force, that when it is experienced is then a
force of light. It is a force of love, of consciousness, meeting
itself here, deeper than ever before experienced. If it is denied
or repressed, it is just the same old habit. When it is indulged,
it is just the same old violence. We are speaking of a certain
kind of addiction; the addiction to a pattern.
With addiction there has to come a point when you see that the
desire is out of your control. Maybe the addiction is
physiological. Maybe it has been practiced for so long that it
has its own groove. But what is in your control, absolutely, is
the willingness to not move when the desire appears. The
willingness neither to indulge nor repress but to not move in the
fire of this impulse of thousands of years. Have you ever
experienced this?
Questioner: Yes.
Gangaji: Then you know the beauty of this fire.
You know that in this moment, there is actually a willingness to
die. Because the addiction to mind or to habits can be so strong
that there is the sense if you don't feed the addiction, you will
die. Eventually, through the maturity of the soul, there is a
willingness to say, "Okay, if I die I will die. But I am not
going to follow this demon down this road again."
This, too, is the mind, but it is the mind in service to what was
betrayed. Vigilance was betrayed, and the mind humbled by this.
It feels like a descent into hell because with any addiction, the
impulse is strong to get rid of the craving, to get rid of the
fire. How? How? How? There are millions of ways how, but
to not get rid of it, to not go numb with it, to let it burn -
this is the fire. This is the Buddha and the temptations of Mara.
This is Christ in the desert. Everyone has to experience this - Oh
my god, I am dying. Okay, so I am dying. I surrender. I surrender
- and there is peace, there is freedom. You recognize what has
never left. You recognize what is always here. In that moment,
there is a break in the habit pattern. The habit may reappear,
but there is something bigger than it, so it does not have the
same hold on you. Do you follow this?
I want you to recognize that there are many moments before the
acting out. There are many choices. They happen very fast. But if
you will slow them down in your mind, just slow the film of this
movie down, you will see where the choices were made.
Justification can arise, and a kind of thrill from the adrenaline
and the power that comes with justification. There can be quick
excuse making, such as, "Well, so-and-so did it," or,
"It doesn't matter," or, "We're all one, it is all
the Self," but this is all thought. It is all the sirens
saying, "Come, come back, back into where you were
all-powerful, where you were in control, where you were God,
where you got to say what happens." Don't follow any of it.
DON'T MOVE. And an exquisite experience is revealed that can
never be taken from you.
Questioner: Yes, but those moments have
happened, and the thoughts still come back. As you said, it is a
conditional pattern.
Gangaji: Yes, good! This means that there is
something still unseen, which is even more deeply humbling for
the mind. Because all we are speaking of is the humbling of the
mind. This is what the fire is. It is the resistance, the
friction of the mind constantly seeking control of a particular
situation. The refusal to follow the mind creates the fire, the
burning, and if it comes back, well good! Then there must be more
here to see.
Questioner: But there is a lot of suffering at
that moment.
Gangaji: Yes, but it is conscious suffering.
This is very different from attempting to delay suffering. This
is very different from following, indulging, or discharging
suffering. Then suffering is spread out over time, and the
suffering of the misidentification continues.
To get to paradise there has to be a descent into the hell
created by the mind so that you recognize you are more than that.
It can be a scary descent. There is the tendency to think, No,
no, I don't have to do that. It is all Self. It doesn't matter.
It is all just a movie. Well that is great if it is true, but if
it is just another strategy, or a covering, then the habit
patterns continue. If it is all Self, then what have you got to
lose?
When you discover that in the midst of hell, here is God,
radiant, then hell itself is liberated. Your demons, the hungry
ghosts that have been haunting you and waking you up at four in
the morning, get liberated. Self-criticism, self-hatred, and
self-torture are liberated. The Self is not liberated. It was
never bound. What gets liberated are the demons of your mind, as
well as the gods of your mind. Set them all free. You are sick of
them. You are sick of playing with them and being played by them.
The way to set them free is to be willing to not play the game.
This willingness takes enormous resolve. Resolve is a little
different from vigilance. Resolve comes after vigilance has been
betrayed, after re-identification has set in. It is the mind's
resolve to recognize the hell that has once again been created
and to be here, to burn here, and in that burning, there is
naturally redemption. No one is needed to come and redeem you.
Redemption happens naturally.
You recognize that it is all a movie, God's movie, a huge movie,
and it has corners, and surprises and slopes that are undreamed
of, unheard of, that even our greatest movie makers and
playwrights have never touched. It is your life.
Questioner: If consciousness is playing this
movie, why is consciousness making me go through this suffering?
Gangaji: Why not? In every movie there is
someone suffering. Would you really be interested in a story if
there was no suffering? The resolution occurs when there is
suffering. Suffering and the resistance to suffering are one and
the same. Isn't this what the Buddha said, "Life is
suffering, and there is a way out"? The way out is in. Meet
the suffering directly, consciously. Christ said, "If you
know how to suffer, you do not suffer."
If you will recognize how it is you suffer, you will not suffer.
But this must be recognized. Questioning "why" is an
avoidance of knowing "how" it is that the suffering
continues.
Right here, in this universe, patterns of war still appear, and
war is what we are talking about, right? Even though you have
tasted peace, even though this universe has tasted peace on
earth, how is it that conflict still has its way? This is true of
every mindstream, especially in humans. War is inbred, and it has
gone unmet. Now war is being made on war, and the child of that
is more war. So meet that war within yourself consciously, awake,
refusing to budge. In meeting war, you will find peace. If you
have tasted it, then you know it is so. If you have not tasted
it, it may seem impossible, but taste it anyway and see. Just
take one moment in the midst of one attacking pattern and don't
budge.
Beneath the behavior is the energy of an emotion, and that
emotion is fueled by some thought of protection from being
wounded or hurt or not being seen. In the willingness to
experience that wounded or hurt or not being seen, to really be
wounded, really be hurt, really not be seen, then it is no big
deal. Then the wound is nothing, the hurt is nothing, and you
realize that you will never be seen. You are the Self. You cannot
be seen. You are not an object. Do you understand?
- Gangaji, excerpt from the Meeting, Immovable Resolve,
San Diego, CA, January 18, 2001