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Saturday May 27, 2001


Self importance...self promotion.

My stance or attitude of self importance demands subtle self
promotion.

Sometimes not so subtle. Always noticeable...always jarring to the
ear, I wonder why I bother.

Quanta


If you are existence, who else has the right to express, and self-
promote your importance other than yourself? Non-existing things?

Rise up and announce you are here!

Love
Bhadraiah


Well now I am confused even more than usual. How can this one who does not know
what he is much less what existance is, only that he is claimed by some sense of
beingness, proclaim his self importance. Is there some grand scheme of things wherin
there is some important role for me to play that would justify promoting? And to whom
or what other should I promote my self importance to?

quanta



Good question. You are not announcing yourself to anyone else,
because there is no one else other than yourself. All "others" are
merely neurons in your own mind, even if you can talk to them or even
if any one of them can take you for a lunch. They are still neurons
in your own mind.

It is just yourself announcing yourself to your own self which is
spread all around. Or to put it in different words, all these things
you see around which you think are "others" are just an expression of
yourself. You are expressing yourself through all this.

More Love
Bhadraiah



So well put...

Beautiful!

It does my heart good, to see this plain truth plainly stated.

Thanks, Bhadraiah...


==Gene Poole==


> It is just yourself announcing yourself to your own self which is
> spread all around. Or to put it in different words, all these things
> you see around which you think are "others" are just an expression of
> yourself. You are expressing yourself through all this.
>
> More Love
> Bhadraiah

Metaphorically, this is true. However, you've got to give Shakti
Her due. The Self is actionless. The one who appears to be making
announcements is in fact Maya, right along with all the other
"neurons."

We as pure being ride the experience of making announcements, yet
we remain untouched by it. It isn't by the exuberance of the Self
that we make such announcements, but by the play of Shakti's lila.

We're all puppets on Her strings, silently witnessing the drama
of our lives, even while we imagine that we have a part in it.

jody


Those who are over awed with themselves... with their moment of satori...samadhi,
whatever, will sometimes trap themselves by the remembrance of that event and instead
of accepting that moment as an attaboy will instead presume to be a spokes person for
the non dual. Like I got IT! And let me now explain it to you...of course what is
explained is explained through that laminate of conditioning that is self importance...and
self importance in this psychological sense demands self promoting, and self promoting
always jars my ears. So my first post recognized my own history in this regard...just a
confession that's all.

quanta



Hi Ron,

And sometimes, rather than feel self-important, people feel the opposite. They feel
neglected because the experience came and went. And they spend their lives trying to
re-create what they imagine are conditions that would bring the experience about, when
all the while they're -- as Jody said -- 'soaking in it'.

I think what the feeling of self-importance teaches a person about, is the danger of
celebrity. Because with slightest taste of self-importance there is a taste of celebrity.
With the taste of celebrity there is the almost irresistible seduction by celebrity. I think
anyone who stands before an audience has tastes of celebrity: teachers, professors,
lawyers, even real estate agents who post their photos everywhere are a kind of
celebrity. I'm fascinated with it. I guess that's why I'm a big fan of the Survivor
television show. Besides the entertainment value of the show, it amazes me how
ordinary people doing little
more than appearing on television every week for a few months, are instantly turned into
celebrities.

In today's world, perhaps the enlightened one is best defined as the one who sees no
difference between the celebrity and the 'ordinary' person. Certainly in our culture, and
in the culture of spirituality, celebrity is a huge issue. It's never been discussed here, I
don't think.

Jerry


I am famous, therefore I am.

Love, Sarlo



Dear Jerry: Have you become a nondual cyber-celebrity?

Humbly.

humanitate.


Hi Sarlo and All...

There is nothing wrong with shining brightly, excellence, joyful
expansion, and sharing such a flow with All, some have noticed an
actinic crackle of effusion, as the stars themselves are momentarily
outshown by a human nova or two, as it occurs.

There is nothing wrong, anyway, but in this world-dream pantheon of
mixed value-stories, wrongness and rightness outshine the very Beings
who entertain this conversation, ideals overshadowing the idealists who
promulgate and advocate rules and species of criteria, which eventually
form noticable clouds overhead, then emanating bolts of lightning to
burn those who deviate from popular or mandatory systems of thought and
value.

Rather than resort to asbestos underclothing, one may choose to
radiate, thus to evaporate the overcast of enforced correctness; those
who have done so, are known as stars, in the loose grammar of the
undisciplined human.

Someone should be tracking, just how classical terminologies and
advocacies, interfere with real-time expression of flowing observation,
which may or may not need to be expressed in any particular way, if at
all.

Modern philosopy does state that what cannot be described is not real;
how many are slaves to this ideal?

And if the only vocabulary available to one, is that of the classical
variety, how then are descriptive means to be employed, to share vision
and possibly thus experience, if the modern lexicon denies the meanings
of the classical?

Much of the complaint and wranglings observed on the way to syncretism,
if indeed that goal is sought, exists for the reason of neglect to
share first, the subtlety of the fine gradations of meaning, embedded
in any vocabulary. Consequently, even if identical pictures are shown,
the different names given to them, are afforded more credence than is
the picture itself.

Injecting this,


==Gene Poole==


Tim Rowe wrote:

> Hi Jerry,
>
> Thought you might like to know (if you don't already) that NDS got a
> mention in a supplement which came with today's "Independent"
> newspaper here in the UK.
>
> The review reads as follows:
>
> 'According to the great Nisargadatta Maharaj, a guru of the Nath sect,
> nondualism is "when you go beyond awareness - in which there is no
> cognition, only pure being. In the state of non-duality, all
> separation ceases."
>
> As you can see, the ideas contained at the Nonduality Salon will make
> for perfect reading over your morning cornflakes.'
>
> I've CC'd the reviewer if you want to e-mail him / her.
>
> --
> Best,
> Tim
> <http://www.timrowe.org.uk>

Hi Tim,

Thank you very much for telling me about this. I'll certainly write the
reviewer.

Also, I went to your website and subscribed to your newsletter, and had
the pleasure of discovering more about you through your bio. I'll pass the
good word along to the NDS list. I like the simple and direct design of
your websites. Very fresh and crisp. Like my cornflakes!

Yours,
Jerry



Found this on Mirror's new and magical list.

As Mark says, Yum!

http://www.thegreatillusion.com

a couple of my favorites:

http://www.thegreatillusion.com/road.html
http://www.thegreatillusion.com/point.html
jerry


> Does Shakti or Maya have Her own separate self other than the Self
> which is actionless? If she has her own self there is no more non-
> duality. If she does not have her own self, does she borrow
> somebody's self? or is she non-existence? (Bhadraiah)

Nonduality isn't everything existing as one, it is the oneness of
all being. There is a difference.

Because you and I are having this discussion, we cannot deny that
there isn't a difference between you and I *as* conversants.

We and the converstation we are having happens within the field
of Maya. The being that is the foundation of our awareness of
this conversation is the Self, and the Self is One. That is
nonduality. However, there would still appear to be two talking
to one another. That happens by Shakti's grace within Her lila.

The Self is utterly beyond the Maya, and to the Self there only
exists the Self. That is nonduality. However, Maya does exist.
This cannot be denied. Therefore, Maya does have Her own existence
apart from the Self, but the Self has no existence apart from It
self. So the answer is yes, Maya does have Her own existence,
but no, the underlying reality remains nondual (jody)

> Action is always one sided, but if you consider the combination of
> all actions in the universe there is no action. Being actionless can
> also mean combination of all actions which cancel out. 100 - 100 = 0.

This is an intellectual conceit held so that things can
make nondual "sense." The activity of the world cannot be denied,
even by the jnanis. They can see that it is all Maya, and therefore
not the Self, but even they acknowledge that Maya exists. (jody)

> >We as pure being ride the experience of making announcements, yet
> >we remain untouched by it. It isn't by the exuberance of the Self
> >that we make such announcements, but by the play of Shakti's lila. (jody)
>
> When we express we also hide something else! What we express and what
> we hide cancel out. The combination of all actions is again zero. The
> expression of Existence and Maya cancel out likewise, leaving only
> the Self. (B)

Another intellectual conceit that just isn't the experiential case.
Just ask a jnani. Maya exists to the embodied being who has been
blessed with realization. This being knows it's only Maya, and
therefore based in illusion, but the illusion has an apparent
reality to anyone in a body. Even if it is seen as essentially
unreal, it doesn't cease to exist. (jody)

> >We're all puppets on Her strings, silently witnessing the drama
> >of our lives, even while we imagine that we have a part in it. (jody)
>
> Maya or Shakti holds what we hide. It is the essence of future
> action. The expression of Existence that we see around in terms of
> this universe is what the existence had already expressed in the
> past. Future and past cancel out leaving no sense of time.
>
> Lots of more love
> Bhadraiah

Again, quaint ideas do not the nondual experience make.

To the jnani, time does exist as long as he/she is in a body.
We can know ourselves as the Self, eternal and beyond time,
and still experience the multiplicity of Maya. It may begin
to fade as we become more identified with the Self, but She
doesn't go away or become absorbed in one big blob of nonduality.

jody

Thanks Jodi, I agree that non-duality is not only about existence, it
can also be about non-existence. The oneness of being is the central
theme in each case. Unfortunately I do not accept Maya, so we can not
discuss any further :-)

Have fun, and love
Bhadraiah
Fair enough. However, I would contend that you live in a state
of denial about Maya, and that is not jnana yoga.

The aspiring jnani understands that Maya does indeed exist.
He/she may spend their days discriminating the real from the
unreal, or the Self from Maya, but in order to do so one must
first understand that there is a Maya to be discriminated from.

jody

That is where I differ with tradition. I deconstruct mAya, avidya and
ajnAna. When I deconstruct these items all that remains is jnana.
People see Maya, when they can't see the whole, just excusively IMO.

Live and Love
bhadraiah


Hi All,

I enjoyed the recent discussion of Douglas Adam's books and ideas, and
I've just read a paragraph from a book (Singer by the Sea) by Sheri S.
Tepper, that reminded me of Adam's take on dolphins. Well, I hope you
enjoy it...

"Fingers," she murmured, remembering the words of the spirit. "We got
fingers before we got good sense. You know, one of our early ancestors
was called Homo habilus, the toolmaker. We learned to manipulate and
change things before we learned to look at what we were changing. So
did the whales and the dolphins, long before us, but they have bigger
brains than we do, and after they made a few mistakes, they decided -
philosophically, you understand - that it would be better to go back to
the sea and practice humility first by thinking things out thoroughly.
Then, when they'd done that, they could crawl back up on land in a few
million years or so. Only they never got the chance because of us!
We... we made mistakes too, but we didn't have any humility. We never
bothered to think things out. We just... went on. Wreck this, destroy
that, gamble our souls on the odds of whether we'd ever do it right..."

Love, Mark

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