Author: nakedom_qxyb03

To be happy with whatever comes

Pleasure pain

Birth death

Sickness health

And the rest of the story is that I feel like a failure at love because I don’t see that I am able to sacrifice in that very physical (and extreme) way. And also I seem to be handicapped when it comes to loving a person in a personal, romantic way.

“Supreme desire” for me is often an experience of varying degrees of sadness and anger. I accept this because I choose to attempt to be as awake as possible and would rather see things and myself as clearly as I am able.

And so I notice a recurring thought and feeling that once I fulfill the desire to be beautiful, or humble, or be the one who endures the pain of sacrifice, or be the one who masters my habits, and/or bodies in such a way as to achieve “perfection” that I will achieve a “final” state where I no longer desire things or experience hunger or physical discomfort or addiction, free from the needs of food, shelter, money, karma, protection, emotions of anger, fear, shame, etc. Free from enemies and people not liking me for something that I have done.

The fruits (the results) will not always please you, and this you must accept.

You will not always be pleased when you see an accurate, non-biased view of your gross and subtle bodies.

I confess that even though an extremely important thing for me is to keep my word (do what I say I am going to do) that I have not always been able; I will keep trying, but know that perfection in this respect isn’t really possible. Upon close examination, it’s not really desirable either; my pursuit of it and attachment to the pursuit causes inner turmoil for myself and then others around me.

The only goal is the path, the eternal road, and until you truly and completely accept this, you will suffer. Sometimes it requires effort, sometimes rest, sometimes pleasure sometimes pain, sometimes success sometimes failure.

Mind-ego is suffering itself. Serving it and following it leads to pain. The tricky thing is that you can be going along, believing that you are free of it, but my personal experience has been (and continues to be) that it is never actually completely true. All you can do is to attempt to take a break from it on a regular basis, and keep trying (perhaps forever).

Interesting that I have expended a considerable amount of time and effort attempting to “worship Om”, desiring Om, trying to be free of mind ego, but I must confess that much of what I was doing was actually worshipping the mind ego, and pursuing pleasure, attempting to avoid pain, often taking the easy way out by not truly helping people, and pursuing a final state of personal bliss (which is just another state of delusion).

And my cycle continues, the sacrifice in order to earn the permission to practice (to just be).

Much of the world (as I have known it) is based on a deeply rooted notion that we are not enough.

The deeply hidden subconscious urge to avoid pain and seek pleasure is practically impossible to eradicate.

I feel ashamed that I have not been better at helping people around me to be independent and free. My desire to bring comfort to others and help them avoid pain often makes people around me dependent.

Thomas Collier is probably at a point where he must give up his attachment to the goal of any type of success (material or so called spiritual) and he also may need to let go of his desire to have other people join him in his attempt at the freedom from goals. It would also serve him well to let go of his desire for any kind of acknowledgement from other people that maybe he was right about something (anything). And he also needs to let go of the need for his desires to be fulfilled quickly (or even at all). He no longer needs to delude himself by believing that he is the one who “gets things done” or gets things moving or fixes a problem, nor does he need to be acknowledged by others for these things. Nor does he need to be obeyed or respected or honored or told the truth by other people or treated specially.

I long to simply show things as they are and see things as they are.

I say I want to see and experience truth and nakedness, but I admit that always doing so is seemingly impossible, and it is a pain that is frequently and usually difficult to bear.

I plod along, often wearing a mask of happiness, love, and contentment, when inside I am often extremely angry and/or sad. I am tired of being a slave to mind-ego, materialism, goal achievement, pleasure, pain, planning, commitments, and habits.

I confess that I am not really free of the selfishness, the fear of pain, death, unknown, and the desire for pleasure and comfort.

I try to make the words that I read and write that I call scriptures and aspirations true by attempting to embody and live them.

I try to make the mantra that I practice true, which is a never-ending endeavor.

I can’t get beyond the idea that I need to endure pain to prove my love, devotion, or worthiness for the divine goal. I feel that contrary to some of what I have read, there is actually some truth to this. Ahimsa does sometimes mean taking the blow, taking the bullet. Love does sometimes mean voluntarily enduring the bondage, humiliation, and pain.

I confess that it bothers me that I lie to people on a regular basis; participating in the way of life that I have chosen and saying that I like it is a lie. Some lying is unavoidable. So I go along, enduring the sadness and anger of “modern life”; the sadness and anger that has always been a part of life. I am thankful that I have access to the endurance needed for staying awake, and for the times when I am able to succeed in maintaining awareness, yamas, and niyamas.

I have spent a fair amount of effort, time, and attention attempting to develop an impartial attitude and approach to life and relationships, but haven’t been completely and perfectly successful. It does not seem possible to achieve in the relative realm; it seems possible only to endeavor to persist in pursuing compassion and experimenting with the boundaries between self and others.

Trying to know Truth is like attempting to view your own eyes without a mirror (or any type of reflection).

Impartiality is a challenge, when the very nature of the mind is to discriminate and judge.

True impartiality is completely beyond personal concerns, ultimately requiring the need to let go of every personal attachment, even those that seem impossible to acheive, like attachment to the physical, energetic, emotional, and mental bodies.

And decisions must be made in order to live life

The mind-ego lies, and that is its nature.

It is governed by desire and fear. Its satisfaction is short lived. It finds (and creates) “problems” and solves them incessantly.

It believes that it can find security and stability in the manifest. (Lie)

It says once I do this, my work will be done. (Lie)

It says it knows how pain can be avoided. (Lie)

It says I am this, I am that. (Lies)

It believes it can avoid pain in the unmanifest. (Lie)

It says once I achieve this or that, I will be truly and lastingly happy and satisfied. (Lie)

It preaches to others how to live righteously and violates its own rules.

(from Four Chapters on Freedom, p 192-193)

Ahimsa means love, harmlessness, non-killing, non-violence. It means absence of enmity, hostility, and harm. For the spiritual aspirant it should mean absence of any harmful intention whatsoever. Pratishtha means being firmly established. When one is established in ahimsa, there develops a kind of magnetism around one that influences anybody who approaches. One becomes free of a very dangerous, evil complex — that of violence and hostility.

In Indian history there have been many great people who could convert even the most cruel and devilish hearts. Mahatma Gandhi, who was a devotee of ahimsa, did not harbour any ill will but he too had enemies and he was finally shot down. This shows how difficult it is to practise ahimsa. Lord Buddha had developed the practice of ahimsa so much that he converted any cruel person into a kind-hearted one. Once he faced a cruel dacoit (robber) who had come to kill him and by his mere look, the dacoit was converted. This is the power of ahimsa. In the ashram of Patanjali, the cow, goat and tiger could live eat and drink together because of the ahimsa practiced by the great sage.

It is very easy to say that we should be non-violent, that we should love each other, but the concept of love is too great for us to understand. For us love means security or defense against the fear of death, and nothing more. It is a psychological necessity, but love is actually something much greater. Christ was crucified. Mohammed was stoned by his opponents, the great Sufi saint Mansoor was tortured by the Muslims and his skin was peeled off. All these men had enemies but in India there have been many who had no enemies because they practiced ahimsa perfectly.

The most important thing is not to oppose even violent people. That is also ahimsa and if the whole thing is discussed more deeply, then it means that you practice elimination of the complex of enmity, disapproval. In India, such a person is called ajata shatru, born without an enemy.

Thus it seems that even the great saints and prophets were not firmly established in ahimsa. For example, Buddha, Lord Krishna and Shankara used to criticize and oppose other schools of philosophy, but the yogic logic says that ahimsa must be practiced completely. There should be a dignified way of facing the irregularities of society. That is what satyagraha means.

So, this sutra means that when the aspirant is firmly established in ahimsa, when even the last traces of hostility are finished, the soul unfolds itself from within a magnetic form and that magnetic form is called vairatyagah, which is abandonment of hostility. Thus even the killing of animals should be given up. The Jain cult is famous for ahimsa in India.

You are not who nor what you think you are

You are not who nor what pretty much all of the world has told you, including the very personal voice in your head and the various emotions born of desire and fear that seem so real.

You are not what your various personal and impersonal experiences of pleasure and pain have told you.

You are not the healthy and unhealthy habits in which you indulge (neither the ones that you desire to stop nor the ones that you desire to continue; nor the ones that liberate you, nor the ones that bind you)

The truth of you cannot really be named or described only experienced, investigated, lived, and died.

While seemingly contradictory, light behaves simultaneously as both a stream of particles and waves, omnipresent and localized, separate and unified, digital and analog, directed and all-pervasive. This is as close to the truth of you as words can get.

Your habit of seeking results and attachment to things and people and circumstances often causes anger and misery for yourself and others.

Your mind can never know your TRUE intentions behind the actions that you perform, nor can your mind know the TRUE intentions behind the actions that someone else performs.

Your mind can never know your own nor anyone or anything else’s true impact or influence. (The mind can never know Truth.)

At some point, every goal must fall away, the words, the story, past and future, categories, preferences, and opinions of good and bad, self and other.

Your habit of striving to embody ideals and self discipline (yamas and niyamas) is a never-ending commitment and experience of successes and failures. This is perhaps the one thing that you should not give up, even though you will never achieve perfection in these things.

No matter how true you think your view of “how things really are” is, you must remember that it is merely one perspective among an infinite number.

An important thing to do is to break your mind of the habit of indulging in opinions.

Another important thing to do is to break your mind of the habit of acquisition and accumulation. Accumulating things, relationships, money, experience, all of it. This is contrary to the way of life that you have embraced, which seems to pervade so much of the planet right now.

The feeling of unworthiness that you try to erase by doing “things of value” will never go away, yet still you must participate.

The experience of anger, sadness, and disappointment when the fruits of action are manifest and then fade or aren’t what you expected is unavoidable.

There is no person or system or thing manifest that can truly give you permission to practice, eat, shelter, live, experience, be, create, destroy, and preserve.

Nothing in existence can completely absolve you of guilt, unworthiness, and shame.

Sometimes people (including yourself) will behave honorably, sometimes not. Sometimes their actions will appear to hurt your heart, and/or your gross or subtle bodies. Sometimes your actions may appear to hurt another’s heart and/or gross or subtle bodies. The only thing you can do is feel it, forgive, and proceed, even though it is perhaps one of the most challenging forms of non-attachment to attempt.

It is impossible to live in this realm and not be a hypocrite in some way, and it is advisable to keep trying and essential to keep forgiving.

You may never get beyond the “fake it till you make it” stage, but you must persist.

Seeing manifested circumstances clearly will often appear to cause anger and/or sadness to your mental/emotional state.

Your only real goal is Om. The only thing you can really do is make that one goal your priority and allow everything thing else to happen. Sometimes it means that you will experience pain and feel like things aren’t fair, and sometimes your heart will ache for Om. Sometimes you will experience the pain of “heavy existence”, and being around people who are deluded by “heavy existence” will be unpleasant. Sometimes you fall back into heavy existence also.

Do not cling to people nor push them away, no matter who you think they are.

Have you created a home or a prison? Sometimes you experience the manifest as a home, sometimes a prison. The experience of the manifest has and always will change.

The real secret of action is to perform what needs to be done, not attaching to liking or disliking the experience, present in the moment only, and not overly fixated on the result. The mode of action that prevails right now is effort leading to more effort, painfully, with ignorance. Action does not itself lead to freedom, but action is absolutely necessary. Be aware that to a certain extent, your participation in ignorant and painful action is unavoidable. You are not separate or special; we all create and share each other’s burden.

Feeling and living with the idea that you will always be a servant and will always be an aspirant has benefit.

Aspire to be a servant.

You wish love/ahimsa/practice/life was something that you could do and then complete. This desire subtly pervades much of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Until you let go of that impossible and false desire, you will forever be disappointed.

Part of you does desire death, for many reasons, but a major one is because every aspect of life gets annoying at one time or another. You also fear death at the same time. Death, like everything else, is not lasting.

Ultimately, even seemingly unchangeable urges like food, sleep, sex, and self preservation are habits. It is worthwhile to learn how to embrace the experience of managing and experimenting with them with a compassionate spirit of ahimsa, tapas, and brahmacharya.

These are just thoughts; they are not absolute nor permanent. Remembering them and acknowledging them serve you at the moment, and at a certain point you may no longer need them.