Category: Uncategorized

“Who am I?” never ends
the practice never ends
the self-discipline, sacrifice, maintenance, creation, destruction
the doing
the being
the longing for Om never goes away
the desire for the end of pain (so unrealistic);
the end only lasts for a while

Can I let go of the desire for the end of the pain and craving, a final state of peace and bliss?

My mind plays tricks —
it’s always convinced that the next achievement or experience or possession will yield “the goal” or the “final state” or Truth. I am thankful for being aware of it and its lies, even as I am often powerless to stop being deluded by it and acting on its desires and fears.

And I conclude that I can’t know the true essence of a thing or person (even, and often especially, myself) through the senses or the intellect. This is the truth that I attempt and this is where I fail.

What I have materially and spiritually is sufficient for today and at all times, regardless of what other people, society, the computer, my internal mind-ego voice, my body-mind-senses, my ancestors, my partner, my teachers (past present and future), and even animals say, believe and/or indicate. There are enough materials, time, space, permission, solitude, community, personal and impersonal love. I AM enough, and I do not need to do or not do anything to prove it to myself or others or God, regardless of the unworthy feeling that never goes away completely, yet I must live life and perform actions and duties.

I don’t mind trying to develop a better attitude towards the endless chores and duties that maintain the modern way of life. I do not expect to be exempted from the need to learn through action and experience, sowing and reaping, but I do need to balance it with the “pleasure” that I feel just being in the park or woods, or going on a hike, or going to a yoga class, or standing in “T” in Times Square, or practicing and experimenting with body and breath alone or with others.

I am most thankful for my health and awareness of the unhappy nature of my mind. I am thankful for a partner, family, teachers and friends who allow me time, space, and freedom to explore the question “Who am I”. I am thankful for participating in a system that attempts compassion, forgiveness, and justice and allows freedom of expression, investigation and exploration of “Who am I”. I am thankful for being able to endure both its success and its failure, my success and failure, our success and failure.

I am thankful for access to divine wisdom, which allows me to see the futility of all of the planning, effort, and goals. I am thankful for putting forth the effort even though I know its futility. I am thankful for knowing that absolutely nothing belongs to me. I am thankful for seeing the obsessions of my mind, how I seek perfection and security and happiness where it will not be found in any lasting way. I am thankful for knowing that neither achievement nor perfection nor success nor failure bring me to reality.

I am thankful for knowing that it is impossible for the body-mind not to be affected by the karma of myself as well as other people and beings in painful as well as pleasant ways, expected and unexpected. I am thankful for whatever access I have to the awareness of knowing that who I truly am is not affected by these experiences of karma, no matter how it appears to myself or others.

Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened – at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling. There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right! You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.
(- Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Striving for absolute

Absolute love

Absolute courage

Absolute ahimsa

Absolute authenticity

To be the same alone and in presence of other people and beings, no matter who they appear to be nor who I think they are, no matter what I do for them nor what they do for me. To be free of being affected by circumstance, environment, time, space (illusion).

My inability to achieve this will always bother me.

My hypocrisy will always bother me. I cheat, lie, and fail at self discipline in various ways, big and small, just like everyone else.

I am often successful at hiding it from others, and especially myself, but I am not able to avoid it.

Ultimately, nothing that I can do or not do proves any of the ideals (the yamas and niyamas) for which I strive once and for all. They must be maintained just like everything else. When I take time to stop and examine my habits and behavior, I am humbled and pray for forgiveness for my shortfalls, giving thanks for the mercy of om, divine mother and father, which truly sustains the world, universe, myself, which are in reality one and the same (even though I can’t claim to be successful in truly realizing it and always living that way.)

My attempt at love is to try to find the essence in all things and love that. I fail because I get distracted by my senses and the illusion of bodies and my personal emotions, desires and fears. The urge to experience sensual pleasure of the objects that I desire is all but impossible to resist, as is being hypnotized by the manifested world all around me. I forget that the essence that I seek is beyond the realm of the senses. In this, I worship and love the false and not the true.

I confess that for me, erections and various other manifestations of testosterone are very powerful temptations among an infinite number of other temptations which I indulge and resist. Rajas (passion) and tamas (inertia) are also temptations which I indulge and resist; I try to manage these things on my own partly because I am ashamed, partly because it is easier than involving others, partly because I don’t want to get trapped in karma with them (which is actually very much out of my control), and partly because I don’t want to disturb, or bother, or possibly hurt people around me. (And let’s face it, some of what I do to manage these things neither I nor other people really understand or really want to know about.) I attempt sattva (compassion) and sometimes feel like I fail and sometimes like I succeed. All of this comprises the habits which I and other people call a person Thomas Collier born, living, and dying in the world, which I have come to know is ultimately an illusion.

I also confess that I have been unable to stop my habit of scheming and planning and even practicing yoga to achieve small and petty goals and results. I realize that I probably won’t achieve complete freedom from that habit. Actually complete freedom from it would not really be desirable, as it would also engender a selfish type of laziness. I don’t know if Thomas Collier is meant to live in a completely spontaneous way until maybe the last moments of his current life. I may never feel or be spiritually mature enough to be able to live that way.

Experience, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant, or incessant or gross or subtle does not by itself yield a final state of “OM”.

I surrender; I will never be perfectly virtuous enough for Truth. (But do I really surrender?)

What I see and what my experience has shown me is that every desire that I have acted upon has been tainted with selfishness in some way. I know that I may never be really sure of my motives beforehand, never completely free of ignorance and selfishness; regardless, ready or not, life goes on, and I must participate.

The beauty of the gross and subtle has tempted me and prompted me to explore sex, erotic things, and sensuality. I felt scared and ashamed of that. My erotic and sexual and sensual ability as well as my experience of desire and fear is changing, perhaps due to the practices that I perform, perhaps simply due to the process of aging and enduring life, perhaps due to the mercy and grace of om. Some of the patterns of desire and fear and sensuality will remain, some won’t.

I have felt and continue to feel unworthy of the beautiful things and beings; I would rather leave them in their beautiful, undisturbed state free of me and my ignorance and dirty unworthiness.

The more I examine and look at the intentions and motives behind the actions that I perform and the decisions that I make, the more I realize that it is all tainted by my selfishness. I don’t see an end to it.

Must I give up even the pleasure of sharing and experiencing breath and nakedness alone and/or with others in order to enter the realm of Truth?

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