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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

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.