As Deep Spirit you are infinite in depth and there are times when you can feel the truth of this, in the sense that there is always something more or deeper that your just not getting at.
Residing at the surface denies this depth, but this is only because depth is fearful to a ‘self’ that has become quite accommodated to surface engagements. You have experiences of others coming into your life for one reason and that is to engage your depth. This is because you can’t go "within" alone.
If you wish to experience a non-dual "awakening," seek it with and through another.
The ego-self has very little need for depth, since it primarily relies on surface ‘perceptions’ in order to judge differences in its experience of reality. This aids it in anticipating and predicting bodily actions and purposes. Perception is exclusive to physical sensation (senses) and is quite often erroneous due to its shallow nature. This is why seeing is not always believing and our bodies can easily hide the truth. If you wish to realize a non-dual "oneness" you will need to experience it with and through another by plunging below the disorganized complexity of surface engagements.
This is evident even in our dualistic reality, as individuals relating with one another from depth are often surprisingly less egoically inclined in that engagement, since depth of interaction engenders intimacy or a deeper level of mutual understanding. However, even this is limited, since there has been no conscious choice to perceive each other differently and soon the ego resumes it shallow apprehensions. You will not attack what you engage with to understand, because what you come to deeply understand is always a reflection of "you." It is through others that the 'self' constructs and knows itself.
In this sense, intimacy is defined as a deeper understanding and it is a emergent relating with another mind, and thus the world. We cannot understand strangers (ego-self fears what it does not understand) and as long as strangers continue to engage in transferences of conceptualized "love," the world will exhibit that lack of depth and clearly it does.
You cannot engage in self-intimacy alone, because you did not construct the 'self' alone. However, you can “find your 'self' through another, in fact, this is the only way “you” can be found and understood. The 'form' that such a relationship takes is insignificant and need not require any physical contact. However, the content of full engagement fuels correspondence with the infinite depth of Deep Spirit.
The intimacy of Deep Spirit is fearful to an ego and such depth of engagement is virtually unknown to the ego simply because the ego-self will always fear what it does not understand. This is because it cannot construct expectations for which to anticipate and predict behaviors and actions. Many individuals spend their lives avoiding any authentic depth of relating with others and the world. From fear, they choose to remain at the surface relying primarily on perception and its inaccurate tools of sensation. In this way, as long as appearances are perceived as satisfactory, as in conforming to egoic expectation, depth can be ignored and understanding never achieved.
This is often evident with individuals whose lives are in severe disarray due to a life-long failure to access depth through others, thereby, impeding any depth of understanding for the individual 'self.' Always dwelling at the surface, they spend a great deal of time in self-development, productivity exercises, task management and organizing daily empirical objectives and society adamantly supports and advocates these endeavors as fruitful and worthwhile above any authentic interpersonal engagement. The more intellectual seek out austere and esoteric ideologies for which to accentuate the ego-self.
So many walking-wounded who have contracted into themselves for fear of engagement, failing to understand that healing is extension and, through extension, Being is realized.
Perform a cursory examination of all the "self-development" blogs and websites and it becomes clear that the ego's prime objective is to become expert at surface activities and engagements. We are expert practitioners of conforming to the world's value system. A value system that we created simply from fear of engaging with one another.
Issues of depth are frequently avoided through all manner of egoic defense mechanisms, not the least of which is anger and rage. The ego constructs experience based on expectation and expectations are restricted to surface beliefs to minimize the chance of encountering fear. Most surface beliefs involve self-defensive actions to protect the 'self' from psychological attack, but ego can only be attacked by those it does not know and if it remains on the surface it must sculpt its life through an abject ignorance of others. Thus, we have the modern world as we know it, completely immersed in fear and the resultant self-absorbed defense measures that can only obstruct engagement and, hence, understanding.
Your "awakening" or "enlightenment" involves a deep engagement with others and the world. Your “true nature" will not be realized through separate, solitary meditative exercises and this is an erroneous judgment egoically derived from poorly translated teachings of the ancient masters. However, the inner calm that these practices afford may further your seeking depth, but only because you have essentially sedated the ego’s fear by calming your mind.
Such a deep understanding of one another naturally dissolves our usual sense of self-protection and suspicion, since this depth significantly minimizes alienation and distrust. From such a depth of intimacy with another, you would then naturally transfer that to your own personal experience of the world (without any active ‘doing.’ In fact, the more you do the less depth possible, since the conditions of the world's need for 'action' impedes intimacy). The only way to “awaken” to an intimate engagement with your experience of 'world' is to intimately engage with your experience of others. That is your purpose, and theirs, because the world is made manifest through the relationship of the parts.
You have only one primary function in your experience of world and that is to seek depth in relating with that experience and the primary component of that experience, or that which causes you most fear and joy, is your engagement with others.You experience a world that is composed of others experiencing the same 'world'. This mutuality of experience is the substratum and foundation of your personal experience and intimate relating is where your “awakening” awaits you. The deeper you go, the more you “awaken.” Remain on the surface and your experience is dulled, barren and based on historical egoic expectation and prediction (the past).
Enlightenment is not self-detached or self-propelled, but deeply engaged with others in experiencing a Deep Spirit correspondence not available to individual minds alone. You have already chosen others through which to engage and awaken. They are your teachers, as you are theirs, and many more will come to you as needed. Trust in the need to deeply engage with those who surround you. Your choosing them was no coincidence. You must heal to be healed and teach to learn. This lends credence to the concept of “universal oneness.” However, a theory without a practice is useless to an ego-self that demands action. Therefore, to experience this “oneness” you must engage intimately with others and together you will reach those depths, for alone you merely remain hopelessly at the surface and your 'world' remains there with you.
This is the simple truth egoic minds continue to resist, opting instead for the path of the solitary seeker, which must leave others behind, simply because engagement is so utterly frightening. Yet this theme is the foundation of every religion and spirituality prior to the ego's need to demand they conform to individual egoic goals. However, keep in mind that the infinite depth of Deep Spirit intimacy has no end-point and no destination and is infinite by nature. But then, neither does spiritual "awakening" have an end point, although many modern so-called masters teach it as a destination or outcome.
There is no end to how far two or more can go when they join in that purpose.
The world's not as bad as all that. The good stuff just never makes the news. This is available to all, as it is all, whether there is a story of solitary practice or shared practice or no practice. In the dream, the appearance, stories of deep engagement and surface engagement come up; one is not "better" than another, or worse; we strive to practice deep engagement, active love, whatever you want to call it, only to find that all was only ever love anyway; there is no right or wrong. Any choice made chooses oneness, in another guise. It's extraordinary, counter-intuitive, and miraculous that each little person-parcel of oneness, all alone, is all one. It's either oneness or it's not, and it is, whatever story seems to be unfolding; and there is never really an unfolding; this is eternity, just as it is.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's all perfect, it's all love.
ReplyDeleteSuffering and pain is perfect lovingness. Disease and starvation is nothing more than perfect love, man's inhumanity to man is perfectly loving oneness.
This may be an authentic path for you, but for many others it is a form of "spiritual bypassing" and such platitudes are endemic to the non-dual and Buddhist religions. This is how ego-self denies world change and even greed and corruption is A-Ok in the egoic concept of "oneness."
mikeS
There will always be those who are gripped by the need to right wrongs, practice compassion, balance dark with light, and take action against man's inhumanity to man in the story. As it happens, my "character" (or whatever you want to call it) leads what could be described as a "good" life, helping others, helping to lift other apparent souls out of their prison of self-loathing. However, those stories told to keep the mind in charge can be as full of good and truth and light as they can be corrupt and destructive. In fact, whatever appears is "A-OK," whether it be greed, love or change, because it is. It is in balance. It "has always been" and "will always be" in balance. The words may sound like platitudes; they are simply a poor attempt to communicate something which is not a concept, so which is doomed to failure. Got to give it a go though!
ReplyDeleteIf you're so interested in how the story turns out, and delight in taking it all terribly seriously, I guess I have to say that the less in the way "I" am, the more efficiently life seems to unfold, with more active love, more joy, more bliss, more yaddah yaddah all that good stuff. I guess what I'm saying is there is no one who ever decided to be good and go out and help people. Those thoughts and actions come, there is no one directing them or originating them. There is nothing you can do, but be.
"I guess what I'm saying is there is no one who ever decided to be good and go out and help people. Those thoughts and actions come, there is no one directing them or originating them. There is nothing you can do, but be."
ReplyDeleteOh, so these are your rules? What happens if I break them? If there is no one "directing them or originating them" I guess it's okay if I choose not to follow them? What if I decide to "direct" them? What then?
mikeS
Who is it that would choose? There is no one. The appearance is meaningless, and miraculous. Of course it's OK if you choose not to follow the rules, or follow them, or direct them. Every choice is just as it should be.
ReplyDelete"Every choice is just as it should be."
ReplyDeleteAh! a rule.
But what if "Every choice" is not as it should be? Can we play by that rule too? Or is that not allowed and "Every choice" MUST BE "as it should be"?
mikeS
" ", " ".
ReplyDeleteRegards.