Advaita Post 09-19 - If, just once, you actually let go...

Year No. 9 19 (December 15, 2008)

An introduction and talk in Gouda May 14, 2008 –

The Non-duality of experience Part 5: Conquest and surrender

I can be overwhelmed by a flower...

If there is just one moment of becoming overwhelmed with awareness. Then there's the recognition of where it’s going. Is it there one hundred percent?

As that happens with the flower, there is something of it there, but it gets cut off.

Apparently you quickly set yourself back into the everyday personality. There is the irreducible wonderful experience "flower" and then it’s over. Too bad, because it’s a wonderful opportunity. If, just once, you actually let go into the overwhelming experience...

How do you do that?

By continually watching, very alert and extremely passive. Then you see what happens when such a flower arises in a magnificent way. Wonderful, even if only a simple dandelion, what comes towards you has a tendency to overwhelm. That primal situation in which you find yourself, you can recognize from the inside. Then you know what it means that you are no longer going to act like a person who judges the phenomenon from a distance. No, you let the flower fully come and in that continuous process the awareness takes place.

So you let yourself, you let yourself...

You let yourself be overwhelmed, while you remain internally aware. You can even faint from the beauty and yet remain conscious.

At the moment that a tendency arises to judge it ... What do you do?

If it’s good, you say: "I’ll stay alert to the beauty and let myself relax even further." Then there's the internal clarity, through which the relaxation and the further process can continue. That's why we're still talking about it, so far as that goes, so that you can continue to acquaint yourself with all the different aspects. You become familiar with that area and then know its possibilities. You step hundreds or thousands times into the trap of the judge, but gradually you see that it can be different.

In that moment you consciously stop the activity of the mind?

If you consciously want to stop thinking, you're already back in the "I do" and "I want". Rather, it's about a much more original situation in which an orientation is still possible. It’s somewhat comparable to learning a skill, such as in a sport. If you go further into a sport, you experience at a given moment that you are able to do things much better than you have ever been able to do from a mental consciousness. That perfection comes from an internal clarity within which the knowledge is "just let it happen." Then you experience that it develops further of itself. So it's much more of a "knowing how" on a physical level than "knowing that" on the mental level. That "knowing how" is implicit in the event. It's an aware knowing, but there is no "I should" and "I do" involved. It is a conscious event that happens by itself. It's not to be analyzed into basic commands which you could include in a computer program.

So that's total surrender.

It's a complete surrender, yes, with internal awareness. For as long as there is a closed "I", that "I" gives itself up to something that is much larger. And then you see that this "much larger" manifests itself everywhere, even in the ordinary enjoyment of an ice cream or the viewing of a flower. Thus in every experience it can be recognized. That happens in a situation in which there is no resistance. So emotionally it means, again: experience more from the heart. The love within lets the borders disappear.

I was on a vipassana meditation retreat, and my attention was attracted towards a beautiful red flower. But we had been given instructions that we weren't to look at anything. I noticed that I wanted to smell that flower, so I looked around to see if anyone was looking. I saw no one, but when I went towards that flower, suddenly a guard popped up: "Don't touch the flower." I was very shocked, but obviously it had to do with the fact that I had followed with my mind.

The vipassana meditation is a specific type of practice. It is a meditation that focuses on keeping a distance. So you consistently keep viewing all phenomena at a distance, and label them eventually. In a certain phase it is useful in order to be less identified with all sorts of things, to break through standard patterns and experience the "emptiness". If that remains the only approach, you'll stay in duality. To stay busy too long with vipassana is not advisable. That there is a awareness of the phenomena at a distance is very good, but the process should proceed even further in the direction of non-duality. That means once again that you're going to be aware of yourself as an observer. Then everything becomes open, so that all phenomena may return in a non-duality. In such openness, there is no separation any more between yourself and the flower that appears.

What about surprise and astonishment?

Then there is an original opening from a relatively closed "I" situation. In the "I" situation the experienced reality is pretty solid around the "I" with its interests. If something suddenly comes that breaks the boundaries of that world, there's a surprise because it's something new, or even something that appears mysterious. I now speak about the possibility that the situation will develop further. What does it mean that the greatness, the mystery, can totally manifest itself? Doesn't that mean that the "I" will be swept away?

You have often said to us: "What holds you back from letting this development continue on to its completion?"

Yes, but stick to the question. Keep centered on it in your understanding of the infinite continuing the process. It lets you become aware of resistances to the extent that they exist. In the sphere of your spacious awareness and relaxation, they will disappear. That means then that the situation of an "I" in opposition to the beautiful things that the "I" has ordered around itself, disappears. So go along with the relaxation and stay clear. If you consistently find that you close off your world once again, then it's necessary to get to know that mechanism, yes. Apparently. The same also goes for the way in which you experience everything. Then you see that in the experience itself the distance to you as the experiencer disappears, that the experience unfolds beyond any separation between yourself and what you experience. In that unfolding the duality falls away. Then you find that the groundless non-duality is present in every experience, the fundamental mystery in every experienced phenomenon. Then, you see that you yourself are That.