Advaita Post #11-19

 
Volume 11 No. 19 (December 7, 2010)
 
--- Your external awareness of phenomena merges with your internal universal self-consciousness ---

You, yourself, are each point of the cosmos, reflecting all others...

Text from Ramalinga Swami
 - about an important aspect of realization -

There was a high pillar
with no peer to it here on earth.
As I shinnied up and up the pillar,
it tapered to the size of a thread.
When I faltered to go further up,
and was perturbed and grieved,
ridding me of my perturbation,
You lifted me up and placed me on high,
that I may be well established [atop that pillar]!

What kind of affinity is the affinity
between you and me?
Is this affinity an affinity
which others in the world can gain?...

Desire wells up in me to embrace You.
On account of the certainty that I will embrace You,
my life lingers on.
My hand stretches forward in a hurry
to take hold of your fragrant feet.
Whenever my hand reaches and grasps them,
joy reigns in my mind!

What kind of affinity...

Further text can be found on the website: Ramalinga Swami

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Text - Openness in practical situations
From a talk in Gouda on May 12, 2010 (Part 5)

The focus of my ego on objects is very strong. Is everyone given to let go of that?

Everyone in themselves is already the original source. You also have a sense of it, because you return to it frequently. Then everything falls away. If this return wasn't there, you would become totally overwrought. Everyone who is not overwrought, certainly has a piece of relaxation somewhere. Everyone who sleeps well, even once. If you are kept from sleeping a few nights, there is little of you remaining. You can't do that for very long. Apparently, it is necessary - and nature has ensured it - that you release the whole superstructure of mental and emotional structures on a regular basis. I've never met anyone who found that to be annoying. Everyone finds relaxation to be wonderful. Of course there can be some tension now and then, that's certainly true, but there must also be relaxation. When you've been fully under the gun during the day, everyone finds it wonderful to return to a dreamless sleep.

Old veils continue to reappear again and again. It happens so surreptitiously and so fast.

If afterwards you find that it has recurred once again, it needn't bother you. No, you confirm it and return to your own center of clarity. That's the only method for continuing on in a good way.

The funny thing is that initially there was a feeling of fatigue and ever since I have begun to focus on clarity, the fatigue is gone.

 So you can see that you are more independent of your conditions when you stay more in the realm of clarity.

 So it's just a thought that you're tired?

Yes, it's identification with fatigue.

So you see that the more you return to the open core of yourself with clarity, with intense light, the more that everything receives that luminous quality.
For the development to continue, there must be great dedication, a continuous meditation. Perhaps in a few it goes entirely spontaneously. But when that is not so, then it appears to be necessary that you focus upon it. Apparently.
Everyone sitting here has experienced something of that. Otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here. So just recognize that being-experience. Then you also recognize that this sphere is more important than anything else. That's why you stay with it. Then that receives the priority. That is the only basis on which the process truly continues.
So just understand that and let your experience remain very aware and practical.

In my work it's certainly very difficult. Everyone just plays power games. In a meeting, I can stay alert and say 'Here I draw the line, because otherwise I'm drawn into your sphere which I really don't want to do. "

Right away you can directly say: the freer you are, the less opposition you receive. When you are free and you see it all happening, you see more opportunities for saying something somewhere that is best for the situation. This can happen by itself. Creativity is only as large as your own freedom. When you are free, there is no personal reaction any longer and therefore there is no personal opposing reaction. For example, you can bring others into a higher perspective where they can see themselves and judge themselves from a general reasonableness: "Come with me then and from a distance you can see how you react, then you see how foolish your actions are." This is not a personal attack. No, that is going along with them, so that they can see themselves.

(Laughing) Isn't that called manipulation?

These things just go by themselves. They just happen. Because you are the space, through your presence you offer all that space and the other can go along into it.

In contact with our son there is a lot of anger in him. Still, I try to talk with him. Then the problems arise, because there is something painful inside him.

You can immediately say: it will go better, to the extent that there is more openness with me. This also means that you remain independent, and that you respect your son's independence. For example, you say you try to extend your contact with your son. Now, what if sometime you didn't try? Because he experiences all that trying as an interference into his own situation.

I'd certainly like, also for him, to have a less forced contact.

Yes, but first that depends on you. On the one hand, you will have to accept your own independence. Secondly, you must also recognize that you are the pure self-being of your son. Then concerning you there is no distance, while the freedom remains. There is totally no mother-figure against which the son can react. You will have to release your son and realize that you are him. Both belong together. When there is mutual conversation, it happens from open self-being. When there is a reaction from your son, then you can rest assured that that is a reaction against something which he experiences from a mother who must need something.

Well, I don't know ...

Well, I think so! (Laughter)

Yes, obviously I am still continuing to play a role towards him.

 (Other) You say that in the spacious consciousness everything can turn inside out. Then it's not really a reversal of some thing but of the whole.

 Of course everything remains one whole. This remains so, because you are everything. In your open consciousness there is no border, no separation. If something appears within it, then it is nothing other than that self-being consciousness.

A separation of the whole arises very easily, even without an "I".

Take a look very precisely at what happens when things arise once again. In what way do they return? When they return as phenomena, there is a certain distance between yourself as perceiver with a particular point of view and those phenomena. Then you have a particular perspective on the phenomena. But also, it can be different. How?

When the cat approaches  me, there remains a whole, but still there is the thought: "He is hungry." Then there certainly is a focus, on the cat and eating.

It can also be different when experienced from your infinite being-awareness. This awareness can persist, even as forms arise. You remain infinitely present, now also in the forms. You experience your own self-being everywhere, even from within things. You have your own heart-center everywhere, everywhere! Then the whole of self-being consciousness remains preserved. You experience everywhere: this self-being, this self-being, this self-being, even when it is remarked that the cat wants to eat. The whole remains your whole as complete internal and external being-awareness. Whatever appears, is yourself, literally.

So, there is no phenomenon outside of yourself.

No, that can't be, but it's about the concrete self-experience of being everything as first person. So your external being-awareness of phenomena merges with your internal universal being-awareness. There is no contradiction between the two, if you don't create it. That's non-duality.

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Warm greetings in this winter,

Douwe Tiemersma