Volume 14 No. 13 - In tranquil love...

July 13, 2013

Text satsang

An Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog,
September 4, 2010

In tranquil love every duality disappears

Meditation is also always insight-meditation. In a spacious and clear
consciousness things that are important to your own being-sphere reveal
themselves. When they are revealed a further relaxation can arise: you affirm that
you're not stuck to those structures and also that they're not always there.
When you fully relax they're not there. They only exist under certain
circumstances. Then they come to the fore. You notice that they arise now and
then and that they are absent now and then. We have looked at several
circumstances where suddenly all the structures of the "I want this and I do
that" can disappear. In fact, this happens quite often. For example when you
have a particular role to play, when you perform a particular function. The idea
of ??a role is the taking on of an identity from which you act, from which you
perceive. You also have the ability to play different roles. Who played that
role? You are that, too. Apparently you're not stuck to just one role. How do
you look when you're not attached to any particular role? Apparently there is
an open realm of self-being which can suddenly take on this form. When your roles
disappear, when your masks disappear, what's left over?

Take a look at it: you return to yourself, previous to all these masks,
previous to all these roles. There is an infinite depth, an infinite openness. So
the point is that you can consciously keep your center of gravity there, that
you can stay there, in spite of life proceeding. Being aware of this original
openness, you can rest in it. When you identify with a role there is always
tension. When you return to the openness there is no duality. When there is no
duality there is no conflict. And when there is no conflict there is no suffering.
Gradually you get more insight into who you really are. This relaxation, this expansion,
brings joy. When you aren't consciously present as openness, then you get a
specification of the self with all the limitations that correspond to that
specification. It's an enclosed whole against other enclosed wholes; there is
tension. The fundamental structure of the 'I' consists of tension with a focus
on one's own center. Because that has already been the case for so long in your
life, the fate of that I-cluster has become your own fate. When that threatens
to fall apart, the panic "I'm falling apart" arises. That 'I' has
identified itself with a body. When the body degenerates and dies, you say,
"Oh, oh, that's really bad, because I'm going away, I'm dying". When
you are aware of your self-being as original openness that's something which
isn't subject to those conditions. It is free of those conditions. There is a
totally open being that precedes these conditions.

In Advaita it's about a complete non-duality. That means: non-duality of
all life energies. When that doesn't happen spontaneously, it's useful to still
take a more detailed look. What does it mean for example when a very clear non-duality
arises at the level of the heart? When you really go into it there that energy can
expand.

Isn't there also a tendency to usually share that with
others?

It's not so much a thing like "I want to share". It happens
automatically. When this heart energy is there it shares itself with others.

How strange then that you're coming from yourself again.

No, you are yourself as heart energy. The essence is that there, you are
yourself, in this heart energy and this heart energy will expand. You remain yourself.
That's the same on the level of consciousness when it opens: consciousness
expands itself, you are still yourself within it. But through this expansion you
become included in everything and everyone. It can still go a little further.
In chakra yoga, you enter into the core of the heart chakra. You already are
that, so there you get that movement back into the core, where everything comes
together and from which everything opens.

It feels blank.

Yes, it is blank.

So no more heart energy?

The heart energy belongs precisely to the field of the chakra. When you
go to the essence, to the core, then the foundation and the origin also seem to
be there which, as original openness, is totally pure. So then you also see
that love, which is very evident on the level of the heart energy, can be expanded
and purified. By returning to that origin it becomes incredibly pure and quiet.
You recognize that, even between two people, different forms of love are
possible: warm love, but also an increasingly tranquil love which goes much deeper.
Every duality disappears within it. And when you become aware there, it's no longer
difficult to accept anything whatsoever as yourself. This means that there is
no duality.

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