Friday, September 5, 2008

Honesty

The search must be about honesty, brutal honesty...

So many thoughts arise - thoughts about a ME that is suffering, a ME that wants more, wants to become something better, a ME that needs "things" or "people" to be happy.

And what really IS that ME? Honestly? What is it? Have you honestly looked for that ME? Isn't that ME really an idea? A concept ABOUT yourself? An "image" we try to build up and add to and trim down? An image we feel we have to defend and protect? An image that isn't what we want but we're determined to make better?

Advaita Vedanta is nothing other than the purest and simplest invitation to be brutally honest with yourself. That's all it is. And in that honesty, we realize that we've been lying to ourselves. We've been telling stories for SO LONG. We've built our entire LIFE around these stories. In fact, "my life" IS a story, itself.

And we have a compulsion to constantly tell that story, to puff ourselves up so that "I" am good or better or best. We defend against any attempt to threaten this "identity" with that story. We try to get "things" to fulfill the needs of this "image" of what we take ourselves to be.

And we want to know "your" story. We want a "guru" or "teacher" to tell "HIS" story, so then we have another image to shoot for, to strive for, to mold our image so that it's like HIS. We feel if we have this "story" we can then take it apart and use the pieces to build up our own image.

But we love our stories. We love our drama. We WANT the suffering. We IDENTIFY with the suffering. THAT is what we've seemed to be for such a long time that we don't know how to part with it. We don't know what we'll do without the story.

Questions come about why do so few really SEE this reality that Advaita Vedanta or any of the other nondual traditions point so clearly to. We've simply identified with the stories. It's because we WANT our stories, we WANT to be separate, we WANT to suffer.

But yet when suffering happens, then we don't. Then we want out. Then we want the spiritual search to RESCUE us from suffering. Then we run to gurus and read books and go to satsang and look for shaktipat, like some sort of spiritual balm to ease our wounds.

And then maybe we find Peace for a moment. But that Peace is fake. It's another story. It's another desire fulfilled for the moment. It's bullshit, quite frankly.

The TRUTH of what you are is not a story. It is not a belief. It requires no concepts. It requires no knowledge. It requires no words. The TRUTH of what you are requires no achievement, no attainment.

The TRUTH of what you are is ever-present as the very SUCH-NESS or IS-NESS of this very moment. Yet we want to find it tomorrow, in 5 years. We look for it to arrive in an explosion of spiritual bliss and fireworks.

Whatever is happening NOW, in the immediacy of this very MOMENT, it IT. THIS... just THIS... NOW.... NOW.... forever and EVER NOW.

But that's too ordinary for the mind, too boring for the seeking mind. This ever-present "aware-space" is too simple, too obvious... it CAN'T be it... it MUST be something SPECIAL, something EXTRAordinary, something mindblowing.

THIS is IT. just THIS. The sound of the bird, singing its beautiful song. The smell of freshly-cut grass. The hum of the computer fan. That's IT! We MISS it because we're off with our stories about ME, about what I can get or attain, about what I need.

The essence of what's happening NOW is IT - it is YOU. YOU are the unchanging "container" in which it all comes and goes. That's it. You are ALL of it, not some small little "person" trapped in a body-mind, wandering in a strange and hostile universe.

YOU are infinite, eternal, luminous emptiness, manifesting in a million-billion ways. YOU are the very ESSENCE of this appearance. The Sun rises and sets in your heart. The Universe races through your veins. The Absolute, one-without-a-second, that-without-opposite, subject/object dissolving into pure being/knowing/bliss, as it becomes perfectly clear that there was NOTHING to dissolve, nothing to happen, nothing to change, nothing to become, NO ONE to SEEK. Perfect and complete and totally FREE right NOW! And NOW! And NOW!

The stories are all bullshit - ALL of them. Especially the story of "you."

Honesty.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh Hell Yes~!~! (pardon ze french)

Anonymous said...

Applause for your relentless "brutal" pointers.
At no point do you ever give power to the story of "me".
Crash it, bang it, your words are the destruction of the story.
They arise all the time.
This, here, everywhere, beyond any label.
Just this.

susana appearing in This presence.

Anonymous said...

bravo

Sergio

Anonymous said...

Hi there pendragon and sergio.

Anonymous said...

Hi There, Susana~~~

Anonymous said...

Who am I, I seem to say?
The pot, the potter, the piece of clay?

Who am I, I say to me?
The cup, these lips, the sweetened tea?

Who am I, who asks in vain?
The hand, the knife or just the pain?

Am I, at all, in time it seems...?
I AM the cause of all these dreams~

Anonymous said...

Hello Susana. How are you?

Sergio

Anonymous said...

Sergio,
Very well actually.
Yesterday I had to venture to the city for the first time in two years.
Left my small mountain village and set out.
It was a fearless experience.
Just seeing the city and its stuff and no suffering arising from the seeing.
And the whole journey Randall's words arise reminding me of This....

Pendragon,
I really like that poem -
the pot, the potter, the clay,
the cup, these lips, the sweetened tea
the hand, the knife or just the pain.

Anonymous said...

Why pictures of some dead "gurus"?

Anonymous said...

why not!

Anonymous said...

Were they ever alive..... are You alive.... Are...You... You...At All~
An idea having a thought about a concept..... I AM~

Anonymous said...

Where are you from Susana ?

This have not a private message or email, so, i put that here.


Sergio.

su said...

Sergio,
I am here....