श्रीरामSatsang with Ananta
Awareness & Attention

Open and Empty: Attentive but Not Grasping

The mind's endless grasping to understand and control life is fundamentally hopeless; recognizing and dropping this effort reveals our already-free, trouble-less nature.

Seeker

I just someHmes also wonder what it's all about? I mean if we are instruments of something that's playing itself out, in ways that we can't fathom and the only course… you know or the recommended course is to surrender and let go - What is it all about? What’s… someHmes you want… maybe we can't answer that, but you know or for who, for what, what objecHve, the shades of the play - what is it all about?

Ananta

Thank you, thank you. One last Hp for you is that - you are right that it is, it is this whole game, this whole play is a very deep mystery. But in the mystery, if you predetermine your posiHon which is that of the instrument; then that can also become a bit oppressive. It’s okay, as a, as a provisional surrender, it is fine – ‘I am just the instrument, you the higher force are responsible for everything that is done and experienced here’ - it can be useful. But there comes a point in your surrender that even that we must make unfathomable. Am I the instrument or am I the light? Am I the puppet or the puppeteer? We don't know! What then happens is that we get used to being posiHon-less and in that posiHon-less-ness; our intuiHon - we learn to rely on that more and more and in that all the answers are available but just not in this sort of conceptual way. So someHmes the Master will say ‘I’ am all there is, ‘I’ am all there is; all of this Universe is just dancing to my light, to my tunes and even beyond I am (the Master may say someHmes). And at other Hmes the Master may say ‘Who Am I? I’m just… What am I? I’m just nothing’ and these statements can be very contradictory (sounding) to the mind. But they're coming from a different place, they are coming from an intuiHve insight which can be beauHfully expressed either way. When we become open to both, being true and being not true at the same Hme, then we lose our dependence on our raHonality or the need to make posiHons out of everything, we lose that and then that is Freedom; because like an innocent child… but in a way more beauHful than a child because we have gone through the structures, the constructs and to taste the Freedom without those constructs is very beauHful as well. But that's also a construct obviously and so just noHce that any posiHon that you might be taking (even the subtle ones) just don't rely on them so much like or quesHon ‘Do I really know this, like do I really know this? Am I an instrument in God's hands, do I really know this. But they also say God is everywhere, so what is the line between the instrument and God itself? So just this open quesHoning, open inquiry, leaves us empty of all conceptual posiHons that we can have and don't, don't fear that, don't fear that being empty of all conceptual posiHons.

Seeker

Thank you.

Ananta

Thank you, thank you.

Key Teachings

  • The mind's habit of trying to figure out and control life through thinking is fundamentally flawed and exhausting - simply spotting this pattern allows us to drop it
  • The head is too small to fathom God, Truth, or the world's dance; all our mental attempts to understand and plan ultimately fail
  • You are already free - the ego can never win, there is no actual trouble to resolve; everything drops away naturally
mindgraspingsurrenderfreedomawareness

From: Open and Empty: Attentive but Not Grasping - 26th August 2022