There Is Only One
Freedom is not in controlling attention or rejecting the body, but in refusing to identify with or believe any story the mind creates about whatever attention fixates on.
I have this feeling Father, to share that today’s Satsang has been very profound. It was like every Hme a quesHon would come or a fear or a doubt you would just so directly answer it Father and I just wanted to expose this…there is been a recogniHon there Father. Because for a long Hme I have been sharing with you there is a sense of idenHficaHon with this body that I feel this idenHficaHon should disappear and with the disappearance of this idenHficaHon only I will be Free. Because I am seeing that when there is discomfort in the body I get troubled by it. So the mind said that ‘You have to let go of that.’ And I just wanted to check in with you Father because it’s almost like chasing a shadow. So how can I let go of this? Just like you say everything can come and go. So this percepHon of the body can also come and go, no Father? We don’t have to try and drive it away.
Of course my dear, of course. Most of us experience the waking state along with the body. Why should we try driving it away? It’s a very natural aspect of existence and if there is pain in the body then in the ouch we feel very natural, so there is nothing wrong with any of that. But to say that ‘I am just that’ is too limiHng no (just like the previous conversaHon). Even if we consider it to be an aspect of us, the trouble usually with that sort of statement is that we don’t consider the rest of the manifest experience as an aspect of ourselves. We only pick and choose between, in the realm of percepHon, between some sensaHons and we have been taught that way. In this life we have been taught by our parents in this way that ‘this is your head, this is not you’ these kinds of things. So we have got aZached to that sort of condiHoning and so if we have to look at the manifest as the aspect of ourselves there is nothing wrong with that. SensaHons can seem preZy central to the experience of the manifest.
Yes and I noHce that it can be very consuming for me, for this expression and kind of get me into that trap of the mind and then the…
Okay define ‘consuming’, what does it consume?
AZenHon (like Olga was saying), like aZenHon would constantly be on this liZle thing and ignore the vastness of my Being-ness and my Self and it's almost like something woosh-es into this narrow focus.
Yes, I understand what you are saying, I understand because I don’t know you have heard this but very oeen I have said that - if there was a beauHful big white wall and I made a small black dot on it and if I ask you ‘What do you see?’ most will say ‘I see a black dot.’
Yes Father.
So that is the nature of the mind to do that. Now, I will give you some advice. Let your aZenHon be fixated with whatever it wants to be fixated with. You apply what I am saying to your belief. You apply what I am saying to your idenHficaHon. So aZenHon can be fixated like that [Looking at one hand raised in front of the face] but you are not buying any story about that. Then what will happen is that (but I don’t want you to use this as benchmark) as you let go of your idenHficaHon and your belief about yourself as the body or the body should change or it should not be like this or this is what it should be doing or not doing, then you will find that aZenHon is naturally loosening up a bit and you will find that your aZenHon seems to become more universal. But this is something that you don’t have to be concerned with. You remain concerned with not idenHfying whatever aZenHon also maybe on, then you see how it changes. Much more tricky to handle… because right now if I tell you ‘Okay, what else is in your percepHon, what else is in your Being and how much space do these body sensaHons take up?’ Because you are in Satsang, because you are here, you will have that spaciousness to be able to check. Many Hmes it happens in life when we go through what we call our day-to-day life we don’t seem to have that openness. So, so I don’t want to force aZenHon in that way and as we experimented earlier when we try to make sure that aZenHon doesn’t go on something it seems to go more on that. Like that famous example that ‘Don’t think of a pink elephant’ (it’s a very famous spiritual) so it seems to go more than that. So let your aZenHon go wherever it wants. Everything is God, everything that shows up in your percepHon is God. Nothing is separate from it so we don’t have to disHnguish so much in that way. But you just don’t idenHfy. For idenHficaHon you need belief. You need to say that ‘This is me, this is true, this applies to me, this is my Reality.’ Don’t make any of those conclusions.
That’s beauHful Father. I will definitely stay with that. Also, you have menHoned (like the previous Satsang) that it’s the subHtles that come with an experience that we tend to read a lot on. So it’s almost the same thing, isn’t it Father? Don’t believe what the mind is saying about it, the subHtles of that, the beliefs.
It’s very much the same thing my dear. It’s exactly that. So it’s like someHmes they have this independent movie like the Oscar-winning ones, I saw one called ‘Roma’ maybe three years ago. So what the director did is he spend the first two three minutes of the movie (if I am remembering correctly) just the camera was on the puddle of water, that’s all, was just looking at that. So if you go to the mind and try to watch a movie like that it just becomes very difficult. Because the mind will say ‘What is this, what are they doing, this is so boring, there is nothing I can relate with, what is the story?’ none of that. But if you just don’t care about what is the content of your aZenHon; not in a negaHve way but you are just open to whatever the content of your aZenHon or percepHon may be, (that doesn’t maZer) whatever is on the screen is on the screen it’s fine.
Thank you for your Grace Father, thank you so much.
Key Teachings
- The body and its sensations are a natural aspect of existence; freedom comes not from rejecting it but from not identifying with it
- Attention naturally fixates on small things like a black dot on a wall, but we don't need to identify with or believe the mind's story about that focus
- True liberation is refusing to make conclusions like 'this is me' or 'this is my reality' - everything that appears is God, nothing is separate
From: There Is Only One - 4th May 2019