What If I Am so Open and Empty That Enlightenment Comes and Goes?

Yes, my dear, thank you, thank you for that. So we sort of alluded to this earlier as well, when I was saying that because the habit is to grab from the mind and treat its ideas to be our reality so for a while it can seem like when we are not grabbing, and maybe you heard this before what I’ve repeated (and some of you are new), this is a helpful metaphor for this: if you’ve always been like a porter at the airport whose job is to pick up bags from the conveyor belt, and suddenly the porter hears the news that he got the lottery or some inheritance has come to him, so he doesn’t need to do that work anymore. But because he’s done it for 20-30 years, so it feels like every time there’s a bag on the conveyor belt, he feels like compelled to pick it up. So for a while it may feel like effort- no, no, don’t pick it up. Justleave it.

So then it can be that the bag itself on the conveyor belt, the bag can come saying “but can’t this conveyor belt stop then?” Don’t pick that up. Because you will say “why can’t the mind just stop instead of me not having to pick it up”, but that’s also just another thought. So for a while it will seem like to come to effortlessness it will feel like some effort is needed. And that we can provisionally call that a practice. So whatever practice helps us to come to this point, where we’re not picking up versions which the mind is selling us as our reality – that practice is auspicious. And any practice, which sort of makes us pick up more and more ideas from the mind itself, maybe about the practice itself, is not necessarily serving us well at this point.

So Bhagavan (Ramana Maharishi) was also very clear about this. He said that as long as it seems like effort to let go of the next thought, to not jump into this stream of thought, you must keep making that effort till one day we will see that even that was just Grace itself.

Well, you will notice that you’re not buying into it so much actually. This feeling in your heart, when you carry this intention in your heart, then you will notice that…you can check now that in the next 10, 20, 30 thoughts that come, how many are you really subscribing to? It’s only those which have been nurtured with a lot of belief in the past. They seem to have a lot more gravitational pull. So you may need to…so what you could also do is if you notice a pattern which is repetitive, right? And you notice that most of the other stuff doesn’t get believed, but something about some relationship or something about some insecurity that gets – then pull that one into your inquiry. Who is that one that wants to have a million dollars in the bank or whatever idea, or wants to be free, like anything which keeps getting you again and again – pull that into your inquiry and keep inquiring on it as much as you can, whenever you get time, till when that thought comes, when the notion arises, it doesn’t become laughable, you can continue that inquiry. It becomes light and laughable after a point. Just like the other ludicrous thoughts which you let go of, this one will also become like that. Only if you notice a repetitive sort of pattern which keeps getting you, like one particular thought pattern which keeps grabbing you again and again. You can pull that into your inquiry and use it as fuel for your inquiry.

More and more natural, you see, more and more natural and you won’t have to…it will not seem like effort, it will seem like a very natural life - to not pick up from the conveyor belt, whether the conveyor belt is on or off it will not matter so much to you anymore. And what will happen is that there’s only vigilance to the extent that you don’t get into any sort of denial, which means that if some thought is there that’s making you suffer, you’re buying into it, but you get into some sort of a denial saying ‘no, no, no, but I am the Self, this is not really happening to me’. Instead of that it’s better to look at that and say ‘okay, what is it that I’m buying into this notion’, instead of trying to push it out or using other concepts.

So…it’s subtle what I’m saying, so let’s deconstruct it at various levels. So there’s only one way in which life can cause a problem. That way is that when we say that ‘I know better than what life is doing’. It’s like ‘ok, something is not right, it could be better because of this’…

Better is a notion that we have. Yes? So that is the first one. Right? So, how would a plant solve a problem? Or how would the animal, who doesn’t have the ability to conceptualize to the human level, that one solve a problem? So this is the second part of my answer, which is that there is an inherent intuitive intelligence which also functions, and a good example of that is just the sharing of Satsang. When the Master is sharing Satsang, it is not a flow which is going from heart to head to mouth. But we feel like things cannot be resolved just from the Heart. It’s like the Heart cannot take control over the mouth or the hands, like the intuition cannot send an email on our behalf. We have to be mind-y about it. But that is not true. So we come to Satsang to get the darshan of how it is possible for things to just flow from the Heart and how the intuitive insight of the Satguru Presence can use this body instrument to share what he wants to share without contamination from the mind. In the same way, whatever needs fixing in life and needs to be changed in life – that intuitive intelligence can also guide you to do that. So don’t feel like the only problem-solving instrument you have is the mind. In fact, it is the most limited instrument you have. There’s a much deeper intelligence which runs this entire universe. That is what you’re getting access to when you let go of the radio. You notice that you come to the Heart. I didn’t speak about the Heart so much because it is not possible to go to the Heart, it is only possible to drop the kaleidoscope and radio. So as you’re dropping the kaleidoscope and radio, it is not that you’ll become down… or you will not be able to take care of your daughter or look for solutions for her health or well-being in any way. All that intuitive insight and intelligence can guide your path very beautifully.

Yes, in the mind’s version- life is a problem to be solved. That’s why if you look at philosophers, thinkers, all of them have postulated a meaning of life. But life is so broad it doesn’t need to have a conceptualizable meaning. Like what does ‘right now’ mean? What is this? It is too broad for our intellect to capture. So to be able to meet life in this way, where you don’t need to find a conceptual meaning, but you meet the meaning in your Heart. It doesn’t mean that life is meaningless because that can be the other meaning that the mind can give. It is just that we accept that the mystery of life is too big for our head to fathom, but it is not unfathomable for the Heart.

Conceptually yes. And you’ll find that answer may be shocking, some might find it unpalatable, but if you look at the expressions of all the sages, you will notice that they were operating from the Heart. And they have gone down and done, like there are some stories of some Avadhuta inTiruvannamalai who used to enter people’s shops and throw all their things on the floor and things like that, you know. At first, the shopkeepers would get angry, but they found because maybe their perspective changed, or something happened, they found great benefits coming in their life after that event happened so they would welcome this Avadhuta: “come to my shop and throw things down”. The Avadhuta not going to the shop would mean unkind and the Avadhuta going to the shop would mean kind then. So, because life is so large and in most situations in our head we don’t really know, like somebody comes to you and asks you for money. Do you really know that they are genuine or not, do you really know for what use he is gonna put it? So what would kindness then mean? It is too broad for our head to be able to capture, so we just have to go to the deeper intelligence and our intuition. And it always guides us in a way which is auspicious. One tip I have for all of you is that: don’t burden your intuition with the need to be right. Not a siddhi which you’ll go to and say: ‘I dropped my mind, but now I just go to my intuition and God always tells me – tomorrow this will happen, the day after this will happen, tomorrow this will happen to Joe Biden, this will happen to, you know, Boris Johnson, all of this, so I can predict world events’ and all this, it’s not like that. It will sometimes tell you the most ludicrous stuff, but it is most auspicious for you right now. And that is the development of trust. In Yogiji’s examples we’ve heard so many of these, he would say ‘come, come we’re going to Chennai’, and then you get to Chennai and he would say, ‘come, come, no, not Chennai, let’s go back to Tiru. And people say: ‘why, what are you doing?’. You’re just following your intuition. Maybe he was just training everyone to follow their intuition and trust it, and not look for ‘right’ and ‘outcomes’, and our ‘minds’ version of what is the best thing to happen.

In a way, it is sort of like the development of trust which also happens when you come to Satsang. Then you try out some of the pointers and feel like: ‘ah, this helps’. So sort of development of trust happens the same way as we learn how to just follow intuitive guidance. It’s a development of trust. Feb 11th, 2022 That Which Is Obvious to You and Yet Never Perceivable, Is You https://youtu.be/aGaoA1mQfc0 1:40:16-1:53:31