What Should Happen When You Find Your Self?

(Ok, thank you) It’s a good start to Satsang and just when I was starHng to wonder how we will enter into this conversaHon you zeroed in very beauHfully on one trigger and you idenHfied it very well saying ‘Why are you disturbing my peace?’. So, and you’ve been with me long enough, (so) do you want to take a stab at deconstrucHng that for everyone? You can start with ‘why?’, you can start with ‘peace’, you can start with any part of the sentence.

Very good. Let me share a bit more about this because firstly, and this is a contagion across most spiritual seekers, they become like peacekeepers. ‘I have found the peace with great difficulty, now I am just going to guard this peace’. So, ‘I went looking for Freedom, but I have just become a guard. I am just guarding my Freedom all the Hme’. And we feel like something from outside can come and shake my peace. But what has to happen really, before you can be shaken? And I am not talking about the state of peace which could be ‘Oh, some feeling is there, the mind is less noisy than usual’, and even if the feeling changes and the mind becomes noisier - is that what we call disturbance now?

Yes, but I am giving you a superpower, which allows you to not be so concerned about the states which may be coming, for example, that even now if you did not get a response which was nice, suppose you got an uncharacterisHcally angry response from something. So, some resistance, anger [shakes hand indicaHng rising of resistance/anger] whatever something can come. But even that as we have seen even in the case of Guruji [Sri Mooji] for example, turned out to be very auspicious for him. So, this idea that I know what stage should come and I know beZer than consciousness what should arise for me, and only from that perspecHve can we end up becoming a guard to parHcular states or situaHons (and I see it everywhere). Some people want to guard their enthusiasm, some people want to guard their peace, some people want to guard their joy, some people want to guard various—whatever else comes up, you can become a guard to whatever you feel, or you have an idea that this is beZer than everything else. But like you rightly said, your Truth, that Awareness that you are, remains untouched by anything that is perceived, and every percepHon is just a percepHon, it doesn’t have the tangibility in the real sense to hurt you or affect you in any sort of way. So, independent of whatever the percepHon may be, you see that you remain untouched by any of that. So, what the mind tries to do is, it tries to use this discovery to try and control or change life and the way life operates now, because we are apparently more Free, we are finding ourselves. Then it tries to find evidence of that in this waking state, but the waking state is Free just like a dream to bring whatever it has to bring. So, allow whatever state is coming to come up because Freedom is not to have the state just exactly the state that my mind wants – ‘I want to just have that state’. Freedom means everything can come and go. What kind of Freedom would it be if I have to be on guard all the Hme? And to be honest it sounds like a very innocent sort of message, saying “Are we okay?” and I know you realized that. So, it could come from some other condiHon or it could just be a very innocent quesHon, we don’t know. But the thing is that you are absolutely right in the way you saw it, and you saw that it’s not the message in itself but the condiHons which you get reminded of, the baggage which a relaHonship seems to bring which gets acHvated. Now, we don’t know whether that ge^ng acHvated is actually auspicious or not, I would in fact lean on the side of it being auspicious because if it gets acHvated maybe it is Hme for you to see through it now, instead of playing the same game over and over again for I don’t know how long and I don’t know how many life Hmes. Maybe it is Hme to just see and say ‘Okay, the quesHon is, are we okay?’, ‘Are we okay?’. ‘Yes’, that’s it. So, it could become as simple as that and even if it is ‘No’, it could just be ‘No’, because this is what we seem to be bringing out in each other (whatever – whatever), that is not the important part of this conversaHon. So, trust whatever life is bringing up and don’t make any set of percepHons into a beZer state that we must reside in, that I have to live like this. That’s why I was saying the other day whether we are in this so that we can be happy according to our mind’s construct of being happy or are we in this just because we want, really we are Hred of the lies and we just want what is True. Now, that Truth, don’t look for evidence of that in the way life is playing out, because what is happening actually is that when you are judging your partner, you are actually judging your own Freedom and that is what is troubling you more. Because you may have an idea of an unshakable peace but when something comes and it shakes it up then you start to (many of us do this) we start to quesHon our own spiritual progress and that frustrates us even more and that ends up coming out in our relaHonship with our partner because we are like ‘Oh, I am sHll ge^ng shaken up by this, and this is not right, she always [inaudible] in me and this is not what I want a relaHonship to be.’ What is troubling us is that because we have a construct of what Freedom looks like then when life shows up that life cannot be in service to any construct like that and usually pushes the buZon the other way, then what happens is that the mind uses that and tries to convince you that you are not really as Free as you think you are. More than any partner, it is these kinds of things which bother us more. We want to live on the Zenith, on the peak of this mountain called enlightenment and something seemingly pulls us down from that so, and we don’t like that about ourselves that we sHll have that tendency to go down, so we say ‘Okay, who is responsible for this?’ and the usual one in these cases is the relaHonship, that is the most obvious one to that we can place our blame on. So, in fact we can have a whole Satsang just on this, because you captured very well this whole noHon of ‘why?’ as if we know any ‘why?’ And Freedom actually in one way is to not need a reason, we stop relying on our capacity to reason to be. So the state of being in the human condiHon seems to be so reliant on needing a cause or needing a reason for everything and it can seem like ‘I am not really on top of my game if I don’t know why’, ‘I know why this, I know why I wake up, I know why I have this relaHonship, I know why I come to this Satsang and not that Satsang’, we seem to have a reason for everything but actually we don’t have a single reason at all which is true. As you heard oeen from me, but many new ones here today, but the mind loves the ‘why?’ quesHon isn’t it? And it doesn’t like the ‘who?’ quesHon as much. And the change, you know this, you heard this oeen, but the change is just one alphabet, change the ‘y’ to a ‘o’ and that’s all it is. But we noHce the tendency of the mind to always present this ‘why?’ quesHon because it’s a facade, it’s a mask, another mask and we seem to build a house of reasons, we feel like we’ve figured out life. One example I could give you which is subtle and may be rampant in much of spirituality is that we feel like, what is the reason for my existence? Or what is the best way I can exist? It must be in a parHcular state of peace, or, even the words of Satsang like ‘openness and empHness’ may get understood as if I am talking about some state that you have to be in. But when I am talking about openness and empHness I am talking about non-judgmental, I am talking about conceptual empHness where we are not interpreHng what is showing up. It is not about trying to maintain a parHcular state of openness or something like that. So, to non- interpreHve or a noHon-less existence is what I am talking about. But the mind can hear it as if it is just ‘Oh, this is my room and in this room, only good stuff can come, joy can come, peace can come… anger– no-no, you are not allowed. You go back where you came from, you are not allowed in here?’ So, who is that for then? Who is anger for if not for you? It cannot be that God has made this recipe and cooked it all up and it just like belongs to no one. It’s for God to taste as the expression called you or me or whatever we call it. So, all that appears in God’s kingdom is for God to experience. So, when we speak of openness and empHness - and it’s an important clarificaHon – we are not talking about what state can come and what state cannot come. It is the Freedom for everything to come but allow yourself to be non-judgmental about it, non-interpreHve about it and you as Consciousness can completely do that. You can [inaudible] without needing a reason. So, we looked at peace, we looked at why, what was in the middle?

Say the whole sentence again.

Yes, yes, so doer ship you spoke about already, like, there is a doer there, there is a doer here, or there is a doer there and there is an experiencer here, or there is a experiencer there and there is a doer here, depending on whether we want to feel guilty or proud. The posiHons of the doer [inaudible] and experiencer also keeps changing based on these things, but have we found such an agent? And oeen we’ve spoken about this that the true surrender means that if we sHll have an idea that there is a me and there is God, then we say that you God are the one doer and the one experiencer. Neither of those have anything to do with me. And truly even that prayer of surrender brings us to the lack of this disHncHon between God and myself. So, one doer and one experiencer. Who is the doer? Who is the experiencer? The same answer to every ‘why?’ which is Consciousness. The world, this whole waking universe shows up, this manifest play shows up when you are, when the light of your Being is shining. So, who makes that happen? Who makes the world show up? And if it is this Consciousness that makes it show up then how can anything within that show up with some other light. It must be in the light of the same Consciousness, isn’t it? So, it cannot be that Consciousness then said ‘ok, here you go world. Here are all the planets, and all of this, I have done all this for you, now its up to you guys, now you handle it’ and who is that ‘you’, the nonexistent one any way. That whole, that ‘Why do you have to do this? So, that does this to me’, that whole doer and experiencer paradigm either way, whichever way we play with it, is always bound to get us in trouble and the fact is that there is no disHncHon like that. It’s just that we take appearances in percepHon and we say I am going to draw a line around this appearance in percepHon using my thoughts to call this me, I am going to call this Mr. Me or Miss Me and oh, there is another set of percepHon there, so let me call that you. But it’s all one set of percepHons. And whose light they all shining? (like) Bhagwan [Sri Ramana Maharishi] so famously said and beauHfully said, “In whose light do you see the light of the sun?” [Pause] So, it is in the light of your own Being, in the light of your own Consciousness. And everything that happens in this play is on the screen of the same Consciousness, in the light of the same Consciousness and Consciousness itself watches and “enjoys” that play. It doesn’t enjoy it according to our mind’s idea of what enjoyment should be because many Hmes when we say it is for It to enjoy, we feel like, what enjoyment is this? It’s not enjoyment. It is not our idea of enjoyment. It is part of it’s own play, as part of it’s own play. ‘Why do you do this to me and spoil my peace?’, so instead of ‘why?’, if you were to say ‘who?’, ‘Who is doing what to whom?’, I feel is very helpful, because this is a very common sort of paZern of condiHoning and I am really spending some Hme on each aspect of it so that when it bothers each of you, you can look at it and you can start unravelling it, breaking up these knots, pulling out these knots from any aspect, from any aspect of these noHons. And anyway, you will start, you will see that the whole construct starts to fall apart, the whole construct starts to fall apart.

Of Course. The delusion and the stepping away from the delusion is all part of the play of the same Consciousness. Even the ge^ng deluded, even to give truth to the mind and to say that ‘I am this bucket of flesh and blood, I am only this, that is you, you are not me, therefore the best we can do is have a relaHonship, but we can’t be one’, all of this play is part of the same Consciousness. Even Satsang, the reminder to get out of that play of delusion is just Consciousness reminding itself that it’s playing this game. [Pause] Why? Nobody can say. There is no reason. Consciousness is not limited to providing jusHficaHon like (some famous scienHst said that) the universe is under no obligaHon to explain itself to us, so this ‘why?’ thing is a complete sham. (Let me end this parHcular quesHon with this which I have said also oeen) To get Freedom actually is not to get Freedom, it is to give Freedom. So anyHme you find yourself caught up in any condiHon find what you are not giving Freedom to. Are you giving enough Freedom to your partner to be exactly how she wants? Usually what happens with spiritual seekers is, and I say spiritual seekers oeen because I spent a long Hme in this life may be the longest Hme in this life playing one, so I can quickly idenHfy those constraints. What happens is that for most spiritual seekers is like the world should leave me alone, don’t they realize that I have the right to be completely Free. They have to be like this because I have the right to be completely free. So, we want to take away the world’s freedom to be exactly how the world is so that I can be how I want. It is actually the other way round where the world [inaudible] get freedom gives freedom to everything (give freedom to everything) which means you are not judging, which means you are not saying ‘this is bad, you should not do this, this should not happen, this cannot happen’. These kinds of ideas can be thrown away. To get Freedom actually is to give Freedom and when [inaudible] you feel like something is taking away your Freedom, you are not giving enough Freedom to that. These can be tough words to swallow especially in a relaHonship where we feel like somewhere or the other we end up believing that I am right about something and the other one is wrong about something. And there can be one or two things where we feel like ‘Okay, okay, it’s fine, whatever Ananta saying, I am definitely right about this and she is definitely wrong about that’, and what to do with those. Like I was telling another child in the Sangha, I was saying, with those if you can’t get yourself to admit that you don’t really know that you are right or wrong (if you can’t get yourself to admit that) and you are clear that you are right on those things you lose. Just lose. You see what I mean lose, like our right and wrong can put us in this baZle right? In relaHonships we are trying to, ‘Why can’t you see it from my point of view? I am trying to see it from your point of view?’ but we are only trying to see it from another’s point of view so that quickly we can convince them of our point of view actually. It never truly, I mean not never, but mostly not real that way. So those things which you feel like you are absolutely right about and your partner is wrong about, just lose that baZle. On those things just lose the baZle. What will be taken away from you?

Nothing. Just agree to be wrong and not fake. [inaudible] ‘Let’s agree to disagree’ that kind of nonsense. Just agree that I am not going to win this I am going to go along with whatever. Not go along in the sense of becoming sheep, I am not talking at this [poinHng to the body] level. I am speaking just whatever gets in the way of you being conceptually empty and conceptually unaZached. And from that empHness whatever would come from your mouth or your feet could walk towards or away it doesn’t maZer. That’s not what I am talking about. I am speaking of more that which gets in the way of us just being conceptually open, conceptually empty. So do you noHce how the idea of spaciousness or empHness or peace can actually get in the way of our spaciousness or empHness or peace.

Not almost, it’s definitely a thought, it’s definitely a noHon, definitely a thought.

If you don’t have a relaHonship with ideas, you can have whatever relaHonship you want or not. So, nice opportunity it sounds like, (opportunity it sounds like) to push up all of this stuff and to let go of [inaudible].

Very good, very good. I enjoyed that as well. Thank you.