You As Consciousness Have Complete Freedom To Choose
True freedom comes when you recognize you are the Consciousness playing the game, not the game character, and you trust the heart's silence over the mind's rational judgments.
What is the compelling message that comes in the head? A strong message, which comes in the head, which you feel like is unavoidable (and) that you have to believe.
Something like God isn't… I can't see God or I can't like grab God, so he must not exist or something. Something like that… I don't like sense it [God] with my senses and everything so it has to be non-existent or something like that.
Okay, let us see… a simple metaphor is coming. So you put on the computer (or in the computer) there is a computer game. Now if in the game the idea comes that ‘only this game exists and there is nothing outside of it’ and we have been trained to believe that; then you feel like ‘Okay, if it is not in the game then it can't be here’. But when it is asked, so where are you?... So let us say all of this realm of percepHons is that computer game. Now, if the player actually checks ‘Where are you, where are you now?’ You noHce that the game depends on you. The witnessing of the game, without you the game cannot be witnessed, isn't it? The game depends on you, the leela depends on you, maya depends on you because you cannot tesHfy to an experience unless you are there to experience it. But where is the experiencer itself? Now the mind says (the mind is the programming in the game itself) ‘but hey, I am designed to tell you that if you are not in the game then you don't exist.’ So it (the mind) is the narrator of the programming, it is the narrator within the game, obviously (it) cannot reach out of the game and meet you, the player, the one who is playing, the one who's witnessing, the one who's playing the game. That is your direct insight that you are coming to and you as the player, you as Consciousness, has complete Freedom to choose. You as the game character (so suppose the game has a character which represents you) that character obviously does not have any Freedom and therefore no free will or anything like that. Or the narrator in the game is designed to report on the apparent condiHon of the main character not of you the one that is playing. Your intuiHon, your heart is always telling you this that ‘you are not just this [poinHng to the body] character in the game. You are not this bundle of percepHons, this bundle of food. You are that which is beyond. Now, what is our task? Is our task now to try and convince ourselves? Which aspect of us could we convince?
Character aspect.
Just a mind, just the mind where you can be convinced this way or you can be convinced that way. So if you are convinced about something and I say ‘No, no, no, my friend, I feel like you have got this wrong, let me present the alternaHve perspecHve and if I present it well enough you may switch your perspecHve from this side of convicHon to the other side of convicHon.’ But in your heart, in your intuiHon, there is no such play of opposites happening, isn't it? So this is a Hp for everyone, this is very important. You must stop making one side of our head, the right side, or the spiritual side, or the true side’ and the other side the egoic side, the personal side. It is not true like that. The mind can also play as if it can be spiritual and it can be personal, but this is not true. Spirituality is to leave these limited constructs about ourselves; not trying to make ‘me’ more spiritual or ‘me’ live in the right way or something like that. But in the absence of idenHty which is ‘me’ - in the absence of that, there is a greater Truth which is apparent to you. It is apparent to you and over there you do not need any convincing, you do not even need clarity. Try to make your heart unclear. Anyone with an unclear heart? Anyone whose heart is confused, whose intuiHon is confused? Anyone like that? When you're feeling like ‘I am a bit confused in my heart itself’ noHce that is a mind trick and your confusion is a result of some belief in idenHty, noHon, an idea. So that is not the heart. Where these opposites are not possible, where it is not possible for you to oscillate, that is your heart. So it may seem like, for Consciousness it may seem like you're oscillaHng a bit between head and heart, but in the heart itself you cannot oscillate. And in the head there are millions of ways to oscillate from idea to idea, from concept to concept. So if you have an idea or even if it proposes it to be a state or something like that which is just conceptual then don't try to get to that point. Leave the instrument, which is providing you these measurements about ‘how free you are or how not free you are.’ What is judging your state? These things are happening… who is saying ‘this is not free enough for you, you should be freer than this?’ Mind itself no? The voice of bondage is pretending to be our friend in the journey of Freedom and if you make that our guide then you don't listen to your True guide, which is your heart itself. Trust the silence of the heart more than you trust any the holiest words of the mind. Trust even the silence of the heart much more than the even the holiest words of the mind, that is trust, that is trust. Otherwise, if it is in the mind and it's raHonal. Mind means raHonality, intellect, all of these judgments, interpretaHons then there's no trust needed. It is already sounding raHonal to you. So you are believing in it, what is the trust in that? Trust is beyond raHonality. If it is raHonal then everybody would follow anyway. To go to your heart is to go beyond your raHonality and the Zen masters have uHlized that over centuries to point you in ways which are completely beyond the intellect therefore to the mind completely irraHonal sounding. So let the mind say all of this ‘so god is not here god is not like this, god can't be this, can't be informed, has to be formless, he can't be formless, has to be formed’ any of these opposites, just throw the whole load of them out. In the sense not that they can stop coming but throw the load of them out from your grasping from your belief. Without that how would you struggle?
Key Teachings
- You as Consciousness (the player) have complete freedom to choose, distinct from the game character (body/mind) which has no free will
- Trust the silence of the heart over the mind's rational concepts - the heart has no oscillation between opposites while the mind oscillates between ideas
- The mind (voice of bondage) pretends to guide you toward freedom but is actually the programming; true guidance comes from the heart, not from trying to become more spiritual
From: There Is Nobody Who Is Unaware of Their Own Awareness - 27th March 2020