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Post by justlikeyou on Jan 6, 2014 17:48:28 GMT -5
This is the first installment of an interesting essay by Jeff Foster. I will post more of it later.
Govinda said: ‘What you call a thing, is it something real and intrinsic? Is it not simply an illusion of Maya, merely image and appearance? Your stone, your tree, are they real?’
‘This does not trouble me much,’ said Siddhartha. ‘If they are illusion, then I too am illusion, and so they are of the same nature as myself… That is why I can love them…
- Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
A few months ago I made this announcement:
“I am officially no longer an ‘Advaita teacher’ or ‘Nonduality teacher’ – if, indeed, I ever was one. Life cannot be put into words, and however beautiful the words of Advaita/Nonduality are, they must be discarded in the end. I could never claim to be any sort of authority on this stuff. I will continue to speak, to sing my song to those who are open to listening, but gone is the need to adhere to any tradition, to use ‘Advaita-speak’ to avoid real, authentic human engagement, to pretend that I am in any way more or less special than you, to kid you that I know more than you, to play the ‘teacher’ by refusing to meet you in the play, to stop listening to you because I see you as ‘still stuck in the dream’ or ‘still a person’. This message is about love, in the true sense of the word – otherwise it is simply nihilism masquerading as freedom. The ‘Advaita Police’ reply ‘Who cares?’ I say I do. I do.”
In this essay I want to explain why I made this statement.
THE MESSAGE OF RADICAL ADVAITA
If you listen to certain nonduality/Advaita teachers who are on the scene at the moment, you may get the impression that there is something terribly wrong with having a personal ‘story’. Having a thought-created story about yourself, your past experiences, your relationships, your feelings, your desires and hopes and fears, and so on – in other words, being a living, breathing human being – is a clear sign of delusion and duality. And you need to wake up from this mess!
If you go to a public meeting held by a teacher of ‘radical Advaita’, and they invite questions, and you start talking about something personal – for example, the death of a loved one, an addiction you have, a painful event that happened in your past – they will tell you that you are ‘stuck in your story’, or ‘lost in the dream of time and space’ or they will simply say you are ‘still a person’ and ‘haven’t woken up yet’. The fact that you ‘told a story’ shows that you are still coming from duality – you are still identified as a seeker, stuck in the personal. Once you ‘get it’, you will no longer tell personal stories. You will exist in the eternal Now, and know nothing of your past.
These teachers, of course, no longer ‘tell stories’ (well, except the gigantic story that all stories are a sign of ignorance…). They imply that they themselves exist in some sort of mystical state beyond the personal, or that they have entered into a kind of space where the personal no longer has any meaning, relevance or interest. They don’t have a past or future, they don’t have ‘personal relationships’ (who is there to have a relationship with?), and they certainly never suffer (because all suffering is an illusion, right?) And so you end up feeling inferior to these people (or non-people, or nobodies, or absences, or whatever they are calling themselves today) and terribly guilty and narcissistic for still having interest in your personal story. Liberation or enlightenment obviously hasn’t happened for you yet! And so you wait and wait for liberation to happen. And although these teachers say there is nothing you can do to reach liberation, and nobody there who can do anything anyway, you carry on going to their meetings and reading their books, in the vain hope that it will happen one day. Although there’s no ‘you’ it can happen to. And no ‘one day’….
What a headache! And for these teachers, your ‘headache’ is yet a further sign that you don’t ‘get it’ yet. Their teaching is 100% true, pure, and uncompromisingly, brutally honest – your confusion is your problem, a sign of your ignorance. The burden of guilt is on you.
end of 1st installment
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Post by runstill on Jan 6, 2014 20:34:07 GMT -5
Sounds like sour grapes to me.......I could never trust a guy with big hair anyway.....
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Post by zendancer on Jan 6, 2014 22:27:26 GMT -5
Agreed, and it sounds like Jeff is busy setting up a straw man. How many non-duality teachers talk in the manner he claims? None that I've ever met. Personal stories are usually ignored because non-duality teachers are not in the business of psychoanalysis or counseling, and have little interest in helping people improve their self concept or social functionality. I think at some point Jeff realized that he, himself, was doing precisely what he now projects upon others, and he realized that it was dishonest.
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Post by enigma on Jan 7, 2014 2:32:02 GMT -5
Agreed, and it sounds like Jeff is busy setting up a straw man. How many non-duality teachers talk in the manner he claims? None that I've ever met. Personal stories are usually ignored because non-duality teachers are not in the business of psychoanalysis or counseling, and have little interest in helping people improve their self concept or social functionality. I think at some point Jeff realized that he, himself, was doing precisely what he now projects upon others, and he realized that it was dishonest. Yes, I watched Jeff a bit when he first came on the scene, and he did take that sort of radical approach that he describes, though not quite as exaggerated. I think you're right that he saw his own approach as too impersonal and divisive and wanted to change it. That's fine but there's really no need for the anti-Advaita strawman.
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Post by justlikeyou on Jan 7, 2014 8:18:24 GMT -5
Part 2 by Jeff Foster:
THE IMPERSONAL IS THE PERSONAL
Whatever the impersonal is, it actually expresses itself as the personal, and so true freedom cannot come through a denial or rejection of the personal story – it’s actually there right at the heart of that story, at the heart of the messiness of human existence. That’s where the grace shines.
Think of Jesus on the cross. Right at the heart of the most terrible personal suffering – right at the heart of broken bones, flayed skin, torn muscle, the Divine shone, impersonal and free. Jesus was absolutely human, and in that humanness, absolutely divine. He did not find freedom through escaping from the cross, though a rejection of the personal. No – freedom, God, wholeness, was right there at the heart of the cross, where life and ‘my life’ intersect and destroy each other. Freedom was, and is, life itself.
We, all of us, live there at the heart of that intersection – where the vertical (that which is beyond time and space) meets the horizontal (time and space), where the truly impersonal (the open space in which that story appears) meets the personal (the story of ‘me’). And so, it gets to the point where you can’t even use the words ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ anymore – because you have no way of separating them in the first place. Where does one begin and the other end? Perhaps there is no dividing line – perhaps at the centre of the cross, there is only One. Perhaps what I truly am is inseparable from life itself. Perhaps I have always been that which I have longed for the most. Just perhaps.
In my ‘story’ (yes, there is a story appearing here – who could deny that?) I spent years pushing away the personal, trying to get rid of my personal story, trying to dwell in the Absolute, to get rid of my ‘someone’ and become ‘no-one’. Jeff was the enemy and I had to get rid of him. The personal self was the devil, and it was only in the destruction of the devil that I would meet God. The ego was the lie that had to be annihilated. Or at least, that’s what I believed at the time. I had read a lot of spiritual books, and had come to a lot of conclusions about reality – not realising that my conclusions were actually personal beliefs. Human beings are amazing creatures. We think we have found objective truth, when in fact we have just come to rest on a subjective belief, and forgotten this.
For a while, the ‘impersonal’ seemed like freedom to me, because the personal had become unliveable. My personal story (relative existence) had become hell – I hated my life, suffered terrible social phobia, felt like a total failure, saw no point in existing at all – and so it made sense at the time to escape into the impersonal heaven promised by the Advaita teachings. “There is no me, there is no you, there is no world, there are no others, suffering doesn’t exist, there‘s no responsibility on any level” – wow, what a comfort for the exhausted seeker! A one-way ticket to freedom from all worldly problems – Hallelujah! No responsibility, no past, no choice – what a relief! I could do what I wanted, say what I wanted, I could even hurt people intentionally and it didn’t matter because it was all Oneness and I had no choice anyway. Or so I believed.
I thought I was free, and meanwhile, the seeker was feeding itself, gorging itself on these new Advaita concepts. I thought I was nobody, and meanwhile, my personal story was feasting on the very personal idea that I was ‘beyond’ or ‘above’ the personal. I thought I was free from all divisions, and meanwhile, ‘nonduality’ and ‘duality’ were at war, ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ had locked horns. I rejected all spiritual paths and practices – they were all dualistic and rooted in ignorance. I was at war with any teacher who looked like they offered a personal path. I saw these teachers as ‘dualistic’ because it looked like, in speaking to a person and offering them hope of any kind, they were actually feeding the seeking and keeping people trapped in their stories. Impersonal teachings – teachings which did not speak to a ‘person’ and did not offer the non-existent seeker any hope or comfort – were the only truth; that seemed the logical next step. And I enjoyed warning people about the dualistic teachers who were keeping people trapped in their ignorance – although of course, when challenged about this (“Jeff, isn’t it hypocritical to call other teachers ‘dualistic’ when there are no others, and duality is an illusion?”), I backtracked and said there was nobody here with an opinion about anything, and that everything was perfect as it was. Oh yes, I became very clever with words. You have to be, when you are defending a position, and trying to make it look like you have no position to defend. That’s how gurus are born. I call this the “Advaita Trap” – and at the time, I didn’t think I was trapped – I thought I was free. Often when you think you are free you are more trapped than ever.
So, I was living in my impersonal castle, believing that I was free from the personal, but secretly I was at war with the personal. I was afraid of the personal, it terrified me – we attack what we are most afraid of. Real, honest, authentic human interaction? Scary. Opening myself up to life, admitting that I was wrong about certain things, letting go of my most cherished identities and beliefs? Terrifying. The risk of exposing myself to others and being rejected? No, better to pretend there are no others to interact with. Personal experience is for ignorant dreamers. The impersonal is much more real.
I claimed to be free from the personal, but secretly, behind the scenes, I was still suffering very much – there were still relationships that didn’t feel clean, places where I knew I wasn’t being honest, places where I was holding back from life, where seeking was still happening. I still felt disconnected from others, blocked, unfulfilled in many ways – but since I believed that I was liberated, or that I was ‘no-one’, I couldn’t admit this to myself, let alone other people. The radical Advaita teachings were a great comfort at this point – it was a comfort to know that ‘after liberation, suffering can still arise but now it belongs to no-one’. Great! Suffering was okay – I didn’t have to do anything about it, and anyway, there wasn’t anything I could do about it, because there was nobody here to do anything. “I’m still miserable – there is still misery appearing – but now nobody is miserable”. The radical Advaita message provided great relief.
But nobody suffering or somebody suffering, there was still suffering – and suffering is seeking! I was still seeking, still at war with life, but claiming to be free from all seeking, in order to promote my identity as an ‘ex-seeker’. Phew. It was all so exhausting, holding up this enlightened facade!
But every facade, every defence, every castle must crumble in the end. No philosophy or belief system, no matter how refined, radical or ‘uncompromising’, can protect you from life itself. Life is the authority, and all belief systems crumble before life, in the end. My radical Advaita castle had been built on very shaky foundations…
“I am no one, nothing exists”. Oh yes, there is a beautiful truth in that. But at the same time, it’s not true, not at all – not until it’s balanced by its opposite, within the dream. No concept could ever begin to capture life, because life is prior to all concepts (including these ones). Concepts are always dualistic – the world of concepts is the world of two. “Self” and “no-self” always appear and disappear together. “Someone” and “no-one” always arise and fall at the same time. In the dream, everything is perfectly balanced by its own reflection – you cannot have one without the other. “Nothing exists” is perfectly balanced by “something exists”, and so on.
Life itself, however, is always beyond all of these opposites. It is beyond “self” and “no-self”, “person” and “no-person”, “path” and “no-path”, “time” and “absence of time”. Life as it is, is totally beyond comprehension, in the same way that the wave will never understand the ocean, because it already IS the ocean…
to be continued...
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Post by zendancer on Jan 7, 2014 8:56:02 GMT -5
Yep, Jeff is on target here. Seeing and understanding that there are two sides of the coin, without getting attached to either side is the way. Direct seeing, direct feeling, and direct action is beyond both the personal and the impersonal because no distinctions are present. Modifying the Nike commercial somewhat, "Just do it! Just be what you are!"
Outside it is 8 degrees below zero, and there is a thin layer of snow and ice. The ground crackles and crunches underfoot while walking to warm up the car. Brrrrrr!
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Post by justlikeyou on Jan 7, 2014 10:16:11 GMT -5
Yep, Jeff is on target here. Seeing and understanding that there are two sides of the coin, without getting attached to either side is the way. Direct seeing, direct feeling, and direct action is beyond both the personal and the impersonal because no distinctions are present. Modifying the Nike commercial somewhat, "Just do it! Just be what you are!" Outside it is 8 degrees below zero, and there is a thin layer of snow and ice. The ground crackles and crunches underfoot while walking to warm up the car. Brrrrrr! I concur....brrrrrr! Though I hope you count your blessings that the ground crackles and crunches. My driveway is one giant rock solid ice rink making for interesting trips to the mailbox. Sand man should be here soon.
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Post by silence on Jan 7, 2014 10:31:24 GMT -5
60's all week baby!
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Post by Reefs on Jan 7, 2014 10:47:40 GMT -5
Part 2 by Jeff Foster: THE IMPERSONAL IS THE PERSONAL Whatever the impersonal is, it actually expresses itself as the personal, and so true freedom cannot come through a denial or rejection of the personal story – it’s actually there right at the heart of that story, at the heart of the messiness of human existence. That’s where the grace shines. Think of Jesus on the cross. Right at the heart of the most terrible personal suffering – right at the heart of broken bones, flayed skin, torn muscle, the Divine shone, impersonal and free. Jesus was absolutely human, and in that humanness, absolutely divine. He did not find freedom through escaping from the cross, though a rejection of the personal. No – freedom, God, wholeness, was right there at the heart of the cross, where life and ‘my life’ intersect and destroy each other. Freedom was, and is, life itself. We, all of us, live there at the heart of that intersection – where the vertical (that which is beyond time and space) meets the horizontal (time and space), where the truly impersonal (the open space in which that story appears) meets the personal (the story of ‘me’). And so, it gets to the point where you can’t even use the words ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ anymore – because you have no way of separating them in the first place. Where does one begin and the other end? Perhaps there is no dividing line – perhaps at the centre of the cross, there is only One. Perhaps what I truly am is inseparable from life itself. Perhaps I have always been that which I have longed for the most. Just perhaps. In my ‘story’ (yes, there is a story appearing here – who could deny that?) I spent years pushing away the personal, trying to get rid of my personal story, trying to dwell in the Absolute, to get rid of my ‘someone’ and become ‘no-one’. Jeff was the enemy and I had to get rid of him. The personal self was the devil, and it was only in the destruction of the devil that I would meet God. The ego was the lie that had to be annihilated. Or at least, that’s what I believed at the time. I had read a lot of spiritual books, and had come to a lot of conclusions about reality – not realising that my conclusions were actually personal beliefs. Human beings are amazing creatures. We think we have found objective truth, when in fact we have just come to rest on a subjective belief, and forgotten this. For a while, the ‘impersonal’ seemed like freedom to me, because the personal had become unliveable. My personal story (relative existence) had become hell – I hated my life, suffered terrible social phobia, felt like a total failure, saw no point in existing at all – and so it made sense at the time to escape into the impersonal heaven promised by the Advaita teachings. “There is no me, there is no you, there is no world, there are no others, suffering doesn’t exist, there‘s no responsibility on any level” – wow, what a comfort for the exhausted seeker! A one-way ticket to freedom from all worldly problems – Hallelujah! No responsibility, no past, no choice – what a relief! I could do what I wanted, say what I wanted, I could even hurt people intentionally and it didn’t matter because it was all Oneness and I had no choice anyway. Or so I believed. I thought I was free, and meanwhile, the seeker was feeding itself, gorging itself on these new Advaita concepts. I thought I was nobody, and meanwhile, my personal story was feasting on the very personal idea that I was ‘beyond’ or ‘above’ the personal. I thought I was free from all divisions, and meanwhile, ‘nonduality’ and ‘duality’ were at war, ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ had locked horns. I rejected all spiritual paths and practices – they were all dualistic and rooted in ignorance. I was at war with any teacher who looked like they offered a personal path. I saw these teachers as ‘dualistic’ because it looked like, in speaking to a person and offering them hope of any kind, they were actually feeding the seeking and keeping people trapped in their stories. Impersonal teachings – teachings which did not speak to a ‘person’ and did not offer the non-existent seeker any hope or comfort – were the only truth; that seemed the logical next step. And I enjoyed warning people about the dualistic teachers who were keeping people trapped in their ignorance – although of course, when challenged about this (“Jeff, isn’t it hypocritical to call other teachers ‘dualistic’ when there are no others, and duality is an illusion?”), I backtracked and said there was nobody here with an opinion about anything, and that everything was perfect as it was. Oh yes, I became very clever with words. You have to be, when you are defending a position, and trying to make it look like you have no position to defend. That’s how gurus are born. I call this the “Advaita Trap” – and at the time, I didn’t think I was trapped – I thought I was free. Often when you think you are free you are more trapped than ever. So, I was living in my impersonal castle, believing that I was free from the personal, but secretly I was at war with the personal. I was afraid of the personal, it terrified me – we attack what we are most afraid of. Real, honest, authentic human interaction? Scary. Opening myself up to life, admitting that I was wrong about certain things, letting go of my most cherished identities and beliefs? Terrifying. The risk of exposing myself to others and being rejected? No, better to pretend there are no others to interact with. Personal experience is for ignorant dreamers. The impersonal is much more real. I claimed to be free from the personal, but secretly, behind the scenes, I was still suffering very much – there were still relationships that didn’t feel clean, places where I knew I wasn’t being honest, places where I was holding back from life, where seeking was still happening. I still felt disconnected from others, blocked, unfulfilled in many ways – but since I believed that I was liberated, or that I was ‘no-one’, I couldn’t admit this to myself, let alone other people. The radical Advaita teachings were a great comfort at this point – it was a comfort to know that ‘after liberation, suffering can still arise but now it belongs to no-one’. Great! Suffering was okay – I didn’t have to do anything about it, and anyway, there wasn’t anything I could do about it, because there was nobody here to do anything. “I’m still miserable – there is still misery appearing – but now nobody is miserable”. The radical Advaita message provided great relief. But nobody suffering or somebody suffering, there was still suffering – and suffering is seeking! I was still seeking, still at war with life, but claiming to be free from all seeking, in order to promote my identity as an ‘ex-seeker’. Phew. It was all so exhausting, holding up this enlightened facade! But every facade, every defence, every castle must crumble in the end. No philosophy or belief system, no matter how refined, radical or ‘uncompromising’, can protect you from life itself. Life is the authority, and all belief systems crumble before life, in the end. My radical Advaita castle had been built on very shaky foundations… “I am no one, nothing exists”. Oh yes, there is a beautiful truth in that. But at the same time, it’s not true, not at all – not until it’s balanced by its opposite, within the dream. No concept could ever begin to capture life, because life is prior to all concepts (including these ones). Concepts are always dualistic – the world of concepts is the world of two. “Self” and “no-self” always appear and disappear together. “Someone” and “no-one” always arise and fall at the same time. In the dream, everything is perfectly balanced by its own reflection – you cannot have one without the other. “Nothing exists” is perfectly balanced by “something exists”, and so on. Life itself, however, is always beyond all of these opposites. It is beyond “self” and “no-self”, “person” and “no-person”, “path” and “no-path”, “time” and “absence of time”. Life as it is, is totally beyond comprehension, in the same way that the wave will never understand the ocean, because it already IS the ocean… to be continued... The impersonal/non-personal is not the opposite of the personal.
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Post by Reefs on Jan 7, 2014 10:50:43 GMT -5
Yep, Jeff is on target here. Seeing and understanding that there are two sides of the coin, without getting attached to either side is the way. Direct seeing, direct feeling, and direct action is beyond both the personal and the impersonal because no distinctions are present. Modifying the Nike commercial somewhat, "Just do it! Just be what you are!" Outside it is 8 degrees below zero, and there is a thin layer of snow and ice. The ground crackles and crunches underfoot while walking to warm up the car. Brrrrrr! I'd say Jeff is mixing contexts.
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Post by laughter on Jan 7, 2014 10:53:49 GMT -5
- The impersonal/non-personal is not the opposite of the personal. ... that it is is a misconception that's at the root of most of the conflict in the discourse here ...
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Post by laughter on Jan 7, 2014 11:03:06 GMT -5
Part 2 by Jeff Foster: THE IMPERSONAL IS THE PERSONAL Whatever the impersonal is, it actually expresses itself as the personal, and so true freedom cannot come through a denial or rejection of the personal story – it’s actually there right at the heart of that story, at the heart of the messiness of human existence. That’s where the grace shines. Think of Jesus on the cross. Right at the heart of the most terrible personal suffering – right at the heart of broken bones, flayed skin, torn muscle, the Divine shone, impersonal and free. Jesus was absolutely human, and in that humanness, absolutely divine. He did not find freedom through escaping from the cross, though a rejection of the personal. No – freedom, God, wholeness, was right there at the heart of the cross, where life and ‘my life’ intersect and destroy each other. Freedom was, and is, life itself. We, all of us, live there at the heart of that intersection – where the vertical (that which is beyond time and space) meets the horizontal (time and space), where the truly impersonal (the open space in which that story appears) meets the personal (the story of ‘me’). And so, it gets to the point where you can’t even use the words ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ anymore – because you have no way of separating them in the first place. Where does one begin and the other end? Perhaps there is no dividing line – perhaps at the centre of the cross, there is only One. Perhaps what I truly am is inseparable from life itself. Perhaps I have always been that which I have longed for the most. Just perhaps. In my ‘story’ (yes, there is a story appearing here – who could deny that?) I spent years pushing away the personal, trying to get rid of my personal story, trying to dwell in the Absolute, to get rid of my ‘someone’ and become ‘no-one’. Jeff was the enemy and I had to get rid of him. The personal self was the devil, and it was only in the destruction of the devil that I would meet God. The ego was the lie that had to be annihilated. Or at least, that’s what I believed at the time. I had read a lot of spiritual books, and had come to a lot of conclusions about reality – not realising that my conclusions were actually personal beliefs. Human beings are amazing creatures. We think we have found objective truth, when in fact we have just come to rest on a subjective belief, and forgotten this. For a while, the ‘impersonal’ seemed like freedom to me, because the personal had become unliveable. My personal story (relative existence) had become hell – I hated my life, suffered terrible social phobia, felt like a total failure, saw no point in existing at all – and so it made sense at the time to escape into the impersonal heaven promised by the Advaita teachings. “There is no me, there is no you, there is no world, there are no others, suffering doesn’t exist, there‘s no responsibility on any level” – wow, what a comfort for the exhausted seeker! A one-way ticket to freedom from all worldly problems – Hallelujah! No responsibility, no past, no choice – what a relief! I could do what I wanted, say what I wanted, I could even hurt people intentionally and it didn’t matter because it was all Oneness and I had no choice anyway. Or so I believed. I thought I was free, and meanwhile, the seeker was feeding itself, gorging itself on these new Advaita concepts. I thought I was nobody, and meanwhile, my personal story was feasting on the very personal idea that I was ‘beyond’ or ‘above’ the personal. I thought I was free from all divisions, and meanwhile, ‘nonduality’ and ‘duality’ were at war, ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ had locked horns. I rejected all spiritual paths and practices – they were all dualistic and rooted in ignorance. I was at war with any teacher who looked like they offered a personal path. I saw these teachers as ‘dualistic’ because it looked like, in speaking to a person and offering them hope of any kind, they were actually feeding the seeking and keeping people trapped in their stories. Impersonal teachings – teachings which did not speak to a ‘person’ and did not offer the non-existent seeker any hope or comfort – were the only truth; that seemed the logical next step. And I enjoyed warning people about the dualistic teachers who were keeping people trapped in their ignorance – although of course, when challenged about this (“Jeff, isn’t it hypocritical to call other teachers ‘dualistic’ when there are no others, and duality is an illusion?”), I backtracked and said there was nobody here with an opinion about anything, and that everything was perfect as it was. Oh yes, I became very clever with words. You have to be, when you are defending a position, and trying to make it look like you have no position to defend. That’s how gurus are born. I call this the “Advaita Trap” – and at the time, I didn’t think I was trapped – I thought I was free. Often when you think you are free you are more trapped than ever. So, I was living in my impersonal castle, believing that I was free from the personal, but secretly I was at war with the personal. I was afraid of the personal, it terrified me – we attack what we are most afraid of. Real, honest, authentic human interaction? Scary. Opening myself up to life, admitting that I was wrong about certain things, letting go of my most cherished identities and beliefs? Terrifying. The risk of exposing myself to others and being rejected? No, better to pretend there are no others to interact with. Personal experience is for ignorant dreamers. The impersonal is much more real. I claimed to be free from the personal, but secretly, behind the scenes, I was still suffering very much – there were still relationships that didn’t feel clean, places where I knew I wasn’t being honest, places where I was holding back from life, where seeking was still happening. I still felt disconnected from others, blocked, unfulfilled in many ways – but since I believed that I was liberated, or that I was ‘no-one’, I couldn’t admit this to myself, let alone other people. The radical Advaita teachings were a great comfort at this point – it was a comfort to know that ‘after liberation, suffering can still arise but now it belongs to no-one’. Great! Suffering was okay – I didn’t have to do anything about it, and anyway, there wasn’t anything I could do about it, because there was nobody here to do anything. “I’m still miserable – there is still misery appearing – but now nobody is miserable”. The radical Advaita message provided great relief. But nobody suffering or somebody suffering, there was still suffering – and suffering is seeking! I was still seeking, still at war with life, but claiming to be free from all seeking, in order to promote my identity as an ‘ex-seeker’. Phew. It was all so exhausting, holding up this enlightened facade! But every facade, every defence, every castle must crumble in the end. No philosophy or belief system, no matter how refined, radical or ‘uncompromising’, can protect you from life itself. Life is the authority, and all belief systems crumble before life, in the end. My radical Advaita castle had been built on very shaky foundations… “I am no one, nothing exists”. Oh yes, there is a beautiful truth in that. But at the same time, it’s not true, not at all – not until it’s balanced by its opposite, within the dream. No concept could ever begin to capture life, because life is prior to all concepts (including these ones). Concepts are always dualistic – the world of concepts is the world of two. “Self” and “no-self” always appear and disappear together. “Someone” and “no-one” always arise and fall at the same time. In the dream, everything is perfectly balanced by its own reflection – you cannot have one without the other. “Nothing exists” is perfectly balanced by “something exists”, and so on. Life itself, however, is always beyond all of these opposites. It is beyond “self” and “no-self”, “person” and “no-person”, “path” and “no-path”, “time” and “absence of time”. Life as it is, is totally beyond comprehension, in the same way that the wave will never understand the ocean, because it already IS the ocean… to be continued... Seeing personality clearly for what it is does not equate to a rejection of it.
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Post by Reefs on Jan 7, 2014 11:07:10 GMT -5
- The impersonal/non-personal is not the opposite of the personal. ... that it is is a misconception that's at the root of most of the conflict in the discourse here ... Thinking that the impersonal is the opposite of the personal leads to anti non-dual idiots crusades and further erroneous conclusions like 'non-duality is trying to get rid of/deny the personal'. The personal stays untouched. So trying to get rid of the personal or trying to embrace the personal are both missing the point.
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Post by laughter on Jan 7, 2014 11:12:24 GMT -5
- ... that it is is a misconception that's at the root of most of the conflict in the discourse here ... Thinking that the impersonal is the opposite of the personal leads to anti non-dual idiots crusades and further erroneous conclusions like 'non-duality is trying to get rid of/deny the personal'. The personal stays untouched. So trying to get rid of the personal or trying to embrace the personal are both missing the point. Right, the defensive, fear-based reaction to ideas about the impersonal, and how these relate to the sense of identity. You don't have to scratch very deeply to find this underneath most of the food fight threads.
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Post by laughter on Jan 7, 2014 11:23:48 GMT -5
Rainbow Dash said: caustic evil things Reefs -- isn't there the potential for those that have had an experience such as the one that Jeff describes to project that onto everyone else who speaks from a context that can perhaps be characterized as "assumed clarity"? What I've noticed in my correspondences is that some folks see a "dark night of the soul" as a sort of prerequisite to seeing clearly. Have you noticed this also?
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