REALIZE THAT NO IDEA IS YOUR OWN; THEY CALL COME TO YOU FROM OUTSIDE

Let us break the above statement into parts and analyze is bit by bit.

The statement talks about analyzing.

That idea is not our own, it always come from outside us. They all actually.

 

Idea - what is it ?

Idea is a thought, nothing else. Thought about something completely new, or novel way to do things which are already there. It can be reduced to a mere thought.

 

It is not our own and it always comes from outside. What does it mean that it comes from outside. Has anyone thrown the thought from outside our consciousness and consciousness has caught it. If anything be outside the consciousness then it is not reality / absolute and also it can then not be known.

 

Hence the thought must have come from us, consciousness alone, as nothing can be outside consciousness. However the core here is not about what constitute inside and outside us but rather where do the thoughts come from and are they under our conscious control ?

 

We can easily verify that we don’t generate thought as in will the thought, but thought comes to us and we grab / identify with it via thinking. Thus we are presented with a thought without any will of our own.

 

Every thought is like this and this is not an exception; and we also know that all actions are preceded by thought; and since thought is not under our control hence any action is also not under our control. Thus there exists no free will.

 

Will exists only for consciousness and consciousness alone. We are mere instruments of her. 

HOW TO TEACH CHILDREN ??

It is a very important topic that needs a fair bit of contemplation as to how we want to raise our children.
 
First let us say that there are two sets of knowledge that is to be imparted to the children of our age.

One is called as AVIDYA or knowledge of the world; and the other is called as VIDYA or the knowledge of the Self, the background of all that is taught as part of the world.
 
The whole knowledge system of the schools and colleges is designed towards developing human as an efficient machine that can function well.

Alongside there can be added a moral and ethical knowledge systems which can soften the human and generate in him compassion, and other qualities that differentiate it from the animal kingdom.

The home I.e. parents on the other hand must be equipped with the right knowledge of the dharma, the knowledge of the Self and it must be imparted to the child at home. For that we need tutors that are equipped with this knowledge is mass numbers and parents which are enlightened enough to know the importance of this knowledge. 

DOING GOOD TO OTHERS !!

 

Any action that does not bind you is a good action. Act alone doesn't qualifies itself as good. What mental attitude you were having while doing the act??

 

If suppose after doing charity, your ego inflates as a result of sticking thought that you have done a good deed, then that is binding thought.

 

You can be good, or your action can only be good when you are established in truth, when the good loses its goodness and gets transformed into truth.

THINKING IS DUALITY; IDENTITY IS NON - DUALITY

 ALL THINKING IS IN DUALITY; IN IDENTITY NO THOUGHT SURVIVES.

 

Let us first clear what identity means here. All other words are self explanatory here. Identity here means awareness’ identification of herself not with a body, mind or world but with herself alone. That means I = Awareness only.

 

Awareness = Knowing = I. Any supposed activity happening in Awareness takes the form of thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving.

 

Thinking comes in the form of split in unity. A supposed thinker is assumed, and thought is assumed to be thought with an object or content of thought, and supposed thinking linking a thought and a thinker. Thus a duality automatically comes into existence with a thinker and the thought. For a thought to exist there must be a thinker.

 

If thought ceases to be thinker cannot exist. Thought and thinker are simultaneous.

 

In identity, there is only pure knowing. Knowing / Awareness sees herself everywhere. No separate thinking or seeing or hearing exists. There is only Knowingness, which knows only Knowing. 

Why You Cannot Stay Present?

This is a very important question to answer. There are two answers that can be given to this. On the one hand, one can analyze the issue using the sharpness of the mind and logic and come straight to the point. It will definitely give clarity and shortcomings and ways to fulfill those.

 

On the other hand, the second approach would not apply logic but rather would destroy the logic and indeed question the efficacy of logic-finding solutions. This would also mean questioning what is logic in itself.

 

Let us start with the first way. You question here why I am not able to stay present more and why I am more on autopilot mode all the time. The more important question would be how I am in the mode – in the autopilot mode or the presence mode. This would give you several answers.

 

Let’s say one has an impulsive sense of thinking all the time. The body reacts in a certain way when one is lost in imagination. The head may be down, the hand may be playing with the hair (as in my case), etc. Mechanicalness takes over and you become the body-mind which is nothing but a machine whose software is already uploaded.

 

So this is how you are in the autopilot mode. Then further questioning can lead you to the answer that you may be asking. It starts with self-observation, observing over a period of time how your body functions, what happens when a certain type of stimuli is presented to it, and how it reacts. Is the presence held, or is it lost? Then over several months, maybe years of observation one understands in the depths of the being that one is really a machine and there starts the real journey of change in the shift. Then one observes the mechanicalness and tries to change it into the presence. Slowly and slowly changes start happening.

 

Another reason can be given from the perspective of yoga. That there are blockages in the nadis that don’t allow the energy to flow perfectly and hence one is bound by the limitations. So one then adopts certain practices of yoga. There are many practices, where I am not going currently. Slowly-slowly change starts to happen same as stated previously.

 

The second approach is radical and transformative once it has been understood by the depth of the being. It goes like this. There are two entities here – one is the subject i.e. awareness which is living, and the other is the object of the subject i.e. thoughts feelings sensations, and perception, which are non-living. The two entities finally are found to be one, where these objects are nothing but the appearance on the subject because of the will of the subject.

 

The subject projects those objects over itself and knows them simultaneously. Thus holding presence is also a thought not in the control of the body-mind, because the body-mind is nothing but an object to the awareness, hence they are non-living. Staying present is a thought that is presented to the awareness. It is the awareness that decides what to do next. What course of sensations, movement, or thoughts she want to project and fulfill the purpose that is known only to her. There is no free will here, as the will is only of the awareness here. Mind doesn’t exist. No mind means no free will. Or we can say that the mind i.e. thoughts are non-living and hence dead cannot have will.

 

Now what does this all mean? In case you understood this, then there is nothing more to say. In case it is still not clear, one needs to first come to an experience where one differentiates between the thought and the knower of the thought. Then one eventually understands that nothing is in your i.e. body-mind control and one should then relax and let the awareness that is one’s true nature fully express itself through that body-mind.

Why is there suffering in this world?

Suffering is a name given to the kind of feelings, that generally tend to be avoided because they are uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable in them is also a dogma and a learned experience. An unlearned person cannot differentiate between good and bad feelings. Feelings are feelings. Bad and good are mind labelings.

              As to the question of why is there suffering there can only be conjectures. The scriptures and rishis and maharshis of the great Sanatan tradition have given the answer. According to them, suffering is required to make people remember the futility of the objective world and also that there is something much higher than what one can see and observe.

              With suffering one starts to question their assumptions about the traditionally lived life. Automatically the charm of the world fades away. Since the mind needs something to latch onto, it starts to think about the other world. However, the need for freedom and liberation is an internal longing, that comes out as a result of innate nature being infinite and unbound.

              The awareness makes itself known in the presence of so-called suffering as well. As the background witness, it is present during times of suffering also. This suffering causes the mind to turn inwards away from the bad feelings and towards the witness, the source, and in doing that there is a temporary cessation of the mind, and that itself is the first experience of conscious self-remembrance.

              Thus we can say that suffering is the event through which awareness gives a jackpot opportunity to remember itself, which was not possible or rather not glamorous enough during the presence of normal thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions.

Importance and Necessity of DEVOTION in spirituality

Spiritual path can have many means. Some may subscribe to some, some do not. Some may even find certain paths and not necessary and waste. However certain things are necessary to carry out the spiritual process, specially if you need to find depth in it.

The thing we are talking about here is devotion. Devotion means surrender of self to the one you are devoted to. It means then we perform the act not based on self-centeredness but we act for the devotion itself or to the devoted. Another factor that comes out startling is no-doer mechanism. When your devotion gets strengthened, you may find you are not the doer of the actions and your ishta devta is the doer of all.

It may look easy that ‘hey its easy, I can do it’, but that’s not so. Shastras in india say bhakti is the easiest path. I conform to that. But I add one more thing. It is also the toughest. The reason is simple; dropping the ego is the toughest test in spirituality. Discovering god can only be possible of the stain of the ego is removed from the self. If you can drop ego completely then the path is very simple for you then.

Now you might wonder that what if I can’t drop the ego and need time and practice to weaken it. Yes the path of meditation does just that. It makes you realize the non-solidness of the go and ego as a burden that you automatically want to drop. You find that it is an imaginary thing that you were clinging on to for no rhyme or reason and making yourself suffer under its constants pulls and pushes of desires.

When this understanding deepens in you the attachment to ego automatically starts loosening. You find yourself light and relaxed. You do not get sucked into the warp of thinking and fulfilling your desires and ego. In other words you become the lightness of being.

Now you may ask what if I don’t believe in this devotion crap and I just want to meditate and not care about devotion to anything be it lord shiva, Krishna, Buddha, goddess shakti or even the self itself. You do not want to devote to anything. Fine. I too was of the same category a while back. I found the difference when I started respecting devotion itself.

I can give my example only. Without devotion I felt(later) that there was a very selfish element present in my spiritual sadhana. Whatever I did, I did it for myself. I found that there was no higher purpose for me other than fulfilling my desire of reaching higher stages in my practice.

Only then I read about devotion and then after self-analyzing I found about this deficiency. I am a very logical kind of guy. I was very skeptical of the path of bhakti thinking that my path was superior and that what I am doing is the best, that there is nothing to have bhakti or devotion of some sort. But I was very wrong.

There have been vast changes since I put effort to bringing devotion to my practice. Now you might say that devotion can’t be forced onto anyone. True not forced, but if one wants to develop devotion, that is possible. You have to daily work for it. You can have some spiritual rituals or pooja at your home for they contextualize your sadhana and give it a frame. The danger here is that if you might be caught in the outer rituals only and not for which it was intended.

Rituals are meant to purify your mind regularly, and specially before the sadhana, whatever it may be. It is the basis of building concentration. By allowing yourself to immerse in the rituals in a very focused way, you devote all your attention in the current moment only where you serve your ishta devta. Thus it gives you a good object for sustaining attention. That purification helps you get going in the main sadhana. That is why mental ritual habit is the best. Of course you can have external rituals as well unless and until it serves the purpose of purifying your mind and building one pointed concentration for that period of time.

I have found today that as the scientific and logical mind is taking shape and strengthening every day, people are being less and less devotional and becoming more and more logical. Logic serves the purpose, but only to a limit. The other aspects of the mind are not taken to use and thus remain undeveloped. This underdevelopment we pass to our offsprings. Thus over generations it becomes our nature to use them less and less and rely on logic and rationale only to miss the vast opportunities that may come in our way and explore the potentialities of the mind.

The aspect of intuition and intelligence apart from intellect must be developed. For that, logic is one cog along with other cogs that make you mind move accurate fast and efficient. Have Devotion to your work, have strong feelings for it. But beware if it goes in the wrong direction. Direction goes wrong when it you drift from where you imagined you would be in the first place. Desires come up that are powerful and you won’t even know when you disengaged and how far you went in the wrong direction. So just be attentive and vigilant for your devotion as well.

Last words before departing. In my experience I have found that I lack true and complete devotion. That is the reason why my practice did not catapulted into a speedy progress. i did many things right and devotion aspect is where it did go wrong. Sorry, not wrong, but it didn’t even existed. I have since then found that missing link and have starting working on it. You should too. So, a suggestion to all of you. Develop devotion to anything you respect and revere , nurture it like it is your child and you will reap the rewards you can’t even imagine.