LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE!--Amended
For a long time I have been getting emails about why I am concerned about Infinity. Why am I concerned about Matthew's manuscript? Why am I concerned about saving cats? Why am I concerned about saving whales from Japanese predation? Don't I know Robert said, "Leave the world alone"?
Yes, I know what Robert said. I was there with him for 7 years in LA. I heard hundreds of his talks and went to lunch with him hundreds of times. We talked hundreds of times on the phone. I wrote introductions for his books, wrote short biographies for him, promoted Satsang at his direction through various media, etc. I know his teachings very, very well.
But, I did not get stuck on that one phrase of his as a lot of people seem to.
Robert and his teachings were far larger than that one phrase.
Robert, with this phrase, was responding to the hundreds of students who came to him with problems. They were preoccupied with problems and had neglected their inner life, their core. He was turning them back onto recognizing their true nature as both form and emptiness, with an emphasis on emptiness, because they were obsessed with form.
However, Robert also said you need not become a doormat.
If Animal Control is coming to take your animals away, or the Republicans are coming to take your Social Security away, or your daughter is newly diagnosed with brain cancer, or someone has launched a well-funded lawsuit against your invention or intellectual property, this does not mean you should not respond to the challenge and protect yourself and your loved ones even if the world is just an appearance.
If you take Robert literally, you would not respond if neo Nazis were knocking on your neighbor's door and dragging them into the street where they beat them to death. Do you really think Robert would not want you to help protect those people even at the peril of your own life?
If you read Robert's "Confession," he says the world does not entirely disappear, but life's events lose their sting. That is, you still feel compassion, love, the need to protect, nourish and help, and if someone close to you is hurt, or you are hurt, you still feel it, and can react, it is just that you are not overwhelmed by the happening because you have transcended the world. You are in it but not of it.
As long as you are alive, you will be presented with situations where you can act with compassion, or ignore the situation and let whatever is to happen, happen.
Am I to ignore Infinity's now incessant attacks on Matthew who is trying to present the gist of Robert's teachings in new and powerful ways? No, I cannot do that. And, if anyone shows up at my door threatening to take my animals away, they will not long forget that confrontation.
This totally out of control movement to protect the innocent, weak, old and animals has deeply gripped my beingness.
Three days ago someone called me that needed help. A 70 year old and rather feeble neighbor allegedly had been abused by Animal Services personnel regarding a false complaint against him by a tenant who he was trying to evict for non payment of rent. It took lots of emails and a personal appearance by me when Animal Services showed up for an inspection, but all is well now. AS knows the complaint was bogus and the officers that did show up were very polite and friendly as opposed to those whom the neighbor had spoken to some days before. I can't help it. The movement to help and protect is too strong to stop.
I know some of the people who read this blog have caught this disease of active and compassionate intervention. There is no cure you know.
Knock knock!
ReplyDeleteWho's there?
Neo-nazi animal control services!
Neo-nazi animal control services who?
WE SERVICE OURSELVES!
"And, if anyone shows up at my door threatening to take my animals away, they will not long forget that confrontation."
This made me smile real big! I pictured you answering the door with your cat box on your head, and the little one popping it's head out, saying so sweetly- "MEOW!"
Seriously, though, I agree- we should not be doormats, but I do not know what to do.
I also feel that we are being cooked here with the old "problem/solution" quandry.
When one is stuck in duality, the problem/solution quandry still hankers around and creates suffering for all involved.
How do we respond with loving-kindness and wisdom to such a childish, immature situation?
Smile, you are love!
Selfishly, I am . . . so grateful YOU were with Robert. Thank you Ed.
ReplyDeleteLooking to where you are pointing,
Jean
With all due respect to you and Mr. Adams, if you are indeed 'Awake', why do you need to use your Teacher's work and words to validate what is primarily dedcribed as an impersonal direct experience? It seems many of today's 'teachers' use the infamous masters of the past as a way to catapult themselves or to attempt to manipulate public opinion. I would be more impressed or interested in what was shared if it weren't so hard to discern whether you hold true wisdom or are just parroting what you've heard.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you Teacher, as great as he may have been, is most likely unconcerned with who was his student or not; the basis of his message was to wake up to Truth, not to follow invisible footsteps.
I find it equally bizarre that you would ask your students to send argumentative mail to your adversaries. What does your Teacher have to do with their awakening to reality? Then, when they question why the argument exists, you were quick to scold their queries and implied they were wrong, argumentative and unloyal.
You are obviously grateful for your Teacher, but I'm sure he would rather see people come to their own understanding versus worrying about his.
How about signing your unsolicited "critiques" about what is proper for a teacher. Come out of the shadows and state who you are.
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious you have never been in a master/disciple relationship, or you would not say that.
Yes, I talk about Robert all the time, how he was, what he said and what he meant to me. This is who I am.
However, I also talk about the teachings--whole books of teaching available on the website itisnotreal.com, without once mentioning him.
But I find no need to differentiate and separate myself from Robert, neither of us being real anyway.
If you had a guru to whom you had completely surrendered, you would know he was your mother, your father, brother and sister. He was your beloved and your life. He is the reason you went free.
ReplyDeleteYes, Robert was my everything.
Read the close disciples of Ramana. Ramana is all they talked about because they understand it is not their knowledge and awakening, but his that guided their way.
The same is true of Muktananda. His swamis only talk about him and his teacher Nityananda.
There is a bond that forms that is so deep and so wide you can't grasp it from the outside.
Also, I think the answer to the first poster's question is, practice. Do self-inquiry every day, regularly, and understanding of the truth will seep in. True love and compassion, and other things that have no words to describe them, but are very deep, will make themselves very apparent. You may smile as you feel them, or "you" feel them, or whatever, because the echoes of them finally resound with words that Robert, Ramana, Nisargadatta, Ed or other realized teachers have spoken and you have absorbed. Then you recognize them as guidelines. You also realize, as days go by and situations in life intersperse with practice to challenge your assumuptions about yourself, that you have a lot further to go. It doesn't come from thinking or pondering, or from "should" or "shouldn't". It comes of its own, and that is the beauty of it... The more you practice, the more you will feel a natural sense of justice, as Nisargadatta says. It comes at the same time as you can more and more clearly see what is an ego prompting, and what is the truth. So you feel compassion for yourself, in the process, as you realize how knee-jerk reflexively egotistical most human life is. And you start to feel more compassion for other people. But as Robert says in an anecdote about the cobra, "I told you not to bite. I didn't tell you not to hiss!" In other words, with real compassion and the ability to discern your own and other people's motivations, comes the ability to be firm and even abrupt with other people, while still being compassionate. This certainty cannot come any other way. So, folks, let's remember to practice. Without that, the rest is ripples on the surface. Nothing wrong with ripples, but the point is to go deeper.
ReplyDeleteMatthew
>>> He is the reason you went free <<<
ReplyDeleteYes. He is the only reason. This is so true. It is impossible to free oneself of ones own false image without the help of a Guru.
There is no doubt Beingness is the only Guru--this is the only reality. However it is impossible to discriminate between pure beingness and false sense of ego without the help of a physical Guru. For most it is still ego--even the most subtlest kind. Physical Guru in his own mysterious ways is "cooking" that out from your system--steaming it, boiling it till it disappears NEVER to return again.
Do not fall for the image of the Guru and his words--always work inwards. You will one day wake up and know that it was always about your own beingness. It is never about the Guru. What was triggered was your own beingness, what was getting disturbed was your own beingness. The center was always the beingness and not the Guru. Do not make the mistake of being attentive to the Gurus images rather than your own beingness. The Guru has no image.
I bow at the Lotus Feet of my Sadguru EDJI.
Rajiv Kapur
"it was always about your own beingness. It is never about the Guru. What was triggered was your own beingness, what was getting disturbed was your own beingness. The center was always the beingness and not the Guru."
ReplyDeleteIt could not have been said better. Truth is evident in this statement as it is yet again pointed to the Subjective.
Also, in loving a true enlightened being who already manifests pure LOVE one gets his/her heart open and receptive to the real LOVE one is.
Lovingly,
Janet
Please include your name on comments or they likely will not be posted. There has to be a degree of respect provided for this forum, otherwise the comment may not be posted. Sometimes people forget to sign, and that is o.k., the comment may still be posted, but snipers must come out of the shadows and be counted.
ReplyDeleteNamaskar,
ReplyDeleteSo grateful for this Guru to be here now and to have been found by him, having been with some strange ones in the past I am so so glad for Edji and Rajivji and all the cooking and melting that is going on. May we all melt away and pure beingness shine through.
Mona
"It is impossible to free oneself of ones own false image without the help of a Guru."
ReplyDeleteI am finding this to be true. Rajiv, I have deep respect for what is shared in your posts. My ego would prefer to declare it's continually wrestling with the question of "who am I." More honest for me to admit the question(s) concerning Guru are currently parked among my thoughts.
Thanks to you and Ed,
Jean
there is cooking and there is burning...honesty is the real cook....a real guru does not estrange you from yourself by placing personal demands on his Self....instead he nurtures every and all aspects of his Self without an expected outcome or purpose...
ReplyDeleteMuktananda for example burned people under the guise of his "enlightenment"...I am not sure if you are aware of this Ed, and I mention this because you mention him as enlightened...
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/muktananda.asp
As a matter of fact I never mentioned Muktananda as enlightend. This is what I said about him in 2005. It is still on the website:
ReplyDeletehttp://itisnotreal.com/Practices.html
However, you really can't judge the depth of a teacher by a few actions. Some teachers tend to act outrageously because they have stepped outside conventions.
I was involved with a SYDA ashram in Santa Monica for years. Though there was a lot of insanity there, there were very powerful spiritual currents also moving.
Also, when I listen to Muktananda style chanting--the old way, not the watered down way Chidvilasananda does now, I feel the old ecstatic bliss and energy flowing around me still, just as I felt it 30 years ago.
Once you set foot on the path, your world gets more and more strange with very unusual experiences, and and endless flow of new understandings and new sorts of problems coming into your life.
For example, for me, karmic responses became almost instantaneous, rather than being strung over years, allowing me to easily see karma's workings.
Of course, once you go free, karma does not touch you anymore even though it may still affect the body/mind.
Lets all sit back and laugh at it all. As Robert says, "The universe is a cosmic joke!"
ReplyDeleteLets see the joke for what it is, and not be dragged in.
Whatever will happen, will happen but we have nothing to do with it, so why worry about it. There are no mistakes, there are no problems.
That which you are is HERE right now! That alone will overcome all.
Nothing can or will stop Roberts teachings from being dispersed throughout world.
Love to all...
When Muktananda's name was brought up, I couldn't also help but think of the eminent example of Chogyam Trungpa who seemed to delight in "cooking" the students to get their goat with what appeared to be egregious mischief. Apparently many if not most were unaware that for instance in showing up late for a speech presentation, he was demonstrating to them how their expectations of his behavior were being tested to the limit.
ReplyDeleteBut he may have gone too far with this because it later became evident that he knew his assistant had AIDS and did nothing to keep him from indulging in sexual behavior(that apparently resulted in one student getting the illness because of the assistant).
Mark
What I feel is that, once we get into this path, we can be only responsible for EVERYTHING in the world..The feeling itself pushes us to the peak of action putting ourselves completely into it; and it is when we have the peak of action that we can identify and rest in the state of "non-doing" or simply being, effortlessly..I've felt it work beautiful..esp when I dance..The moments when we pause in between a passionate dance are so transcending..
ReplyDeleteRegards
Sharada