Dear Ed,
While rereading some of your most recent responses on your blog, it dawned on me that Ed, the teacher, is such a misnomer.
It would be more true to say, Ed, the unteacher.
Most of us who have come to you are tired, worn, and weary from dragging around our conceptual baggage and the ideas that have sprung from them.
Even those of us, (this would not be me), who have somehow managed to escape the deep conditioning often associated with mainstream religions and have spent their years in the so-called 'spirituality' camp come heavily laden with their own conceptual baggage and ideas about what it means to be free.
You most definitely are a gift to us, but not as a teacher per se, but as an unteacher.
Everywhere I turn someone is offering, and most often without being asked, a new teaching or their interpretation of some teachings from those who once lived on this earth.
And what do you offer? Nothing but an invitation to lighten the load and drop the accumulated baggage; nothing new, just a release of the old.
Isn't this really what freedom is about anyway?
I am forever indebted to you.
v.93 TO ABIDE IN THE KNOWLEDGE 'I AM' IS ONE'S TRUE RELIGION. GIVE THE HIGHEST HONOR DUE IT. DOING SO YOU WILL NOT UNDERGO SUFFERING OR DEATH.
ReplyDelete(Pradeep's Commentary) Conventional religion comes after the 'I Am.' Before belonging to any religion you have 'to be' and it is only after 'you are' that you are anything else. So,the true religion that you are endowed with is the knowledge 'I Am' and this is common to all. So to abide in the 'I Am' is your true religion and by doing so you are giving it the highest honor due it. The benefits that you will get by this abidance in the 'I Am' are tremendous - you will not undergo suffering or death. What more do you want?
I read this in the Nisargadatta Gita this morning and while reading it I was overcome with a renewed strength and zeal to be loving, faithful, worshipful, and passionately attentive to this feeling of existence...aka The Beloved.
This is not the first time this has happened to me. This is not the first time I have committed my love, my attention, my affection; not the first time I have pledged my fidelity, my faithfulness to this ever present, fresh as the morning dew, untainted Lover.
No, this is not the first time and I'm guessing it will not be the last.
You see, I don't mean to, but I get distracted by some momentary awareness that comes unexpectedly with an invitation to play, and sometimes I play. I play the harlot, the adulterer, the unfaithful lover again and again.
And when I tire, when the novelty wears off, when the promise of happiness and joy that I thought could be obtained from my illicit lovers is seen for what it is, a lie, a cosmic joke; I,laden with the heaviness of searching for myself where I cannot be found, set my face like a flint and once again turn towards myself.
And every time I do, there I Am, pristine, pure, unadulterated, all embracing LOVE, without judgment, without condemnation, withuot shame, without guilt...just a joyful union, with the newness and the excitement of two lovers embracing, touching, tasting, feeling each other for the very first time.
The day will come when those alluring, illicit lovers will have nothing to tempt me with, nothing to promise me, nothing to bind me with, for I will have obtained my Beloved by divorcing myself from these imposters.
The day will come my Beloved, when my faithfulness, my devotion, my surrender will match yours. I long...I wait...I love the best that I can.
The day will come when my Beloved will totally have captivated my attention and I will wander no more for I will have become my Beloved.
I have already begun to feel your presence permeate my emotions, my body, my thoughts, my world...and yet...I long...I wait...I love the best that I can.
"Just a joyful union" with the Beloved - this is one of the most beautiful comments on this blog in a long time.
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