16 September 2012

Today, Deep Sadness


Here I sit in my office today and Little Red has been gone 22 hours.  Lakshmi is on my lap. I am still surrounded by Red’s water bowl and food dishes, and about 4 feet from where he used to lay most often.

At first this morning I felt strange.  I felt the emptiness inside that I always felt, but mostly I felt the absence of emotions, the absence of sadness or loss.  Gradually though a weight settled on my chest making it a little difficult to breathe, then I felt a wave of tension in my back, like a stiff blanket covering my upper back and shoulders.

Then I began feeling a pain in my heart, both sharp and dull at the same time, and a deepening sadness spread throughout my presence.  Finally, I was feeling depressed.  Yesterday it was just shock and disbelief.  Today, I feel a raw depression.  Heaviness, loss, sadness, and welling up of tears remembering Little Red’s dead body on the blanket. After the vet left the room, I closed Red’s eyes so he appeared to be asleep.

Yes, it is so hard to feel this loss, and I miss his presence. But then I think, “Why would anyone want to run from this feeling?”  Buddha encountered sickness and death, felt his own confusion of why this was, felt the suffering of those who felt the losses, and determined to understand what this was all about, this suffering, death, and depression.

Finally after seven years of austerities, studying with teachers, fasting amd meditation he reached enlightenment and became an arhat, a Mukti, one in whom the self had dried up and blown away, one who no longer was attached to anything, one who felt a slow-burning benevolence for all, but ultimately was not touched by anything because he was not attached to anything or any outcome.  He no longer loved as a parent or a lover.  As Robert said regarding the Jnani, someone no longer touched by the world and its “vissisitudes,” and thereby the “sting” was gone.

But is this it?  Is this why we practice meditation, self-inquiry and spirituality, to escape the “sting” of death, either by feeling estranged from everyone, no longer attached to anything or anyone?  If this is the only reason our spirituality is purely a sophisticated form of ego defense against feeling emotional pain, insecurity, loss and fear of death.


Is there anything else in spirituality beside escape?

Yes, Robert only spoke of escape, that one gradually sees the whole picture of life, and one learns detachment by witnessing and deliberately not reacting.

But for what?  What was the reward for dying to our human attachments?

Well, in going within we find the bliss of self, which gradually gives way to ecstasy.  But eventually these phases pass and one just encounters a deeper peace, and the clear, self-illumined void, and a kind of ever present, mild happiness.

Also, we go to a place where love and idealism is safe.  In this area our love is perfect and we can hang onto the belief of the omnipotence of love, that “true love” conquers death and any other obstacle.  We are cocooned in a self-contained self-awareness with no duality, just me.

I saw we can have both our humanity and the infinite.  Once finding the rock bottom levels of consciousness, the so called absolute beyond consciousness, as well as knowing the I Am and the love of the I Am, as well as the state of not knowing and ignorance, can we not return to being a regular human again, totally feeling the pangs of loss, desperation, love, and all the other emotions associated with being human?  Do we really want to run from them anymore, or do we want to embrace our limitations and vulnerability?

Basically, my answer is yes we do want to embrace it all.  We return to the marketplace, the normal world of humanity and its frailty, but we come bearing gifts we can offer others, of true humility, true compassion, and the deepest loves anyone has ever felt, letting everyone know it is alright to feel deeply everything that arises, and to care deeply and to love deeply with great attachment and commitment. 


13 comments:

  1. "I saw we can have both our humanity and the infinite."

    This is why I'm with you Ed.

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  2. Ed, as I read your eloquent words again for the third time, I realized that much of what I thought awakening, enlightenment, and all these such words meant has fallen away.

    It is clear to me that what I had hoped they meant or what they would lead to was an escape from feeling rejection, insecurity, fear, depression, loss, loneliness, despair...in a sense I thought I wanted an escape from this whole human experience. Overall it has not been a pleasant one.

    Now I see what I really wanted was to be able to embrace it fully, to be human and really alive as a human.

    The futility of escapism has been seen here. So, I am becoming more human than ever and in this becoming more human I am also becoming more my Self.

    I thought the negation of the one would lead to the other; but for me, the embracing of the one is revealing the other.

    Thank you for this post Ed. It it one of your best so far.

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    Replies
    1. This is just the sort of thing that I appreciate.
      I just read nisargardatta on how to conduct oneself:
      … as simple as an actor acting his role WITH ZEST, knowing that it is only a role that he is playing

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  3. Dear Ed,

    I am very sorry for your loss.

    So often spiritual life is portrayed as a rejection of human life, where detachment from feeling deeply is given as a spiritual strategy, a way to gain freedom from being whiplashed by our emotions. The aspirant retreats to a cave, real or virtual, to get away from the things that might wound him. I think there is a fear that to feel such intense pain will destroy the self, the soul, whatever you might call it.

    Maybe the true purpose of spiritual life is to experience the full spectrum, feel it all without rejecting any of it, and to understand that what remains, still remains. To find that freedom is having the ability to move up and down the spectrum at will, and not be stuck somewhere when you are done with that particular flavor for the time being.

    You have experienced the ecstatic states and the crushing lows (what I call “trying to breathe a brick”), and maybe have seen the impermanence of both. Those of us who have not seen the heights sometimes wonder if they exist, and yearn intensely for them. We haven’t learned to travel the full length of the road yet. I wonder if the fear is really that we will be destroyed by feeling the sadness, pain, despair, or that we won’t be destroyed, and will be stuck there forever?

    Thank you for sharing everything with us.

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  4. this blog looks like an experimental laboratory about conciliate human condition and spiritual life ! i find all that we can read here is an enormous help to understand that ; particularly the two last messages from Edj and Jeff who answers him . i never read things like that before and i was thinking it was a lack to always be feeling emotions . A boudhist monk had taugt me about that , i was too much in the life , i had to go out from that because that life was no true ! In the non-duality i have learned you have to trancend , overtake the duality and stay in the self but not to completely feel emotions , just see them passing like clouds in the sky still and still and by this manner they 'll make it worn .
    very very interesting to read about all that other look !
    much love
    sylviane

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  5. " I wonder if the fear is really that we will be destroyed by feeling the sadness, pain, despair, or that we won’t be destroyed, and will be stuck there forever?"
    in the tibetan boudhism we learn that different hells are like that : we are stuck in an eternal bad emotion !
    i think so we are afraid by that because life may be when we have not found self ,depression may be shut up us without nothing to escape from, only love if we are lucky to feel it .
    thank a lot for that very intersting answer !
    much love
    sylviane

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  6. Why this false dilemma between utter deference to insecurity versus mere escapism. If the jhani feels the insecurity but the sting is gone then that is the perfect balance, am I right?

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  7. Anonymous asked: "Why this false dilemma between utter deference to insecurity versus mere escapism. If the jhani feels the insecurity but the sting is gone then that is the perfect balance, am I right?"

    I don't think it is a "false dilemma" being considered here. The issue is really, what is the point of enlightenment anyway? Is it to be happy or is it to be not unhappy? (Two different things.) Happy 24/7, or is 21/6 good enough? I'm not saying I know the answer and you don't, I'm just saying it's not just pointless dharma battle, as if the answer is really obvious and doesn't need further clarity.

    I do wonder though if God gets really bored with all the jnanis hiding out in their stingless bliss, and just wants to feel something raw every once in awhile. If that lack of sting is just another defense against feeling something without a limit, where's the real freedom in that?

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  8. "Is there anything else in spirituality beside escape?

    Yes, Robert only spoke of escape, that one gradually sees the whole picture of life, and one learns detachment by witnessing and deliberately not reacting.

    But for what? What was the reward for dying to our human attachments?"

    I have not experienced jnana, or the Self free of human identity (that i can remember at present), but, all the same, it is still false to equate jnana, or enlightenment as you've put it, with escape. Jnana is not ONLY sought for escape from the limitations of human attachment, but rather it's a return home...a magnetic beacon...and, yes, fear of death, pain, destruction fuels it, as does love. Thus, your dichotomy of to escape or not to escape is not entirely accurate.

    the denigration of enlightenment and the celebration of attachments... i was born already knowing that...it's quite instinctual, is it not?

    The point of "dying to our attachments"... how about due to the fact that such attachments are based on the identification with an organic bubble, constantly decaying. by all means, enjoy it while it lasts, but seeing through it is the goal numero uno, which you did not reach by celebrating your emotions. you only returned after seeing.

    the Jnani, in any case, returns or doesn't...it's sort of a moot point, then. it's only a debate for us, sob stories who haven't experienced our identity BEYOND the human process. in any case has one ever seen through it all by shirking pain? embracing your humaness, in other words, is unavoidable, right?

    putting the question back to you, Edji, what is the point of not dying to attachments when prefaced on a mistaken identity? ("I saw we can have both our humanity and the infinite." - identity with the human is not the problem for your readers.) to claim only half of that equation is a promise of only death. a realization of the full spectrum is the point of all of this "bullshit".

    You claim to be have seen both, which allows for a celebration of it all...i'm sure i'd agree with you after having known who or what i really am.

    Love,

    Trevor

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  9. trevor writes : "You claim to be have seen both, which allows for a celebration of it all...i'm sure i'd agree with you after having known who or what i really am."
    i agree with you about that last thought ! But we cannot wait that moment by escaping from the life and bad feelings during all this time before !
    What Edj is saying, with his experience ,is for me a great help to across all the bad stuf now because he opens a new perspective to become free and not to escape !
    it happens like the most important is to across all the bad things without refuse suffering and with a total acceptation in the heart ,not refused dissolves it and makes us not be destroyed by it or becoming full of hate , it gives the courage to pass across because we are sure and trustful that at the end there will be love and it is our true house .
    Perhaps is that only what we have to do there in that hell to become free from it and help others to go in the same way ...???
    much love for you
    sylviane

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  10. The thing I highly appreceated by Edji is that he shared his basic human feelings with us. I have no doubt Edji has a deep insight in what is awakening. This is what distincts Ed from many other so called self- realised teachers: he is not afraid of his feelings and emotions. Other self- realised talk as if they have no longer these human emotions. It seems to me that the experience of human emotions is the proof of not being realised in the advaita shuffle. So my conclusion here, excuus my simple mind, is that Ed is not a self-realised advaita jnani.. Or he might be and all other neo adaita masters and teachers only feeding there hungry burds with concepts that keeps themselfs abd there birds in again, just another dream. Thanks Ed, what ever you are, to me you are a hero and I love you,

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