More on my way versus Kashmir Shaivism, but the joy I feel reading about it.

Regarding Shankarananda’s book, some people have contacted me saying it is too wordy, too many concepts, too many distinctions, and a constant emphasis of avoiding negative thoughts and emotions.

I agree totally with this criticism.  First of all, I have very little to do with the mind at all.  It does not get in my way or between me and the ‘external world’.  I do not avoid thoughts at all; they come and visit very briefly and leave because I more or less have nothing to do with them.

The same with emotions. Emotions come and go, and I don’t much entertain them, positive or negative. But an emphasis on avoiding “impure” thoughts or emotions just escapes me.  There is a great amount of energy and bliss encased within ALL strong emotions from anger, love, jealousy, fear, to negative moods such as depression, anxiety, euthymia, and elation.  With and below each is a river of bliss, and within that bliss, is pure Consciousness and light.  This has been my own experience.  By diving deep into depression, jealousy, fear, humiliation, one encounters energy and bliss. 

One learns how to “eat” emotions, abide in them, accept them, even love them.  Love your depression, lust, jealousy, fear.  Play with those feelings, own them, absorb them.  When you do they leave an aftertaate of bliss and energy, which eventually blows away leaving peace, rest, and alive Consciousness.

The same with great love. Own it, dive into it.  Accept it, brimng it into your inner heart of identification however short a period of time and you become love itself, which transforms into visions and states of divine intoxication.

As to all the myriad concepts found in Kashmir Shaivism, it is just a joy to dwell for a while in a completely different take on the same subject matter, especially given Shankarananda’s light, joyful touch.

I am grasping this different perspective and can better grasp the Tantric approach which I discovered for myself in isolation the lone rebel in a sea of Advaita teachers and students always complaining about my many deviations from their concepts of the teachings of Robert, Ramana, or Nisargadatta, who so many worship as the embodiments of absolute truth and spirituality.

But all the distinction, concepts, and levels in Swamiji’s book?  In a month I will not remember much other than “Everything is Consciousness” and how that is expressed in so many ways in that book.

The strange thing is I entirely dwelled in that state a few weeks ago for four or five days after Michael came and took over my physical chores, and two months before reading Everything is Consciousness, and being shot down by Vedantists that thought I was being blasphemous. Doing nothing, with no movement of mind or body, the I Am sensation of my union with the divine disappeared and all that there was. Was Consciousness. All had dissolved into Consciousness.  There was no inside or outside, no divine versus personal, no I Am, no God within or world without, no joy, no sorrow, just infinite immersion in absolute peace of being at rest in Consciousness as Consciousness.

However, more than anything, I felt the joy in the way this book was written, even more than Shaivism’s broad sweep and poetic expression.