Things gurus don’t tell you

Robert used to embrace uselessness. He used to embrace leaving your job and dropping out.  He would say don’t worry about bills, payments, medical insurance, obligations, etc., just leave the world behind. Don’t worry about the pragmatics of day to day life.

The John Wheelers and Parsons of the world really don’t talk about life during the awakening process or afterwards as all of your cherished beliefs and concepts are blown away.  One day you are ignorant of yourself, the next day you are awakened, self-aware and all problems have disappeared and are resolved.

This is bull.  The process of awakening, losing beliefs, attachments, concepts, and even the belief you are the body causes tremendous changes in your day to day life.  This is a sign you are really changing and awakening.

Relationships fall apart, you no longer love your husband or wife, the idea of being pinned to a 30 year mortgage creates nausea.  The struggle to maintain payments on your BMW, $700,000 house, and student loans becomes too much. The belief in the benevolence of friends and the government go out the window.  You know the wealthy are trying to take more and more from you.  The health care system is rigged to extract the most money from you.

Fox News and MSMBC are both mouthpieces for a partial perspective.  No one speaks to you honestly, they lie a little each word they say so as not to drive you away.  Sometimes they smile and you can feel their hatred.

Strange energies awakening in you and you can’t sleep or you sleep too long.  You don’t talk to the kids anymore because you are immersed in indecision about everything.  You just want to be alone, or you just want to be with someone else or be somewhere else.

All your self-told lies disappear and you are exposed to your own truth more and more, and that which is not part of your truth falls away.

Things no longer unfold as they did before, but unfold in a new and frightening way as your entire past is seen as a lie and yet you still do not see your own truth clearly.

In other words, your daily life goes from a boring certainty, to an insecure emptiness, yet an incredible and frightening aliveness,

Intense practice, or intense involvement with a free teacher creates situations with a lot of out of control emotions, matched at times with an inner deadness, followed by periods of intense self-doubt and self-inquiry.

Do these gurus tell you of this?  Do they warn you of this?

You see, Robert did and incorporated this inevitable collapse of your belief systems and lifestyle, and made it a part of leaving the world behind.  When your whole lifestyle and thought structures are deconstructed due to self-inquiry, self-abidance, or watching one’s thoughts in emptiness, radical changes to one’s outside life are inevitable, as well as to one’s emotional composition and self-boundaries.

In other words, the walls come tumbling down, and chaos reigns for a long, long time. If there is not a bit of chaos, then there is no real change happening on a deeper level. This must be obvious is it not?  One cannot continue in the old lifestyle with the beliefs you had before when everything is being radically questioned and whole new worlds of perception and cognition are opened.

I warn my students of this.  Robert incorporated this falling apart into his teachings and made it a goal, the goal of becoming good for nothing, meaning really not good for anyone or anything in your previous lifestyle.  And, you will be good for nothing until you live your own truth, rather than society’s, your spouse’s, your children’s, or your employer’s “truths.”

Intense practice or intense involvement in the movement towards freedom has to produce such external chaos. Is it not obvious?  Freedom means freedom from your past conditioning and the known.

What Krishnamurti missed however, are all those states and understandings beyond mere recognition that there is no separate ‘I’ or separate doer.  He did not talk of the ecstasies, the awesome Void, the feeling of the sacred, the feeling of surrender to the divine, to one’s own Beloved.  Nor did he speak of rivers of love that move through one’s body and one’s sense of presence.  Nor did he talk of a love so deep that you disappear into the other, or of a void so vast that you fall to your knees in awe and sometimes fear.  He did not talk of the awesome power you feel sometimes when you feel aligned with your own destiny and feel its inevitability.  There is so much that teachers do not tell you, both of the richness and the sadness and desolation you will encounter.

It is like the Matrix Trilogy.  When you take the Red pill, everything changes, enlivens, collapses, becomes chaos, reorders, and you become alive.  But sometimes you crave the Blue pill, to let you return to your old life and its security.  Once you really take the Red pill, you have a tiger by the tail and you cannot let go because he will eat you.

There is a terrible illness of dispassion and greed in China.  Zen Master Seung Sahn said it was no longer a case of bringing Zen to the West, but of returning Zen to its roots in China.  There is a spiritual illness there.

The Voice of Stray Dogs

Photo of the day on The Voice of Stray Dogs: 1137 dogs rescued from ONE truck destined for slaughter for the Chinese New Year in Chongqing.

 — withJo-Andra de Cuba.

Message to me:


Hi Ed,

Water flowing through water, as said Mooji, consciousness flowing through consciousness.


In place of my body there is emptiness, and when someone comes close, or something, I become it.

If I walk along the river, in Bangkok, while on the solid ground, my all inside is moving like if I was on a boat on that agitated river. My stomach wants to throw up, my body looses balance, my heart feels ecstatic.

When I walk on a bridge my all body is sucked down like if I was falling.

If a person comes close to me I start to talk with the same accent as that person, and I feel as if her presence/field takes over the empty space of my body.


When I sit to meditate on the beach, my head becomes filled with the water, I feel I am sitting at the bottom of the sea. So beautiful, so dreamlike.

Ed, what a wonder world you brought me in ! 


Several days before the big realization, exactly 1 year after I started to follow you, you worked on me so much, I would see your face leaving my head several times a day, especially on waking up from nap/sleep.
Without you nothing would have been possible !

And without your teaching of loving every expression of consciousness I would be still lost in the emptiness, not willing to interact anymore with this stupid world.

How lucky I met you, the most complete freedom Teatcher !
And no need to go and catch a parasite in India ! What a saving in flight tickets :)

BUT please, don't stop with me now, I feel I have so much way to go ahead, and it might take the next 20 years or so !

I'd add that a way to love you is to support your help to your helpless kittens, and I think that generosity is a door to open in our heart, through where consciousness can flow in.

What else to say, why even taking time to right this message ?


May be for your love, for your grace Edward. 


The show must go on !


Muzika ! Muzika ! Bhajans ! Bhajans ! Freeeedom !!

Recently people have complained that some weeks I sound like student A, then student B, and wonder where Ed’s central thread went. They ask, “Where is the Jnana, or what happened to the lover?”

I can only say I am much moved and influenced by conversations of those who I am close to and who are burning.  Their burning catches me on fire and I write from my heart whatever comes up.  Each of my “lovers” is in a different place.  One is shedding concepts and conditioning, another is learning to love herself, another has gone entirely beyond the world into the Absolute, and yet another is lost in unending bliss, a rapture from which her body is forgotten.  Another begins to burn brightly in the Rocky Mountains, another is half a world away who always feels my presence.

When they talk to me, I am blown away.

I used to see this with Muktananda.  When someone came to him and spoke with clarity and passion, it was as if he blew in the wind, he bent and surrendered to their shakti, and this juice then became his truth of the moment.  Teacher and student were equal, and he was like clay bent and wriggled into a new form for a moment.  Then moments later someone new came, and if they came with passion, energy, he was transformed again.

Such happens to me.  People come to me and when they burn I see their truth.  I feel their truth.  One is becoming a new Krishnamurti, another is becoming Kali, another becomes Krishna, and there is room in me for each for that moment.

Then I write, and when I write, I express their truth as it unfolds and it appears my central thread is lost.  There process and truth inspire me.  There expressed truth will be of some help to someone, somewhere. 

But the truth is, I have no central thread. I have no truth.  I am there for them, not for me. I feel like I take on the clothes of whomever I talk to at the moment.  Those I talk to most, those are the clothes I wear at the time.

Of course in the center is the untouched, the origin of the manifest world.  All the rest is mind including all the writing that spill from these fingers.  And a few are always with me, inside me, sharing my emptiness, sharing our mutual purpose in the world.  Above all is Robert and Nisargadatta smiling downwards.

Email to me:


It's a noble fight, to try to bring advaita and love together.

I don't know how much you seen of what's out there, but

there's a robotic, forced vibe from many, many teachers.

Even well known ones like adyashanti, for example.  it's

someone who jammed themselves into an advaita model.

took a very human, juicy soul and stuffed it into

a theory on how to be spiritual.

Where's the naturalness?  the ease?

Why don't even the most famous teachers look like

they are comfortable in their own skin?

It's as if one looking to mix advaita with love, with

feeling is leveling with people, saying "c'mon, you're still

a person, whatever level of 'attainment' you've

Achieved."  why arent' more teachers talking about jealousy, anger, sex?

Christ edji, you're on your own.  That's why i say it's a noble

fight.  it's far too easy to be a statue of perfect advaita

purity, whatever the hell that is.

It's phony, it's forced.  And people like me starve to death

around teachers like that.

A note relevant to the previous post about going naked before God.



Some think there is a geat distance between Bhakta and Jnana.  Only in the outward form.  Though Robert is called a Jnani even in the Ramana Ashram, remember his famous story of meeting Ramana.  I don't know whether it occurred when he first met him, or later when walking around Arunachala.


Robert said this story with great passion.  I was there at this Satsang.  He was electric.  He sat on the edge of his chair perched somewhat forward and looked upwards and into the distance, as if he were again seeing Ramana.


He said Ramana and a group of people walked towards him and suddenly he felt complete surrender and devotion.  He felt utter humility and wanted nothing more than to touch the guru's feet and surrender.


He said he took off all of his clothes and dropped at Ramana's feet, totally surrendered.  Totally loving and devoted.


At this point Robert said, "This is how you have to be," as if the story was self-explanatory as to the need for surrender.


Ramana supposedly either grabbed him or told him to arise, I don't remember the story exactly and said, "I have been waiting for you."  I'll bet Ramana did not specifically mean Robert, but he had been waiting for any of the  devotees that showed such devotion and surrender, because these people, these devotees already were close to God and felt the ecstasies of being with the infinite. 

Can you go naked before God?

Some have asked, “Where is Robert Adams in your current teachings?”  Others have been more sarcastic, and have remarked (of me) “Some have ears but do not hear; some have eyes but do not see,” intimating I was around Robert for years but never understood him as deeply as my critic obviously thought he or she understood him.

I will say something here that they will not hear.

Robert taught freedom, not about the absolute, God, Brahman or even Consciousness. His last words at his last Satsang, was only one word, repeated over and over: Freedom;  Freedom; Freedom! But he used concepts and situations to affect the direction a student was heading in, and at Sunday Satsangs, he was pure Ramana.

On Thursday evenings he sometimes went much deeper.  Sometimes someone would ask a question and Robert would go on a roll.  The words that poured out were pure truth, insofar as truth can be expressed in words.  A few of us close to him and maybe a few visitors would be stunned.  Our minds would become weak and then wash away.

For a few minutes he stopped talking about karma, love, the guru teacher relationship, or anything else we could remember.  It was more or less about the Infinite, going altogether beyond knowing and unknowing, going beyond Brahman even.  We were transfixed.  There was a transmission of some sort, an energy, a grace descended.  These were Robert’s true teachings, golden words about that which is beyond concepts, the world, and ANY experience, no matter how transformative or transcendental.

Then he would return to earth and be Robert again.  But we were changed.

The concepts Robert taught about karma, God, oneness or Consciousness itself, would be untaught during a Satsang a week or two later.  He knew all concepts, especially spiritual concepts, were illusory, empty.  Once in a while he would give an entire Satsang talking about the Four Principals, Three understandings, or something like that, and at the end of Satsang he’d become silent for a moment, then announce that all he had just said, all the knowledge and concepts were bullshit.   He didn’t use that term of course, that is mine.  He’d say, “I gave you a story and concepts because that is what you like to hear.”  Robert considered Satsangs, especially Sundays’, to be pure crowd entertainment.

Besides some of those hot Thursday night Satsangs, a few of us met with him weekly or even more frequently on a personal basis, for lunch or a movie.  Here quietly Robert would work on us to help us win our own freedom, either by setting up a situation within the Sangha to make us let go of certain ideas, conditions, desires or ambitions, or by offering concepts opposed to those we held on to.

Robert taught many different methods of meditation, and each in the audience was free to select whichever method they liked most.  But the method he taught most was self-inquiry in its myriad of forms, and self-abidance.  He taught us to go inwards, into our inner emptiness where dwelled the mind, images, emotions and everything we called subjective. There we were to just watch. Watch for the I-thought and find its origin.  Watch the other thoughts come and go.  Look for the subject.

This place is as close as we can come to our true nature in consciousness, but from time to time, he’d say we were beyond even that.  AND SO WE ARE!

You know, so many students say they want that, complete freedom, enlightenment, but in fact they don’t.  They hang onto concepts and exploration of concepts and new experiences. Many, many came for a year or two and thoroughly understood what Robert was saying, took those concepts into the world and the experiences they had with Robert, and became teachers.  Some just left and looked to a new teaching thinking Robert’s teachings lacked something.  Eventually the fire of seeking dies out, and maybe after 10 or 30 years they come to peace and stop seeking.  But in most, even after 30 years there is a hunger to find the real, a final resting place of truth, which is so hard to find because they use the mind and “teacher of the day” to find ultimate rest, which is really discovery of their own true nature which is always with them.

The problem is they have accumulated so many spiritual systems which remain as contaminates of their pure nature, that it is impossible to ever find their Self unless there is some life crisis that shakes them and their belief systems to the core.

To use an analogy, through the years, people accumulate a wide variety of spiritual clothes which gives them some warmth and safety in a cold and harsh world.  But to see the Self, become the Self you are, you need to shed all those clothes. You have to undress and shed all of those hard bought spiritual clothes, the koans, prayers, beliefs in karma, the I Am, the Beloved, concepts of family, guru/disciple, spiritual progress, compassion, and even concepts of transcending. 

This is what I am trying to do with you as Robert did with me: Undress you until you become naked, exposed for you and all to see clearly.  Nothing is hidden, no private treasure is kept in the closet not to be touched by self-inquiry.  Everything is thrown away.

But this often brings terror.  “I have no clothes, no security, no stability, what am I to do?  I am frightened and terrified.  I need someone, something to hang on to.  I need the warmth of soft teachings and maybe a father or mother figure as a teacher.  I need to feel safe.”  This is the dilemma of the sincere student.  He comes looking for the Absolute and finds only that the teacher wants him to become naked before God and his own Self.  

The teacher says, “I am here.  I can take you, but can you receive? Can you stay by me and walk into Nothingness without all your clothes, books and concepts?  Are you courageous enough to drop the mind and tolerate the cold harshness of the world in order to discover who you are?”

So few are. Robert knew this and dished out Advaita concepts on Sundays and maybe deeper concepts of no concepts on some Thursdays.  He sold a lot of spiritual clothes, because for some, that is all they could take.

Even I failed with Robert. I failed to move to Sedona to be with him through his last days.  I was terrified and even got deathly ill when I got close to Sedona.  My mind and my entire beingness rebelled and failed me, the Self.  I could not take Robert’s cooking anymore, his “games,” his created situations, and the lack of security I felt going there.

Robert, on the other hand was fearless.  Before he left he told me he would be betrayed by all the people who were trying to seduce him to leave Los Angeles with promises of financial support, and support of Satsang. 

One by one these people came to me and told me how they were going to help Robert and also me to get settled and find a job.  I reported what they said to Robert, and he frankly told me that they would never keep their word.  He told me that every one of them would betray him, yet he went to them knowing this.

This turned out to be truth.  They did not support him as they promised and finances were always desperate.  Robert often called me or I him just to talk, and he continually wanted me to come, but I could not.  I was afraid because there was nothing there for me.  The people there made it clear I was not wanted.  They wanted Robert all to themselves alone. All the former promises disappeared once Robert was their captive.  Yet he went into the unknown, knowing this, and out of fear, I did not follow.

So I ask, do you trust me to take you to an unknown goal of freedom?  I won’t even take you to the safety of the “Absolute,” or “Brahman,” or “God,” for these are just words to give comfort.  Are you willing to shed all your concepts, beliefs and security to enter the unknown?  Or like most, are you more interested in the excitement of buying new clothes, and shopping at the niche shops of Advaita, Sufism, mystical Christianity, Taoism, Jainism, or being with an energy guru?

Sufism and the Jnana traditions

Susie: I just spent time with L. Vaughan-Lee who holds to 'nothing' (eg. knows all is made up, that Absolute Truth destroys everything you ever thought or had any meaning) and yet at the same time he works with the 'concepts' that bring 'life', 'light', the 'sacred' and 'meaning' consciously into being. The 'Beloved' is such a concept. He rightly says that without 'nurturing' a 'sacred' 'substance' of 'creation' life is exactly as Shakespeare describes: "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, a tale full of sound and fury told by an idiot, signifying nothing". just dispensing with concepts and passivity does not necessarily bring life alive or alight.

Ed: Susie, what is the “Beloved?”

A feeling of a want (?) like a desire, intuition (?) is what has drawn me, from a sense of fatigue of worldly experiences, to those Teachers and even to your sphere on fb Ed. My experience of 'the Beloved'? how to do this justice in a few words on a fb thread. nothing is really it. a weary feeling of so little in this world having any real interest, knowing somewhere how it is to feel when something is real, alive,and truly flowing, and looking to see this everywhere and in everyone, some days feeling close and seeing a little of this brightness, aliveness, beauty and connection, but often feeling sorrow, limitation,suffering, disappointment as I look outwards, and feeling more connection and peace when I am quiet and turned inwards and disappear somewhere else so to speak or when going to sleep in bed. A feeling of wanting to give myself to this something and little else.

Ed:  

I see Susie, you were speaking to Vaughan's concept of Beloved. Then relating your experience of wanting something like the Beloved inside yourself. Thank you for sharing that, Still, the "Beloved" itself is not defined or shared as experience except the search for the Beloved. It is still a concept, and you have learned Vaughan's and Tweedie's concepts of spirituality, which you shared. But the only experience shared was of dissatisfaction and wanting a resting place, or "home" or the return of love from something inside yourself, so you are compelled to turn within. .... This is exactly the same instruction provided by Ramana, Robert Adams, Nisargadatta and I. Look within. Look for the I. Immerse in the I-sense, the I-Am when found, and love that I Am and it loves you back a hundfred fold. Beloved = I Am. But do either speak of going beyond the Beloved, beyond experience and beyond consciousness itself? Do either speak of finding God, grace, or the Beloved in another human, in the personal? Or is it all impersonal?

Susie:  you mean Tweedie and LVL? Will reflect if either of them speak of going beyond consciousness? certainly they relish nothing more than absorption in emptiness where nothing remains, Tweedie calls it a state beyond the mind. You are the knowledge, the understanding and you are one.

Ed:  No, not emptiness. Emptiness is still an experience. One abides in emptiness, it interpenetrates one's own existence and sense of presence. I am talking of that which lies beyond Consciousness altogether. Beyond form and emptiness, emptiness and form. This is of what Nisargadatta speaks, and Robert at times. For Consciousness is temporary, impermanent, not the final rest state of the unborn.

Susie:  LVL speaks of Absolute Truth as completely other, terrifying, no words, concepts, destroying everything, all meaning, all concepts, unimaginable, where nothing you believe exists. He speaks from experience.

Ed:  The Jnana Tradition:

Susie, now that he has given you that concept, is that something you want?  If so, you have borrowed someone else's experience, which he put in concepts for you to grasp and make your own, and you want to go after his experience. 

But what if you never have his experience?  What if it is unique to him?  What if your path, your body/mind situation inherently has different and perhaps even more profound experiences laid out for you, if but you would take them?  ..

Each human is unique.  Look at those of whose experiences we read, U.G. Krishnamurti, Bernadette Roberts, Segal, Robert Adams, Mother Teresa.

Each has had such profoundly different experiences from each other even at the end of their lives.  Yet our minds want security and we look for uniformity in their experiences and uniformity of understanding. For if there is no uniformity, what is the point of following someone as an authority to reach your own ultimate end and truth?

What I ask is why do you want to walk down someone else's path to go to where you may not have a ticket.

Because you distrust your own ability to fill that sense of lacking and wanting, you will follow someone else's ideas, concepts, exercises, etc., which may take you even further from your own destiny.

But this may be your destiny, to follow him and to succeed or fail at his mission or to find your own down that path.  I understand that.

But there is another way, which is to take that wanting and sense of lacking, go within and find out where that takes you.  This requires more courage because there are no signposts of concepts and instructions to guide you unless you go to the kind of teacher who keeps taking your concepts away rather than give you more as a GPS through other concepts.

I wish you well Susie.  I feel you have a bright future.  But I think it could be brighter once you let go of the idea you need to add more concepts in order to get to less.  This is a more frightening path because there is nothing to hang onto except faith in yourself or in a guide that can take everything away from you.  If you can get Vaughan to guide you in this way, on a personal basis rather than just learning his presenting concepts, I think your path will more quickly unfold.

I just got home from VAC West LA where Lakshmi's oncologist thoroughly examined her and she had an ultrasound of her GI track. 


No sign of the cancer returning!  She has been on chemo now for three years and three months.


Her problem is stomatitis, which is a painful inflammation of the mouth and gums of unknown origin and with no known cure.  There are many ways to try to control it, and you have to keep trying until you happen on a method that works.


Steroids are no longer working to control it, so she has been losing weight.  She is now 5-1/2 pounds instead of 7, which she was nine months ago.


Now we are giving her SQ fluids, which means 100cc of lactated ringer's solution injected under the skin, a new course of an antibiotic in case there is a new primary bacterial infection of her mouth, alpha interferon which had to be procured from Europe as it does not have FDA approval, and depending on blood tests, in a few days we will be trying a new experimental anti-inflammatory medication.


In the meantime she is receiving a narcotic pain killer so it does not hurt so much when she eats.


Already, she has improved a bit, preening herself and eating.  It was a long trip for she and I, but very much worth it.

Every day in the morning, Zen master Ruiyan would slap himself in the face and say, "Don't be fooled by anything today!" To which he responded, "No I won't."


What does this mean?


It means he was entering the last phase of self-mastery. He was not accepting any concept.  In fact, ANY concept that arose, he would cut it down.


After one has attained a sense of completeness, you realize that contentment comes from not accepting anyone's "truth" except your own. And, you yourself have no truth at all, no concepts, no understanding, and as soon as anyone throws a concept at you, you knock it away, leaving you just walking forward, straight ahead, not fooled by any "truth."


This was said even more cogently by the Sixth Patriarch, Hui Neng, who said, "The only truth is that there is no truth; beware even of this truth."



So many cannot imagine living in freedom where the only "book" they read is their own intuition in the moment, an intuition derived from throwing all books, teachings and teachers away.

Oneness, duality and living from the heart

The “path” is quite complicated, is it not?  Looking and searching both without, in teachers, books, and teachings, as well as inwards in meditation, psychotherapy, and even drugs for something….  But what is it?  New “spiritual” experiences, finding love, either in receiving or giving it, finding a “nondual” state, either for a moment or permanently, or a sense of completion and coming home?  Confusion reigns.

But this is all in the mind, this sense of lacking, needing something more.  Even with a lover or guru, it is fixation on the other as an image in the mind attached to a feeling near the heart that we interpret as longing, needing, jealousy.

But, when we are in no mind, when the mind drops and we are in the heart itself rather than watching the heart-sense, life is effortless. Perfect, accepting.

But is it possible really to love another unless we allow dualism?  Without dualism the other is me or us, and from this position, we can only see ourselves and all emotions that arise are from our own limited me sense.  The One is no more than “me” enlarged to include everything, including our beloved. Our beloved, whatever or whomever, is me.

To truly love another, we must be able to see them as the “other,” with their separateness not dependent on “me,” with their own wants and emotional needs, their own life trajectory.  We have to be able to see them as they are and even better, to see them as they see themselves.  We need to feel this space between us even if only to see the “stuff” we each project into the other.

If we live only in the non-dual awareness, we really don’t accept the other as separate, but only part of us or me, and the danger is that my beloved’s actions may take part of me away from me.  I might lose my love of myself were she to go.  Thus the struggle to maintain self in relationship becomes a desperate clinging to I and all that is me.

It is a continuous learning process, this living in various identifications, whether it be unitary nondual consciousness with it continuing clarity and beauty, or a life of dualism, where only there can you have true relationships, or living from the heart where both come together.

Make Love Not War on the Mind

Hello Ed, my name is A. I am seeking from guidance from you because i have not yet had an encounter with my own spiritual teacher in my everyday life. Since I was about 16 years old,  I realized with progressing intensity that awakening from the dream of my ego is the only thing worth ever doing in my life, and the only way to truly attain lasting happiness, peace, and the end of suffering.

Now, years later I sit here, with still many questions. Many insights have been imparted to me over the past few years, though never lasting peace, never a moment of truly seeing through my dense false self has occurred. I have realized many profound things especially recently that make me feel closer than ever to awakening but I feel as if something is missing in guiding me to true seeing; and I think what is missing is a teacher that can guide and help lead me to clarity. I would like your opinion on this- how necessary is it for an individual to have a spiritual teacher in this path in order to truly awaken?

With passing years, I realize with more clarity that the external world is completely unsatisfactory and that ultimately it is suffering-- even my pleasures are suffering. The sense of running out of time is growing along with the sense that my time is of precious concern and that it is urgent to do all that I can to awaken because awakening is the beginning of actually living. I know I have spent my entire life living in the delusions of the mind, and the desire is finally becoming strong enough to break free from these bonds. However, I feel that alone, without a sangha or a teacher, this intensity of desire for truth wanes out. I feel like I go in and out of being lost in the trance of mind and clinging to worldly pleasures, sufferings, and the mind eventually pulls me into its vortex and trances me into the belief that I have other more important things to do than discover the truth of my own being.

I find I am seeing things much more clearly with the practice of self inquiry, yet I find self inquiry hard to keep up consistently throughout the day as it exhausts me and the mind finds way to sabotage my efforts. I know definitely that I have all of the potential in the world to awaken to my true nature in this lifetime and I feel that  clarity is not far away as I see (intellectually) that I am not actually a me or a person very clearly; yet I am still identified with A. due to the magnetic pull and trance of the ego. How do you suggest I can intensify my progress in my life? I feel that this burning desire to awaken will not be constant unless I nourish it in certain ways.

Thank you,
A.

Ed:

  

There are two paths to where you are going.  The path of Jnana and the path of Bhakti.

You seem inclined to the former.

I think you would benefit from guidance from what you say.  Many flee from it, not wanting to give up any autonomy.

Attached are three documents.  One I wrote on self-inquiry, called Hunting the I.  The second is the Nisargdatta Gita, which is a great meditation manual taken from Nisargadatta. The third is the path of Sri Ramana, Part I.

Print out the Gita and read no more than 2 pages at a time.  Ponder the meaning.  Then look into yourself for the I-Am sense.  Do this morning and evening for half an hour.

Read chapters 7-8 of the path of sri ramana, and my hunting the I for further directions on self inquiry.

We will start at the beginning with basics--the method, rather than with theory.

Tell me about your meditation experiences and self-inquiry.  Try writing in paragraphs to make it easier for me to read. 

A: 

I am very ready for your guidance. The sense that I can no longer do this alone is becoming stronger.

I will do exactly as you have told me to do with the three documents, thank you for them.

My experiences with meditation and my own spiritual practice are as follows:

I feel I have more patterns of pain and fear that arise with thoughts and emotions than others, perhaps due to karma, or whatever it may be.

Because of this, I have never found success or much interest in breathing meditations, counting meditations, one pointed meditations, etc. because of the strong energetic pull of these thoughts and emotions that are simply too deeply ingrained and distracting.

I tried for some time, methods of meditation to quiet my mind such as breathing, until I realized that the attempt of quieting the mind was simply a means of controlling the mind and its thoughts temporarily. There came a point that I finally wished to ultimately see through these thoughts altogether, and extinguish my suffering, rather than manage them.

I eventually stumbled upon self inquiry, and a light went on. I knew this was most likely for me, the most rapid and effective method for  to awaken. It deeply resonated with me, simply because the deeper I got into it, the more the curiosity for the truth was fueled.

So I began reading with diligence Robert Adams, Ramana, Nisargadatta, and Adyashanti. Each one of their teachings solidified the knowing that if I simply look deeply into myself and inquire into what the thing called "me" is that is actually having all of these experiences, that eventually all of the false constructs of my mind would crumble as the false self called "me" that holds it all together is finally seen through.

So I had this realization, and since then, as I mentioned, my spiritual practice and intensity has waned in and out, as it had not clearly hit me until recently that the external world could never ever satisfy my yearning for peace and happiness.

So over this past weekend I spent my time in hours of silent sitting at a Zen Buddhist Monastery and this realization that I had no other options left became more palpable. I know now that even though the mind may deceive me temporary, the only path to happiness, fulfillment, and true peace and rest is to awaken.

So my method of spiritual practice and meditation is mainly this: either I practice self inquiry asking questions such as: who am i? where am  I located? who feels this? who is the sufferer? to whom do these thoughts come? etc.

Or I simply sit in silence and observe the workings of my mind with the attempt to not get involved in them,  simply sitting as awareness, looking  objectively at my thoughts and feelings as they arise.

I've noticed that I have a lot of fear inside of me, which affects me deeply on a daily basis.

This  path really began at a young age with the deep nagging fear that arose with the questioning of any meaning at all in this life.

Anxiety pervaded my being at the age of 16 when I truly realized that every single thing I had taken to be true about myself, life, God, everything and anything might not be true, because I saw that thoughts are not to be trusted, and I saw that the entire world was run by people's thoughts and I was supposed to believe all of them. I was supposed to believe my own thoughts and everyone else's and live of off blind faith that this was all there was.

So this intense fear, doubt, and anxiety led me to the search for real truth in this life, and I think that is the fuel of my path. I agree that you are right, the path of Bhakti is something that does not resonate with me and it is simply the yearning to know the final truth of this life, so that I can finally be at rest, which is what continually drives me.

That and the fact that my thoughts and feelings and this separate sense of self have caused me much suffering in this life and I no longer want to suffer.

Even the worldly pleasures that I have always taken solace in for my whole life in order to escape from suffering are being realized to also be suffering due to their inherent unsatisfactory nature.

Thank you Edji,

A.

Edji:

One hint:  Don't go to war with your mind.  Make love to it.

Instead of looking for pleasure in things external, love all that presents itself within.

Don't watch it as an enemy to be rejected and mastered, watch it as you would a lover, interested, fascinated, open, accepting. Don’t just watch it with indifference; watch it like you would watch a playful kitten.  Delight in its antics and this way you will know it much better.

Then is easily reveals all of its secrets.  When you really, really know the mind, have cared for it, cultivated it, it drops away in importance.  It is after if you already had two pieces of cake, and you really don’t care about a third.

If you watch with indifference, it can take a long, long time for it to drop in importance without it coming back and grabbing you. Indifference is a lot like repression, and the repressed always comes back when least expected.

When you love the mind or the I Am, you regress with it, become little with it as it is in a pure state.  Then you grow up with it inside all over again, just as you did from  ages 5-12 or so.  This time the relationship is different.  Better. More complete and healed.

The same with self-inquiry. Seek the sense of I, of I-Am A, the sense of existence, of presence.  

Then love it while you watch it.  This way there is no dryness.  This way you follow your beloved, yourself.  That is, add a little Bhakta to your self-inquiry.

Download some of the Krishna Das and Muktananda chants from wearesentience.com

Put them in an iPod or MP3 player.  Listen to them an hour a day.  Your life will grow sweeter, and the dryness will disappear. Then motivation will not fail. You will run to meditation then.

(THIS IS A RARE STUDENT. LOOK AT THE QUALITY AND CLARITY OF THE WRITING, AS WELL AS THE FOCUS AND CLARITY OF PURPOSE.)

John:

Jesus, i just read dennis' comment to your post of the last satsang. it seems like everyone has jumped on you.  i guess he thought you were irreverent to krishnamurti.

I don't know.  you take a lot of shit.

People suggested you have an online website---'ok'

Do it like this---'ok'

not those old yogananda songs edji, krishna das---'ok'

Mute your mic edji, we don't want to hear you---'ok'

I'm not too cool with you absorbing all the shit, including my own.

I'm not a happy camper edji.  i've got a lot of anger.

I also feel, in regards to you, like an ungrateful, spoiled child. Do whatever you do.

People will never appreciate anything, ever.

Ed:

      John, it is all bliss.  The movement itself is all bliss.

     Drop into your heart, and watch from emptiness.  

     The first day that the commotion started, many things were happening, not just the leaving.  Many, many little crises with financial accounts, contacts, and an attempted hacking of my website, etc.

      I felt attacked, like "negative energies" were coming my way.  I even felt fear for the first time in years.  The next day all was normal again.

 Then something miraculous happened.

I began to feel an intense love for this breaking process, and for a person I know.  This accelerated until last Monday, a week ago, when I felt an intense love growing within me, and with it an internal light, a column of brilliant white light extending from the bottom of my spine through the top of my head.

It was like a powerful dynamo of love.  I felt like God was loving the world through this body/mind and felt expanded a dozen-fold.

Gradually the intensity of the love grew immensely stronger and I felt a continuous ecstasy, radiating love into the world.  There was a reshuffling in the Sangha and I delighted in it, welcomed it, and felt bliss in it.

Finally, some movement in the Sangha.  It had grown static.

For four days I burned in this ecstasy, and things came and went.  I met two students for dinner Friday evening and they felt burned and ecstatic by my energy.

Finally, yesterday for the first time I returned to normal then went the other way, towards a feeling of desolation and despair for half a day.

This is all part of my process of reentering the world teaching different teachings.

It is a continuously wondrous experience.


Nothing is static.  Everything comes and goes, but I remain, really untouched even by the ecstasies and the desolations.