Obama;s Budget would cut Social Security benefits and Medicare

Just as I predicted, Republican President Obama's budget cuts Social Security benefits by $1.8 billion dollars over the next ten years, and cuts Medicare by $400 billion over the same period.

Satsang today, Saturday April 6, 6 PM California time.

Go to satsangwithedji.weebly.com

Sign in twice with the password "edji."

Topic: No idea!  Bring questions.

Needing love

To me re love: 

Edji,

Lately I seem to be continually aware of the most fundamental "decision" I have made in life: The recognition that I needed love, or at least acceptance, and that it was conditional on my providing what was needed or wanted by another. The result can be that I am very supportive for others, but it can also be very manipulative.

My question is: How to best approach this? Make it a sort of inquiry? If so, what to inquire? Does it really matter? Is this all just a distraction?

M.

Ed:

M., Of course you need love.  You are human. There are two sides to this equation: the need to be loved and the need to love.

Personally, I need to have someone to love more than I need to be loved.

When they go together, it is magic.

When I love someone, I just want to do for them all day long. Part of it is I just want them to be happy. Part of it is a desire in to have them love being around me.

Manipulative?  Yes, but also natural. When you love someone, you just naturally want to serve them.

I do the same for my animals. Some of my cats ignore me, but I love them anyway.  The ones that are shy, the ones that don't come to me, I watch them too, and I notice they are always watching me, meditating on me.  They love me, need me, but are shy.

Don't make a problem of it.  Just give more and more and more.  Service, surrender to the other.  This is the Bhaktic path of love and surrender.  Follow it diligently. Accept your need to love or be loved and expand it, not analyze it.

The path of love is not a lower path, second to self-inquiry or jnana (wisdom); but it is an emotionally intense path often filled with storm and noise.  It is not for the faint hearted. It is a path of full involvement in your life and in those around you.

In fact, most people go into a path of emptiness or jnana to get away from the intensity of love and neediness, and even call the path away from love into beingness, nowness, or the Absolute, wisdom.  The idea they convey is that after years of emotional pain and frustration, they recognize they will never be happy in matters of love and bonding and give it up.  

That is what Buddhism is all about: having no needs or desires, especially of love or neediness. But this is not really wisdom: usually it is just an escape from the intensity of emotions, grief and lost love.

True happiness is found when all levels of you, your Self, are discovered and owned by you, including your divine aspects, and this is best accomplished through loving, serving, and self-awareness.

To me:

Hi Ed, I'm deeply grateful for your work and your writing. I have been following your satsangs and writing for a long time. 

Like you, I spent many years "prior to consciousness" dead to the world, with little or no interest in it. The past couple of years I've returned from this, (your writing definitely helped with this) returned to therapy and lots of other things and the sense of wholeness and well being on a human level has definitely increased.

I go through periods where I find myself getting quite entangled with the world again and reading your book recently I feel its helped to restore a balance in me. Without the deepest knowledge of the absolute its hard to meet all the ups and downs of life with an open heart, it just gets too messy and I feel the life and well-being drain out of me. Thank you for all you bring to my life, it's rare I feel such a connection to a teacher these days.

Love, D

A Dialogue With Francis Bennett

The following is a dialogue between Francis Bennett, with whom I have had some communication over the years. Look him up on Facebook. He has deep experience as a counselor and we tend to see things very much alike.

Francis Bennett:

If we are able to watch our fear, our sorrow, our distress, our anxiety whatever it is, we prove by that ability that we are not that which we can observe. We cannot be anything we experience as an object. We perceive our true self simply by being that self.

• Shane Sheila Very good

  2 hours ago via mobile · Like
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  Ed Muzika No, we don't perceive our true self by being that self. We apperceive it, meaning at first we know it is true. It is not an experience, but an intuition, a knowledge. Gradually the feeling grows as an intuition, a conviction, that I am that which has the knowledge and is beyond both experience and knowledge. Beyond, in the sense of prior to.
  
  However, later comes the understanding that we are also that which we perceive, feel, love, and serve. We are everything, both the witness which is a pure knowledge of the unmanifest, and everything in the manifest, including Self as manifest, as the divine, appearing as God, but which is really us.

  2 hours ago · Like · 3
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  Francis Bennett Yes Ed, I agree with you. I think both statements are true on different levels. What I am trying to point to here is our ability to dis-identify from all our distresses, to not feel that the feeling I am feeling right now, no matter how overwhelming, is ultimately "me" or is the entirety of what or who I am. In offering a lot of spiritual direction and pastoral counseling over the years I have found this to be very useful for folks who are feeling overwhelmed and taken over by difficult feeling states. But I don't feel we are essentially in disagreement, just speaking from different perspectives, different angles. If you look at a mountain from one direction you will see a seemingly different mountain than if you look at the same mountain from another direction! 

  about an hour ago · Unlike · 3
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  Francis Bennett The key word in my above comment is that the feeling state is not "ultimately" me. In other words...while you are correct in saying that ALL is ultimately the Self. we are never CONFINED to be any one thing on any absolutr level...Does that make sense? 

  about an hour ago · Unlike · 2
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  Francis Bennett I think Ed you speak here of the "collapse" of the witness. While I know it is true that the witness does eventually collapse, i think for many, being aware of the witness initially can be very skillful and helpful in navigating difficult feeling states that they may be experiencing and feeling overwhelmed by.

  about an hour ago · Edited · Unlike · 3
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  Francis Bennett I should have said," We cannot ULTIMATELY be anything we can observe as an object". However you are right that, since that object arises and ceases in THAT which we are...that object IS INDEED, a temporary manifestation of That also. You were quite right to correct my wording, which is often quite flawed. Sorry!

  about an hour ago · Unlike · 2
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  Paul Schwartz I'm confused--wasn't it Krishnamurti that said the observer and the observed are one--was he pointing to what Ed was pointing to? 

  about an hour ago · Unlike · 3
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  Stephen C. Galleher What a great thread! Both Ed's response and Francis's dialogue with Ed and with himself have elucidated a very tricky and profound point. Thank you, gentleman!

  about an hour ago via mobile · Unlike · 2
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  Ed Muzika I agree with you completely Francis. What I see is a continuum of experiences or "rooms" of identification. Sometime you can be the witness, sometime you can be the emptiness or void that contains all inner phenomena, sometimes you can be the external space that eats up all objects in its oneness. Sometimes you can be a human falling in love with a tree, a cat or a woman. Sometime you can be ecstatic bliss that arises just before the Self reveals itself as the "other," or God inside you. Sometime you can be that arising God energy or goddess within you.
  
  I call it an ability to pass through various rooms of spiritual experience, and freely identify or not with any room or its contents.
  
  I think that some non-traditional Advaitists can all too easily be stuck in a prior to consciousness, witness or Absolute and die there as an emotionless zombie, while a neo Advaitan is caught in the beingness of now as are many Zen practitioners. 
  
  Personally, I now emphasize love, human love as an entrance of Self Realization through recognition of God in another, allowing it to arise in ourselves through true devotion and surrender. Or, becoming aware of inner states of bliss and energy/light that also arise through ecstatic love.
  
  Personally I teach this way more now because I enjoy the beings I meet in this Bhaktic room, and I think these kind of people don't ever become lifeless zombies, but saints who actually are of service to the world.

  about an hour ago · Like · 2
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  Ed Muzika Paul, K. was talking about an experience where there is no apparent boundary between the seer and the seen. They are one. You become one with the sunset, etc. This is just one kind of spiritual experience. One class of experience so to speak. Different teachers emphasize different classes of experience as "ultimate."
  
  I like my students to get to know many classes and choose where they want to spend most time, or let the rooms choose them.

  27 minutes ago · Like · 2
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  Paul Schwartz Thanks for expressing, Ed--and Francis--I've always been curious about this "experience."

  23 minutes ago · Unlike · 1
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  Francis Bennett Yes Ed, I am more and more seeing the wonder of deep integration of the Absolute and relative. This is what you represent here so beautifully! Thank you! 

  13 minutes ago · Unlike · 2
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  Ed Muzika Thank you Francis.

  8 minutes ago · Like · 1
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I want to thank everyone who donated to We Are Sentience since March 26.

Almost $1,800 in donations have been received that allows me to purchase all the cat food necessary for the month.

Thank you so much for your generosity.

Email to me:

To Me re: Self-Realization and Other Awakenings.

Good day, dear Edward! I liked the posts on your blog! My friends gave me a book by Stephen Wolinsky, "I am that I am." I have read a few pages and my brain is wrapped in a pretzel. I'm really tired of all the concepts. You offer something quite different. Living through the heart. I feel different emotions in my heart. I had not paid attention to it. They are real. They are alive. Thank you. With love K.

http://hdcity.net/sr_order.html

Self-Realization and Other Awakenings - Ed Muzika

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