Dear James,
It’s been about a year since I last emailed you and I thank you with gratitude for your responses. I have been following your advice: “take a stand in awareness” for the past year keeping it that simple. Trusting absolutely in the self (limitless, unborn, undying ordinary awareness) . Every day, I read a portion of the Essence Of Enlightenment or go to your website and review the satsangs. I stopped reading other books on Vedanta etc…because it created more confusion than clarity.
James: Keeping it simple, daily, and exclusive is the proper way to do Self inquiry, Don. I’m not surprised that you have been greatly served by this great teaching. Good for you!
A lot of the last year is spent being aware of my thoughts, feelings, actions and words. Being aware that very little of life is under the jiva’s control and that the best choice of all that arises within awareness is to gently bring this entity back towards awareness away from absorption in the jiva.
James: Yes, gently bringing one’s attention to one’s Self in an appropriate and beneficial use of jiva’s free will. Good for you!
Thoughts-emotions have now become objects, clouds floating in the sky. They come – they go. They have lost their stickiness. It seems the choice is to put my awareness on them or not. An example: a thought may arise to eat. I put my awareness on a certain food and then on cooking the food. I go back and forth between being aware of cooking or absorbed in cooking as the doing occurs. Sometimes my heart opens beautifully and from an experiential perspective there’s nothing more amazing. However from this came the dangerous pull to be in this state more and more and ultimately I tried to force it with intentionality. It became a binding vasana so I just kept going to back to taking a stand as awareness. If my heart opened then good. If it didn’t open then good. Whatever comes, comes. Whatever goes goes. Stay in awareness.
James: Seeing through the experiential trap is a great blessing, Don. Good for you! And the solution is…ta ta!…taking a stand as awareness. Your “heart” is you but you, awareness, are not the heart. Being/awareness, is always open so you have nothing to gain from an open heart. When “taking a stand” is no longer necessary, the heart melts into you and ceases to exist as anything other than you.
And you are also successful because you apply the karma yoga view to your experience. Good for you! It is strange that you feel that karma yoga seems complicated because you expressed karma yoga perfectly when you said, “If my heart opened, then good. If it didn’t open, then good. Whatever comes, comes. Whatever goes goes.”
So when I read your book and get into karma yoga, it just seems all so complicated to me and has a tendency to regress me back to the doer state. I try to live the qualifications/values – it seems forced.
So here’s my basic summary: Life is a beautiful zero sum game. You can’t win. You can’t lose…you can only play.
James: That’s karma yoga, Don. It neutralizes the one who seeks to gain and who fears loss.
Isvara creates the game we play and we have limited choice in the role and Isvara’s is in charge of the winning and the losing. Jivas have the joy of playing without being the determiner of the results and it’s such a beautiful gift to not control the outcome, nor people. Jivas can just play in joy without worry!
James: That’s karma yoga, Don. It’s the karma yoga that removes the worry. Karma yoga is just knowledge of Isvara, the karma/dharma field. The karma/dharma field is the field of karma, life. Living universal values is the action side of karma yoga.
The ultimate jiva experience is love. This opening of the heart which can be watched or with attention immersed in. But to try and have this pushes it further away. To need and want it pushes it further away. To be the watching awareness, enjoy it when it comes and not miss it when it goes nor try to force it back.
James: Yes. As awareness you are whole and complete so there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Existence shining as awareness is your nature. Love is fulness, completeness. It is bliss. The Self is sat (existence), chit (consciousness), ananda (bliss). Reflected love you call the heart. It opens and it closes because it is subject to the play of the gunas. When sattva guna predominates the heart is full of you and open to everything. When rajas/tamas predominate, the heart closes. But you are love. You are the heart. The scripture’s words are “parama prema svarupa.” Prema means love, but not the love of objects. It means unchanging (parama) love.
I am real as reflected awareness – the jiva – but the I, me, my, mine story has lost its stickiness. It’s there and more personal than observing a tree or a car or a squirrel but it’s lost its control as the source of my happiness or sadness.
James: You are real as the reflection because one ray of light isn’t different from all rays of the sun. When you know that, nothing sticks to you. Feelings don’t stick, opinions and beliefs don’t stick, people don’t stick. Nothing sticks. You are Teflon. The next stage is to see that there is no I and mine for awareness because there is only you, awareness.
I do and there’s limited choice but I’m not the doer. More and more things have become effortless. As if it’s happening, yet there’s no me making it happen. I also have a mental process occurring that tries to avoid using I, me, my or mine when I write or converse but it seems unavoidable in expressing myself.
James: I wrote what I wrote in the paragraph above before I read your statement that you are working to remove the me and mine, which is excellent. You can’t remove the “I” because you are the “I.” There is only one “I.” There is only one true word and it is I. All modifiers don’t apply. If you only say “I” everyone understands. If you add anything, you’re in the apparent reality. Things may be true and they may not be true there. So in that world you just play.
I’m 62 ears old. I know death will come. But what dies is a temporary abode in a physical body, thoughts, feelings about people places and things. Not I which is unborn and undying.
James: Amen.
That’s where I am after a year. And it’s been a pretty amazing shift. Hoping for your thoughts.
James: My thoughts: Isvara loves you. You had the discrimination to keep it simple and do it right so you get the fruit, which is immortal bliss. Yes, these sound like big words but they aren’t big or small. They are the truth. If existence shining as awareness had a mouth, it could honestly say “I am immortal bliss.”
The next thought is: if you have a little extra dosh it would be nice if you made a contribution to ShiningWorld. 🙂
Love,
James
I will gladly do that and thank-you!
