Stop Caring So Much
Mind Management
Vedanta says in a nutshell that your true nature is nondual Awareness, you are whole and complete, you lack nothing. There is nothing wrong with you except who you think you are. And even then, there is nothing wrong with who you are not. So where’s the problem? It should be easy – what better news could there be than you are unborn and never die? We could tell you as the Neos do, that you are the Self, end of story. Nothing else exists. A friend and long-time inquirer wrote to us asking when are we moving past the subject object teaching, onto all is Consciousness? That brought a smile.
Unless you are highly advanced and have totally assimilated nonduality, there is some fine print to address. The you that you are not, meaning the body/mind and story you take to be you, does not give up without a fight. Look at your own experience and see if this is not true. I know it has been for me. It may not be real, but the jiva program stands in the way of the assimilation of nondual vision. And for this, you need guna knowledge.
We get so tired of delivering the bad news, and the guna teaching is the least fun part of self-inquiry, sad to say, because it addresses the make-up of the conceptual ego identity. It would be great if we could spend this time entertaining you by unfolding the nondual teachings, and talk endlessly about the qualifications and motivations required for self-inquiry, karma yoga and upsana yoga, none of which are necessarily challenging for the ego.
While karma is not good news for the ego, it can get on board with the idea because its common sense knowledge that you are not in control of results of action. But guna knowledge – that’s hard work. Which is why most other teachings skip it. Which means skipping the whole teaching on Isvara. Unfortunately, there is no freedom from or for the jiva without understanding Isvara, which entails understanding what makes up the whole field of experience, and your particular life experience: the gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas. These three energies or forces make up everything in the apparent reality and all give rise to very predictable thoughts and emotions. While we cannot change the gunas, we can manage their relative proportions with knowledge of them and how they function. This is covered extensively in James’ book the Yoga of the Three Energies, and in countless satsangs on the Shiningworld Website.
Mind management is the key to a happy life, and to apply it, we need guna knowledge. It is such an important topic because without it, our mind goes from friend to foe. Our reality, which is whatever experience we are having, becomes fraught with emotion and therefore, a highly agitated and/or, dull, mind. When it comes to things that trigger the mind, it often loses its ability to discriminate, unless we have a firm hold on managing the gunas.
The Vedanta teachings inform us upfront about the guna teaching, and that it is the best teaching to understand our psychology, or jiva make-up. But it also tells us that it is an advanced teaching. To have it unfolded, the inquirer needs to have assimilated the first stages of inquiry mentioned above. But why is this so? If the gunas explain the energies or forces that are behind our genetic psychological blueprint, that which makes up the DNA of our life experience, and if this is what holds everyone up in terms of actualizing Self-knowledge, why not teach the gunas right up front? The reason is simple.
The conceptual jiva makeup is what we all struggle most with in the application of nondual teachings because it is the most guarded and hard to access repository of ignorance. Ramji and I were talking this morning about laughter being such a powerful way to disarm the ego, and that we all need to stop taking our ‘not’ selves so seriously. But laughter, like inspiration, while wonderful, is not capable of doing the heavy lifting needed to disarm the ego completely. Laughter and inspiration will take us to the door of our inner ego sanctum, maybe even through the door. But it will not likely keep us going through it when the going gets tough.
Last Sunday Rory gave us the most inspiring talk we have had on our zoom Sundays in a long time. He is such a pure and beautiful instrument for Self-knowledge that he could move people into samadhi in total silence. He shared his story with us to show us an example of the teachings in action. But he would be the first to tell us that while it is very important to be inspired, unless we follow up the inspiration with action by putting the teachings into practice, like any other experience, inspiration ends. And our personal ignorance will be perfectly intact, looking for more inspiration.
People who study motivational talkers says that the best of them leave behind at best a three week window for the meat of their talks to be assimilated. After that, it is lost. It is no different with Vedanta. Showing up for satsang, reading the scripture, and being a good inquirer is important. But what matters is the application of the teachings to your life.
This is where is gets tough. Nobody likes to face the deeper aspects of their psychology because its not fun and not funny. The fear based ego run by rajas and tamas takes itself very seriously, and is very sensitive. It clings desperately to its identity, and even the slightest threat to it is perceived as an attack. It immediately lines up its defenses, denials and counter-attacks. So what is it that will keep us going when our ego identity is under threat?
If humour and inspiration are not enough, the only other option is psychology or Self-knowledge. While psychology offers many therapies that definitely help remove a lot of our psychology detritus, it can only go so far to prepare the mind for self-inquiry because it does not have a means of knowledge that explains the gunas. The ideal methodology is to combine psychology with the guna teaching, which few if any traditional psychologist do. Our good friend John Baxter, who is a qualified psychiatrist and Vedanta teacher, is doing this. He has agreed to give a talk soon on one of our Sunday satsangs.
Facing the hidden ego self is a scary journey to embark on, one we would all much prefer skipping over. But it can’t be avoided. Our good friend Sarah shared her facing up to the deepest shadow aspect of her jiva identity in a satsang I recently posted, and we salute her for it because it takes courage to be transparent. Most of us will fight tooth and nail to hide that part of ego identity, not only to ourselves but especially to everyone else. Sarah said to afterwards that she was worried that her account of her experience might scare some people off because it was so harsh. And it may well do that. While not everyone is such a hard nut to crack, to use Sarah’s own words, if we want to be free of the jiva identity, we all must face the parts of ourselves that we like least and holds us back.
So it takes Self-knowledge and a lot of guts. We need to be so tired of the mind and all its defenses that we are prepared to commit to vanquishing the minotaur, the monster, at the heart of the labyrinth of the mind, and slay it for good with Self-knowledge. The good news is that your ego is not unique. It’s like every other ego – and in fact, it can be said that there is only one ego and we all share it. All egos are manufactured in the same factory – Isvara’s Causal body. They feel personal because they make up our personal story, but in fact, all egos are impersonal. So relax, don’t take your ‘not’ self so seriously.
All our issues, whatever they may be, are highly predictable and work out in the same way for everyone. It is not easy, and you will feel very vulnerable and maybe even a bit unhinged when the ego makeup starts to unravel, but stick with it. Observe how the body feels when this topic is approached, see the resistance forming in the mind.
I have shared my story about facing this part of my jiva identity, as has Sarah. It was not fun, and it was not over. Recently, another very subtle hidden aspect emerged, and I will share that with you too.
Stop Caring Too Much
It is always hard to know for sure the ‘truth’ of anything in mithya because none of it is real – meaning, always changing. Thoughts appear in the mind, the endless cycling of the gunas push and pull it this way and that, feelings come and go. What does it all mean? Not much. To the observer, Me/Self, it means nothing. Just experiences, all of which end. Trying to make sense of any of it is often futile because it’s a zero sum. Each mind is a kingdom known only to itself, and also, often, especially unknown to itself. Known only by the Self.
Isvara created a situation in my life this week which brought up an ego issue that remained hidden. It was ostensibly about perceived disrespect from someone I care about, and who is close to us. The motivation to respond to the situation for me was that humility is the hallmark of a free person, and arrogance the flag of the ego, of ignorance, which is true. I had to learn that lesson the hard way a while back, and it was not fun for the poor ego. Most of us have arrogance to some degree because the ego is a fear thought, and it needs to be protected in a world that is threatening because it is mostly unknowable.
Arrogance with its attendant superiority is a samskara that is hard to accept and come to terms with because the ego very much wants to hold onto its good opinion of itself. Nobody likes to see the less than fabulous parts of the psyche. But the things most hidden from us must be rooted out for humility to operate as a function of freedom from the jiva identity. I have spoken at length about what I call the Duryodhyana factor, and recently posted the satsang with Sarah mentioned. It can be scary for the ego to ‘go there’.
The humility I speak of and we all need to develop, if moksa is the aim, is not self-abasement but is rooted in Self-knowledge. It is rajas and tamas in complete balance with sattva. It is the cognizance of the zero sum nature of life in the apparent reality and gives us the ability to see everything as the same, as the Self, that no-one is superior or inferior to anyone. It just is. It creates a mind that understands and has compassion for the sensitivity of the ego-identity, so treats everyone the same, with kindness, gratitude, transparency, and friendship. Until we face the most hidden part of our ego identity, this kind of humility is usually not accessible to us.
However, upon deeper inquiry into the experience of the jiva in the situation mentioned, I found there was hurt. The hurt came from the attachment to being a ‘carer’. A lifelong investment in caring too much for ‘others’, and along with it, the expectation that those cared for would respond in an appropriate way. I.e., showing caring in a way my jiva identity understands it. But what Isvara quite regularly shows me is that most people cared for do not care, at least, not in the way one expects them to. See how rajas creates expectations, and tamas denies them?
The obvious downside is the loss of dispassion when the one cared about behaves in a seemingly uncaring way. The mind registers disrespect, which may or may not be there, and this causes hurt. And what is hurt, if not the ego? It is easy to see the limitation in this ‘caring’ tendency as a function of the limited ego if Self-knowledge is applied to it. The fact is, how can we ever know what another is feeling or not feeling? As the Self, we are all that is known and knowable. But in the world of experience, even with Self-knowledge, it is hard to know anyone well. We all have our own peculiar inner world with its known or unknown psychological makeup.
Why should anyone care for us, and for that matter, why should we care about anyone, either? James had a realization when he was quite young that actually, nobody really cares about anyone but themselves. He was the first born and very well cared for while I was the tenth child and not so well cared for. My conditioning was all about putting others first. Caring became part of my nature, but essentially, everything we do is for our own agenda. Being a carer made me feel good.
We all think we are so unique, and our life stories do seem to proclaim that. But there is only one ‘jiva’ and one ‘ego’, with one ‘story’ and we all share it. We are all a mixed bag, and that bag consists of universal guna generated thoughts and tendencies, positive and negative. How easily Maya fools, even when we think we know ourselves. Our ‘not’ selves. Things seem to happen. We get drawn in, or not.
Maybe our assessment of our experience is true to the object of our experience. And maybe it’s not. Who can tell? It’s all a strange dream. Dispassion kicks in if Self-knowledge is operating, and doesn’t if it is not. When situations arise where our ‘caring’ is not appreciated, dispassion is often not accessible because of hurt feelings. Karma yoga fails, which temporarily obscures access to Self-knowledge, which is very unpleasant, even for a moment.
Kindness towards others is an important sattvic value to uphold. I will not stop caring because it is my nature to do so. But caring without karma yoga, or caring too much carries emotional ego hooks. Freedom from the jiva means I am free of the need for any result. Though we all want to be respected, and society would fall apart if respect for ourselves and ‘others’ did not function, our subjective interpretations always stand in the way without mind management. If we are unconscious of our unconscious conditioning, the mind will create its own story about everything.
Respect is not something that can be expected. And anyway, what does it matter if someone does not care, or disrespects ‘me’? I am not affected, only the ego feels it. If someone disrespects me, they are only disrespecting themselves. Life, Isvara will rectify the situation if it needs rectification, it is not up to me. Does this mean I never respond appropriately if injury takes place? That depends on the situation as sometimes we are required to take a stand. But we do so with mind management and karma yoga. If dispassion rules, so does Self-knowledge. If we are not too arrogant and humility is operating, we see that everything coming at us from the field is just a play of the gunas. Negativity does not stick, the bliss is too strong. All that is, is that. Love. Me. Nothing and no one is excluded. ‘Caring’ and ‘hurt’ are just thoughts known to me.
So, fresh with the newly minted freedom from this need to care and be respected –
Blessed are Those
Who stand unmoved and unmoving
Unshackled from the shadow of the ego
With all its fears and desires
And desperate need to protect its limited identity
Untouched by sorrow or joy
Or that which is known or unknown
Always full and satisfied
From the Fountain of the Limitless Self
Sundari
