Ram: And if you are in life to purify your mind for the purpose of discovering that you are free, any choice will be beneficial.
Lynn: You mean acknowledging that you are free from any choice – i.e. no choice hampers your freedom?
Ram: Yes. Choices are the ego, and the results of choices are experiences. Neither ego nor karma has anything to do with you. Well, they do, insofar as they depend on you – but you don’t depend on them. That is called freedom. But this is not actually what I meant. What I meant was that a spiritual person is going for a pure mind, nothing else. So he or she takes whatever comes as prasad. And taking whatever comes as prasad purifies the mind, so it really doesn’t matter if you get what you want or not, each option is a useful as the other, insofar as the result of either is a purer mind – if you have the karma yoga attitude. A pure mind is one that understands that the results of one’s actions cannot set one free. So a person who wants what he or she wants and wants it the way he or she wants it is not actually doing sadhana.
If you are making choices you are doing so for certain results, i.e. to make your ego happier than it was or to keep some happiness you have, etc. And if these choices are based solely on your likes and dislikes instead of dharma, you will not get a pure mind. Your choices will just reinforce your likes and dislikes, and your mind will not be free to understand that you are free already. So you will just keep on trying to make the world work for you so you can pick up a bit of happiness here and there to keep you going.
Lynn: Life seems delicious most of the time these days… there is such a sweetness always in the background except for occasional moments… I am even finding joy and peace when I’m with my mom, and gratefulness. There is quite a bit of perverse pleasure in just being “myself” – getting old and not looking super-great…. relaxing in such a simple life.
Ram: This is a pure mind.
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