Alex: You made a comment in your Sunday talk last week that stuck with me in responding to the comment ‘the steps to get there are the qualities of being there’. You said that every time we apply Self-knowledge to our lives we are actualizing the knowledge. The penny finally dropped that Self-actualization is not a destination somewhere sometime ‘in the future’ when I ‘get it’. It’s available to me right now. Thank you so much for that!
Sundari: Good for you! If that landed, you have just assimilated the most important point the nondual teachings make from the get go: you are never not the Self and you cannot become or obtain it. But to benefit from that knowledge, you need to apply it, thought by thought, day by day. And every time you do, you are actualizing that which is actual: YOU. The unborn, ever present, unchanging factor present in every situation time and place, making your seemingly born awareness possible. To make that choice to identify with your primary experience, instead of the secondary experiencing entity, letting go of its story, is ‘the work’ of inquiry. But being the Self requires no work and no doership whatsoever. It just being the Isness, free of everything, unmodified by anything.
Here is a check list of how you are doing:
Living or Talking Nonduality?
While it is not easy, let’s try to keep this simple. If Self-knowledge has actualized, which means the nondual teachings have assimilated, this is what that looks like:
1. We Can Discriminate 24/7. We can discriminate between satya (the witness/unchanging Consciousness/primary experience) and mithya (conceptual persona/always changing/secondary experience or reflected Consciousness)100% of the time. We never confuse the two again;
2. Objectified the Jiva. We have objectified our jiva or egoic persona, see, accept and love it totally, as it is, without the need to improve it or change it. Though we do not need to perfect our personal identity, yet we have changed for the better. Not because we had to but because we follow dharma and value peace of mind above all. We manage the mind with Self-knowledge automatically and effortlessly;
3. Dispassion, Non-Attachment, Likes and Dislikes Neutralized, Follow Dharma Impeccably. Our personal program no longer causes us, or anyone else: (1) any agitation and (2) to deviate from the position of the witness. This means our likes and dislikes don’t drive us or trouble us because they are neutralized. We follow our inborn nature as a person (svadharma) and do what is appropriate for us, but we are satisfied with what we have. We don’t have to have anything. We always consider how we impact others and take their needs into account. We live impeccably according to the dharma of non-injury.
4. Love is Natural and Ever-Present. We love and receive love without inhibition, exclusion, withholding or defending;
5. Love of God is Permanent, Personal and Impersonal. We live our lives naturally as a devotional practice – meaning, we are surrendered to Isvara in humility and love, not as an external force or deity, but as our own Self.
If all of the above are true for you and you are not fooling yourself with a spiritual bypass, crack the champagne and celebrate. You are home free. Why worry about your jiva, in that case? It is just what it is – an imperfect object known to you. No jiva is perfect, needs to, or even can be. That’s good news, guys! But the bad news is that if the above points are not true for you all the time, then you are not home free. Even if you experience very high spiritual states and feel good a lot of the time, there is still work to do. Meaning, Self-knowledge has not fully assimilated, and or you have some cleaning up of your binding likes and dislikes to take care of.
It’s the Every Moment Moments that Count
High spiritual states are all very nice, and good for you if you have lots of them. But it’s the every-moment-moments of life that matter the most, not the experiential highs, which though lovely, always end. If you are often, or even occasionally, tripped up by binding likes and dislikes, meaning your jiva persona prevents you from accessing the position of the witness and causes suffering to you and others, even momentarily, how free are you? Not very at all. When Self-realization has taken place, it is very hard to be prevented from accessing the bliss of the Self, even for a moment. So be warned, there is no going back at this point. You can make excuses for hanging onto your likes and dislikes, but only you pay the price. You cannot unknow the Self once you know. And non-alignment is worse when you know. If you hit a dip and find yourself depressed, here is some help.
Nondual Tool Kit for The Blues
1. Identify the gunas at play: rajas projects, and tamas denies.
2. Use rajas wisely to get off your butt. DO something positive no matter how painful.
3. Identify, objectify and say a very firm NO! to those infernal internal tamasic voices of negativity, your VOD’s, as I call them. It’s time to accept that they have nothing whatsoever with truth, or who you are, both as a person and as the Self. They are the voice of ignorance. That is what it sounds like, ‘in your head’. STOP listening to it. Just turn off the dial.
4. Discriminate. Think the opposite thought, take a stand in Awareness as Awareness.
5. Dispassion. Apply karma yoga.
6. Wake up and start PAYING ATTENTION!
7. APPRECIATE
A Life With No Meaning is Life Devoid of Attention
Could it be that a depressed life not worth living is simply an inattentive life? What if I told you that boredom, which is caused by rajas, morphs into addiction and depression, tamas, is rooted in a failure to pay attention and appreciate? Paying attention is the essence of love, your true nature. We do not love or appreciate what we do not pay attention to. Failure to pay attention is a failure in love. We fear and then dread what we refuse to pay attention to – that is the power of denial, and it often shows up in the form of procrastination. Therefore, failure to pay attention results in failure to access Self-knowledge. In that case, learning to pay attention —entirely and without distraction—might be one of the most vital of human skills. It could save your life. It will most certainly improve it. And moksa, nondual vision, will not obtain without it.
This kind of paying “attention” is not just about single mindedly focusing on a task, but about being fully present in the moment, engaging with and appreciating the world and ‘other’s, openness and surrender to what is coming in from the field of life, and understanding the interconnectedness of all things. It is about living with an open, humble, fearless heart, and a deeply grateful, porous mind. It is me, living as the Self. We have all experienced this at times, even if only briefly and sporadically. This is the bliss of the Self – and it is always available to us. The way to snap out of depression is to kick ourselves in the butt and start paying attention.
Sundari
