Hi James,
Marvin: I hope you are doing fine, though you have 90° F in Malaga.
James: We’ve got air conditioning. All good here.
Marvin: Your new book arrived at my Kindle and I started reading. It’s the essence of Vedanta in a plain and straightforward way. It’s like talking to an old friend about shared secrets from former times, expecting that magic “click“ moment to happen “one fine day“.
James: That day is now, Marvin. You are the click. You are the magic. One fine day never comes.
Marvin: But it doesn’t, so the apparently real world has become more real than it was before.
James: More or less doesn’t apply to the real world. It’s always just unreal until you understand it is just a word made out of real self in which case it has no power to disturb you.
Marvin: Well, I don’t mind, there are so many juicy things out there that I’d like to acquire. Thanks to a sattvic mind due to Vedanta.
James: Sattva’s just another unreal state of mind. Acquiring sattva is like eating cotton candy…a quick taste of bliss then a long nasty aftertaste.
Marvin: I am able to concentrate again, which I couldn’t for decades (one aspect of OCD, do you remember?) and I started playing the Hammond Organ, which is as old as me, 60 years… and gives rise to the sound of the 60s and 70s when I grew up, I love it.
James: Play the organ day and night and you will be eternally happy.
Marvin: On the other hand, stress arises, there is caring and looking after my 92 year old mother, with the sword of Damocles, knowing “one fine day” she passes away… lot’s of hard work during summer, hoping to meet my customer’s expectations. Well, all this comes dripping in slowly, it triggers my OCD, my circle of thoughts, thoughts that have the capability to bend me down to what’s apparently real.
James: It seems they have. But wait! If you know they bind you, are you bound? Remember, you are never what you know, although what you know is you.
Marvin: Mostly I am strong enough to let these thoughts go again. Mostly I am strong enough to let these thoughts go again (Prozac is Martin’s little helper !) but it makes me tired.
James: So sad. The thought you need to let go is “I need this and that.”
Marvin: It makes me tired of Isvara’s circus or this never-ending roller coaster ride. And if I come to take a closer look to the world (not the earth, which is a benign beauty) then my values system gets punched in the stomach.
James: You were tired before Prozac. Tiredness motivated your interest in Prozac. But like all the remedies, the downside cancels the upside, leaving you…well…tired! A big negative thought is punching you, Marvin.
Marvin: I try to keep dharma where I can, but isn’t it better to “foster complete satisfaction with yourself as you are at any moment and with the world as it is” as you wrote?
James: Of course it is. Ask why you’re dissatisfied, take Vedanta seriously and stand as awareness because standing as awareness is perfect satisfaction.
Marvin: Why worry? Indeed, I worry and I am affected by the madness, the stupidity, the affluenza of the world’s crazy ongoing show. When worry begins, the stress catches me, resilience decreases, rajas and tamas arise, sattva turns way back. This loop is the jiva’s own rollercoaster and is my svadharma, as I said above, doing what has to be done. Watching the circles go by, mostly equanimous, but tired in a way.
James: Well, awareness isn’t worried. So, stand as awareness. Anyway, awareness or poor tired Marvin, I love you as I love my own Self for what it’s worth.
I hope – one fine day – CLICK.
James: “Give up hope all ye who enter here.” Inscription at the gate to hell. Dante Alighieri. Be the CLICK!
