Maria: I am so humbled by your reply to my email. Really a beautiful response which brings me back to simple truth, simple elegance. Just be.
Sundari: Thank you, I am so glad it helped. Yes, just be, as long as the ‘you’ that is ‘just being’ is the Self, and not the ego impersonating it. You cannot not ‘be’ the Self, so there is no need to ‘just be’. I Am Existence, shining as Consciousness. I am not anything else though everything is me.
Maria: The intellect wants to “understand” the mind’s design and processes. That’s awkward. What it can know is that it can grasp and map out the memory and perception process, but it is designed to function only in duality as a tool to use within Maya.
Sundari: This is true, that is the intellect’s function. And as long as avidya, ignorance, covers it, it can only think dualistically. Except when Self-knowledge starts working on it removing duality, the instrument becomes much clearer and progressively more capable of thinking deliberately. And as Self-knowledge actualizes, thinking ‘happens’ spontaneously from the nondual perspective.
Self-inquiry is essentially a process of retraining the mind/intellect to think differently, which is no easy task as the mind/intellect is entrained by Maya to think dualistically. I spoke about this last night. How ‘system 2’, the microcosmic mind or jiva, has to make a change in ‘system 1’, the Causal body, for Self-knowledge to be effective. That’s where all the ‘work’ of inquiry happens because what always gets in the way of access to Self-knowledge is the jiva program, i.e., likes and dislikes and doership. The ego identity.
So, the process of assimilation requires a thought by thought monitoring until such time as there is no longer a ‘monitorer’ and the mind/intellect are firmly established in nondual vision. It’s not that you stop thinking along dualistic lines, or have to ‘kill’ the ego/mind. That is not possible and not necessary. Both are still required to function in the transactional reality.
But you are totally aware that the mind is ‘switiching’ channels, so to speak, as the ego/mind is under new management – nonduality, the Self. Being firmly established in the Self, the mind is no longer under the spell of Maya. It is no longer in bondage to its likes and dislikes and doership has been negated. Your avidya has been removed by Self-knowledge. That’s moksa.
Maria: I really need to drop all this “thinking”….it is a decoy mechanism. OMG…
Sundari: You are a good thinker, and an unusual one. I am always interested in your perspective. You don’t need to drop thinking, that is not the problem. The problem is the one identified with the thinking/thinker who gets stuck in rabbit holes. The ego is a tricky thing, and it can easily fool the mind/intellect into falling in love with its thinking, and its doubts. Remember the ego does not relish freedom because it ends its rule of the mind, as I said last time. But if it can’t stop the process of ignorance removal entirely, it will fake it. Then you have an enlightened ego, not moksa.
Maria: Your last paragraph states the truth I need to paste to my forehead! Be the witnessing state. Stop squirming and be steady in Satya. Thank you.
Sundari: I am never not the Self. The created being is an object known to me. Paste that to your forehead. Just observe the ego and its ploys, as the Self, not as an ego. And yes, stand in Awareness as Awareness, think the opposite thought if any thought contradicts that.
Thought by thought the house of freedom is built.
Much love
