Sandra: Yes. Full transparency is beautiful. I’m not sad or upset at all seeing my family for what they are, just happy and free. From grasping and fearful jiva’s point of view it feels like betrayal, an awful/funny perverse example of how the worst painful crap gets protected and defended like it’s some kind of precious treasure. The suffering comes from denial and the denial comes from suffering so the only way out is standing in the Self, as you say.
I started to write a point by point response to your other emails and partway through saw that I was just going over the same old rotten boring story. So I will spare us from that and use the energy surplus to craft a story upgrade: a very good idea because upgrading my own story also upgrades “everyone else’s” story. I love what you said: standing in the Self does not trivialize the suffering but takes it out of the driver’s seat and puts it on the shelf.’
Sundari: I am so glad to hear this. The story we carry around about our lives is usually totally boring, but hard to let go of. It’s like that Soul video I sent you – when the unborn (#22) soul says to Joe ‘your life is sad, and pathetic, yet you are working so hard to get back to it. Why?’ It was really funny and true. Yet that’s what most people try to do. Stick with it no matter what, it’s what you know. Being free is just plain scary and feels like too much work. I wrote about this in my satsang ‘Maya’s Chokehold’ posted a few days ago.
Sandra: I find care and esteem for myself in that because there is an acknowledgement of those beautiful ugly things, but in their proper place they are not running the script. Maya can appear to be a wicked bitch but once understood in the light of me/Awareness, she’s a harmless little puppy dog.
Sundari: Yes, being Ok with the jiva to be free of it means accepting that it is a flawed entity and that this is true of all jivas. Maya, the phantom of the Opera, holds all potential outcomes, but it is essentially neutral. The central issue of course, is to discriminate the experiencing entity, the person, from you, the Self. Sounds simple, and it’s what we teach over and over, in every way possible. Basically, it’s all we teach. Every teaching we give comes down to just that one idea. But most inquirers still find a way to partition off the part of the jiva identity they are still tied to, and invested in. A marriage to the bitter end.
Sandra: I’m building my own D-ometer for my adaptive child program thoughts and projections, but if you see it before I do would you be okay to just say something like D-factor alert? That would help me a lot.
Sundari: Yes, I will if it’s appropriate and not going to elicit an ego response. Actually, I have been doing that since you entered our lives.
Sandra: I think I figured out why the sound on my phone kept malfunctioning during those long WhatsApp messages to you. A concerned citizen, Isvara, was trying to muffle the sounds of a ‘squeakfest’ and spare the field from irritation. I made notes from the ‘Unhumbling’ satsang and distilled it into bullet point of I statements and will post it up like you did with your sankalpa sticky notes.…also spare me from communicating things that are not true.
Sundari: Good. Hopefully you will soon have no need of the notes. Mine are long time gone.
Sandra: What I have realized in the effusiveness that comes up in my relationship with you is there is a ‘g’ in the word ‘fan’. That was an eye-opener.
Sundari: Exactly. This is why Ramji and I will find a way to disabuse anyone who tries to put us on a pedestal or treat us as ‘special’. That is the ultimate duality. How can anyone be special unless Maya is operating? If you have not figured that out, what have you assimilated from the nondual teachings? Not much. The tough part of imparting these flawless nondual teachings is that inquirers project their jiva stuff onto us.
Though the greatest gift a Vedanta teacher can give to anyone they communicate with is to demonstrate their ordinary humanity framed in fearless love as the Self, it is often, misunderstood. People come and go in our lives because of this. They start to relate to us a jivas instead of seeing the common identity between us as the Self. Then they start to judge us, which is what people hypnotised by duality tend to do.
Fandom is always a projection of smallness onto someone perceived as ‘other’ and more powerful. With it inevitably, sooner or later, comes comparison, resentment and envy. This is why all fame comes with extreme downsides, and creates a very precarious and unenviable life. For me, being known has not been easy. Unlike James who was born to shine, stand out and command the room, standing out is not my comfort zone. I prefer being unknown, watching from the sidelines, listening rather than talking. But that is not my karma, and I am getting used to it. I had to learn to be Ok with shining, even though it elicits comparison and judgement from some quarters. Being powerful especially as a ‘woman’, does not go over that well.
Start shining, you owe it to God.
As Mandela said in his inauguration speech – print it and put it up as it is a mantra well worth remembering:
‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Much love
Sundari
