Thank you for taking the time to compose such a thoughtful response.
My vasana busting slot machine….
I’ve recognized the hold this “Clarissa vasana” has on me and have resorted to a mental trick, if you will, that is proving to be effective. How this trick aligns with Vedanta, I don’t know. I only know that it is destroying this vasana slowly though it keeps popping up in the most insidious ways and I have to tell myself (usually vocally) that I’m pulling the f*ing handle again!
While at the beach recently, I walked through the casino there witnessing the many people mindlessly pulling the handle (in this case, pushing the button) of the slot machines. I’ve never gambled much less fed a slot machine and as I left I was feeling a strange discomfort about the people at the slot machines. The next morning, during my Gayatri, it came to me. My Clarissa vasana is a slot machine! In every thought or interaction with her, I’m “pulling the handle” hoping for a response from her all the while feeding the damn machine with the currency of my peace/bliss. Today, slot machines are computer algorithms programmed to the rules of payout. Clarissa has the very same algorithm governing her payout to me. Only her algorithm is one of fear that she may do/say something that leads her to thoughts of me that are not in line with her algorithm.
We are no longer in contact and I will not be attending TL. So, Vedanta or not, I have employed the practice of the Gayatri (which has become an “earworm” that I can call up at will) and a mental association of her as a slot machine. I still find myself “pulling the handle” (though less frequently) and I have to reconstitute the image to get out of the grips of the vasana in each moment. Each time I’ve “pulled the handle” I’ve spent more of my bliss currency. But it is a tool that is working and from there I can move on to my life and engage in doing things (music, home repair, projects, etc). Without the demands of the householder, there is far too much time for mental gymnastics and the projects/responsibilities become a welcome distraction from the monkey-mind.
Whether I’m the doer or not, until such time as the Vedanta has become my nature, I will continue to use whatever tricks I can conjure up to escape the grips of this vasana. I can see that as long as I view the Vedanta as a practice, I’m not “there” and still trapped in the world of duality.
I look forward to the possibility of a Vedanta buddy in the Portland/Vancouver area.
Sundari: Great insight! Isvara is always speaking to us providing us with the subtle and not so subtle prompts we need to interpret our karma. If we don’t hear the whispers, we get the shouts. And then, we get the big kick in the butt. The trick is to apply the Vedanta algorithm as the interpreter and not our own vasana filters – meaning, ignorance.
You could not have summed your situation up more succinctly. When we see our life unfolding through the lens of Self-knowledge, we see just how symbolically rich and accurate Isvara’s language is. It is exactly like that when we dance to Maya’s crazy tune; we feed the insatiable and bottomless slot machine of desire and it sucks us dry of every bit of bliss, until we are just another hungry ghost. The world is full of them.
Good for you, that was a tough call. Trust the knowledge, you cannot go wrong if you follow it and not your desires. Though there is nothing wrong with desire itself, when our desires are aimed at the world we are asking for pain. If we stick with what self-inquiry requires of us, assuming we want freedom from dependence on objects more than trying vainly to satiate our desires, knowledge fills us with the most sought after prize: Self. You are the sought.
If you change your mind about attending TL there is a place for you there. It may just be that by then you have enough dispassion to attend and not be affected by the Clarissa slot machine vasana. The important thing is the breakthrough in understanding regarding your feelings about the Clarissa object. She is not really the problem, only a symbol of it, which is the illusion most people labor under. That someone or something can fill our emptiness, which never happens.
All the best, and may the Force be with you!
Much love
Sundari
