One of the greatest challenges facing seekers of liberation is the fact the senses are, by nature, extroverted; focused outwardly upon the world of material objects.
Where the senses lead, the mind follows.
This binds us to duality, subjecting us to the seemingly endless discords and disharmonies of the material world; the pain and sorrows, the disappointments and grief at a personal level and the many injustices, wars, conflicts and sufferings wrought by the samsaric mind at a collective level.
We naturally strive for harmony, peace, cooperation and to attain all those things we believe will bring us happiness. Happiness is natural to us because happiness is an aspect of the Self; sat chit ananda.
An important point, however, is that even the good things of the world, the upsides of duality, are, ultimately, no more real than the downsides. Both the agonies and ecstasies of worldly life are mithya.
The entire human experience is conditioned by ignorance; an immersive, universal delusion that binds us to form; seemingly robbing us of the vastness of our true being as as pure Consciousness, and contracting us into a painfully narrow identity based on identification with the body, mind and ego.
Subject to ignorance, we accept the world of form as the sole reality. We see only the visible, that which is perceivable by the physical senses, and are blinded to the invisible Source and ultimate Reality; the noumenonal Cause from which, and in which, the phenomenal effect appears.
The entire phenomenal world, the good, the bad and the ugly, is simply the play of maya and is, ultimately, mithya—unreal.
Ignorance is never felled by the single strike of the axe. Even once we’ve gained this Knowledge of Reality, we must continue fighting the illusion for as long as is necessary, or it’ll continue pulling us in. The ignorance-conditioned mind can be tenacious and, without continued vigilance and discrimination, will most certainly keep us immersed in, and bound by, the temporal world of duality.
The world may promise fulfilment and endless delight, as determined by our desires, attachments and conditioning, but there’s simply no way to find freedom and liberation from that which is fleeting and ultimately unreal.
The seeker of freedom must continually pivot the mind from the false to the true; from the phenomenal dream-reality to the Reality that is God; the Self—that which is already attained, here and now, eternally present as the very reality of our Being.
The only way to be free of samsara’s crippling sense of limitation is to truly, fully and completely know the limitlessness of our true Self.
Such freedom cannot be attained by simply rearranging the circumstances of our material lives. It’s not earned by satiating desires and trying to avoid the discords of duality. Only a fool seeks lasting freedom in an ephemeral and unreal world over which we ultimately have little control. That which is limited, the world, cannot yield the limitlessness we seek.
Instead, we must lessen the bonds of samsara by neutralising the immersive pull of the senses, which all too readily chain us to the maya world.
We must learn to attain our joy and wholeness not from the world of objects, but from the invisible, ever-present and boundless Consciousness that we are. This is what we’ve been seeking all along. It’s something that can never be taken from us; something we can never lose. It only appears to be absent when ignorance, maya, veils and obscures the Truth from us.
There’s no happy ending in duality. The world of the senses is a field for the outworking of karma, both good and bad. Its pull is immense and immersive, yet in order to be free, and to enjoy the Wholeness of your own true Self, you must learn to divest the world of its realness.
Even if you’re lucky enough to have youth, beauty, health and riches beyond the dreams of avarice, the world can never deliver lasting freedom and happiness. Lasting freedom, lasting happiness and wholeness, can only be found through knowing the Divinity that is your true essence. This alone is the source of all joy, completeness, fullness and freedom.
Such freedom exists independently of whatever might be going on externally. While we should always follow dharma and do our best to make this a better world, ultimate freedom comes from recognising duality, the bad AND the good, as mithya; as only apparently real; as impermanent, hollow and dream-like in nature.
In order to liberate the mind, you must consciously and constantly redirect your attention, focus and identification from the false to the Real, from mithya to Satya, from the world of duality to the boundless Consciousness/Awareness in which it appears.
By consciously transcending the phenomenal world and the opposites of duality, you come to realise the essential Wholeness, Freedom and Limitlessness of your own true nature.
