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January 1st 2007
Today’s Gem -- One Light on a Single Background
Imagine watching a movie in which two men walk toward you. The setting is a desert. The sun is blazing overhead, and a huge mountain range is visible in the distance.
One of the men stops and says to his companion, "Do you realize that this is all an illusion and we are just variations in one single light appearing as us, the sun, the sky, and the whole landscape?" His friend looks puzzled as he continues. "This whole world we see is a flat screen, though it appears as if there is space all around us."
Now his friend gets slightly worried. He thinks perhaps his buddy has been affected by the heat, so he asks, "Are you feeling all right?" "Absolutely fine! It is just suddenly obvious that all this is really nothing but a very clever illusion appearing on a single background." "Really," says his friend getting slightly annoyed. "Please show me this background.'
"Well look, here it is; right here touching us, carrying us. It contains everything we see." He turns and points to the screen. His friend follows his finger, but sees nothing but the far off mountains.
Leo Hartong -- Awakening To The Dream www.awakeningtothedream.com/
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January 2nd 2007
Today’s Gem -- Sorting It
Another power of the mind is the power to go through experience and sort it, putting it into the correct categories. What can be seen, sorted, and categorized is within the realm of the mind. Some things are ugly, some are beautiful, some are good, some are bad, but who you are is none of that. Who you are cannot be seen. It can be directly experienced, however, and it is always being experienced.
Because of our infatuation with the sorting capacity of mind, we overlook this ongoing experience of what cannot be seen and what is absolutely the same in everyone regardless of gender, race, culture, class, nervous system, intellect, or sophistication. It is closer than any concept of enlightenment or any concept of ignorance.
If you will for one moment stop feeding the tendency of mind to compare and to polarize, what a laugh appears. What a laugh! "I had hair and I was trying to be bald. I had brown eyes and I thought blue would do it. I was Western and I thought I should be Eastern. I was female and I thought I needed to be male." Those are just examples. It gets very, very subtle. In the mind's practice of sorting, comparing, and polarizing, there is a tragic overlooking of the sameness of one self.
The main focus of the mind's power is to possess. Learning takes place by possessing knowledge in the mind. Learning is an awesome and wondrous power, which requires the possessing function of the mind. This power facilitates the great arts, the scientific discoveries, and the capacity to design and build a house, a piece of clothing, or a meal. But where the mind cannot go, what it cannot possess, is the source of its own power.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
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January 3rd 2007
Today’s Gem -- When Mind is Busted
We cannot possess truth; that would be the mind's idea. But truth can claim its possession, which is 'us', each soul, each being.
When I speak of "stopping" or "calling off the search", I am simply pointing to our habitual tendency to try to get something, which we have been trained to do with the facilities of our minds, through powers of thinking, projecting, imagining, discriminating, or veiling. But just in one instant of simply being -- without being anybody, without being anything, without getting it right, without missing it, without naming it, and without knowing it -- awakening is present.
The truth is that everyone has these moments every day, but they are overlooked because of our infatuation with the powers of mind. The mind is not present in any of these pure and perfect moments. But then the mind arises again, and we get on with our business, with our definitions, and with our ideas of who has wronged us, what we need, or what we have to know.
To realize true freedom, this infatuation with mind must be cut, and to be cut it must first be seen. Each of us needs to investigate and then tell the truth. In telling the truth, the mind is used to expose and bust itself. In lying, the mind stays in power. When mind is busted, a deep happiness is revealed. Then the intellectual and creative capacities of every individual, the life experiences of every individual, can all be joyfully used in service to the truth.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
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January 4th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Giving Up Hope
The invitation to discover love, truth, enlightenment, freedom, or yourself carries with it the ruthless fact that the mind cannot deliver it.
All that is truly pure and free is unknowable. That is the humbling of the mind. That is the essential understanding that the mind can comprehend. That is the mental doorway to surrender.
Because you have had success in knowing many things, you hope that if you just work hard enough, you will succeed. But the realization of true freedom is the opposite of working hard mentally.
The perseverance you need here is to give up the hope that the mind can deliver freedom; give up the hope that the mind can deliver the heart, which is love; give up the hope that the mind can deliver enlightenment, which is truth. In that recognition, surrender can naturally follow.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
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January 5th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Inner Voices
The ego and its partner the superego are internal mental voices that appear to determine who you are. As the 'I am this body' thought (ego) determines your individual reality, the thoughts that determine how your ego is doing, how it could be better, or why it never will be better, as well as how others are doing, are the voices of your superego.
Your ego is a simulation, a virtual reality of l am, based on perception, sense experiences, and learning. Your superego is a simulation of authority designed to control your ego. It is based on feedback from others in your life.
Both ego and its further development, superego, are wondrous phenomena. There is nothing inherently wrong with them. Both have an extraordinary role to play in the theatre of human consciousness. The development of ego is miraculous and the formation of superego is perhaps even more astonishing.
The problem arises when they command most of your attention and life force. Your opportunity to spontaneously and authentically experience life is then preempted by attention to the internal war: the voices that state, "I am this or that", versus the counterpoint, "You are not enough of this or that”. Some voices say you are good, beautiful, and kind, while other voices say you are horrible, ugly, and miserable.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
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January 6th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Superego
If you bang your head accidentally, after the initial shock and sensation of pain, what mental voices do you hear? Do they deal with blame? If so, do they blame you or someone else or some object?
These voices arise from your superego's attempt to assert control, usually through verbal punishment, so that head banging won't happen again. The superego is your internalized authority, where part of your ego splits off and calls itself "God" or "Mother" or "Father" or "Guru". When you recognize this split, a great inner battle is exposed, especially in the "spiritual" arena where the superego desires to get rid of the ego.
Only the superego wants to get rid of the ego. Getting rid of the ego is the ultimate control. Only your superego needs war. These warring thoughts are of course reflected in our collective world as well as in our individual world. However, for our purposes here, put your attention on what is going on in your egoic reality, not because it should or shouldn't be happening, but simply to discover what is being thought of as real.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
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January 7th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Welcome Them All
We can cherish the freedoms granted by family, culture, and government, but they are ultimately meaningless if we are bound internally by a simulation of authority. Reliance on superego is buttressed by our fear of what we would be without it. In short, we generally have a deeply embedded distrust of our core self. We actually distrust the freedom we crave.
The question is, can you recognize a mistake (banging your head) and can you know what is wrong (acts requiring moral choices of conscience) without a punishing or rewarding fabricated authority? Regardless of the appropriate functions of ego/superego in the past, in this moment are you willing to trust what you have learned?
And even more radically, are you willing to trust the integrity at the core? If there is an ambition to be egoless, it is a red flag. What is wrong with the ego? Who has a problem with the ego? Does awareness have a problem with the ego? Only the superego has a problem with the ego, and it is a huge problem. The superego wants to control the ego.
In recognizing the tendency of the superego to dominate the ego, without then having to establish a super-superego, you can simply welcome ego with its ambition and needs. In this moment, you can welcome them all - ego, superego, internal and external illusion - into the limitless consciousness that you truly are. Then you can experience yourself as a very limited human being with limited propensities.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
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January 8th 2007
Today’s Gem -- Original Innocence Regained
From the first moments of awakening, the rapture provided a brand-new experience. Let's call this sensation "original innocence regained." You've no doubt heard of "original sin." To me this is the state of being designed by Source to create the human predicament.
Part of our physical makeup includes a brain or intellect whose function as a receiver of Consciousness is to go through sensory data, instantly analyze it, compare it, and come up with judgments that fall within the polarities such as good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, and like or dislike. This is by Divine design, although any judgment results in a contraction of limitation. Even if you judge something as wonderful, the concept of "wonderful" is not available unless its counterpart "horrible" is also somehow present.
Adam and Eve lost their original innocence and got thrown out of the Garden of Eden when they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In other words, they went from their pristine state of bliss in original innocence to the conflict of original sin by having to judge every thought from then on.
Now the process has been reversed again, and in seeing through the eyes of Source, accepting everything as an extension of Consciousness and what is -- as is, judgments, comparisons, and opinions are no longer relevant. And you feel as though an enormous weight has been lifted off of your head and soul. This is what I call my original innocence regained, and it is an integral part of the rapture. This is what I define as freedom.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
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January 9th 2007
Today’s Gem -- The Nature of Consciousness
When I described the first phase of awakening, for me it was a death to everything meaningful that I knew in life up to that point .... It wasn't until about a year into the deliverance that the nature of how Consciousness functions began to manifest itself more clearly in my understanding.
I used to wonder why a God of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence -- in other words, unlimited in every way -- would want to create a universe where evil, suffering, and pain were rampant. Of course, I had in the back of my mind, through conditioning, the concept of a personal God.
The masters of advaita can help us out here with their theory of understanding. They view God in an impersonal sense -- no great white-bearded father image is possible in the understanding of Consciousness being all there is. So they say that Consciousness as the Source in an unmanifested state is "Satchitananda" (Sat = eternal reality, chit = pure awareness, ananda = bliss).
Source is completely aware and blissful, but in this state of rest, It cannot know Itself as the Subject, except through an object, which in this case would be all of manifested reality. So Source has a dream that is the object of this knowing itself, and that is all of manifested appearance. In this dream, we, the individual body/mind organisms, are not the dreamers but the dreamed.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- The Individual Dream
We have all had dreams whereby we are in big trouble, the bad guys are after us, our feet are seemingly stuck, and we can't even cry out for help. If we happen to have a gun, instead of shooting, the bullets just fall out of the barrel. We wake up shaking, in a cold sweat, relieved out of our mind that it was just a nightmare of a dream, and life is not really limited like that.
This is analogous to what happens to Source (the infinite impersonal Awareness that we essentially are). It also dreams that It is limited through this universe of appearance, and through individual mind/body organisms, that illusion is personified.
This dream has all the reality for Source that our dreams have for us. The Source dream is complete with every kind of limitation imaginable: wars, famine, pestilence, child abuse, pain, suffering, pollution, death, and so on and so on.
As each individual mind/body organism dies and goes back into beingness, there is a cessation of the individual dream, and Source feels "Ah! All that limitation isn't real after all! I am infinite in every way!"
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- The Freedom/Limitation Factor
When you, as an individual, have a dream of violence, did you really kill that other person? Were you really stabbing him through the heart? During the dream you would say, "Of course." But on awakening, you know it to be an illusion within the dream, and no one died or got hurt.
It is the same situation within the dream of Source -- but with one big difference: So it doesn't get out of hand and become unbearable like our sleeping dreams can get at times, Source has put a safety-valve factor in our waking dream in order to ensure that it stays amusing. I call this factor the Freedom/Limitation equation. It goes like this:
For every bit of limitation or contraction experienced in a situation, there is an equal and compensatory balance factor of freedom or expansion also experienced. This Freedom/Limitation balance is not only true of each individual life, but also every situation in that life and every event in the whole universe.
In other words, it is never more than you can bear overall, because in addition to the Freedom/Limitation factor, there is always the ultimate exit door out of this dream and back to Source, the ultimate safety net called death.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- It Doesn't Really Matter
A quick and easy personal example of the Freedom/Limitation balance would be the limitation caused by being incarcerated under oppressive and inhuman conditions balanced by the freedom within prison to experience alone time, without serious responsibility, and to explore the inner world of Spirit.
A national example would be the limitation of war balanced by the freedom experienced as everyone drops previous prejudices and works together in harmony against a common enemy. Every crisis, big or small, creates a different perspective on life thereafter.
So, for the individual body/mind organism existing on planet Earth, there is no purpose or goal except to be a vehicle through which Source can amuse itself by experiencing limitation in this Leela, or Divine Comedy of Life.
Because of the Freedom/Limitation equation in our existence, this reduces every single possible event or situation in our lives to a common denominator, which is that EVERY SITUATION IS THE SAME, SO IT DOESN'T REALLY MATTER IN THE LONG RUN HOW IT TURNS OUT!
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- It Is All Source
As part of the Leela (the play of Source), we are faced with horrendous choices in life: Do I marry this person or that one? Do I become a doctor or a pilot? Do I end my life when I have a terminal disease, or do I suffer through it? Do I get an abortion or keep the child?
The Freedom/Limitation equation assures us that either choice that is made by Source (we don't choose, we just think we do) will result in an equal amount of Freedom/Limitation.
Whether we go left or right, or stay in the middle, when we come to a fork in the road, the end results are the same for us as individuals and for Source, who made the decision anyway and who enjoys either outcome. Everyone's life at the end is the same, no better or worse than any other, in spite of what appearances may dictate.
Always remember that God has no favorites, and no one has an advantage or disadvantage over anyone else, since it is all Source anyway.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- All Dots?
It's as if we painted black dots on this wall. The dots are maybe an inch round, and three or four inches apart, and the whole wall is covered with black dots. When we walked into the room, the first thing we would usually see is all the dots, right? "My God, this wall has so many dots! It's all dots!"
But, in fact, it's not covered with dots. There's a lot more white wall than there are dots. Even if we made those dots really small, the size of a pin, we'd still notice them and think, this wall is full of dots. But there is actually a lot more space than dots. The dots are just where the perception goes.
When awakening starts to arise, all the repressed material starts to arise, and the tendency is for awareness to contract around it. Of course, it seems quite terrible when awareness does this, rather than just resting and seeing everything as a whole. Sure, there's lots of stuff arising, and now that you're aware of it, you can let it arise. That doesn't mean you've got to contract on each thing that comes up.
It's much like when you look at the wall with some dots on it and just let your awareness take in the whole wall. Become aware that more of the wall is space than dots. Don't ignore the dots, but don't ignore the background either.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- Innocently Mistaken
It's important to see that repressed material arises from consciousness, and that's where it returns. All of it is impermanent. It's a completely impersonal event -- that's the beauty of it. When you know you are consciousness, then there's no repression, and there's no grabbing hold.
It's as if you are the sky. You neither push your clouds away, nor grasp them to keep them from leaving you. The sky is inherently completely unaffected, even if the storm comes and lightening cracks and all hell breaks loose. It doesn't much matter as long as the sky remembers that it's sky.
It's very easy to get innocently mistaken. It's like being in a movie theater viewing a movie, and all of a sudden the characters come to life and they invite you in, and so you go into the movie. It seems like everything that happens in that movie has to do with you, and you're very sure you're the movie character.
Then for some mysterious reason you wake up and suddenly realize, "Oh, I'm here in the theater with popcorn and a Coke, and all that time I spent thinking I was in the movie was wrong. I'm sitting here watching the movie. I thought it was real, but it's not." This is similar to what consciousness does. It projects this thing called a human being and gets so enamored with its creation that it loses itself in it.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- Give Up Referencing
Whatever you may think or feel about yourself has nothing to do with you whatsoever. So you just keep being what you are which is no-thing. Let your repressed material arise and stay conscious in the process, don't go unconscious or into a trance state. Don't go into analysis either, just allow whatever wants to arise to arise.
Question all assumptions all interpretations, all old story lines. Neither repress nor indulge -- just be still, inquire, and stay conscious. Part of not getting caught in illusion is to give up referencing the way we think and feel. A big part of wisdom is to give up referencing the positive thoughts and feelings.
We're more than willing to give up the negatives. But when we run into bliss, ecstasy, the joy and release of true revelation, and all the emotions that we consider spiritual, we tell ourselves, "That's me. How do I know that's me? It must be me because I feel very good. I feel bliss and ecstasy and joy. That's how I know who I am, what I am, and that I am safe."
But you're still buying into sense perception. If you buy into sense perceptions to tell you who you are, it's just a matter of time until the senses show their other face, which is the negative side, and you'll say, "Oh my gosh, I'm trapped."
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- True Maturity
Part of the maturation is to realize that you don't just give up the negative perceptions, you give up the positive ones, too. You give up the whole framework that was used to tell you who and what you are. Then, you realize this body-mind experiences whatever it experiences, and you are the conscious space for it to have all those experiences.
It truly doesn't matter what the experience is. It just so happens that the more you do this, the body-mind tends to reflect this wisdom by feeling really good. But even when it feels very good and very blissful, you can still fall into the seduction of identifying with those nice emotions. As soon as you get seduced and think that those emotions tell you anything about yourself, it's just a matter of time before you'll be caught in separation again.
The mind wants to land, to fixate, to hold a concept, but the only way you can be really free is by not fixating. That's part of true maturity, and it's one of the hardest things for spiritual people who have had true and profound revelations to go through -- to accept the degree of surrender needed to literally let go of all experience and all self-reference. Even in great revelations, there is almost always something that wants to claim, "I am this." Every time you claim, "I am this," you just claimed another sense perception, thought, emotion, or feeling.
Eventually, when you go through this enough times, the mind gets it on the deepest level and lets go completely. When the mind lets go, you always know who and what you are, even though you can't define or describe it or even think about it. You just know it by being it. This is the ultimate release of identity and separateness.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- Reality Without Distortion
You come to see that every way you define yourself is just a concept and therefore a lie. The mind just stops because it has nowhere to go. The stopping, of course, can't be practiced because any practice stopping is just a fake. This stopping happens as a result of insight, of wisdom, of understanding, and nothing else. It's not a technique.
That's why this is the path of wisdom. When the mind understands its own limitation, it stops, and that's very natural. The mind only keeps working to find itself when it suffers under the illusion that it can find itself. When it realizes it can't find itself, it stops because it knows there's nothing for it to do.
When I say the mind stops, I don't necessarily mean that no thought goes through your head. That's not what the mind stopping means. It has stopped interpreting reality. Then you're left with raw reality without any distortion.
This is the experience of deep, liberating freedom. It's the relief of a great burden. Your thoughts don't have to stop going through your head. Nothing has to change at all. All your mind has to do is look and get very curious about "what am I really?" The contemplation of the question will lead you right beyond the thought.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- A Horizontal Movement
Spirituality may be approached in two ways. The first way is the most common, which is through a horizontal movement of the mind. Horizontal movement means the mind goes back and forth collecting information.
It's as if the mind comes to a wall that has writing all over it. This wall has all kinds of teachings, practices, things to do, and things not to do. Usually the mind just makes a horizontal movement along the wall, acquiring and accumulating more information. It goes to the left side, and then it goes to the right side, collecting information, beliefs, theories, etc.
Have you ever met people whose minds are like that? They have traversed way out to the nether reaches of the wall -- the mind spinning horizontally collecting information. That's what the mind does, and most people make this horizontal movement of collecting information, ideas, beliefs, etc., in hopes that it will help them spiritually.
But Truth isn't a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of waking up.
From: 'Emptiness Dancing', by Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org
Today’s Gem -- Grateful
It's not a miracle that is happening somewhere else. It's taking place right Here, right Here.
You are a magician bringing yourself out of this hat of Non-Being, and you haven't a clue how you are doing it.
I take my stand on that which I cannot understand.
I am grateful for the miracle of Being. In the last resort, one is grateful and astounded that there isn't just nothing, a dark night of nonexistence.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Knowledge
I don't know what I think until I hear what I say -- hear the words that come from my No-mouth.
It takes a lifetime of study to persuade us that we know nothing to speak of.
The mystics confirm and round off this conclusion, asserting that perfect knowledge of the object of highest rank is knowing that it is perfectly incomprehensible.
The first work of explanation is to render the mysterious commonplace; but it goes on to render the commonplace mysterious; and its work is unfinished so long as we feel that we know anything whatsoever. Only in knowing our total ignorance do we overcome it.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Intimacy
Are we face-to-face, in symmetrical relationship, object confronting object, each shutting out the other? Quite the contrary.
Here where I am is no face, no speck of anything to ward you off with, to resist your invasion. Whether I like it or not, I'm so wide open to you that your face is mine and I have no other.
This is an intimacy that is the paradigm of all intimacy, infinitely deep and total, immensely satisfying -- once I have the humility and the courage to notice it. The awareness is crucial. I am fully conscious of the perfect way you give me your face, of the perfect way I take it.
The practical difference this discovery makes to your relationships is immense and cumulative. In fact, what it comes to is that you aren't related in any way to anyone: you 'are' that one.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Science
The spirituality that denies the universally accepted findings of modern science at all levels, or refuses to face up to them and cheerfully take them on board, is a pathetic and moribund travesty of spirituality.
Conversely, the spirituality that perceives in these findings a rich and precious and indeed divine revelaton of our time and for our time and just what's needed to treat our sorry condition, is alive and kicking.
While allowing that our modern science is valid and indeed indispensable as far as it goes, I claim that the ancient wisdom goes much further, that it is in a real sense more scientific and more sensible than science, as we know it, could ever be, and is in fact its practical and theoretical complement.
In other words, I maintain that Western objective science is only half of real science (the other half being the science of the Subject or First Person) and that we are in trouble because we mistake it for the whole.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Forces and Faith
There are no fates, factors, or forces outside the First Person that I am, working against me. Even the "nastiest" things that happen to me as third person are in reality my profound intention as First Person.
So I say YES! to life, and this is the true therapy.
The solution to a problem, no matter what it is, is to see whose it is. Not to understand or feel or think who has the problem, but actually to gaze on that WHO and await what comes of the gazing. This seeing and this waiting you can always do, whatever your need. The rest is out of your hands. See what happens, and trust it.
Trust Who you are to come up with the right answer at the right time.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Fear
It is always the other that I fear, hate, envy, plan to destroy. Prove to me that there's a level on which I am you and you are me -- and all aspects of our mutual alienation are ended.
Here, I'm enjoying that face of yours as mine. Here, I have you as object and 'am' you as subject, and so take on both your appearance and your reality. What could be more intimate than this double intimacy? How could I fear you who are myself?
No wonder the essential Experience is dismessed so cavalierly, is so unwelcome and so distrusted: Below the surface, we are all terrified of our Emptiness. Until its inexhaustible and breathtaking beneficence and fertility begin to take shape, it must seem not just meaningless but suicidal, mere annihilation.
Yet it's no bad thing to be fearful, provided we're driven to the one refuge from all danger and stress and fear -- to this incomparable Safety, to the Place or No-place we have been all along.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions. www.InnerDirections.org
Today’s Gem -- Constricting the Life Force
Another very common battering ram of the superego is the idea of "worthlessness," especially in spiritual circles where there tends to be a great fear of arrogance. But arrogance and worthlessness are just two sides of the same coin of ego. Neither experience needs be avoided. Both can simply be met and directly investigated.
If you just allow yourself to be fully and completely arrogant for one second, you will see the absurdity of arrogance, its posturing, emptiness. It is exactly the same with worthlessness.
If you fully and completely experience one second of true, absolute worthlessness, worthlessness will become nothing. It will reveal itself to be just another weapon of the superego, having nothing to do with the truth of who you are.
Whether you run from arrogance, worthlessness, or any experience, you are constricting the life force. You are desperately attempting to be what you think you should be, while being haunted by what you think you are.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
Today’s Gem -- The Spaciousness Beyond
Another interesting twist in the recognition of the superego is that if the superego is engaged in battle with the ego, it will definitely win. It is designed to win because it has "God" on its side. It is the authority.
Whatever measly little arguments the ego can throw up, the superego will win, case closed.
The impulse to listen to and be beaten by the superego is huge, but the willingness to stop and see what is under it will reveal the reality of the spaciousness beyond all faces of the superego.
Then you will see that the superego is just sound and fury, signifying nothing but conditioned learning. But because this is the way that we as human animals are taught by our parents, cultures, and religions, their voices are very deeply ingrained.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
Today’s Gem -- Rewards and Punishments
The core strategy of the superego is the system of rewards and punishments. It's pretty primitive, but it works.
You must see how you speak to yourself internally, and how you speak to others in terms of reward or punishment. Otherwise, this thought-form called "superego", which says "I am the authority, I know what is right and what is wrong", continues to operate subconsciously.
There is nothing wrong with rewards and punishments. They are very effective learning devices. They may be appropriate in terms of how you train children, pets, students, or co-workers. They may work in any number of arenas. But when you are dealing with the desire and longing for truth, then the strategies of reward and punishment are distractions of the mind.
The mind is still assuming control as "truth giver" or "truth judge." But truth is out of the realm of the mind. It is uncontrollably free. It cannot be punished or rewarded.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
Today’s Gem -- Self Inquiry
As a way of investigating how the superego operates within your own mind, you can once again inquire directly within, letting the answers float freely up from the subconscious. Ask yourself these two questions: How do I punish? and How do I reward? Make no distinction between internal or external punishment or reward.
When you determine that you have done something well, what praise do you give yourself? Special treats? Tender words of love? And if you determine that you have done poorly, what punishment: Harsh words? Anger? Hate?
At first your answers may seem to be obvious, things that you already know. But then perhaps you will be surprised, and that is really the point of self-inquiry: to be open enough to discover what you were previously unaware of, that was unknown and unexamined -- in this case, to discover how the superego manifests itself within your own mind.
Whether the answers are spiritual or worldly, enlightened or mundane, is totally irrelevant.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
Today’s Gem -- An Inner Burning
See, feel, and experience in your mind what is revealed in this inquiry (How do I punish? and How do I reward?). Maybe you have many more rewarding strategies than punishing strategies. Maybe they equal each other. Maybe you are punishing yourself now for punishing yourself before.
The key is the willingness to see the workings of your own mind without making them right or wrong, without adding to the power to strategize.
See if there is an inner burning that can occur in the exposure of the strategies. If there is a burning and it is not avoided but surrendered to, what does it reveal?
When the mind begins to reactivate, take another moment to let all strategies go, to discover what is underneath it all, before it all, after it all, what is always here, what cannot be revoked, and what cannot be awarded.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
Today’s Gem -- Direct Experience
The questions I am most frequently asked are related to the emotions. Many people seek to be free from difficult emotions such as anger, fear, and grief, and seek the more pleasant emotions such as joy, happiness, and bliss.
The usual strategies for achieving happiness involve either repressing or expressing negative emotions in the hope that they will be pushed from sight or released. Unfortunately, neither way reflects the truth of one's inherent self, which is an unmoving purity of being that exists deeper than any emotion and remains unaffected by any emotion.
There are certainly times when it is appropriate to repress or express an emotion. But there is also another possibility: to neither repress nor express. I call this "direct experience."
To directly experience any emotion is to neither deny it nor to wallow in it, and this means that the can be no story about it. There can be no storyline about who it is happening to, why it is happening, why it should not be happening, who is responsible, or who is to blame.
From: 'The Diamond In Your Pocket', by Gangaji www.gangaji.org
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