Resistance, fear and control issues

[Jim and His Karma]

Oh, one more thing. Just as desires and fears get stronger as silence increases (a trap!), the worse trap is that, as Yogani says, the ability to feed the desires (i.e. actually get what you want) and fears (avoid what you fear) also gets stronger. That's why I'm always urging everyone to avoid aiming spiritual work at specific real world effect (e.g. healing samyama). It's hard enough to see through these phantoms without having established a pattern of feeding and engaging them with our spiritual energies. We're trying to detach from our desires and fears, not to more skillfully and effectively engage and attain with them.

[Jim and His Karma]

One more thing: the "spokesman" is the ego mind. The spokesman honestly thinks she's surrendered. The ego is a happy eager puppy, very anxious to make happen all that is wished for. You wish surrender and God and no-ego? The ego will create an experience of surrender and God and no-ego all within the frame of ego.

So what to do amid all the monsters and mud and loops and traps? Follow the genius of Yogani's expression: Favor the practice. Devalue the experiences and analysis.

The silence that amplifies the fears and desires also detaches you from them. So....Mantra, Mantra, Mantra. (the new millennium's version of "Location, Location, Location"...don't know if you'll get that joke in Norway....)

[david_obsidian]

Well,  I enjoyed reading that.  You may become a renowned spiritual writer some time Jim -- but only provided you stay unenlightened long enough.  There, I hope that messed your screen up good (probably worse than the prospect of dying in horrible pain in a tunnel) because only if your screen is messed up long enough will it happen.

Jim said: Front-of-the-brain surrender is easy. The monsters and habits and crap and mud at the back-of-the-brain are harder.

So so so so true.

Katrine said:
I need to look at myself and see where I fool myself, and others need to see this post so that if they too think that I think I am "fully surrendered" or "fully unattached" - that this is not true.

Katrine,  on the forum I've seen grown men dance like munchkins at your holy feet,  as if I'm watching the good witch Glinda in the Wizard of Oz. That happened because people wanted it to happen.  It certainly isn't all bad, and it certainly isn't all good,  it is what it is in the dance of samsara.

It is only because of the "monsters and habits and crap and mud'n'stuff" (to borrow Jim's technical terms) that deluded mythologies about people get propagated.  It's a rare person that has the strength and vision,  and motivation, and persistence, to decisively break any deluded spritual mythology about themselves that arises in any kind of 'spiritual' group.  Because the mythology is just too delicious a thing for the ego to throw away.  So too often the ego likes to have its cake and eat it -- to repudiate the mythology officially on the one hand and then (often subconsciously) cultivate it on the other!  You know the number -- some chest-thumping protestation of ones ordinariness,  while being half-hearted and generally uncommitted to breaking false perceptions, or preventing their development.

At the same time, in your case I can't be sure at all that you even do want the adoration on some subconscious level (only you can be). Maybe you don't -- maybe you even hate it and maybe it's just the munchkins in this case for all I know who set all the adoration up. But one thing's for sure -- once these things get started they tend to have a life of their own, and get harder and harder to stop.

[Jim and His Karma]

"it is what it is in the dance of samskara"

David: correction. You mean "samsara", the conditional world. "Samskaras" are what I was talking about above....the little subconscious tendencies, patterns, and collective sense impressions built up over a lifetime (or many lifetimes, if you're into that).

Also, I disagree with you. My spiritual mythologizing of myself, for example, is quite high and always has been. Since I was twelve years old, I've been absolutely CERTAIN I'm on the brink of holy grandeur. In fact, every movement of energy or unfoldment of silence makes me gesticulate wildly like Fred Sanford, yelling "Uh-oh, this is the BIG one!" I'm fortunately of an age now where there've been so many false alarms that I can't help but laugh - hard - at myself when I do that. But I still do it. And the thing is: that's ok. It doesn't matter so long as you don't get trapped.

It doesn't matter so long as you don't get trapped. That's the perfect distillation of everything I typed above. It doesn't matter so long as you don't get trapped.

We westerners think we need to, like, FIX all our issues. No, that's the goal of psychology, not mysticism. My idiotic compulsions and knee jerk self glorification needn't be photoshopped off my cortex. It can all stay.

It can all stay.

I just need to not let that stuff drive the car. THAT'S the challenge.  And it's a lot easier to read a statement like that and chuckle wisely at your grasp of the insight than it is to actually detach from an ever more intense and visceral cast of sirens and tormentors. I tow an ocean liner full of 'em, and so do you all. You don't slay them, you love them...and let them simply be.

[david_obsidian]

Yes, that's a typo on the samskara.  I did understand it.

Since I was twelve years old, I've been absolutely CERTAIN I'm on the brink of holy grandeur.

Yes, that's the Messiah gene talking.  In my case it started when I was only seven.  It's like having a tick. It may pass away or it may not.  But it is important to understand that it is a tick,  a neural spasticity, not the voice of Truth.

[Jim and His Karma]

"But it is important to understand that it is a tick, a neural spasticity, not the voice of Truth."


I'm going to be a real jerk and keep arguing as you keep agreeing. I'm annoying myself by doing this, but I can't help it (it's a samskara...not kidding....).

It's ALL the voice of truth, even the idiocy. Just need to let it all be. Don't divide everything up into right/wrong, and good/bad. Let it be. Don't get trapped (in "truth" OR in "falseness") via attraction or repulsion. Be empty and just let it all be. Swami Lennon-McCartneyanda got it right.

[david_obsidian]

Don't divide everything up into right/wrong, and good/bad. Let it be. Don't get trapped (in "truth" OR in "falseness") via attraction or repulsion.

I would agree we should avoid getting 'trapped' in anything -- neither in a truth, nor in a falsehood that it counters.

[Manipura]

David and Jim - I think it's ironic that you're addressing control issues when  you've both been nonstop edit mode for the past few hours.  Let it be indeed!  

[david_obsidian]

LOL.  Yes it is ironic and funny.    We're just neurotic in our persistent editing, and that can't necessarily be fixed. So we'll just have to let let it be, won't we?

[Jim and His Karma]

Oh YEAH. Meg, I've admitted innumerable times that I've got a sick, sick problem with the edit button.

It's just so easy to be misunderstood. And as a few minutes go by, and I reread my stuff more dispassionately, I see ways to create more clarity. But the process is potentially endless. It's hellish.

Let me see if I can not edit this.

[Jim and His Karma]

"ensure" would be clearer than "create". And "hell" would be stronger than "hellish". And "admitted" (instead of a less loaded verb like "said") makes it sound like I think I'm being "Large" about this. And "resist editing this" would read better tahn "not edit this".

In 30 minutes I'll have more.

[Jim and His Karma]

I won't touch the typo "tahn". I won't touch it. No I won't.

[Manipura]

You definitely need hlep.

[Jim and His Karma]

You misspelled "shlep".

[Wolfgang]

Ha, ha,
Editing or not editing, that is the question

PS: you could always ask a moderator to edit, that way
you could avoid the edit button, but would that be cheating your karma ?