On Beyond Concepts
All Teachings are Dodos, and Tightening up what this Site is About
I let my personal feelings cloud my discernment, and published a guest essay that I realized was of more of a religious or spiritual-y nature or attitude or tone than I really wanted in the site’s philosophical mosaic. This chalkboard here is really more about exploring innate freedom with a capital “F”. When I talk about spirituality, it’s nothing to do with any cultural meaning of the term other than what is borrowed in order to point to something non-objective, and is the same as “philosophy” in the traditional sense of “love of wisdom.”
Sometimes called “Consciousness,” or absolute freedom, it is independent of any beliefs, teachers, authorities, words, concepts, or the past as mental activity. (I’ll quote the American sage, rebel and spiritual iconoclast Robert Adams here, more as a comrade than as a teacher):
“Eloquence is in the silence.”
~ Robert Adams
This realness of fact—that is, what doesn’t change—being the most basic or fundamental experience possible, has to be approached or seen completely devoid of any preconceptions or worship of sources or authorities outside oneself, with no agenda, nor any concepts, no matter how perfect and beautiful. “Drop everything” and be totally welcoming of the totality of experience now, is to be lived, first from the mind of mindlessness … and not talked about endlessly, or in order to convert anyone. One has to go “naked before God” or Reality, as it were, to realize there is no God.
It is the same with any teacher that students see as a “mere instrument of Consciousness,” conflating the message and the messenger. The messenger body is a dodo, even if it speaks the truth (like I try and do but always fall short). In fact it’s a projection, and every teacher one is taken with, no matter how powerful the revelation (and this too will pass since it is only an experience and not the source of experience), is the phenomenal dual nature of both person-as-person and instrument of “Truth”, and is by nature imperfect. The guru still has to put their pants on one leg at a time, and watch their cholesterol and get pissed at the dodos on the freeway, and use concepts – by nature error-prone, ambiguous, dualistic – as tools to convey what is concept-less. If you see the guru in the road, kill him. Well, that’s a little violent: I’d say, if after listening to him, and if a beautiful thought comes to you, smile and toss the dodo out the window, wave him a little kiss goodbye as he floats off on his guru carpet, twirling into the sky.
There are no authorities in this business, as it is by nature impossible for anyone to give you freedom.
You already have it, are it. So live with it! Stop talking about “awakening” or wanting to awaken, or going on and on about if others are awake, or who is awake, or what teacher or student is awake. Just Be.
Consciousness with a capital “c”—Universal Consciousness, or Universal Intelligence—is simply the reality you are that allows all experience, and is the same as all of reality, there being only one reality. Too simple for words: the awareness of awareness. It’s not some mystical state change or becoming anything, or in the love of any thing or anyone in particular, or huge revelation (since that will pass), rather it’s self-recognition of the source of oneself. It is also not understandable from the mind, which drives some of us crazy who are knowledge or professional-understander junkies, or professional seekers.
I realize this is a very high bar to set in a way, and that I have to go it alone (probably) but I can’t see any other way to do it. It’s like if you want to go for a nice peaceful camping trip in the desert, and enjoy the stillness, beauty and wonder of nature, and allow the expansion to the carefree selflessness of life in the Now, and hike some hills too… you don’t bring along a rock & roll band that bangs on and on about the desert, God and grace, and groupies that talk endlessly about the band leader, and more baggage than you need. No, you travel light and walk very freely, dropping each momentary thought and feeling as quickly as it arose.
In any case, I want the “Beyond Zen” site to be about that – what’s been called the “direct path.” Maybe I’m too American in my rugged individualism, but as humans we are by nature imperfect, so we do the best we can and “let God do the rest.” (See how that religious baggage creeps in?)
The site and my writing also is not about any agenda, nor changing anyone’s mind or beliefs, nor changing the world, or even changing or pulling out worldviews. So I’ve also had to turn down essays along those lines, even if they were very intelligent. However if someone posts a comment or emails me, ask questions, initiates a dialogue, then I may ask them a question that challenges their belief, or suggest some possible pointers.
“In summary”, if there is one… There’s nothing to change, no goal or purpose. It’s simply about enjoying an exploration into the unknown, opening up and seeing fresh, and enjoying the peace of No Thing (I Am has no objective qualities, Awareness = Reality = is not an object = more abstract concepts to drive you mad!). Sometimes with friends, sometimes not, but alway alOne. 🙂
Live a simple life. It’s not serious.
Take it or leave it (you have to leave it all in the end anyway…).
I find this article very refreshing, thank you. Here is a paper that you may enjoy, touches on similar points: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337545498_Oneness_in_Everyday_Life_Nonduality_Wholeness_and_Human_Life_Af
Have a nice day!
Libby
Hi Libby – Thanks, and I’m glad you found it a refreshing. I was concerned it was a bit of a “rant” (partly in response to friends who have become “converts” and completely obsessed with non-duality and a particular teacher).
I started reading the paper you linked to, and indeed it is in alignment in a general way with what I’ve seen as a good approach. Initially I felt the Advaita I was exposed to (via walking into a satsang with Francis Lucille, not even knowing what “Advaita” was but merely looking for a good local, live group for personal growth) was too black-and-white, like that article says. It left me feeling either dizzy and excited with the proposed possibility and a wholesale inversion of outlook, or feeling like I was completely failing to achieve it. As I came to understand the more nuanced aspects, I realized Francis and teachers of similar ilk, such as Rupert Spira, lay out a path (and I’ve seen this reflected in some deeper parts in the history of Advaita such as the Ashtavakra Gita) where a very important distinction is made between the initial “glimpse” (which can be small and unnoticed or enormous and calamitous), and the “establishment” of the knowing of unlimited consciousness in all aspects of life. This “colonization” or integration of the non-dual glimpse of reality is established through an on-going investigation and spontaneous re-alignment of thinking, feeling, perceiving and acting, on this basis of the wholeness of the possibility of Self as universal “consciousness” equaling reality. One’s whole life becomes more and more harmonious, peaceful, happier, loving, honest and beautiful.
In contrast, what has been called the “neo-Advaita” school of sharing, which is much more common, often involves a facile shooting down of any utterance that invokes personhood or realness and so forth. It’s more like a game of one-upmanship. Or what I also hear is a type of “it’s all just happening” reporting, or gets into a brand of acceptance that’s interpreted more psychologically, etc. The view I’ve heard from better teachers is that the neo-Advaita folk have had a large glimpse, or an initial “awakening,” or sometimes even just an intellectual awakening, but are not necessarily well established in the deeper or full spectrum of their life, from the inner cellular to the emotional to the outward way of living. This makes sense. They mistake or conflate a glimpse as an entire awakening, the endpoint, and start teaching. Also, teaching is not implied by a glimpse, no matter how many glimpses or how established: teaching is a separate skill and love.
I am very careful not to make any claims – I know I am not “established”, even if I’ve had some powerful glimpses and wonderful shifts in “inner” and “outer” aspects of life. This is an on-going journey. And, I’m not a teacher, just a writer (and photographer and gardener…)!
Happy exploring!
Best,
Eric
P.S. I just read a little more of the article, and it does point out the potential for authoritarianism in Advaita – the all-or-none character, which sets up a new but subtler duality to attain or conform or impose – which is part of what I was instinctively responding to in some my experiences with some students and teachers. I will write further on this later. Thanks again.
Dear Eric,
I am sorry that I did not see this until now! I think I must not have been scrolling far enough:)
I fully understand your comments regarding neo-Advaita, and my experiential understanding is in accord with your perspective.
I think that you and I may be cut from the same cloth in that neither want to make any “claims”… Inherent in communication is the pain of its inadequacy.
All my best,
Libby
Hi Eric, This is a good article, I do not understand though why you think you ever went anywhere ‘alone’ in this path, why do you think you could ever go ‘alone’. Who or what would be ‘alone’? If your answer is ‘I, this Oneness’ then you are saying nothing, obviously there is always only You. If your answer is ‘I, this Oneness, through this channel-body-mind-I-call-Eric’, then you are not seeing that you are both at one and yet independent from all your manifestations, and that as such you never ‘go alone’ anywhere, you are both the Movement and the Rest.
You choose amongst your infinite possibilities what to create and to celebrate at each instant from your timeless nature. One of the infinite different games through which Consciousness ‘finds’ Herself involve the moves of ‘a relationship between a human student and a human guru’. They are both of course nothing but manifestations of this Oneness, which indeed plays these games by using language, which is by nature dual. But the Transmission of the non-dual experience of peace is always only from Consciousness to Consciousness, it does not involve any object. There are indeed ‘students’ that conflate the message with the messages. My reply to this is:
First of all – so what, this is also part of the infinite perfection of Consciousness the there are so many different games available for Her to play hide and seek. Second, in most cases, the Transmission of the non-dual experience requires an openness and an availability from both the student and the teacher, a kind of listening and a kind of trust that eventually removes all obstacles, all confusions. This trust is something that happens incrementally and naturally after the glimpse of your true nature. It is not a trust in the ‘human guru’, hence it does not blind you and make you vulnerable to any kind of abuse or lack of integrity and honesty from his or her part., It is trust for the only true Guru, present in all manifestations, yet more than all manifestations. At the end, this relationship between the human guru and the student disappears in You. When that happens you can also clearly see not only that there is only One Guru, but also this incredibly beautiful and complete Oneness. You then see there is truly only One Reality. You see then the divine, you see your Self, in all the manifestations, absolutely all of them.
As I said, the paths to liberation – to the understanding that you are not a limited entity – are infinite, and not all through gurus. In ‘my’ case it could not have been otherwise, but each case is different, a different path. What matters is to see them for what they clearly are: this One Reality that is always at rest and yet it moves so gracefully, so imaginatively, expressing Her freedom by choosing amongst infinite possibilities.
Hi Luciana – Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it. And you write beautifully. Answers are below:
“Go it alone” – good question, a point that needs some clarification. There are several senses of this:
1. No one can give you freedom, or it wouldn’t be true freedom, and one needs to investigate within oneself if there are limits to consciousness, and also in one’s life to put into effect the experiments of living universally. No teacher or anyone else can do this for you, though they can point you in the right direction. Like the old song goes “You have to walk, that lonesome valley, you have to walk it by yourself. Nobody else, can do it for you, you have to walk it by yourself”. One cannot rely on any authorities other than one’s own reason, intuition, and inner experience.
2. You cannot trust a teacher anymore than you can trust human love to bring you happiness in the long run. Take the example of “falling in love.” If you can fall *in* love, you can fall *out* of love: it’s intrinsic to the game of everything changing. But, you can trust what they say *if* it makes sense universally. But you aren’t trusting the teacher, you are trusting the message. And, even given that, you have to examine the details of their life too and make sure it is commensurate with truth and their teaching (as I wrote about elsewhere). The phenomenal and the noumenal are two sides of the same infinitely thin coin “manifesting” (to borrow a crude term that should not imply personhood) and this applies to teachers as well. Leave no stone unturned if you are going to be involved with them: depending on the depth of involvement, you may want to live with them and get to know their human side as best you can, to make sure they are trustworthy, and to see what living the truth is like from example, in all aspects of life: behavior, relationships, emotional stability, use of objects, etc.
3. One is alone in the sense of “alOne” – always alone to begin with. There is only One Being, and I Am That. All others are projections of the mind. There’s peace knowing that, even if it can *seem* lonely.
4. There is a sense however in which the partnership with other students, the dialogue with them and with a teacher, are all part of the dance of One, as you point out. There’s nothing wrong with any of this, as I said.
You said “…it does not blind you and make you vulnerable to any kind of abuse or lack of integrity and honesty from his or her part.”
It all depends on the particulars – this kind of thing definitely does happen, as you know. But as I said, in the big picture it doesn’t matter. Every experience is precisely tailored so as one can grow as needed, of one is available to it.
It’s better to go in with open eyes (look what happened to Osho converts and the mess and pain that all caused – but people are still naive about the spiritual industry, and he has a large following, no matter how many times that kind of thing happens!), but an open mind too, in case there’s something of value. Take the grain (and give what you have to offer) and throw away the chafe.
“This trust is something that happens incrementally and naturally after the glimpse of your true nature” you’re mixing two different things together, confusing the order – the glimpse and the trust – and also there are different kinds of trust at play here.
A certain amount and kind of trust has to come first in this case. At least, enough trust to “hear” something and have an experience. That’s how it happened with me. I heard enough of Francis Lucille’s responses to my questions (and others), and had a feel for what he was like and the atmosphere of freedom and real friendliness around him, to trust him *as a teacher role* enough to be able to, with his help, take apart the beliefs in the way of seeing (the “cruft” accumulated, and the false belief in separation), and at the same time feel something in the background – the universal love, the “transmission” (stupid concept but I don’t have another at the moment) – and have the glimpse of realization of reality. But it doesn’t mean I threw the baby out with the bathwater and never questioned anything he said or did after that! You see what I mean? That would be foolish. You take everything one step at a time, on it’s own merit. Trust yourself only. Its the only way to go (for me) if you want totally solid ground all the way, phenomenal and noumenal.
I’m scientific and philosophical enough, and seen enough crap in these fields, that I don’t take anything on faith or authority.
Here’s a metaphor: think of the direct path teaching and teachers as blockchain technology, where it’s a zero-trust model (this just occurred to the writer, so I’ll have to develop the metaphor more). In such a case, one requires no personal trust in the sender of the money, only an understanding of the immutable character of the blockchain as a whole, which one can understand *enough* to get the whole deal off the ground, store your money, get paid, or send money, with no person or personal trust involved. The trust in the understanding, the truth of what it is, is all that’s needed. So it’s the same here: I trust the teacher enough in this game to get the initial money, pay my fees, and store some understanding, with enough awareness of the trust of the system, from seeing it in action. I learn more about the blockchain, the teacher, as time goes on, which helps grow the investment and the integration in living the truth of the universal as it becomes established as peace and happiness. But it all got off the ground without the kind of trust the old centralized banking system and it’s reliance on authority, nation states, and blind trust required (or the old religions).
So yes, we *are* talking about trust in a human guru, in part for the part they play *as* appearing to be human. You’re trying to put the cart before the horse in your argument by saying someone has a glimpse before they meet or hear what the teacher has to say, in which case there would be no need for the teacher in the first place! Of course *ultimately* there is no need for the teacher, because it’s all just consciousness at play as you say, but you can’t talk out of two sides of your mouth at the same time. It’s like saying (as an example – and this is not you), “well I’m miserable but since it’s all consciousness and we are already awake, I don’t need to meditate.” or, “We are all already awake, so I don’t need a teacher.” You see, these are both true and false. But you keep trying to conflate things together from the endpoint and not seeing or admitting how it unfolds. You’re using circular reasoning. So, from that standpoint it’s one-sided (and was part of what was behind my earlier comment of wanting to see the whole Luciana express herself) and imparts an all-or nothing quality that is a potential barrier in Advaita teachings, when they are taken on as too black and white and a new kind of dualism of Consciousness-vs-person for example (but this has to be taken in context: are we talking about the teaching, or the Experience? See below…).
Like I keep saying, it’s a field of paradox (to the mind) and as a practical matter, we (humans, as appearances) have to *do* something, like meditate or have a teacher, until you see that you never really needed to do anything, a practice or a teacher, as it was all scaffolding in an illusion in order to see that it was an illusion. That’s part of why it’s the “direct path”! And as a corollary why so few can take it: the student is told what the whole game is, the whole enchilada, that they are Universal Consciousness (which can sounds abstract), right from the beginning – the endpoint – and at the same time is brought along, step by step, taking apart the beliefs and seeing the feelings of separation and dissolving them – to get where they always were. It sound crazy and contradictory but it’s the way it has to be in this here relative dreamworld.
This is also why teachers like Rupert and Francis make concessions to relativity. For example – and, don’t get me wrong, I love the guy and greatly respect him as a great teacher – but he advertises in his Google ads as “Finding Lasting Happiness | Rupert Spira Webinars”.
He has to do this way: what would he say otherwise? “Find out you as a person have no reason for being here, have no purpose, and don’t exist?” There wouldn’t be any point to an advert like that!
Not only would it not work, but you have to put it in terms of a relative goal because if “someone” already knows what the game is, and it’s all experienced as the play of Consciousness already, then they won’t go for it either way, as an advert for happiness (nor as an advert for nothingness) – a teacher has to aim for the relative “level” as a “concession” as Rupert and Francis say. In other words if you advertise, it has to sound like self-improvement to some degree: either about getting something the self wants, like peace and happiness or enlightenment, or as losing something the self doesn’t want, like stress and anxiety.
The mind will never figure this out. But it does seem that you are conflating the teaching method and the endpoint (which never ends, so to speak, since we are already it, and we continue to unfold and grow, including your/our teacher as long as a body appears), the means and the ends. There is no way to meaningfully teach anyone about non-duality if you do that. It just becomes a bunch of ungraspable words.
I think the biggest part, or maybe the whole thing, of the confusion in our discussion, is that I’m talking about the teaching (I’m as fascinated with the means as well as the ends) *and* the realization, and you are talking only about the realization, what the teaching is pointing to, in your experience. That’s beautiful, and I *could* just talk about the realization, and sometimes I write like that (or more like make art from that experience, “feelingness” as Lester used to say – photos, painting, music, in-person ranting performances, comedy, etc. – express as best I can), but I am mindful of my audience too, and unless I write poetry, I’ll stick to making concessions to an audience for the time being. But you write beautifully, confessing your experience as Consciousness , so I do encourage that.
I’m sorry I took your essay down, but I wasn’t grasping where you were coming from for a while – it seemed one-sided to me, given what my “project” is, as it were, haha (I do laugh at myself – necessary in this crazy game!)! I’ll put it back up shortly…
Cheers,
Eric
Hi Eric, thank you indeed for taking the time to respond in depth, and for sharing your ideas.
Well, I don’t really mind you took down my little… story (I did not understand you did as I would not really call it an essay)… it is just something that came up my mind one morning and you said you like it and asked me if you could publish it. Of course if you don’t like it any longer, just remove it, you don’t need to be sorry at all. And I truly don’t mind. At all.
Just one thing: I have never and would never say we do not need a teacher. I said one of the way Consciousness choses to wake up is with the help of the teaching and transmission of the experience of a teacher, and accepted that there are also infinite different ways She may do that, all for fun, for the play. In my case the teacher was essential for my understanding, so I would not say there is no need of a teacher.
I also get from your response that you do not think the transmission of the experience of our true nature is possible, you think that even the concept itself is stupid. I do not understand that, since it seems quite natural for me that a teacher that has an experience of our true nature can communicate it to his students not through words but through his sincerity and gestures and love. I find it beautiful, both as a concept and as the way Consciousness comes to understand.
I do not think I will ever be grateful enough to Francis for all his teaching and the understanding he made possible.
But of course I agree with you that some non-duality teachers out there are crooks, that one should always be aware of teachers who say something and do something else, and that one should not believe anything unless it is his or her experience.
OK, anyway, thanks again for replying. All the best,
Luciana
I also didn’t say we don’t need a teacher. But you have to be clear and concise about the “we”, or the “I” too. (My comments below are for other readers too, since you know most of this stuff already):
I was characterizing the direct path, as my discussion or argument developed, to show that it’s not always necessary to have a teacher, or even in the way that you characterized the relationship such as the one you perceived I have with Francis Lucille. It varies quite a bit. Some absolutely need a teacher to rid them of “ego”, whereas for some a glimpse of Reality, sometimes even a total, life-changing one, happens spontaneously with no apparent teacher (as happened with Sydney Banks, the teacher I followed for 20 years, who started the 3 Principles Psychology movement), and all kinds of cases in between, and there’s no telling why. The story goes, after the main glimpse of Reality, which can vary in depth, there is the dissolution of the residues of ignorance in the bodymind, as there may have been before, such as from progressive paths of purification, or other reasons, (the post-glimpse stage is what we are both at, in my view) as well as continued glimpses or “revelations” as you put it, after, of various kinds, degrees, types… My point was, you can’t generalize, or judge someone’s need for a teacher *or* degree of awakening, from their questions, attitude to the teacher, degree of trust, etc., given how the direct path is (and my approach to it, like you were doing with me in your emails and messages), and my approach to Francis Lucille’s teaching. Right?
The charm of the direct path is that it’s suited to the modern world, the Western mind, and the secular, skeptical, scientific attitude and culture (especially how Jean Klein, Francis, Rupert, etc. teach it) which is also averse to renunciation of material or social life and obligations and creative activities, enjoyments, love, sex, family life, etc. Nor should it be. Ramana Maharshi saw this need for a contextual path (see quote below).
Of course how it’s all taken on or approached or seen or experienced varies quite a lot.
I like to see the direct path stripped to its bare essence, without need of worship, surrender to a teacher, devotion to any outward form, and so forth. So with “my” broad interests (psychology, philosophy, spirituality, various wisdom teachers and teachings, artistic approaches, etc.) and an early glimpse, and with the powerful resonance I felt with Francis and Laura and the community there, when Laura said to me, “You know there is only one Sage” (and she wasn’t talking about a person or teacher-as-person or any kind of object) when we were at lunch talking about Robert Adams, it ignited a spark of understanding. Plus it hit me one day that *everyone there* at satsang was a guru, but most didn’t know it. And as I keep having to repeat, people (bodyminds) do not become enlightened. Enlightenment Is.
“Through the potent Grace of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, the path of Self-enquiry was brought within the competence of men and women of this age, was indeed fashioned into a new path that can be followed anonymously in the conditions of the modern world, with no forms of ritual, nothing to distinguish a person outwardly from the world wherein he moves. (Anon., “Intro” to Ramana Maharshi, FHSA.)”
https://archive.ashrama.org/docs/self-enquiry/
I also clarified that sometimes sticking to one teacher is good for beginners, as Francis said, but he failed to add that sometimes it is suited for the more “advanced” souls who have a particular bent for that way of evolving. That latter wrinkle didn’t occur to me until we got into a discussion about it and you shared how things evolved for you, and your very different notion and attitude towards teachers, and how you experience Consciousness playing out in that play of “Her”. But you continued to give me a hard time about my questioning and scrutinizing Francis, teachers, teachings, and your beliefs about it, and implied that I was at a lower level, still a seeker shopping around, and was wrong in my approach.
In your case there was a watershed moment of surrender after listening to a video by Francis on surrender (according to your Facebook post) and Francis’ teachings continue to ignite revelations for you; and before that Mooji and Laura were Consciousness revealing itself, on a “need-to-know” basis. I fully accept that, and as I was trying to share with you, it illuminates the paradox (to the mind) of teacher/no-teachers, student-teacher/no student-teacher, person/no-persons, depending on whether there is a looking from non-point-of-view of Consciousness or the point-of-view of mind. To the mind there are contradictions, but to Consciousness there are not.
I’ll end this little comment with a quote someone just sent me (serendipity):
“On many occasions Bhagavan (Ramana Maharshi) told me, ‘Become envious of anyone lower than you. You must become very small. In fact you must become nothing. Only a person who is nobody can abide in the Self.’
Bhagavan often spoke to us about the necessity of humility. On another occasion he told me, ‘No one should be our inferior. One who has learned to be the inferior will become superior to all.’ ”
Peace & Love
Hi Luciana – I see much better where you’re coming from in this now and the only thing I would want to clarify is in regards to your first paragraph, about going it alone: “If your answer is ‘I, this Oneness’ then you are saying nothing, obviously there is always only You.” Well, it’s not obvious to most, so you are preaching to the converted as they say, if you assume that. I have to assume that readers of the website may not see that or feel that, or come here for inspiration, or clarification, or whatever, but it’s not “saying nothing” to note that one is always alone, or “alOne”, since many readers may at times feel alone, as I was feeling. It’s good to be reminded that one can never be alone if you are everyone and everything, the All, even if I wasn’t fully feeling it – I was in effect trying to “remember” or uncover the unity again, by writing (feeling a bit frustrated), exploring and expressing… As for the second part of the paragraph, if I interpret what you are saying with “you are both at one and yet independent from all your manifestations” and so forth, it sounds like you’re pointing to proper identification. And you’re right, I was identifying too much with the “…this channel-body-mind-I-call-Eric” rather than Source, to an extent that I was experiencing some doubt and separation and was in essence a calling out for love (looking back honestly) – as is most of human behavior – to which you and readers responded. So for that I am eternally grateful and humbled. Thank You, Love.
But Eric, in conversations with friends about my path I would like very much them to tell me about their understanding and experience, even if that went against my intuition and my own experience. And I usually do the same with them.
I don’t even remember what I said in that email you found so offensive. I was just answering to yours, we were talking about the roles of teachers in general, if I recall correctly. If not in that then in other occasions, I told you that IN MY CASE, trust in my teacher was everything in this path. As I can only talk about my experience, I gave you an advice based exclusively on my experience. And I did stress you should not take anything I said personal, and that I very much respected all different paths and ways to understanding. But you did took it personal, and when I realised that I apologised to you. I apologise again, even if I do not understand why you felt attacked.
So I don’t know what else to say apart from asking you ‘what or whom was or still is feeling attacked?’ You said many critical things about my own path and I embraced your criticism and learned from it. I loved your passion and did not even mind your anger.
Openness and welcoming, this is what makes learning possible.
In my emails to you, and here, I also stressed many times that each of us is one of Consciousness different ways of celebrating herSelf, I said that each path is different and I love and respect that. I love this diversity, I love all of it. And I see no difference between I and You, we are both I, like everyone else, we are both expressions of intelligence, of beauty, and of love.
Now I will say this, and I hope so much you don’t take any of it personal. The problem (that is not a problem but the way it is) is always the person, it is Consciousness that play to be the person that takes it personal. I still do that through this body-mind you know – but every time I see this happening it is a powerful moment of understanding, another liberating experience. I know I have a long way to go to be established in this peace, but every moment of this journey is a blessing, it is such a beautiful experience. It is pure love.
Much love and peace to you, Eric. Try to be kinder to yourself, take all this as another yoga exercise that are teaching us so much. As you always say you are already the peace you seek.
Luciana
Funny how I thought you took things personally, and was certain of that, and you thought I took things personally. And I thought I was seeing things impersonally, and you thought you were. Haha, Sigh.
“Try to be kinder to yourself.” Yes, have been feeling I’m being a bit harsh on him. Thanks ♥️
“But you continued to give me a hard time about my questioning and scrutinising Francis, teachers, teachings, and your beliefs about it, and implied that I was at a lower level, still a seeker shopping around, and was wrong in my approach.”
A hard time???? I don’t remember doing this Eric, scrutinising etc… . If you refer to my comment to your previous article, I was answering to what you said about my experience and attitude, since it is my experience and attitude and I felt there were things that needed clarifying.
But on the other hand, if you say so, that I gave you a hard time and scrutinised you… well that’s the way it must also be, who am I to say you are wrong, when you are so convinced about that? . So, what can I say now … apologies for scrutinising you and giving you a hard time!!! Still, I am sure it benefitted you somehow… as a yoga exercise, I mean .
In a discussion that is what happens: an exchange of ideas, not an agreement at all cost, not a wanting to please, just a sharing of experiences. I took your points Eric, all of them, and have learn something from each of them. For that, thank you.
All my best
Luciana
And – this I need to say, for the records… I would never EVER say to ‘anyone’ that they are ‘lower’ than me in this path…. I see myself always just at the beginning, always at the bottom of the mountain. So that every moment I can start again and again and again the path up. And encounter fresh and new those moments of understanding.
Because this is the most beautiful experience, the understanding all over again of this amazing, incredibly beautiful and only Truth.
Very well said Luciana!
Pratap