Let Your Own Discretion Be Your Tutor: Suit The Action To The Word, The Word To The Action.

"What should I do?" ask so many, many seekers; Andrew asked the question pointedly in the comments section of the last entry. Well, a lot of answers come to mind, none of them particularly useful. Advaita seems to be largely about pointing to the fact that awareness is here, now; that enlightenment, that elusive goal, is always already met. Liberation can never be something that happens in the "future"; all there is, is this: this ever present, ever lasting, timeless moment. It is only ever "now". Now is all we have, all there is. So, logically, liberation, awakening, enlightenment, whatever you care to label it, is always available now. It is, in fact, just awareness; it is the mere perception of whatever it is that's happening. So advaita, or nonduality, is sparse on practice. And it is often pointed out that any practice reinforces the notion that there is some separate entity that can get this. That separate entity - the persona or personality, the ego, Mike, Fatima, Pervez or Barbara, the person that this all seems to happen to - is illusory, and a convenience. What happens, happens, but not "to" anybody. So writers of blogs like this are likely to say that there is nothing you can do. Just look around. Whatever you're doing is the perfect expression of aliveness, oneness, awareness, or whatever we're calling it on a Thursday.

I suppose the only goal behind these words is to point out that everyone is complete and whole and perfect, just as they are. There is not so much the goal of inducing somehow the "ah-ha" moment, when the needs and desires of the persona are eclipsed by the realisation that their heart's desire is, in fact, in everything they touch, think, feel, see, hear, smell and taste - and it always "was". My goal, for whatever reasons of my conditioning, is to point to the beauty of what is, and the wonder that is each of us, just exactly as we are. I'm not fond of people beating themselves up for being human. I'm appalled by the destruction - both of self and of everything near - that self-loathing is the catalyst for. So I gently try to make people see how extraordinary they are, just as they are, by simply telling them this is so.

However, it's also the case that being appalled by destruction doesn't mean that it's not necessary. The other goal I seem to have is to merely describe balance: in duality, which is simply awareness taking a look at itself, there must be depression for happiness, despair for joy, destruction for creation, subject for object, war for peace. So I point out that there is always balance, and there is no utopia but this.

So, bearing all this in mind, the answer to the question "what should I do?" is: do exactly what you are doing. You can't get it wrong. If the thought comes up to join a meditation group, or embark on some austere and fruitful Eastern-based spiritual practices, by all means do so. If Byron Katie's The Work seems to beckon, please embark on that journey. If A Course In Miracles seems to fit your particular conditioning, get stuck in. However, perhaps the most helpful advice - if, indeed, there is any - is to give up. Just take the whole enlightenment search and stick it up the collective Universe's butt. Read everything, go to satsangs, get frantic with it, and then get disgusted and throw the whole thing out the Great Cosmic Window. The Buddha similarly gave up; when the mind stops its frenzied quest to annihilate itself, the obvious can shine through. No matter what you are doing, it is eternal and infinite. No matter how small you seem to be, you are eternal and infinite, too. Do everything; do nothing; it is all just as it must be.