Not Knowing No Longer an Option

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Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

There seem to be two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish . . . and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and playacting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to dis-identify themselves with the ego, by realizing its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure Being.
Wei Wu Wei Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon: Reflections of a Pilgrim on the Way

…if you're enquiring merely to get rid of the pain, if you're using the enquiry as a pain-killer, it might work, [but] maybe not... It's not the purpose of the enquiry. The enquiry is to find out who suffers, to come to see that it's not what you are, but that it's the idea of yourself that is suffering. A concept is suffering from a concept.
Mooji

How silly is that? A concept suffering from a concept!

Several weeks ago a friend asked me to please excuse the distastefulness of the term “enlightened” and to simply tell her where I was evolutionarily.

I do indeed dislike the question (see Joan Tollifson for an explanation) but, having been asked, I gave an honest answer my best shot: “I don’t know. I cannot decide.”

Perhaps this sounds a bit ridiculous, but it was the closest I could see into my situation. Well, my friend is marvelously direct, and her short reply cut through all the crap: “What if you never decide?”

Again, I considered simply and directly.
I was totally surprised by the answer.
I hadn’t seen it coming and suddenly there it was so starkly obvious that I broke out laughing:
“I would probably be enlightened and continually un-enlightening myself.”

This struck me as the silliest behavior imaginable and because my reaction was so guilt free and filled with loving amusement – I knew it to be true.
This was not philosophical gymnastics on my part – this was seeing deeply into the matter.

And because of that truth, it wasn’t long before the silliness wore off.
I had received my wake-up call.
“Not knowing [was] no longer an option” and since that day, Life has been roaring through, unfolding on its own.

I found these words in a story told by Adyashanti’s wife, Mukti. She too had received a wake-up call:

…we attended a satsang with a teacher named Gangaji. Right away Adya got up and spoke with her from his perspective. I could see that the dialogue that ensued was from a shared, awakened perspective of knowing Oneness, and that it was a dialogue in which I was not able to participate. As I witnessed their exchange, something came fiercely alive inside me, saying, “In order to have a true spiritual marriage, a true meeting of Adya, I must know this perspective.” And my seeing this didn’t come from a place of jealousy. It just came from a knowing that this must be—it was as though within myself, without literal words, my Being was saying, “This must come to pass. So that I too can meet my husband from this perspective.”
…“this must be.” There was just something inside me that made not knowing no longer an option, and in that sense it was as though time had run out.

Well, why not? Next month, I turn sixty.
Perhaps, I have finally become that second kind of seeker.

The Tax for Having a Life

You have not been educated to that you could be perfect from the beginning.
You think you will be perfect at the end.
And therefore a journey comes into play, the birth of all religions comes out of this.
So do we need the journey?
For a while, that seems unavoidable… we must taste the tax for having a life.
Mooji, You Can Be Free Today

Thanks to FaceBook I have reconnected with a friend I’ve not seen in over twenty years. Mark and I taught TM together in the late ‘70’s.
What a marvel to compare notes about the path after thirty years.
We speak the same language. We share the same roots… and a lifetime of practice has flowed past the bridge.

I asked Mark which non-dual teacher he likes the best.
I wasn’t that surprised that he said, “Mooji.”
Mooji’s soft, gentle, loving manner feels so like Maharishi to me.
Turns out, Mark had the opportunity to sit an hour with Mooji in personal dialog:

My question was about my teacher of Vedic wisdom (MMY, of course) teaching that the human nervous system over time and through repeated alternation of meditation and activity develops the ability to maintain pure awareness 24/7.
His response, quite lovingly, was, "Bullshit."

Ah! So Maharishi’s teaching left Mark with the same question I had – is awakening spontaneous and in the moment, or is there some kind of process, a ripening, that’s required?
I tried to look at this sometime ago. Now’s as good a time as any to revisit the subject.
Why? Because paying the tax bill has become just about unbearable to me.



Or, perhaps these words of Joan Tollifson will make the point from yet another angle.
I came to Joan on a tip[ from another FaceBook friend. Someone I have never met and known less than a year.

Some say enlightenment is the absence of suffering,
some say it is the absence of non-functional thinking,
some say it is the end of identification with the thinking mind,
some say it is the absence of ego or the dissolution of the separate self,
some say it is the absence of any sense of agency or of being the author of the thoughts and actions that arise.

Some say it is the realization of Oneness,
others describe it as the merging of difference and unity.
Some compare enlightenment to lucid dreaming in the waking state and say that it is the abiding realization that all of consciousness is a dream state, including the entire movie of waking life and the whole spiritual search.
Some insist that enlightenment manifests only as saintly behavior and is characterized by being soft-spoken, generous, kind, vegetarian and pacifist, while others insist you can be enlightened and still be an alcoholic, a meat-eater, a womanizer, a thief, a warrior, or someone prone to angry outbursts.
Some say enlightenment happens suddenly and irrevocably at a particular time on a particular day, and that it is a permanent, final shift;
others describe it as a gradual unfolding;
and some say that it only ever happens Now and that it never happens to somebody…

Who has it right?…
Who (or what) is it, exactly, that would be enlightened or unenlightened? …

Enlightenment doesn't “happen.“
It is.
It is neither gradual nor sudden, and what is realized is both ever-present and ever-fresh.

It can appear gradual in the story where it seems (in retrospect) that awakening was a shift that unfolded slowly over time—that which is false was seen through ever-more clearly, ever-more deeply, ever-more subtly, ever-more often, ever-more completely….

To say, “I am enlightened and it happened on May 2nd at two o’clock in the afternoon,” sounds to my ear like a good story.
To say that “I am not enlightened yet, but maybe someday I will be,” sounds like a different story.
Both stories refer to a “somebody” that I have been unable to actually find, a “somebody” that is the bottomline myth or idea (the snake in the rope).
Joan Tollifson, Am I Enlightened?

I like Joan. Reading her entire article is worthwhile.
And if that is too many words, click here and watch a bit of video.
How very different from Mooji.
I just love to see the packaging!