Become the Ocean of Consciousness ~ Shunyamurti responds to Khalil Gibran
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Excerpt: So, tonight we’ll go further with our process of deepening our understanding of the Self and of the transcendence and elimination of the source of the chatter (the false self, the ego) that is a computer program that has no true Being. And its lack of Being creates all of the psychological problems that are plaguing the lives of those identified with the ego.
Have all the spiritual warriors been practicing cutting down the mental chatter? How many have been working on that today? OK, good. How many feel you’ve been successful, to some extent at least? Yes? OK.
So, tonight we’ll go further with our process of deepening our understanding of the Self and of the transcendence and elimination of the source of the chatter (the false self, the ego) that is a computer program that has no true Being. And its lack of Being creates all of the psychological problems that are plaguing the lives of those identified with the ego.
And so, all of the unhappiness that one might feel in one’s life can be eliminated at a single stroke, through eliminating the ego identity, rather than working through each neurosis one at a time, or even each symptom in the body, or each karmic glitch—or whatever is the form that the suffering takes—but one can be done with all of it at once. That approach is the most useful at this time.
But before we begin, the continuation of this talk on the sadhana, I want to ask don
Rolando to come up to read a poem.
FEAR Khalil Gibran
It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way. The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.
I think that poem does beautifully express the terror that the ego feels as it recognizes it is about to dissolve into the ocean of consciousness, and will lose its identity forever, but that it’s a gain without a loss, because what it’s losing—is simply fear, and suffering, and mortality, and desires that are a dead end, that simply create more suffering—and it is the obstacle to one’s bliss.
So that at a certain moment, one crosses past the fear and doesn’t let it hold one back, and then one realizes the infinite nature of the Self, that one always was, that the river originally was the ocean, that simply took a journey of ascent and then descent and then back to the Source, and that it’s done it many times, as we all have, and that this journey home is always a blissful return, that gives us back everything we had thought we had lost. And it brings us infinite treasures, and it compensates for all the karmic suffering that we had to go through, in order to regain our bliss. And then all that had been conceived as suffering, is realized as wisdom, as perfection, as beauty. And we inculcate, we integrate, all of that power that is gained through the total acceptance of the whole cosmic process, and all of the lifetimes, and all of the cosmic nuances of our projection into this holographic matrix, and all of it is recognized as never having been anything other than the mind of God, expressing itself in a dream, in which all of its infinite permutations of potentiality could be totally expressed, and then all could return fulfilled, into the glory of the Absolute.
And we are now at the moment of the return to the glory of our Being, and the end of the suffering of the illusion. And in that oceanic consciousness, comes, again, the power to create new rivers, new worlds, new mountains that the rivers can journey through, and new experiences, new adventures, that we do because there is love for that unknown astonishment that comes when God forgets who She is, and has to relearn the true nature of our essence, through the shock and awe that comes, through the realization that we are deathless—that we are immortal—that we sometimes do not discover until the moment of death. But that if we can gain while still alive, then life itself becomes a kingdom of heaven, an act of beauty, a total wonderland of the capacity to create within the phenomenal illusion, the full embodiment of the supreme ecstasy, and the supreme power of creative imagination, manifesting all possibility in space and time—and not simply in the ocean, but that even in the meandering of the river itself—it is divinized and it becomes a holy river, a holy Ganges, in which whoever dips into it, is saved. And that is our role now, to become such sacred rivers of truth, of love, of divine power, that whoever even encounters us and sees the beauty of the flow of our divine energy, will be liberated from their illusions and their pain.
And that is why all the rivers have gathered here in a confluence, that is the true Kumbha Mela—that no longer happens in India, but has transferred its essence to Costa Rica. And it’s a great joy to share the ocean with all of the sacred riverine gods and goddesses, who are willing and able to swaha the ego into the ocean, and create a communion of all of us, and a single consciousness, that can transform the world.
To accomplish this, we have to be willing to realize we are not the ego—and never were. But the ego—as, I think, beautifully expressed in this poem by Kahlil Gibran—the ego is fear-based. Underneath anger is always fear. And fear creates sadness, it creates attachment, it creates greed, it creates lust, it creates all of the various emotional vices, that produce karmic backlash, and dam up the river—literally damn the river—to be unable to flow to the ocean. And so, we must break through these blocks of fear, in order to reach the fullness of our Being.
So that’s really it in a nutshell; there is not much else that we need to talk about theoretically. It’s a matter now of doing it. And the way to do it, is to not entertain these river-like narratives of the ego, the mental chatter that produces the fear. And the moment we disidentify from all the fearful ideas and images—all the awfulizing, all the tendencies to see the dark side of things, all the tendencies to believe in lack and in doom, and in impotence, and incompetence, and a sense of hopelessness and shipwrecked-ness—all of those illusions of the ego can be stopped, simply through the refusal to entertain those thought-patterns. And if we refuse for a significant amount of time, we extinguish the patterns of thought, and emotion, and impulse that produce acting out of the ego, and continuation of suffering.
And all of the ego’s thoughts are draining; they weaken the immune system. They hold one in affirmation of negation, an affirmation of fear and of lack. So we never want to be on the side of the ego—we always want to side with the light, with the power, with the Real, and to cut down the ego’s enjoyment of its usurpation of our mental space, and take over manual control over the mind, until the ego is gone, and the mind of God comes in and replaces it, that ocean of infinite Being. And we become embodiments of that mind, not of a mind created in infancy, through imitation of our biological parents and their fears, and their defense-mechanisms.
And so, the ego is never authentic—it’s always an imitation. And it’s an imitation of an imitation of an imitation. And it’s a hodgepodge because it imitates the mother, the father, an uncle, some siblings, aunts, grandparents—it has no consistency or continuity or unity—always at war with itself, always is conflict, always in gridlock and paralysis. And so, the ego, then, is in flight from itself, and from its inability to decide to break through and lead a fulfilling life. And that running away, that denial, creates even more difficulties in life, that then produce problems, that we cannot understand, because they are derivative of the real problem, which is the inauthentic nature of the identity.
So, it’s only by breaking through the lie of the ego, and establishing ourselves in the truth of our Being, that we free ourselves from all of the negative symptoms that the ego produces. And then that energy of love, and light, and power, and truth, and beauty, become the radiance of our Being, that can touch others, with the same beauty and magic of liberation.
So, this is the function of a Sat Yogi: to be liberated and a liberator. But the step of being liberated from the ego requires a ruthless refusal of the sentimentality of the ego, that wants to hold on to the old comfort zones, the old relationships of meaningless collusions with other people, and identifications with family systems that are dysfunctional—and it pays a huge price to pretend that it knows who it is. But all of those bases of the security of the ego, lead only to massive insecurity. Because all of the people that the ego holds on to, to keep its identity secure, they are insecure, they are shaking in anxiety. And so, no one has a ground in real Being, so long as they’re in ego-consciousness, and you become drawn down to the lowest common denominator to all of those beings to whom you are attached emotionally, and all fall in to the quicksand of lostness and inauthentic being. So, we have to have the courage of getting out of that swamp, and only then can we help pull out others.
OK. So, as I said last night, we are beginning a boot camp, or an intensive retreat, but a much more focused and consistent sadhana—spiritual practice—to accelerate our ability to break through and be free of the ego once and for all. So, I want to create conditions here, for everyone who will be here through this Coronavirus blessing, that allows us to have this retreat, to really make use of it, to make this Noah’s Ark seaworthy. And so that all crew members are in top condition to be able to row, or put up the sails when necessary, or to deal with reefs, or whatever we have to encounter, and to be fearless and in attunement with that supreme intelligence, so that we all work together as a whole, and without any conflicts, and in a state of fearless love for the mission that we are on. And along the way we may pick up stragglers who are in the flood, begging to be saved from their denial that the flood was coming.
And so, we will have much work to do: much work to do locally, and much work to do in our light bodies, non-locally; as we transcend the physical vehicle, we will come more and more to function through the subtle vehicle. And we will be called on, to work as angelic beings, on a dimension of our consciousness that transcends the plane that the ego is used to operating on. And this too is something that we must fearlessly accept, and be willing to fly, like Garuda. We have one Garuda here, but we’re going to have many Garudas. And Vishnu needs an army—or an air force, I should say—of vehicles who can fly to wherever they are needed, to send love and peace, to those who are suffering. And we must be egoless enough to be willing to serve, at any time of day, in whatever body we are called to do it in, or bodiless in the infinite consciousness of the ultimate light-field of Brahman, but we will be called to serve, and in some very astonishing ways and situations, that we will soon encounter in the near future, that will bring great joy to many, if we have conquered all the traces of paranoia of the ego.
Namaste,
Shunyamurti
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