Assorted Vidyas #21

Dear readers, this is a repost of my article posted on 2/22. There was a glitch of some sort with Substack and only a few of my readers received this, so apologies to all. And to make sure everyone receives it I'm just sending it again to everyone. Substack is still trying to figure out what happened. Thanks for your support.


1.

The Divine Presence will not reveal itself with a lightning bolt. God will not rock you like a hurricane. God will not thrill you. In fact, the experience of God's grace might seem a disappointment to you if you're coming from an amusement park thrill attitude. Awakening is ego's biggest disappointment, to quote an old saying. Thrills, excitements, dramas, etc., are of the body. The experience of God is not of the body. The body is of duality and is a creation from God. Yes, you can experience duality and you can experience God, but they are two different things.

God reveals itself like an unfolding, a gradual shift or a curtain lifting. And God also determines how long one will be in The Divine Presence then one quickly slips back to physicality and one suddenly realizes where one just was. It all happens naturally and without the brain noticing until afterwards.

2.

Mystical/Shakti states are experiences from a different realm that lies outside of thought/brain-time/space references, i.e., they occur in pure consciousness. But there can be times a "lightning bolt" effect might occur but it's "after the fact" when thought "comes back on line" and the brain suddenly realizes what just happened and any jolt is due to the abrupt energy shift from a mystical environment back to the dross of physicality. Such is the radical contrast of the antipodes of Creator and created.

3.

Sometimes spiritual progress can have a certain unfortunate aspect that creeps up on both the aspirant and the teacher. It might be called an air of superiority or, using a more negative tone, "toxic success". It's rampant among fake gurus, toxic gurus and cults but it can also happen with legitimate gurus and their followers. It's also observed in  controlling and fear-based absolutist western religions. The air of superiority is but the first step to authentic spiritual self-destruction. Being a firebrand on the path is a slippery thing. Passion and equipoise do not mix, in my opinion. Proselytizing is already a sign of things getting out of balance. As my first guru taught me, “If someone hasn't asked your opinion, bug off.” 

One way to test oneself is to ask if one is taking the path too seriously or is thinking in terms of there being only one way to walk it--and that way is your way. One's progress is thus negated. You missed an important part of the point of the whole thing. It's the part called self-check for humility and equipoise in all things. It's about recognizing and deprecating the ego every step of the way. Power corrupts in any endeavor in life because wherever you go, whatever you do,  your ego's there, too. A successful path walker is a vigilant path walker.

4.

Dattatreya’s words
of  homogeneity 
remove our dross
and reveal eternity.

His "Avadhuta Gita",
so original and bold,
is written from experience,
not from what he was told.

Hovering between antipodes
in equipoise aligned
he reveals a mystical crack
where The Ultimate you’ll find.

Duality teaches differences,
inequalities, and separations.
Yoga teaches Sama, Samarasa
and universal equations.

The only reason we’re here
is to awaken and provide
an experience for God
alone to be magnified.

The forward motion
to attain liberation
becomes a stillness
called Samarasa.

I don’t fear death.
I die daily in meditation.
It’s dying on an installment plan:
a path to liberation.

I die to the ego-I.
I leave it behind
and immerse in something greater:
The Supreme Cosmic Mind.

5.

I was over there experiencing that.
Now I'm over here experiencing this.
Next I'll be in another place experiencing something else.
All are the same thing only different.
Celebrating, complaining or clinging to doesn't change anything.
Neither does strutting or fretting.
It's all just stuff.
Deal with it. Accept it all because it all just is--just like The Divine Presence.
If there's something you can do about it, no need for drama.
If there's nothing you can do about it, no need for drama.
Equipoise in all things.
Soli Deo Gloria.

6.

Away from duality,
away from non-duality,
a distanceless distance,
a depthless depth,
a Substanceless Substance,
The Truth of Divine Stillness Profound
is the essence called The Consciousness Absolute.

7.

Not knowing is essential for authentic spiritual progress. Not knowing is not the same
as ignorance. Not knowing is of humility. Ignorance is of the ego. Not knowing sets the environment for The Divine Presence to be revealed. Ignorance blocks it.

8.

Thinking "I love you" in the Divine Presence is ineffective and meaningless just like any other thoughts or words or brain-produced pictures. Besides, if you are really in The Presence, thoughts and words won't even occur to you because you are no longer in the place that produces them. So, when in The Presence, what does one do, then? Nothing. One does nothing, or rather, no-thing. Things are duality. One does what God is doing: just being present. Not only is that enough, that's all there is. It's "The All that is" in it's stunning, profound, blissful, paradoxical, identity-dissolving Self. You won't even miss the stuff of duality because it won't even occur to you. In fact, what you think of as "you" is no longer there. 

9.

And, on a related note, it's historically constant that we humans insist that God is a spectacle and looks just like us! Thus, our egos are exposed. Creating one's god in one's own image (or fantasy) never ends well in my opinion.

10. 

Due to the demands of everyday living, we sometimes can feel that we’ve fallen away from God which causes an emptiness in the heart, a sense of lacking spiritual grounding. But getting back on track makes one realize just how close one had been all along, and that one was closer than one thought. Such momentary “lapses” are actually a blessing however they may feel. If you were never close to begin with, you wouldn’t have noticed God seemed to be not present. The contrast can’t happen if you hadn’t made progress on your path.

11.

I don’t really know anything.
I just write what I experience.
Don’t know why I feel the need to write.
Yet here I am in the midst of words.

I’ve read sacred writings
and spiritual books abundant
from saintly minds and Godly teachers
but they're all the same thing only different.

Some think I parrot these.
Some think I speak through a bong.
But I only write from experience
as I’ve done all along.

I write about what I’ve got
and some may think it’s not a lot,
but it doesn’t take me squat
to see a bowl of rice as God.

So, dear readers,
take what’s useful
and leave the rest.
In my act of service
I can only offer my best.