Nothing but Nature

Dear all,

I think this enlightenment and spirituality-business is dangerous and
destructive. It leads us away from and destroys what is of vital
importance to ourselves, that is, nature.

What I mean is that anything we experience, is an experience of nature
(or the cosmos). In short, all there is, is nature. Nature is not some
external thing. As you are never separate from nature, nature and you
are one: it is impossible to say where a human 'ends' and
nature/cosmos 'begins'. To ignore/destroy nature is to ignore/destroy
humans, to straightjacket nature is to straightjacket yourself, and
vice versa. Nature is one.

Nature is a (comm)unity and everything that occurs in nature (f.e. a
human being) is a form of that (comm)unity.

So it's not Shiva, Shakti, (para)Brahma(n), God, Allah, Buddha-nature
or whatever other spiritual, mystical, or transcendental concept/path
that was, is or will be making your day: it all is, has been and will
be nature. Hence there is no high and mighty plain of Detachment,
Happiness and Bliss where the Enlightened dwell: every one of us is
here, in/with nature, as nature. And I assure you, we all suffer
tremendously from the wars that are being waged on nature.

So instead of searching for ((y)our) Happiness and ((y)our)
Enlightenment, we/you should better start minding and fighting for
what we are and what we were from the very beginning, viz. nature and
her (comm)unity.

Notice that, I, that is, nature, am being destroyed while you are
searching for Enlightenment. In other words, the search for a Higher
State of Being (Enlightenment, Liberation, Extinction) is one of the
terrors of the contemporary world. We do not need Enlightenment, we
need nature, and we need it now!

Other terrors that haunt our world are the terrorism of the Higher
Being (cfr. Abrahamic God), the terrorism of the Higher
Community/Leader(s) (cfr. states, kingdoms), and the terrorism of the
Higher Reason (cfr. Western Enlightened Reason).

The terrorism of the Higher Being (God) turns humans into creatures of
this Being on a mission to spread His Message and Love. This is a very
tough terrorism as it is purely rooted in the belief in this Being,
those existence can not be proven or disproven.

The terrorism of the Higher Reason (cfr. Western Enlightened Reason)
turns humans into civilised, developed people who (are made to)
believe in the High/Developed value of democratic states, science,
industry,.. with all the political, economic, industrial,
(neo)colonial, social, cultural, ecological consequences thereof.

The terrorism of the Higher Community/Leader(s) (states, kingdoms)
turns people into subjects, civilians or followers who (are made to)
believe that this Higher Community/Leader(s) is more important than
their own natural (comm)unity.

The terrorism of the Higher State of Being (Enlightenment) turns human
beings into seekers of spirituality/enlightenment who (are made to)
believe that (people with) this Higher State of Being is(are) more
important/valuable than (people with) other states of being.

All these searches for Higher Goals terrorise/straightjacket human
beings. Being ignorant that nature is one, these straightjackets tear
nature into pieces (creatures, civilised/developed people, ..) and
destroy the (comm)unity of nature.

Let's face it: we are not really creatures, civilised/developed
people, labour-units, subjects, civilians, followers or
spiritual/enlightenment seekers. Let's stop terrorising and
straightjacketing ourselves: we are nature!!

The goal of nature is not to be holy/divine, civilised, obedient or
enlightened, but to live and enjoy her/our (comm)unity/ies.

Therefore, we must (learn to) support, conserve and live in/as/with
our natural (comm)unity/ies with love and wisdom, and help stopping
the denial, straightjacketing and destruction of nature/ourself in the
name of some Higher Goal.

The only energy/power humans need is not nuclear or electromagnetic,
but energy/power that is naturally available. The fusion humans need
is not a nuclear fusion, but a fusion of natural/human energies.

I wish us the best of luck!

Greetings,

Jeroen

NonDual Highlights No. 2456, 25/4/06

Just be willing to receive

like an empty vessel
life, expressing itself as it does.
Give up your preoccupations,
your interpretations,
and all conditions put on existence.
Come to see that there is no separate individuality,
see that all sense of separation is mind made.
Realizing this all suffering ceases
and you will awaken to love, wisdom and compassion
expressing itself in all actions throughout your entire life.
Susan Frank

All forms of psychotherapy

including psychoanalysis, are based on a premise that is exactly the cause of what could be called a fundamental neurosis in the light of advaita … namely the arising of an ego that experiences itself as a separated entity...The psychoanalyst tries to restore an ego to balance and harmony, an ego in balance with its surroundings and with other beings. On closer examination this ideal is seen to be completely naïve... This is just about as absurd as applying oneself to curing the symptoms of a disease without turning to the sickness itself. The psychoanalytic cure is thus not a real cure. It doesn’t liberate the sick person from the sickness, it helps him to live with it, with the ego. His sickness is imaginary. From the point of view of advaita a psychoanalyst always works, whether consciously or not, and in all sincerity, just as does Monsieur Purgon, the doctor in Moliére’s ‘The Imaginary Invalid’.
Jean Klein, Be Who You Are

I see the same world as you do

but not the same way. There is nothing mysterious about it. Everybody sees the world through the idea he has of himself. As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. I do not see the world as separate from me and so there is nothing for me to desire, or fear.

Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I Am That"

On Enlightenment

I generally do not like to use the term "enlightenment" because it tends to stigmatize or specialize within our awareness what is our "always already" true essential being thereby separating ourselves from the experience of it more. It is a term of assessment which employs the comparative, measuring mind in ways that I have noticed has tendencies to pull an aspirant into separating themselves in their belief and identification from that for which they aspire.

As soon as you speak of the "real" as being what one thing as opposed to other things are or the "enlightened," you speak from awareness that sees also what is other than real and other than enlightened. In other words, it is a term of measurement from a dualistic and relative place of awareness. There is nothing wrong with this and it is what we do to create markers for ourselves in differentiating within our Self-experience. But what happens is that the markers become bars rather than gateways to that realization when we believe ourselves to be other than "real" or that there is something to do to become "enlightened." As soon as we act out of the belief that we are other than that which we aspire for, we concretize that belief and create tension obstructing the realization of the always already nondual suchness.

Enlightenment can be seen as the spacious awareness of what is prior to all conditions and conceptions and is not the end of Becoming which is the nature of manifest existence, but the (perceptually) unobstructed or unobscured unfolding of that unconditioned being, our true nature, as Satchidananda within manifestation.

We might ask, what is it in me or us that sees what enlightenment is and what is it in you that recognizes it? Is it not enlightened awareness itself? Only enlightenment itself can be enlightened. There is no one separate from anything to be enlightened in relationship to anything else. In that sense, the terms nondualist and enlightened are oxymorons.

In addition, enlightenment is not some measure of great knowledge attained. In fact the Truth Consciousness is birthed from the unknown and nothing previously conceived. So it can be said that in essence enlightenment is not knowing (and being at peace with it) and living in the realization of being no one. ;-) [...]

Ellen Davis
Nondual Highlights #2449 - Monday, April 17, 2006
 

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here

e e cummings

When you have understood

that all existence, in separation and limitation, is painful, and when you are willing and able to live integrally, in oneness with all life, as pure being, you have gone beyond all need of help.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, A Net of Jewels

Subtle trap of the mind

From ‘Presence-~Awareness: Just This and Nothing Else’, Sailor Bob Adamson.

Q: Bob, one of the questions that I have, and I know it is a concept, is that one can grasp the discussion intellectually, but it is almost like it has to translate into a livingness or something. Do you know what I mean? I know it is quite dividing.

Bob: It is! Because, where do you get the idea “intellectually” from? Why put on that label? Grasp it. Full stop.

Q: I’m assuming life should turn upside down or something or shift dramatically or maybe it does. I don’t know.

Bob: It may or it may not, but it doesn’t need to, does it? You see that there is no ‘me’. Why hasn’t life turned upside down before?

Q: It is just a concept.

Bob: Yes. You put the label on it: ‘I understand intellectually’. Then we think there is some other way that it needs to be understood. Then we are subtly back in the trap of the mind. Seeing it is seeing it. Two and two is four. Is that intellectual? Or is there a knowing of it? In the seeing of it, nobody can convince you otherwise. The same with this. It needs to be looked at to really see that there is nothing there with any substance or any independent nature that I can call ‘me’, nothing whatsoever. But thinking is still happening. Hearing is still happening. Feeling etc. Everything is still happening the way it always has. Choices are made. Preferences are held. Arguments, fights...livingness goes on.

Q: But it is different from a state of awareness...?

Bob: It is not different. It is all awareness, but the only thing that happens is that psychological suffering drops off, including the resentments, fears, self-pity, depressions and all that sort of thing. The emotions come up, but they don’t hang around and fixate. The anxiety does not build up and build up. The knots in the guts, aches in the heart, lumps in the throat, and feelings that go on in the body because of that are not there.

Q: (Second questioner) What sometimes comes up is the idea that this is not right. You should be feeling guilty! It is funny how those thoughts continue!

Bob: Yes. That is the habit pattern, the idea that we have got to conform with what society dictates we should be like.

Q: It is not attaching to the thoughts.

Bob: Yes, not fixating on them. Taking what they call a ‘vested interest’ in it, it hangs around and hangs around. Thought comes up and there is awareness of it. It will play around for a while and move on. Have a look at your thoughts. Where are yesterday’s thoughts now? No thought hangs around forever. It is soon replaced by another thought. Then we say, ‘I had the same thought yesterday’. But did you? Is it the same thought? Or did it come up again fresh and new? It might be the same content and the same label on it and all the rest of it, but it is just what has come up right now.

Free and Easy

A Vajra Song
by Ven. Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present, in relaxation
and letting go.

Don't strain yourself;
there is nothing to do.
Whatever arises in the mind
has no importance at all,
because it has no reality whatsoever.
Don't become attached to it;
don't identify with it
and pass judgement upon it.

Let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves -
without changing or manipulating anything -
and everything vanishes and reappears, magically,
without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It's like a rainbow which you pursue
without ever catching.
Although it does not exist,
it has always been there
and accompanies you every instant.

Don't believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax this grasping,
space is there - open, inviting and comfortable.

So make use of this spaciousness, this freedom
and natural ease.
Don't search any further.
Don't go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great elephant
who is already quietly at home.

Nothing to do,
Nothing to force,
nothing to want -
and everything happens by itself.

NonDual Highlights #2436 - Sunday, April 2, 2006