Fixing the world
Adyashanti: Good evening.
Questioner: This is my first retreat with you.
A: That's funny. It's my first retreat with you.
Q: But I'm the beginner.
A: You better believe I am too. More than you would imagine.
Q: Well, I'm struggling with something and its going to sound a bit theoretical but its really very personal.
A: Okay.
Q: A little background, I get paid to think. I'm a teacher. Okay that can become an addiction. My background is Christian and I'm still hanging in there.
A: Very good.
Q: Trying to preserve what I think is really valuable in the tradition although I must admit I am a bit religiously promiscuous in my Christianity.
A: Apparently so, yeah.
Q: You might say I sit around a lot.
This is it, it goes back to the question that came up the first evening, with the gentleman who watches CNN and BBC and gets upset. I watch CNN and BBC too... and get upset. Now what I'm trying to do; I want to be as brief as I can, I'm trying to make connections between what I've been and what I'm trying to be - all that I've learned, I think I've learned so much during these past days. But part of my tradition that I still want to affirm is what we Christians inherited from our Jewish parents. It's called 'tikkun olam;' fixing the world. We've got to fix the world. That's especially the Jewish prophets - including Jesus - and they all said 'you've got to fix the world.' The main reason they said 'you've got to fix the world' is because they saw not only the suffering within each of us that we cause ourselves so often; not only the broader, but they were kind of specific, Adya. They saw the suffering of people who are suffering because of what some people do to them. In other words some people who are not very enlightened of course but it's the suffering that is inflicted and it comes under the rubric of 'justice.' Or 'injustice.' And responding to injustice, we've got to fix the world.
You addressed this and I got part of it but I guess I just want you to say it again once more for me. How do I put together, 'everything's okay the way it is,' 'surrender to it,' and 'the world needs to change.' 'Accept it; fix it.'
A: They seem diametrically opposed.
Q: And it gets really... I feel it. When you look at the suffering that is inflicted on innocent people blown away by bombs, either terrorist or military. By families in the inner city that can't feed their kids. Children denied health care. And the biggie that touches us all, what we are doing to this wonderful Earth. I know you're going to tell me...
A: Well this will save time, won't it?
Q: I think you're going to tell me that before you can fix it, you've got to accept it. I see because of the trouble with our fixing it, I guess I tend to get fixated on our fixing. Ego enters into it.
A: Yeah.
Q: Just help me; what's the gap? I think we've got to overcome the gap between accepting it and trying to do something about it. How does one move?
A: Because either one of those - even the accept everything as it is - if that gets taken as the 'truth,' then that's just as illusory as 'it's a mess, we gotta fix everything.' You see it's more like a medicine; it's a prescription, right? If we have this terrible disease of apparent division and strife, then one of the prescriptions is 'allow everything to be.' But it's like taking antibiotics if you're sick. True health isn't taking antibiotics for the rest of your life, is it? True health isn't contained in the drug and true health isn't contained in the sickness. It's contained ultimately outside of either one of them, so... - by the way, these are two difficulties that people run into even in their own realization.
Sometimes we start out from a divided point of view, seeing seemingly everything's a mess and division and hate and ignorance and greed and violence and all of that, and that leads to a lot of division. And then we can have a great awakening and see there's nobody doing it. It's all done spontaneously, and then the mind still jumps in and makes a conclusion, "Ooh, why get involved?"
It's just doing - and even then the realization becomes, as I have said many times, a new fixation. Right, so let's see it this way... If you're gonna think of it, more importantly; feel it, allowing everything to be as it is. It's sort of restores a sense of balance. It heals a certain anxiety and if there's a total of spontaneous happening of truly allowing everything to be, which is like surrender. Our nature is surrender; the ground of our nature is "allowing every thing to be." So let me talk to you in concrete terms. because I could keep going abstractly...
From my own experience, (because again, my teacher was smarter than me; she never tried to teach me any of this); its all inherent within being. But there was a time when; it was after a certain realization, and I was standing at a wedding, after the wedding, and it was a big wedding and it was a gymnasium after the wedding and I went over to get a second plate of food which is one of the best things about weddings, you know? So I went over to get a second plate of food and I'm going over there... And of course, I'm the first to get the second plate of food because I eat almost as fast as any one I've ever known - I'm not very Zen in my eating habits, you know... - "steam shovel version," yeah.
I get a plate of food, and I turn around after I get the food, and I look out in this big room and there's the whole wedding thing; after the wedding, the dancing, and the kids and the grandmas and all of humanity, and you mingle for awhile so you get to know, "Oh there's a little tension over there in the family, and these people are having a great time."
It's like it encapsulates humanity in a sense, and I sit there and look at it, and just this realization dawns, and I realize it's over... I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever see life the same way. It sounds separating, but its not - the way that these people are seeing life. I will never see life ever again, the way that most of humanity is seeing it. And it was at that point I felt just a tinge of what I would call the "taboo against being totally free." It's like, and then I felt; "how dare I?" "How dare I leave humanity totally behind?"
You feel like a taboo; like it's not right. You must stay in the muddle and help make it. I'm not saying that I had all these thoughts; it was just a feeling, right?
And there's a taboo in the collective consciousness that most people actually feel at a certain point of development, and I felt it, and it was very obvious to me, luckily, that it was just time to let it go. It was "let go" and it was no big explosion; nothing like that; very, very simple. And all of a sudden I'm there, plate in hand, looking at the wedding like I was before, and the next moment it was like, well,.. into the fray. And so I walked right back into it; it was like leaving the dream unequivocally, and then walking right back into it and its hard to make sense of that, but what arose was "from this place, everything is accepted."
Because everything IS accepted. Literally... Literally. I can feel great compassion for hideous things that humanity does to each other, but I don't go into emotional psychological division. And that's the taboo... You feel that in the collective consciousness; that it's like not okay "not to go into division..." You must go into division; you should go into division.
That's what the collective consciousness feels.
And there I was not feeling it anymore...
But what would happen, instead of division, would be a great outpouring of love or compassion when I see inhumanity. And out of that came a response; not from anxiety; not from "we've got to fix it," but from that state of non-division -from the love itself.
From the state of "everything is fine exactly the way it is;" there's nobody to do anything anyway.
Right out of that state, arose an action, an activity, that looks like helping, contributing to the welfare of others. It's not a disengaged, "there's the disengaged everything is just God happening," and then there's the "everything is God happening," with the emphasis on happening...
It's a verb; it's not a place to hide. And this to me, is a true expression. I mean you see it: all the realizers - they all have the same message basically. "All is well." "All is unimaginably well - you can't imagine how well it is." And they're spending their whole life dedicated to the welfare of others. It's very odd, you know?
Q: So you end up fixing the world not by intending to...
A: Right.
Q: ...but by loving...
A: Yes.
Q: And the fixing results...
A: ...from the loving... Right, and that was Christ's message. Was it not?
Q: Yes, absolutely.
A: Right; "treat your neighbor as yourself." So many of his teachings were basically saying, "Don't act from division." He could just as well have said, "Don't act from hatred.... Love your enemies." Right. And we hear that as a commandment but actually what he's telling us is, "This is the way Truth is. This is the Truth of your being." "This is how it works if you're just awake to it." But that's the funny thing; ultimately egos are afraid of love because they think, "If I was really undivided, I'd have no response to what I see." Where would the motivation come from?
Q: There also may be, or I should say, "we're also afraid of... I don't know afraid of; but you end up, excuse me, you end up loving the bastards who are doing the oppression."
Adya: Exactly. You have to... Otherwise, your division creates another bastard to do more oppression. Get rid of one, and remember - if you understand the dynamics of it, your division must manifest. It will manifest, it must manifest. So you can get rid of one nasty character but all that division inside is mysteriously creating another one over here or two or three. And this is what the world hopefully is starting to catch up to...
We'll see, but we've tried everything else. We've tried to just get rid of all the bastards; get rid all the bad people...
Q: ...evil doers...
A: ...Right. The funny thing is you notice all the evil doers - most of them really believe in their heart they are doing the right thing. Do you really think that somebody who has the wherewithal to literally sacrifice their life = like fly a jet into a building - they have to think they're doing the highest good. Just like me and you do. And when we see that, we go: "Umm, the problem here isn't some disembodied evil force. The problem is actually illusion" We do the same things. We've done it. We may have not driven a plane into somebody but we've driven our mind into somebody, haven't we? In many ways just as violently. Yeah. Does that make more...?
Q: ...Oh yeah...
A: ...more sense...
Q: ...Yeah... Thank you very much.
A: You're welcome.
Adyashanti - Omega 2007 disk 15, transcribed by Mark Scorelle, posted to adyashantigroup
- Nonduality Highlights 3415
Questioner: This is my first retreat with you.
A: That's funny. It's my first retreat with you.
Q: But I'm the beginner.
A: You better believe I am too. More than you would imagine.
Q: Well, I'm struggling with something and its going to sound a bit theoretical but its really very personal.
A: Okay.
Q: A little background, I get paid to think. I'm a teacher. Okay that can become an addiction. My background is Christian and I'm still hanging in there.
A: Very good.
Q: Trying to preserve what I think is really valuable in the tradition although I must admit I am a bit religiously promiscuous in my Christianity.
A: Apparently so, yeah.
Q: You might say I sit around a lot.
This is it, it goes back to the question that came up the first evening, with the gentleman who watches CNN and BBC and gets upset. I watch CNN and BBC too... and get upset. Now what I'm trying to do; I want to be as brief as I can, I'm trying to make connections between what I've been and what I'm trying to be - all that I've learned, I think I've learned so much during these past days. But part of my tradition that I still want to affirm is what we Christians inherited from our Jewish parents. It's called 'tikkun olam;' fixing the world. We've got to fix the world. That's especially the Jewish prophets - including Jesus - and they all said 'you've got to fix the world.' The main reason they said 'you've got to fix the world' is because they saw not only the suffering within each of us that we cause ourselves so often; not only the broader, but they were kind of specific, Adya. They saw the suffering of people who are suffering because of what some people do to them. In other words some people who are not very enlightened of course but it's the suffering that is inflicted and it comes under the rubric of 'justice.' Or 'injustice.' And responding to injustice, we've got to fix the world.
You addressed this and I got part of it but I guess I just want you to say it again once more for me. How do I put together, 'everything's okay the way it is,' 'surrender to it,' and 'the world needs to change.' 'Accept it; fix it.'
A: They seem diametrically opposed.
Q: And it gets really... I feel it. When you look at the suffering that is inflicted on innocent people blown away by bombs, either terrorist or military. By families in the inner city that can't feed their kids. Children denied health care. And the biggie that touches us all, what we are doing to this wonderful Earth. I know you're going to tell me...
A: Well this will save time, won't it?
Q: I think you're going to tell me that before you can fix it, you've got to accept it. I see because of the trouble with our fixing it, I guess I tend to get fixated on our fixing. Ego enters into it.
A: Yeah.
Q: Just help me; what's the gap? I think we've got to overcome the gap between accepting it and trying to do something about it. How does one move?
A: Because either one of those - even the accept everything as it is - if that gets taken as the 'truth,' then that's just as illusory as 'it's a mess, we gotta fix everything.' You see it's more like a medicine; it's a prescription, right? If we have this terrible disease of apparent division and strife, then one of the prescriptions is 'allow everything to be.' But it's like taking antibiotics if you're sick. True health isn't taking antibiotics for the rest of your life, is it? True health isn't contained in the drug and true health isn't contained in the sickness. It's contained ultimately outside of either one of them, so... - by the way, these are two difficulties that people run into even in their own realization.
Sometimes we start out from a divided point of view, seeing seemingly everything's a mess and division and hate and ignorance and greed and violence and all of that, and that leads to a lot of division. And then we can have a great awakening and see there's nobody doing it. It's all done spontaneously, and then the mind still jumps in and makes a conclusion, "Ooh, why get involved?"
It's just doing - and even then the realization becomes, as I have said many times, a new fixation. Right, so let's see it this way... If you're gonna think of it, more importantly; feel it, allowing everything to be as it is. It's sort of restores a sense of balance. It heals a certain anxiety and if there's a total of spontaneous happening of truly allowing everything to be, which is like surrender. Our nature is surrender; the ground of our nature is "allowing every thing to be." So let me talk to you in concrete terms. because I could keep going abstractly...
From my own experience, (because again, my teacher was smarter than me; she never tried to teach me any of this); its all inherent within being. But there was a time when; it was after a certain realization, and I was standing at a wedding, after the wedding, and it was a big wedding and it was a gymnasium after the wedding and I went over to get a second plate of food which is one of the best things about weddings, you know? So I went over to get a second plate of food and I'm going over there... And of course, I'm the first to get the second plate of food because I eat almost as fast as any one I've ever known - I'm not very Zen in my eating habits, you know... - "steam shovel version," yeah.
I get a plate of food, and I turn around after I get the food, and I look out in this big room and there's the whole wedding thing; after the wedding, the dancing, and the kids and the grandmas and all of humanity, and you mingle for awhile so you get to know, "Oh there's a little tension over there in the family, and these people are having a great time."
It's like it encapsulates humanity in a sense, and I sit there and look at it, and just this realization dawns, and I realize it's over... I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever see life the same way. It sounds separating, but its not - the way that these people are seeing life. I will never see life ever again, the way that most of humanity is seeing it. And it was at that point I felt just a tinge of what I would call the "taboo against being totally free." It's like, and then I felt; "how dare I?" "How dare I leave humanity totally behind?"
You feel like a taboo; like it's not right. You must stay in the muddle and help make it. I'm not saying that I had all these thoughts; it was just a feeling, right?
And there's a taboo in the collective consciousness that most people actually feel at a certain point of development, and I felt it, and it was very obvious to me, luckily, that it was just time to let it go. It was "let go" and it was no big explosion; nothing like that; very, very simple. And all of a sudden I'm there, plate in hand, looking at the wedding like I was before, and the next moment it was like, well,.. into the fray. And so I walked right back into it; it was like leaving the dream unequivocally, and then walking right back into it and its hard to make sense of that, but what arose was "from this place, everything is accepted."
Because everything IS accepted. Literally... Literally. I can feel great compassion for hideous things that humanity does to each other, but I don't go into emotional psychological division. And that's the taboo... You feel that in the collective consciousness; that it's like not okay "not to go into division..." You must go into division; you should go into division.
That's what the collective consciousness feels.
And there I was not feeling it anymore...
But what would happen, instead of division, would be a great outpouring of love or compassion when I see inhumanity. And out of that came a response; not from anxiety; not from "we've got to fix it," but from that state of non-division -from the love itself.
From the state of "everything is fine exactly the way it is;" there's nobody to do anything anyway.
Right out of that state, arose an action, an activity, that looks like helping, contributing to the welfare of others. It's not a disengaged, "there's the disengaged everything is just God happening," and then there's the "everything is God happening," with the emphasis on happening...
It's a verb; it's not a place to hide. And this to me, is a true expression. I mean you see it: all the realizers - they all have the same message basically. "All is well." "All is unimaginably well - you can't imagine how well it is." And they're spending their whole life dedicated to the welfare of others. It's very odd, you know?
Q: So you end up fixing the world not by intending to...
A: Right.
Q: ...but by loving...
A: Yes.
Q: And the fixing results...
A: ...from the loving... Right, and that was Christ's message. Was it not?
Q: Yes, absolutely.
A: Right; "treat your neighbor as yourself." So many of his teachings were basically saying, "Don't act from division." He could just as well have said, "Don't act from hatred.... Love your enemies." Right. And we hear that as a commandment but actually what he's telling us is, "This is the way Truth is. This is the Truth of your being." "This is how it works if you're just awake to it." But that's the funny thing; ultimately egos are afraid of love because they think, "If I was really undivided, I'd have no response to what I see." Where would the motivation come from?
Q: There also may be, or I should say, "we're also afraid of... I don't know afraid of; but you end up, excuse me, you end up loving the bastards who are doing the oppression."
Adya: Exactly. You have to... Otherwise, your division creates another bastard to do more oppression. Get rid of one, and remember - if you understand the dynamics of it, your division must manifest. It will manifest, it must manifest. So you can get rid of one nasty character but all that division inside is mysteriously creating another one over here or two or three. And this is what the world hopefully is starting to catch up to...
We'll see, but we've tried everything else. We've tried to just get rid of all the bastards; get rid all the bad people...
Q: ...evil doers...
A: ...Right. The funny thing is you notice all the evil doers - most of them really believe in their heart they are doing the right thing. Do you really think that somebody who has the wherewithal to literally sacrifice their life = like fly a jet into a building - they have to think they're doing the highest good. Just like me and you do. And when we see that, we go: "Umm, the problem here isn't some disembodied evil force. The problem is actually illusion" We do the same things. We've done it. We may have not driven a plane into somebody but we've driven our mind into somebody, haven't we? In many ways just as violently. Yeah. Does that make more...?
Q: ...Oh yeah...
A: ...more sense...
Q: ...Yeah... Thank you very much.
A: You're welcome.
Adyashanti - Omega 2007 disk 15, transcribed by Mark Scorelle, posted to adyashantigroup
- Nonduality Highlights 3415
