bansy wrote:Now that you have become ex-BKed, is there an answer ?
Hi Bansy,
Nice that way you invite people, drawing them out on such questions. I am curious what you think about this, as questioner.
I am discovering that much of my life I had organized around wanting an answer, meaning some formula that would give me advance assurance about outcomes in situations, especially in connecting with others.
Much as my cerebral self would like that assurance, outside of ritual (which has its place in life), to be a living, aware human to me, now means to some extent surrendering any attachment to form or container for the future. Trusting that
I can contain the expression of whatever possibilities the moment might lead to.
I recently went to a couple satsangs of Gangaji, who I wrote about elsewhere here. The second time I went with a wise and elderly friend. She and her partner Eli propose a single solution: to let go of one's conditioning, attachment to one's labels for oneself. They sounded much like the BKs, not mentioning the word "soul", but implying that there is one unchanging reality that underlies all that changes. And if you can be aware of that, that your relationships will be better because of being free of expectations toward others. She says it's very challenging, but very simple.
Discussing with my friend afterwards, I could see that taking that path would be framing life in terms of a single problem to be solved and the single solution of seeking the source through relationship with someone who is at that point of evolution, i.e. Gangaji, or maybe her 500W-smiling partner.
No therapy (which in my experience is a kind of creative exploration of the past in the present moment toward a new experience of the self with a larger perspective of one's, uh, multidimensionality.) No, stop, it is all here right now.
Gangaji did not allow her questioners much rope to explore. Eli told the woman who said she wanted to play more that what she wanted could be achieved directly, without intermediate steps. He used the example of his crackly microphone that sputtered and came to life. He said that self-discovery was that quick, does not require years of ascetic practices.
In the presence of my elderly friend, I could see that Gangaji's approach is essentially a renunciate path, that fulfillment is OUTSIDE of everything else in the world, with the one significant exception that it is INSIDE the relationship with an enlightened master.
At this point in my life, I reject the dualism that I perceive in her approach: that self-awareness, enlightenment, whatever you are seeking is an ON/OFF kind of thing. And I reject that there is a single goal and single process for reaching this goal.
The reason we need music and literature and art and dance and relationships with many others is that each awakens and develops a particular facet of ourselves.
At this moment I am reading
One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian, the Nobel Prize winning Chinese writer. I had previously been deeply moved by
Soul Mountain, his most famous work. He has a way of observing and loving all of life through his writing. That is something of my direction: embracing all of myself and all of life. When I say it this way, it sounds like an answer, yet it is also a rejecting of all answers.
Answers, by nature are linguistic, semantic cerebral things, whereas our natures have many layers and dimensions that our semantic assessments of ourselves-in-the-world can never full grasp.
Nice to have written a little something before abandoning myself to the self-forgetful embrace of sleep.
Thanks for reading.