Less Than Half Isn't Nothing

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Thursday, 04 March 2010 20:54 Written by Nirmala

I very often get email questions asking about the contradictions found in all of the spiritual teaching out there, not to mention all of the contradictions in life itself! This can be very confusing to the mind, so i thought I would post this response to one of the questions I received to perhaps help sort it out:

First I would point out that whenever anyone writes or speaks (even spiritual teachers) they are at best speaking half of the truth. It is just the limitation inherent in words. Most of the time we all speak much less than half of the truth.

So when you read words that seem contradictory from different spiritual teachers or even from the same spiritual teacher, this is because it is necessary to contradict yourself to fully express the truth. There are many levels and dimension and perspectives within consciousness and they are all valid.

The real gift of any teaching is when it points out the part of the truth that has not been seen or is being overlooked. And it is natural when we discover the part of the truth that we have not known, that then we want to hang onto it and even deny or reject the opposite truth. So as challenging as it may be to accept, dualistic teachings are correct, pure nonduality is correct and everything else is correct to a greater or lesser degree.

Just to be clear, some things are true but not very true at all. So very narrow, bigoted perspectives may have an extremely tiny piece of truth, but that does not make them important or very helpful or worthwhile. A simple example of something that is true but not very true is a lottery ticket. It is true that if you buy a lottery ticket that you can win, but it is not very true. In fact it is a ridiculously small truth!

What really matters is whether someone's words expand your own experience of the truth or not. And the way you know is that anything that adds to or expands your experience of truth also opens and softens your heart, quiets your mind, and expands your sense of your self. So when words do this, you can savor them and ponder them to fully absorb what they are pointing to. And if anyone's words (even spiritual teachers) cause the opposite effect of contracting your heart, making your mind busy, and making you feel small or inadequate, then you can know that truth is not important for you. You do not need to reject it or make it wrong, just let it be there and move onto something that is truer for you.

 

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The Ego Is a Pimp

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Thursday, 04 March 2010 15:23 Written by Nirmala

Another email question:

Nirmalaji, on enquiry into the source of ego, the ego is completely destroyed. Then after destroying one's ego how do we transact in this world? Can you please clear this doubt.

Here is my perspective in response:

The ego always was just a thought and so it has never really done anything. I sometimes say the ego is like a pimp, it stands around and takes a lot of credit for doing nothing.

So if the ego has never done anything, then there is something else called Being that is living your life. This Being is very good at living your life whether egoic thoughts arise or not. It does create your experiences through the filter of the egoic thoughts when they are present, since Being itself has no preference for what happens or what it experiences. Once the egoic thoughts are dissolved or even just loosened, then the same creative process generates lots of experiences and actions without those actions being filtered through the ego's beliefs. It is this filtering of Being's actions that make it appear that the ego is doing something, since its thoughts are having an effect. But the creative force that is actually acting is still Being.

So outwardly, life can look very different or pretty much the same depending on how distorted the ego's beliefs were. If the ego was very distorted, then the new life will look very different without those distortions. If the ego was a milder distortion, then the life might look pretty similiar.

This Being has always been breathing your body, growing your hair, and getting you up in the morning and off to work or whatever you do. It can and will continue to breath and work and play and love and all of the rest once the ego is out of the way.

Hope this helps.

the ego is a pimp


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Loneliness Calling You Home

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Tuesday, 02 March 2010 22:39 Written by Nirmala

Please feel free to contact me with email questions or comments that I will address in this blog.

A friend on facebook shared the following about her experiences of loneliness:

I'm learning to look deeply at my loneliness now and sit with it. That's very helpful. Yet the loneliness comes up when I want to connect with others. Maybe because of a certain energy, because of karmas, or for any given reason, sometimes I feel there's a lack of connection with the other. Maybe due to lack of communication or even quite possibly, I "sense" energetically the other is judging me, or has an inccurate or negative or low perception of me, I feel it is difficult to connect with others.

And here is my reply:

Perhaps I can add a bit of insight into the last thing you mention which is the lack of a felt sense of connection. We are so deeply conditioned to look for connection (and everything else) on the outside. We want others to act or speak a certain way so that we will feel connected with them, when in fact the place where we are connected with others is deep within ourselves. That is where the connection lies, and that connection is here even when someone is judging or rejecting you.

Even when someone really does like us and responds positively to us, what happens is that we relax and just be ourselves around them, and in that naturalness of self is the connectedness we seek. Even then the sense of connection is actually arising within us. And so that is always where it comes from, even when it appears we are getting it from others.

The challenge arises when we feel a lack of connection inside. Then there is a strong tendency to look for it outside, and of course this even seems to "work" sometimes when again we get someone to like us and feel at least a little of the connectedness.

But there is another possibility, and that is to become very curious about the felt sense of a lack of connection. Where is the lack felt in your body? What is present in the empty space where connection is lacking? While there is no formula for what you can discover when you look within a sense of lack like this, one quite surprising discovery is how often you find the thing you were lacking in the emptiness of the lack itself! What a surprise, that the empty space inside you of something lacking or missing is itself connected to everyone and everything!

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