When hearing such a statement, it can trigger four types of responses:
1. Positive, such as ‘Wonderful!’
2. Negative, such as ‘Terrible,’ ‘Hopeless,’ ‘Depressing!’
3. First negative, then positive.
4. Rejecting, such as ‘I don’t believe this!’
1. A positive reaction is naturally triggered if there is a seeing that everything that appears is the expression of one intelligence-presence-energy.
2. A negative reaction is understandably triggered if there is an identification and sense of separation.
What a dreadful situation this must be: There is the sense of imprisonment, and I am told that I can’t do anything about it, no matter how hard I try.
I’d say that such a response is natural, like the first response, because the nature of life is fullness. A sense of lack will naturally trigger a yearning for fullness.
This natural yearning is, in a sense, interfered with, when the above statement is believed in, from the perspective of an assumed separate entity. That interference can be perceived as being inappropriate as it may take away any hope. Nothing can be done by me, all I can ‘do’ is wait, and I may continue thinking: ‘Even this waiting is too much doing because it perpetuates the sense that a will outside of myself has control, and it will decide when I am destined to wake up.’
Such a train of though may take the mind to its limits, because mental activity is so used to finding solutions in many areas of daily life, and it is used to hope for a better future. That habit of ‘being in charge for a better future’ is now rendered impotent as far as waking up is concerned.
Following is my opinion regarding the statement’s usefulness or lack of usefulness: It will either be useful or it will be useless in regards to waking up.
It is useless if the listener loses interest in the subject of realizing reality.
3. It is useful if the listener keeps inquiring – this is the third type of response -, even if this inquiry is reduced to looking at the situation as it has been presented. Let’s assume that I consider that the statement may be true. This does not mean that I stop looking at the fact that this statement may be true. The very looking at this statement and its possible relevance may reveal what I have been yearning for. That initially disappointing statement that ‘I can’t do anything,’ when looked at, can cause a mental relaxation that may turn out to create the ‘condition’, yes, condition, that facilitates the seeing of what has always been the case, the timeless presence that is. The looking at this statement could be classified as a ‘meditation;’ and therefore, it could be classified as a ‘method.’ I am fully aware that the presenters of such a statement avoid the label ‘method,’ as it could fuel the greed towards an outcome in the future, and this would distort this method and make it a useless imitation of itself!
4. Rejecting such a statement will lead the listener to investigate other avenues, some of which may also carry the opportunity to waking up. We could state that all useful methods do not contain hope for a better future. Hope for a better future is, however, the incentive for most people to look for methods to start with, useless ones and useful ones. As mentioned earlier, useful methods do not deal with any imagined past or future, they always deal with facts. Looking at facts has never interfered with waking up. In coming posts I will look at a range of such useful methods. Hope for a better future is totally understandable and the resulting motivation to look for useful methods is equally understandable. This motivation does not need to be killed. As soon as a useful method is found and applied, this motivation will come to an end during the application. It may arise again during daily life and fade again during meditation. By alternating between these two instances, the timeless presence is bound to emerge more and more, and consequently the illusion of a separate identity is more consistently exposed.
