From: mw%ki.fht-mannheim.de (Marc Wachowitz)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Effort vs clinging on the spiritual path
Date: 21 Nov 1992 16:21:58 -0800
Organization: Fachhochschule fuer Technik Mannheim
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandman.caltech.edu

The mentioned quote from Golas' book:
>I am a lazy man. Laziness keeps me from believing that enlightenment demands
>effort, discipline, strict diet, non-smoking, and other evidences of virtue.
>There is a paradise in and around you right now, and to be there you don't
>even have to make a move. There is nothing you need to do first in order to be
>enlightened. All potential experiences are within you already. You can open up
>to them at any time.

Jeffrey CHANCE (jeffjc@cs.mcgill.ca) wrote:
: Im assuming that you believe in the above quote.
Believing in quotes? Aah, no, never! :-)
Btw, is experience within or without - where is THIS vision?

Okay, seriously: I've experienced quite dramatic changes in what one might call
the "mode" of experiencing (and without taking drugs, formal meditation or such
things). It wasn't hallucination (in the usual sense - some might argue that
everyting is hallucination). Hard to explain - words like freshness, clarity
and density come to mind, but what is that really good for?

Another case: I was contemplating the problem of being in harmony (i.e. peace
of mind, not in the sense of controlling other people etc.), what do do
about it. The paradox of harmony as not needing to change something and the
current state of harmony not being there became more and more appearant, and
all this became quite puzzling (not depressing).
I simply didn't know what to do about the whole matter, and somehow the
problem dissolved and there suddenly was peace and joy.

: As such, why don't
: you enter an extremely high state of consciousness (eg. Nirbikalpa
: samadhi) and post back your experience.
Sorry, I don't know what these labels refer to - experience usually doesn't
come with words (except when reading :-)

: But let's be realistic. What does one do when distractions pull a
: man away from his usual regular spiritual practice (eg. one's
: daily meditation)? Wait, I know your answer. Don't fight it,
: just go with the flow, its something you need to let yourself do 
: (the thing that is distracting you). Well, what if this leads  
: to a gradual falling away from one's spiritual practice? What
: if some charming, attractive and charismatic person draws you 
: into a relationship and subsequent marriage and then the agitation
: of keeping the marriage happy completely pulls away the attention
: and energy you could have invested in practicing self-awareness?

I simply deny that there is a clear boundary of what is "spiritual" and what
isn't, except in the heads of followers of some ideologies.

Maybe we could find some common point in saying that love matters, but I
refuse to accept this as something to be practiced in the sense of a training,
or even to be made a means for discrimination.
(there's this absurd phrase "death to all fanatics!" :-)

[about hostile forces]
: Some of their tricks: self-doubt, fear, temptation, enhancement 
: of ego, entertainment/diversions, complacency, etc.
You are touching an important point here. That aren't some foreign "hostile
forces" (though it can definitely look this way) - this is you, too!
Don't fight "it", care for it like for a close friend - maybe ill in your
opinion, but certainly worth of love.
Discovering your "darker potential" and being ready to honestly see them as
aspects of yourself is a part of opening. Remember that having a potential
does not mean expressing it completely. Imagine a screen being able to show
both horror movies and love stories - you can't repaint the screen such that it
can't show horror stories any more without also disabling the potential for
love stories.

As Michael Barnett expressed it:
Stop trying to be good, if you have the courage.


Here are some further quotes from Thaddeus Golas' book about this topic:

Anything that really frightens you may contain a clue to enlightenment. It may
indicate to you how deeply you are attached to structure, whether mental,
physical, or social. Attachment and resistance are appearances with the same
root: when you resist by pulling away your awareness, the emotion is one of
fear, and the contraction is experienced as a pull like magnetism or gravity;
that is, attachment. That is why we often fear to open our minds to more
exalted spiritual beings. We think fear is a signal to withdraw, when in fact
it is a sign we are already withdrawing too much.

What you cannot think about, you cannot control. What you cannot conceive of in
your awareness, you will stumble over in your path. Violent human beings are
precisely those who refuse at some time that they could be violent. It also
happens that if you are unwilling to conceive of people being the victims of
violence, you may become a victim yourself, for you will not be sufficiently
aware of how it happens to avoid it. Everything that is manifest begins in the
spirit: every evil that is manifest to us is there because we refused to
conceive of causing it, or denied someone else the freedom to conceive of it.
The way out, as hard as it may be to believe, is not by resisting further, by
moving the furniture around, but by being willing to conceive of it - by loving
it, in short. As we should have done in the first place.
     Unfortunately, most people with good intentions are trying to deny or
eliminate what is already manifest. And many spiritual revivals are a deeper
denial of the facts of our vibration level. What can we do about evil? A great
deal, if our heads are clear. My catch-all phrase is: "I wouldn't deny *that*
experience to the One Mind."
     Once you have cleared your head on the matter, then do whatever feels
right to you. Evil occurs as a secondary reality, after you have withdrawn to a
low vibration level. The seduction of evil is precisely in that it involves us
in trying to get rid of it.

Loving yourself is a willingness to be in the same space with your own
creations. How contracted would you become if you try to withdraw from your own
ideas? Loving yourself is not a matter of building your ego. Egotism is proving
you are worthwhile after you have sunk into hating yourself. Loving yourself
will dissolve your ego: you will feel no need to prove you are superior.

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