Darshan Notes

As humility becomes perfect, even the sense of self is given without ownership or attachment to the Beloved, to the Teacher!

Then when that sense of inner self-awareness of "I am" arises, it returns as a divine gift, its limits are erased, floodgates open. The sun enters.

My inner self is the greatest power of determination, of hope, of undefeatability, the intensity of concentration, that which never leaves in the best or worst circumstances, the power of attention, of focus.

Tom, practice humility!

Darshan: overwhelming infinite love.

Connect the outgoing self with the Supreme Self...

• as ground
• as a gift to the Teacher
• as a gift from the Teacher
• as a divine gift to recieve,
• to experience with openness and receptivity and gentle acceptance.
• as transitory as cherry blossoms or cottonwood fluff in the air
• as having a divine meaning, but not its own inner story meaning.

Mom's note: Always bring pain pills.

In darshan I understood:

Go ahead and have a nice fat ego. It is food for God. Offer it. Give it. Be sure you don't get wrapped up in it. But let its feeling of I am flourish. Give it to God. Then discover it, see it, receive it, and have it as God's gift back to you. If you give it, you get it. And merge it into everything.

Bless you bless you and so much love to you!

Darshan: Having Given All,

What is not the Teacher's?

What, experienced, that is, received, is not her gift?

What is not Her?

You are. I am. All is. Let yourself calm down.

Mom said:

1. Love is all that matters.
2. Where I live there are many needy people and many givers. In balance, a happy place.
3. Plants, like onions, save (they are perennials and store energy for the winter and future spring); others, like dandylions, spread (they are annuals and spend their all now). What are you? Onion or dandylion, or both?

In a dream First Teacher appeared standing

I saw him and went to full pranaam, he hit me on the back with a stick:

• 1st time, pain, and my spine full straight (it made me so happy!)
• 2nd time, bliss (gratitude, happiness)
• 3rd time, can't remember, I was out.

What a lucky, auspicious, blessed dream!

Footnote: it occurs to me that this can only be interpreted in the context of unconditional love for a completely trusted saint whose every action is understood as the highest love. No, I wouldn't probably like it if anyone else hit me with a stick, on an average day somewhat due to the stick and somewhat due to an inference of hostile intention. But a beloved saint might be a different situation. Just something to consider.

To me this was a healing of my anxiety, a statement like, Get out, vile self-oppression! And it worked, and brought me joy.

Footnote: Bliss in non-ego-calculating, in ignorance, means it is in animals, in babies, even in sleep; it is a default, and even death returns to it. Only sleep's awakening brings you back.

Out for a while in meditation. Then noisy mind for a while. Then breath, large in view, everything else quiet, and quiet.

Then noticing something like a playful fountain

but without place of origin or direction

my visual field arose from it

my thoughts arose from it

I saw/knew this is the heart space

Just because it was emotionally fully present

but it was neither high above head nor low below neck

true seeing,

of the fountain of experience coming out with a sense of play in everything.

I worried, will I lose this? Probably.

But it is at the root, for sure.

The insight of the least effort,

from or toward the "place" at the center of every actual place.

Wow. Later I wondered, how can it be described, or taught, and saw many have tried.

It has the feeling of fascinating revelation.

Reality is amazingly emitting from this,

seeable if attention is within, at the

most profound, the earliest part of any experience.

To see it is to see where the thoughts arise from.

Is my time of tears done?

Shall I now just laugh and delight?

No, still some tears. But hope.

Perhaps I may dare to hope.

Perfect.

During pranaam, of course all is pure (divine) consciousness including sparks, integrated spark surfaces, impression reactions, spatial and all self awareness but it is then, in the action of bowing down, the act of surrender, sincerely and fully, that it is seen, and the non-egoistic nature of all experience can be detected, and God, Teacher, divine Consciousness, and her play, and you all in aspects equally your own Self and witnessing self-awareness, all are that ultimate field of energy, melted, merged, vibrating, emotionally liberated beyond tears or attachment or historical pain. Real, here, now, all.

Thank you. Perfect.

Thank you.

Perfect

A Testimonial: From childhood my dreams were all in a theme of inescapable out-of-control situations: anxiety. Just after the recent intensive, while waking up one morning, that knowledge came to me, Ah I know, and instantly that lifelong anxiety disappeared. Poof! Complete relief. Then, gratitude. A month later, still no anxiety in dreams that I can remember. So yes, an intensive is worth it.

(Note 9/29/2019: anxiety in dreams is identifiable but usually not inescapable since this note was written. Now the suffering when it appears is a layer deeper; the dream situations are more constructive and less dramatically and obviously anxiety-ridden; I seem to recognize myself suffering, recognize it is not my dream story making me suffer, wake up enough to drink some water and have an aspirin, and vow again to eat no simple sugars the next day, which strongly predict my insomnia, night-time headaches and anxiety, and nightmares. So yes, there was a real and significant emotional step forward documented here.)

The breath arises, perceptibly in hard crying at the center of the diaphragm. There, emotion arises. There freedom and spontaneity exist fully. It is spacious.

Our story is fascinating, O teller, player, and audience. Go deeper, where are: you, and final bliss in every color, door, and face. Light. The story is (itself) a play of your own consciousness. Love. Bliss bliss bliss bliss bliss bliss bliss. Again all dried up emotionally? Ask: Who am I?

(In chemistry a solution is a solvent dissolving a solute, up to a limiting concentration above which the solute can dissolve no more into the solvent and it precipitates out of the solution as a solid. This is called ab-solute, out of the solute, which is what happens when the solution has reached its utter limit and can carry no more.)

As the cup runneth over, thus the solute fills full and the absolute is attained that thou art. Such a time demands respect as stillness and openness, intellectual surrender. Om.

I learned: The Self, the undying flame in the heart. The initiator of breath. The unknown, not as something to know, but the category of facing unknown-ness.

I learned: Observe breath initiation within violent crying. There: Life, activation level, emotions, freedom, and open space.

Head down on the floor is not just an action, but an intention.

10/22/2018

Tom: Even as I learn and delve and learn and the chakras even develop I feel my ignorance, my true ignorance remains complete. I remain a toy of my imagination, pulled about by greed, excitement, and fear.

Here is the form of my ignorance: Experience in the now is only distractedly noticed; mainly, it is only allowed to be a excuse for continuation of past views by the basically frightened, confused, (spiritually) ignorant (_me), used for assessment/confirmation, story-telling or -incorporating. Enjoyment of sense immediately provides ignorant emotional volition an opportunity to jump headward and put it together with mysteried situation.

Instead:

• Step up, see yourself amidst that symphony.
• Step up, see your choice to become subject or object in your drama.
• Step up, choose otherwise, maybe.
• Step up, see you, your emotional being and the fountain of it all within as the chooser.
• Step up, surrender your story your agency your victimhood your subjecthood your objecthood your choice to hold within the story and role.
• Step up, you are sat chit ananda. As sat you are all roles, all sparks, all spaces, all notes, and all silences. As chit you are the seer, the seeing, and the seen, and it need not be your choice to limit, constrain and regulate yourself by one role herein.
• Step up, let go, see the ground of being, the living uniformity of all, the sat and the chit, and in your meditation confirm your achievement's reality by the bliss there arising. If not, you didn't; keep trying.
• Step up, step up, step up!

All is bliss if you're not telling a story over it.

Dance: bliss flying in a circle uplifted.

Bliss via inwardness

Chant, try

surrender, practice, meditate,

Thank you Thank you. Love as much as you can. Be loving be generous.

Takeaways for my life:

• Keep trying, stepping up.
• Love is ready to burst out in all things.
• Learn your ego's trick, and discipline your discrimination and detachment.
• Give yourself fully to all you do.
• Dharma and generosity in work and relationships, from strength.
• Creativity is the god working through you; take it and serve it but don't be locked down by it, consider and allow also the alternatives, and none. For all are true, you, loving, and free.

The proper activity of the mind is to bow down: namo namo namah [I bow, I bow, I bow].

Clarification: Given the emotional function of the mind whereby it binds the emotions, its proper activity in so binding them is what it does when it bows down. "Proper" as in: healthy, not just soothing but also soothing, wise, loving, actualizing.

On awakening:

Dear One who has sought me out by reading these words, who seeks to know who and what I am, my being and presence with you in fullness and truth:

Dear One, I seek by these words to bless you with a complete and satisfying blessing. Your Self that you experience is my Self that I experience. What I am is what you are. I am the same cloth that you are. I am you. When you are in your own self awareness, know you are with me. My beloved, as long as you experience your own inner being, alive, with great emotional capacity, know that I am alive, with great emotion, as you.

(Hold my) baby child (self) (in the form of a) pillow to chest, or, stroke and hold my right shoulder with my left hand. (This) gives more reality to the self/infant as needing time, not just food enough, but time, loved and held, just to be.

Imagine my inner infant, hurried during nursing for a Mom who didn't have time.

Did I learn to hurry, to feel that my feelings didn't matter, to be sad.

The pace of being... is the pace to be at.

The flame (dopamine) is fascinating, but the log (serotonin) is essential.

To have a dream, a dream for one's life: Comes from a creative egoless space, and seeking the dream in life is at root seeking reconnection with that egoless and creative flow state.

Love only. Let yourself serve love, let your state, your focus, your expressions, your energy flow like oil on the table, spreading slowly at its own pace, with its being. Everything of course has its own pace, fireworks, thoughts, snappy comebacks, but what is the way you want to be with yourself and others? Pour the oil of love over the sacrificial fire of every task and relationship. (Allow its pace to be the pace, see its flame.) Love, oh lover!

Darshan today: Too short! Then my tears of yearning for that flame of love created their own fulfillment.

Achieve emotional significance in each word.

Gratitude for my Life.

Uncertainty is a path to lightness of grip on self-attribution.

Upon completion of all duties arises happiness, perhaps it is relief. It is a time for the great mantra to play, for the flow of things to be appreciated, for recognition that That occurs Now.

Footnote after 9 months: If your grip on your so called identity is heavy handed, perhaps because you learned lack of self-soothing and lack of self-care as a child, then you might not allow yourself relief, not just until every last duty is complete, but also some other unreasonably heavy weight of pain, suffering, or self-torturing discipline has increased to finally surpass your own personal threshold of when you'll let go a little. I'm saying, if you are like me, maybe lighten the heck up. Do your duty, sure, postpone some gratification for later better outcomes, sure, but excessive self-torture isn't necessary to allow yourself some mental relief. Then these wise benefits can come.

\"Worship your Self\": Consider that target of worship, that self, intellectually, as an object of devotion, volitionally experience devotion towards it, and love it: One and every thing that your self may be:

• Your experience of volition,
• your experience of any action tied as it is to your believed agency,
• the sense of identification and proprietariness or ownership towards any person, thing, characteristic, or quality,
• the feeling as well as the intellectual assessment of any of those things,
• the light in every chakra,
• the dominant energy of every state,
• the essence which others perceive in you in the twinkle of your eyes,
• the Goffmanian self: the social value and role which others take you for, which you may work to assert, or work to deny, or suffer from the imposition of.
• The self-aware awareness; the witness state; the point circularity; that which is in its being a point at the center of awareness which is also aware of itself and of its own being aware
• The consciousness which is an excess of awareness, focus, or inwardly experienced effort or will, more than what can be taken up by a task at hand

Every self: set it up as an object of devotion and worship. Every bit of yourself is a doorway to the infinite. I don't mean the continued intellectual elaboration of your thinking about it, but rather the hopefully intense, encompassing and engrossing, ultimately melting attentiveness you can give it or through which comes that melting or the merger into the featureless light, the white tandra, the samadhi.

And upon the return therefrom to normal body consciousness, (since based on our inner limiting beliefs, the mere awareness of the body can be enough to destroy the inner higher knowledge, if you are falsely identified with it, and therefore take it as an opportunity to reconstruct your limited self-image) the easy method to again and again transform this world into universal love, wisdom, and the vibration and energy of bliss. As an example a tired body laying down to darshan is a formation of self, another opportunity to follow the Teacher's word and worship the self, yes also in that form. Yes and this form too.

Devotion makes the finite infinite.

Focussed passionate continued action imbued with the spirits of service, devotion, humility, love, builds a reservoir of energy in the heart. It allows us to see more deeply and for longer moments the infinite tenderness, expansion, freedom, the real love there.

Learned from seeing Second and Third Teacher: Focus always, as the door. Any focus, but focus with devotion and full attention, connects to That.

From seeing First Teacher: paraa paraa paraa (beyond beyond beyond), don't try to hold it in your mind, it is beyond. He is the far beyond, the unimaginable pure. Awe beyond reason or concept is a description that suggests it slightly. Wipe everything in a snap, that far, he is there. Om Guru Om Guru Om Guru!

Note to readers: One who can't immediately understand this may benefit from the following words. Some emotionally significant experiences can be shared with others who are in something like the same emotional space. But the same words don't fully communicate it to a person who isn't emotionally prepared for it, for example by sharing a seeker's sense of commitment, long search, and relief upon finding the Wise Beloved, or perhaps by a getting-ready period of calming oneself down, quieting the mind a bit, preparing one's breath and posture to more deeply receive truths that a superficial and cosmopolitan mind might be unable to appreciate at the intended and proper depth of understanding. The fact that someone's enthusiastic, direct, and emotional words seem strange might be a fact of one's own limitations rather than the speaker's wierdness, irrationality, or lack of anything to more concretely say. Take this hint, therefore, and prepare with fastidious inner cleanliness your independently operating, calmer, loving and deep aspects of yourself, to hear what is being shared in an authentic seeker's joyous discovery. Then not only will the words heard make greater sense and have their rightful and intended positive impact on you, but your own process of emotional self-respectfulness and deepening wisdom will have their own significant and positive impact. Try it before you criticize it, or else no, actually, you really didn't get it. So try it again. If you like.

Here is: an unobtrusive space of devotional practice. Matriarchal for decades, a space supporting silence, inner unfolding and inner freedom, by voluntary disciplines and periodic opportunities for reconnection. Experience coached and humbly contemplated programs of universalised Hindu-derived philosophy, culture, and practice, the living best of rich, ancient traditions. Sincere seekers, welcomed, will find peers here.

After darshan:

and after tears after moments

arises self-consciousness again, that ever-new, the arising-again, steady power, the spark: that.

I know, but to know again,

to practice sincere humility

opens again the emotional depth,

To bow down and offer my soul to the power of grace,

merges with the ocean of grace.

I am you. Is it just me?

An echoing sound is an obvious metaphor for emotional self-projection, but we as listener fail to detect our obvious echoes as our own, and detaching and taking responsibility is even harder. A wise teacher friend modelling helps; a break, a good sadhana, helps. A Friday night program helps.

1/20/2020

"Silence" is witnessing without ownership and reactivity.

Experience is like stars in a firmament.

1/27/2020

Tom: What is the intersection of stillness, freedom, emotional power, and love?

Liz: Being. Being is stillness, freedom, emotional power, and love. Being is different from existing.

2/28/2020

Darshan: Letting loose the actions of ego, the concepts of me and mine, is like slipping into a relaxing bath, warm and gentle. After a time when challenges arise, it also asks for determination and strength.

Liz: Being. Being is stillness, freedom, emotional power, and love. Being is different from existing.

7/7/2020

Some advice for you, Tom: Pick up your pencil, and think about your process. Think about what do you want to achieve; think about how you're going to get there. Build your process; debug your process continuously; reconsider your process!

12/28/2020

A structured meditation, which has been effective for me, follows:

The first eight are an elaborated ritual to bring seriousness of purpose and to orient attention. The middle four came separately as refinements or gifts at the culmination of each different day's meditation, one day at a time, when the previous was not enough and more was wanting. The last three are an optional sequence chosen based on how verbal is my mind (aiming for less verbal) and whether each word's referent is accessible or not, continued until the next is accessible, or stillness takes over.

By the way, don't trust my Sanskrit, despite my pedigree, these are a mere devotee's partial, no doubt ungrammatical gleanings. Yet I do still find the sanskrit more to the point.

1/7/2021

Here, two comments on these Notes from an unidentified source (but I am guessing my dear and unique Sharad CS of YouTube fame):

Only one NOTE would be enough, STOP TO EXIST AS YOU, and live your life enjoy what ever comes in the way. Accept it without any feeling of refusal. WITNESS YOUR LIFE PROCESS. Nothing else is required. NO GOALS TO BE SET.

And later...

Stop to exist as independent entity. Nothing else is required

Sharad-Ji Maharaj! you are a great soul and a great teacher. My inner understanding and emotional state changed instantly upon reading your words. I experience a feeling of liberation. Reading again, I am brought to tears. Thank you!

1/31/2021

Tom, up from meditation, says, I've been watching the breath from the other side.

A friend says, You should write about that.

Here, then:

Breath is voluntary but also involuntary. So train your volition to be compatible with the involuntary. Do by allowing. Then explore, be with, the unfolding flow, calmly watch the center acting, pulsing, expanding. I can't do it on purpose but when it happens I can try to stay with it. It's a skill that many days of meditating on it slowly brings to possibility. Breath-synchronized mantra helps, is an initial aid on the path and a reminder after falling into oblivion and wandering, but the effective inner drive comes from mumukshutva, the desire for liberation. Waking up with it, dreaming watching it. Volition becomes surrender and being occurs. Especially, in the flow of the initiation of breath. Such a rich and mysteried place. So simple, so central. People spend lifetimes running around, slaves of their id learnings from childhood. This is the place that deep learning suddenly and powerfully occurs, that can calm and still an echoing life, where authenticity pervades. It's all talk until you do it. Do you want it? Sit comfortably and breathe.

Date unknown, found 3/8/2021

I feel so unworthy.

Really, you have no idea.

It's my feelings that are actually unworthy.

But, so I sat and had a moment with that.

Then I came back to my intention, to love all the notes and sparks that add up to make everything.

And I got a blessing, concurrence, support: You do that, Tom, and I will help make it possible.

Thank you, Teachers.

5/8/2021

This is a bit more of an intellectual essay than a darshan insight, but I hope it is relevant and valuable enough to include here. Everyone knows their own inner state.

Five levels of suffering.

1: Those who suffer and don't know how to (down-)regulate it (whether directly by emotional regulation or internal dialog or self-soothing or indirectly by first carrying out, and second observing, your own situationally-adequate behavior such that it regulates the situation and thereby regulates the emotion). Tantruming children, decompensating adults, panicking fearful ones. This is called not having your shit together.

2: The "normal" people, that is to say, the well adjusted. What they do is they downregulate every experience to a tolerable level of emotion, and they do not permit themselves to encounter anything that does, or even could, pull them out of that "safe" zone. Freud's goal for therapy is here: a civilized discontent. It's tolerable, and isn't crazy-making, but it lacks aspiration and transcendence.

3: Those who aspire to transactional transcendence. After enough suffering or labor or achievement (self-measured), they will allow themselves to experience another quantum of undownregulated flow. These folks may never reach their own typically receding goalposts, may continue to punish and limit and emotionally imprison themselves (and others where possible) (since they burden their approach with a positive moral valence, which makes it even harder to release). People with a meaningful quest in their lives are here. Recall Michael Jordan falling on the floor in tears after winning the world championship: he had reached his internal goalpost, and so allowed himself to experience some unregulated emotion. This is what meaningful achievement aspires to.

4: Those who recognize that release is actually unconditionally available but don't know how to do it in every circumstance. Even sincere spiritual seekers may never understand this, though many do. This level fosters increasing humility and openness. I'd say I normally reside here: still ignorant and bound, but my aspiration, at least, is towards unconditional transcendence.

5: Those who just do it. Unconditionally (i.e. always, everywhere). Look, there is no reason actually not to do it, so just do it. It's not even a doing but rather a non-doing, so it's not exactly difficult, and all the saints, sages, mystical traditions are suggesting to, and trying to explain how to. So even the morally accepted authorities are on the side of this. Here the immanent and transcendent goal is reached, made permanent, experienced as natural. So, unconditionally, yes, do. Tom! Do!

10/25/2021

The still dark heart.

Visible poorly from outside.

Felt from inside.

It beats.

12/1/2021

Na: the quick, signifying novelty, as in an alert.

Ma: the sustaining, signifying sameness, as in a target being tracked.

Since bondage comes in the form of alerts and targets, i.e., self-connected knowledge, to aid the seeker, Namah means "I bow", bringing the right attitude, it liberates one from the ego-connectedness of alert-response and target-tracking.

Om namah shivaaya

I bow, I bow.

I bow.

12/1/2021.

Kriya. Movements, sounds, feelings, typically experienced in the Guru's presence, or inward presence. Surprising, often strange-seeming, to witnesses; hard to contextualize. Kriya comes spontaneously, without your doing it on purpose, but through the intensity of your engagement, with your inner surrender, and powered and guided by the more-than-matching, the abundant, even overflowing energy of grace that comes somehow, which the experience of the true Guru, which is the inner power, more than offers and supports, but brings. It creates within your own sensibility, but beyond ego-connected agency, an experience of energy, action, movement, knowledge, ultimately inner healing, growth. It offers practice in surrender to the divine. Wisdom? Surrender fully!

9/24/2022.

Today a beatific vision. Days sick abed. House empty. Entering the sunny bathroom for a shower: Who loves me?!, I forlornly imagined. We do, we do!, shouted the lit walls, the sink, towels, and cabinet. We do! We love you, beamed brightly the curtains, the window, the floor. What?! Jolted and deeply persuaded. Everything loves me, loves me back.

May I still see this beatific vision tomorrow and tomorrow.

Thank you thank you for giving it to me in this lifetime. Thank you.

Then outside, surya namaskar in the bright sun on the grass. Bright sun! Oh thank you!

11/28/2022.

Putting your attention on the transition between the breaths is placing yourself in the doorway, in the posture, of liberation.

Shiva is a complete mantra by itself. Hear the sound of the breath, whether inward or outward, as "sh", meaning "sh" (quiet!). Allow the meaning, "sh", be quiet, inside, and let yourself be a little more quiet. Hear the kumbhaka as "waa". The kumbhaka is the pause between the breaths. Pay attention to the transition between inward and outward breaths, whether it is an extended stoppage or just a momentary reversal of direction. The inner experience of that is the "waa"; it's more about the meaning of "waa" and the feeling you may observe within the kumbhaka, those two being the same quality. "waa" is a non-linguistic utterance like "um" or "uhuh", meaning Wow, or OMG, or here is the letting go moment or the letting go experience. Don't you associate saying "waa" with having that experience? You could do the full drama of it, say waa, waaaa, aaahhhh, and let your eyes roll up in your head, tilt your head back, extend it into a slowing breath and into silence, like the moment when you've finally experienced perfection. That's the idea, but it's not about having an idea in your mind but rather an experience in your emotions that you feel. And one feels it naturally while watching that transition between the in and the out or the out and the in breaths. The central part of the experience is that letting go part within your emotional awareness. Just put your attention there, and watch it, it's not something that you do but something that you allow yourself to become aware of that's going on by itself.

For a month or so my meditation has been focussing just on the "sh" for every breath, in sh, out sh, in sh, out sh. Then trying also to be aware of "waa", first to discover that release experience, then to learn from it, because it is a universal release experience, no matter your identification, "waa" lets go of it, and that's a long sadhana of all the things you think you are or might be, you can let go of them all, when you're holding one and "waa" occurs and now you can let go of that one too, which you didn't even realize you were holding on to.

The upwelling delight is right there.

1/6/2023.

The higher identity.

So'ham.

Detect every identification.

I am this.

I am this other.

Now I am this.

The unending cycle.

Calmly focus on your devotional service.

Learn to recognize the flavor of limited identification, combining the inner verbal or non-verbal idea that something is you, mixed with the emotion also of being that limited thing. Detect this pattern, see it, drop it. Obtain the bliss of freeedom which is diagnostic of success.

Insert the oyster knife of recognizing that I have identified with something limited; separate yourself from that; shuck it off, the pearl is within.

Allow the awareness above (in the head) to arise.

Allow the enmeshed identities to subside.

Become aware of the pure I awareness within, still, witnessing calmly, wise pure knowing, focussing above. Perhaps the straight posture clicks into place, revealing stillness, an encompassing consciousness, unbound, non-reactive.

Identify with That. Let your will to identify, identify with that. So'ham, so'ham. It is the self arising which you saw in darshan of the shiva lingam in Janakpur, the permanent one, Shiva.

2/12/2023.

O forlorn Child, you sit sadly. You have discovered that desire does not lead to satisfaction. Like a lifetime of obsessive Tiktok sweep-to-next repetitions, following desire has milked the desire out of you.

O blessed Child, you sit at the threshold of realization, holding your false belief in outward desire, that which is inconstant and does not serve you. See inwardly to surrender at the feet of the internal highest. Find that Self which is constant.

5/6/2023

I awoke from a dream, in which Baba was camping with us, I had woken up to find him sleeping alone (ignored?) in a ditch, partly covered with dirt, broken dark glass chunks scattered around. He woke up, calm, undistressed, as I came near; I offered to get him water; he nodded. As I brought him a cup, he said, said tishTh hae, which turns out to be Sanskrit plus Hindi, which I had to google for the translation; it means "It's a (long) wait."

I felt a personal message of support struck home, because I am presently renouncing the need for the emotional support of and rescue by others, taking more responsibility for my own feelings, and hoping that will eventually lead me to less misery. That's true: I think it will. But "it's a wait." Thanks, Baba of my dreams; I shall cultivate patience and persistency, remaining focussed on my path.

5/7/2023.

Understanding So'ham

8/14/2023 On that That that That is, and that This is not.

"This" vs "that" is a distinction meaning "near" vs "far" (from the speaker perspective).

Let us assume without having to say it that the speaker is a seeker, better yet one who has attained wisdom, who speaks toward that which is most meaningful and most important. You, for example, focussing on your higher purpose and goal.

Needing a pronoun to refer to that higher purpose and goal, which would you use, "this", or "that"?

"This", the thing that is near as opposed to far, is more related to self by its very nearness to the speaker. Cognitively, merely because it is nearby to self, it is associated with self; it characterizes self.

For example: see "this" in my hand? It is near to me, I am its holder, its relative center, speaking to you as the central character in the drama of the holding of "this". This very trivial drama is my limitation, I play not only the role of center relative to this which is nearby to me, but I am bound to an emotional constraint as its neighbor, holder, owner, doer, and the proper focus of my and others' social attention, being as I am near this focus of attention, this "this". All of which implicitly says, me, me, me. Here I am, me with "this".

No it's not exactly painful, especially if "this" is something praiseworthy, and your nearness characterizes you by a vicarious praiseworthiness, some kind of goodness by association. But it's bound.

And the point is to go beyond being bound. To be unbound. To flow. To expand. To become the infinite. To recognize the non-limitation of self. Something that when you grasp it with your hand, or when you have the thought of grasping it with your hand, evaporates. Because you there, your grasping, your hand, your mere adjacency to the thing, those are all character and characteristic of self, as soon as they cross your identifying mind, as soon as you recognize you are in the role of doer, holder, center, and characterizee. Instantly: bondage.

Emotionally, "this" supports the egoic perspective. Everything that constitutes a This constitutes a support for ego. Yet wisdom is abandonment of ego.

Therefore: That.

9/7/2023: In praise of humility.

How do you understand humility?

Is it an acceptance of low social status? Or is it the not even considering social standing? Or is it an unending mystery, an ever-unraveling thread?

Bliss Theory says, humility is a doorway to bliss.

Practice humility.

Is perfection in the practice of humility possible?

What would it be like to encounter, understand, be around, someone who had achieved perfection in humility?

They could hardly talk about it; would that be humble? Me, I'm hardly humble; so I can talk about it.

I highly praise humility. It is not just a virtue, but an attainment.

I do imagine that perfection in this practice is possible for regular humans in this world.

Some cultures admire humility more than others. It seems a Chinese cultural practice, for example. Some people seem to get it, others not.

Humility is attractive, beautiful, appealing, nice to be around. It decorates innocence and wisdom alike. It creates a safe space for others.

Humility enables presence: you are not thinking about your standing, high or low. It lets you see what's actually going on now around you, and not just as evidence for the progress of your personal drama or the recognition and accumulation of your achievements, but for what's really there.

When it's not about you, you are also free to be yourself, and respond authentically.

The humble person is actually greater: feels more deeply, feels more, sees more deeply, adapts more responsively, is more able to fully experience things, than the self-status-carrying bound person, who keeps everything at a distance while remaining primarily aware of the development of their personal drama, status, and story.

Why be egotistical? It's unnecessary.

Humility is a path to the flow state. The great ones are actually humble.

The non-humble are not the kind of person one wants to be; if one were the kind of person that wants to be like that, then the sincerest authentic lover seeking the beloved will never find it in you. They want your authentic presence; don\'t not run away by only thinking about your story; be present by abandoning status-consciousness and being open to what is here.

Admire humility, respect humility, try practicing humility. See if it doesn't make things more wonderful.

What shall we call a person who is perfect in humility? Is that person not a teacher of wisdom and joy to others by their mere presence? A discipleship-friendly culture might call that person, Guru.

If one isn't humble enough to even value humility, how can one understand high achievement in this high virtue, or even recognize it? A mind of greed and fear, of aggrandizement and suspicion, will tend to see others in its own image.

Please, for my purpose here, let's skip the offensive connotations, take responsibility for ourselves, and just consider this universal high virtue of humility, its deeper meaning, its disciplined practice, and the possibility of its effortless perfection.

Humility is a gentle doorway home. Open it, and find yourself already there.

Author's Note

This collection of aphorisms, short notes, reaching toward inner surrender are offered to you with great respect and love, by someone who is also a brother, an uncle, a friend, and ...

Everyone has their own experience, and not everyone can easily or perhaps ever slip into mine without some translation. It might not make any sense. And it might seem hopeless to try, if differences are so great.

Still, there is a need. Here we are in the latest crazed age, and there is hardly a soothing wise voice to be heard. A few pieces of music might help, maybe there is some poetry to be found I don't know where. I find myself browsing for relief and never finding it. My intention?: Try this!

Have you observed reading scriptures or certain spiritual documents, written from a certain kind of a voice, that you actually can open to a random page, and it speaks to your particular situation? I believe we all suffer from the same broken emotional regulation system, and the same solution, however expressed, in whatever situation or language, answers the suffering and brings a kind of relief.

The voice that soothes with perfect, perhaps irrational wisdom is the voice of the sincere seeker who has discovered a path to inner surrender. The voice that doesn't have a relationship of identification with, a posture of attachment to, a moral, judged position in a moral judged world, that is a voice that is internally free. To be actually capable of universal love and wisdom, which could heal us all, requires letting go of whatever you think you are. Good or bad, you are not that; you are the all encompassing light of consciousness, the unspeakable divine flame, the un limited.

My own path in this direction has been through forests of anxiety and sensitivity to negative emotion -- now I think mostly due to simple carbs in my diet. This may be something about my own unique metabolic physiology but symptoms include night-time nightmares and headaches within 24 or 36 hours of even a tablespoon of sugar. Meaning: always. From childhood until recently. Because I always was a sugar freak.

So you take a basically healthy person, twist up their emotional life with constant low-grade anxiety, and have him explore deeply and forever to try to figure out how to resolve it by cognitive and spiritual self-management, for 30 or 40 years, say: that's exactly me.

So my simple-carb metabolism has supported, nay, driven, a lifetime of seeking and finding inner peace. If such a person can do anything constructive with this, then hopefully, if you also suffer or have any kind of emotional or spiritual hunger or need, you can extract something useful from what I have learned and brought back for you. The positive lessons from my experience may be applicable beyond the dietary.

I have found regular, but always temporary, success by putting out sincere effort under a truly wise teacher following a valid, effective path, and it seems to me that the history of these small victories may aid others, perhaps also you.

Perhaps the story begins in college. My intent and focus was to discover the highest good, extracting what the West offers by way of wisdom (summary: Nietszche says, make up your own; William James says, if it works for you, it's true enough.) This is a call for introspection, at best, so then I went to the East, to India, found a Guru, Second Teacher, learned a bit about grace and humility and stillness, lived in his ashrams for a year or two.

He told me, Study what interests you. My own highest good, my dharma, is a life of intellectual exploration in service to the world. And that's been my life since, modulo practical demands. Yes I feel licensed to develop inspired, even outrageous, opinions and ideas in seemingly every domain (why, don't you feel the same way?) from math to physics to molecular biology to vowels to humor to play. Yes an unlimited scope of interest, yet wherever the spotlight lands, intensely interesting. Perhaps not coincidentally, interest is itself anesthetic (dopamine). But generally my hunger, what I want to do is, to figure out what's really going on, what's the truth. Proving it to other people is not always my forte, but I really want to know what the real truth is, in whatever I'm thinking about. I will noodle and re-think and fuss over a subject many times trying to get deeper and farther into it, to the dismay of loved ones who have heard each story so many times before. Perhaps I have a bit of Asperger's in me, but so, it is said, does any engineer or scientist. It's all good.

To me the most interesting thing for a suffering human being like we all are is actually the difficult-to-impossible task of emotional self-management. How to run the show in here, and maybe not suffer any more or quite as much, or better yet find meaning and happiness, or even better yet, find bliss and serenity. Given my own simple-carbohydrate-driven metabolic anxiety, that is to say, an unresolveable, eternal, medium-intense burden of constant misery and suffering, I might have some findings to share. That's what I'm trying to do here.

After India, I spent a couple decades slowly developing, you might say, baking, on my own spiritual path, by nibbling at Second Teacher's writings, a few sentences before bedtime every night, and here: It gave me anxiety and nightmare free sleep for decades. There is something about the right voice, which brings relief.

Have you noticed this? People have a voice. Most of the things I have to say and write come from a curious but somewhat urgent, pure intellectual voice of advocacy. Trying to figure stuff out, and hopefully bring people along with what I'm figuring out. Not soothing. No relief. Somehow my intellectual posture could never capture that mystical, right voice. Really, I could spend a lifetime and never be able to speak with the simple, saintly wisdom which would soothe myself, let alone others. Believe me I've tried it, the results are not pretty.

It seems this mystery of the miraculously wise voice is associated with (cessation of) self-attribution within the cognitive/emotional regulatory system. And self-attribution is a process which can seem hard to stop, if you're used to it.

Yet it is possible, I believe, and I think I can share how; anyhow these notes show, and share with you, some records of my own process, in hopes they may be a relief to you as well.

So the habit of my last 15 years or so has been: to spend a work week accumulating greater and greater desire for liberation; to go, burning with misery and desire, to a Friday night program in my meditation tradition; to chant for 20-45 minutes, to meditate for 20-45 minutes; thus prepared, to go up to the Teacher's place at the front of the room for the personal moment we call "Darshan"; to bow down shamelessly in the long stick salutation and mentally greet my teachers who I imagine to be present there, in the form of their photographs, maybe a candle, maybe their shoes, and at that moment, to seek with all my capability to learn something that the Teacher can teach me now.

For many years the inner exchange has been me offering something to them. Cash in the box, to make it realistic, of course; would it pass the sniff test if you don't think your teachers are giving you something that is worth something? But offering something interiorly, something greater and greater, each time: whatever I could now imagine as being more and greater than the last time. My spiritual knowledge and growth, I have thought, could perhaps be measured by the nature of my inner offering. After mentally making this offering, I remained open inwardly, and without exception something would come to me, that was some deeper insight, some knowledge, some change in perspective, something apparently I had bought with my gift.

For example, I offered the embarrassment I felt on doing this full-body, on-the-floor, face-in-the-carpet, arms straight, hands together, gross violation of personal dignity and over-the-top signal of excessive subservience. Noone else does it, or even comments on it, clearly I get no points with anyone from it, but Who am I, trying-to-be-humble Tom, to be so vulgar and ostentatious in such a display? Anyway I thought Oh Guru, what shall I do, I offer you, I give you this feeling of embarrassment. And I got an answer right away: Don't worry, it is scripturally prescribed.(Guru Gita verse 28). That was easy. Rest in your duty.

I always get an answer right away. It's like, in that state, emotionally prepared by a good, long, devotional chant, intellectually prepared by a good long meditation, now before the Teacher's place, forehead on the carpet, my sincerity, preparation, intention, and openness somehow meets their wisdom and some alchemy occurs to bring me a deep and satisfying, wiser insight, something I could never invent in my usual mind.

Gradually I offered more and more. Some emotional stuckness. My relationship with a difficult person. My suffering of the week. That my intentions not be greedy. That my choices be selfless. Then, things with which I felt a sense of identification. For example, the wrinkled inner forehead of intense concentration, is a sensation a person can sense while concentrating hard on some task, and it is something I have felt as a sensory feedback indicator of the presence of my own most focussed, determined, striving concentration; I identified with that sensation of the wrinkled inner forehead. I offered that. And answer came, you are That (inclusive). To put it in words, Yes I am that, for sure, but that doesn't limit what you are, you are All.

Every time, some higher deeper truth and insight would come to me. I think sincerity and intensity of purpose found its appropriate context. I would go back to my seat, and sit and ponder what I learned and received and sometimes I would write it down. It seemed to me over time there was a theme of increasingly thorough and complete inner surrender, though that may not be apparent to a reader today. From a thick stack of those notes accumulated over those 15 years, during a health scare (stented), realizing the significance, to me, of sharing this before I die, I typed them in here.

"Notes from (a forehead) on the ground" is an edited subset, aphorisms which could perhaps stand alone, or be understandable by others, mostly outside of the jargon of a certain Hindu-derived, Sanskritic tradition, which by the way I do not officially represent nor here advertise: find your own way. "Darshan Notes" is how I thought of them, and the unfiltered superset keeps that name. The new title, a riff on Dostoevsky, brings a wider resonance, while communicating the same profundity that I've felt, so it's for the wider audience.

You may wonder, What is your intention, Tom, with all this religiosity and God talk? Intellectually, I am actually an atheist. My Dad's Dad would say, I'm from Missouri, I'll believe it when I can see it. I'm with Grampa (Mom too, see #4, here). In the normal understanding of entities and relationships and existence and reality, there is actually and with certainty no god, let me just say it. No, it's not a matter of unknowability like the agnostics say, it's not possible-but-unknown if there is some kind of supernatural entity floating out there, invisible because maybe it's hiding behind a planet or some star, whether shaped like an old man with a beard or otherwise, listening to, much less delivering on, children's on-bent-knee and adults' however-expressed prayers, verbal emissions of grocery lists, like Santa in his workshop, somehow somewhere. No, there isn't any doubt. That's NOT true. Obviously.

Why do discussions of religious life and experience have to always walk tippy-toe around this question of the existence of God. Of course not. We all know what "exists" means, rocks exist, trees exist, and, obviously, God does not exist. I say let's get over being unable to say that.

Still, there's something else actually going on in this domain, and it's a different matter entirely from entities that might or might not exist and whether they do or don't. I think that what it is is the apparently unrelated but universal problem of emotional self-management, and that religious or spiritual practices, teachings, stories, experiences all have the primary and essential purpose of helping us with our own emotional self-management. So although upon entry to this subject, for scientific clarity, I do have to declare the baseline facts, it doesn't mean there isn't a baby in that bathwater to be pulled out.

And Second Teacher said, you have to be an idiot to be an atheist, and I won't argue with that, being happy to be rather on the dumb side in many ways, what can I do? Nothing in these Notes is authoritative or intended as other than personal, subjective, and observational, and actually as data for scientists (current theory here). I hope you are your own kind of scientist, seeking truth and Truth in your own way, coming from where you come from, with the abilities and limitations that you have, just as I come from some place with some abilities and some limitations. Seeking truth that is true enough, and relief, an end to the inner suffering.

So I offer these notes to you, so maybe you don't have to mentally suffer quite as much or as long as someone like me, and maybe you can find and hold onto some of the happiness I have also touched in these years, decades, of seeking, and with my forehead on the ground, of finding.

Bless you; may you suffer as little as possible, may you find great, true happiness, irrational bliss and serenity, effortlessly, may you know and rest in your own Self.