Letting go of your last standpoint

Advaita Post #24 – 01

From a talk with Douwe Tiemersma – Advaita Center Gouda, January 12, 2011

Letting go of your last standpoint

Douwe Tiemersma: Tonight, like always, it’s about the essential. Can you go along and release your standpoint?  For years I’ve spoken, more from a mental level, precisely about how that can go. Enough of that. Now it really comes down to you.  Can you go along with it, in an aware manner, so that your last standpoint disappears?

Remain very clearly aware in the open space. That’s where it will happen. Recognize the impulse, recognize the development: a steadily increasing expansion, a greater clarity of consciousness. That great clarity will need to remain, because you will enter into increasingly subtle dimensions. Let the impulse proceed. These deeper layers of your own self-being, though incarnated and such, are extremely subtle. Remain alert with yourself in your own aware being, in that great space. Then the process will continue. Allow it to proceed, completely. That process stops only when a limitation from your consciousness pops up. More and more layers of your limited self disappear. At a certain point there’s nothing left.

Do you see that every restriction of your consciousness, which arises when you focus on something specific, also immediately brings with it a point of view and a limited identity? When the last anchor disappears, the last identity does, too. So if you don’t affix yourself anywhere specific there is just openness. Things go wrong when you dive into some part of creation and get stuck there. Then there is duality. So remain consciously present in that original, that all-inclusive, whatever happens. What happens in creation is dependent upon all the factors within it. And apparently, that’s how it must go. So remain aware in this original openness. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted. What’s more important than that?

Notice what happens when you come near to that Great. Aren’t all remnants of self-limitation wiped away? That’s surrender: when you let it happen and don’t hold on to the old, limited things. So don’t pose any more questions from the mental level. You’ve already seen for yourself that such questions only pertain to the difficulties that your thinking mind creates. By returning to the original openness directly there is much more space; thinking diminishes and disappears. Consciousness is direct and primary; things are determined immediately within it without separation. That’s what it’s about.

Once again: in the transition towards the release of your standpoint, there’s an incredibly alert consciousness, an extremely high intensity of being-awareness. Remain alert and you will see that the process of purification and surrender proceeds radically. Recognize that process, so that you can remain with it and it can proceed by itself. It can simply be a dissolution, an evaporation. It can also be that you experience it as an incineration of everything that has yet to be purified. Let it proceed, up to and including the core of your own little standpoint.

Starting out from all those [phenomenal] things, confirm for yourself: nothing’s left over. Once it’s clear, then you see that it has absolutely nothing to do with ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. It’s of a totally different order. It’s from the level where speech and thought are inadequate and so have nothing to say. The final standpoint disappears, even that of the global being-sphere.

Remain in this supreme clarity. Then the liberation becomes absolute. Nothing more. Remain with this essential, with this highest cognition. [Then] Whatever still needs to happen, happens by itself.

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Remain in the Light which knows no opposition between light and dark

Advaita Post Vol #23 – 12

From a talk on December 15, 2010 – Advaita Centrum, Gouda

Remain in the Light which knows no opposition between light and dark

It is of the utmost importance to distinguish between what is transitory and what is imperishable. The calendar year runs to its end. Another year has gone by. The activities here gradually stop. At the end of the year people look back and say: time flies. All the things that were important to you are gone. But what about yourself? After the old year there is a new year and then, so the idea goes, life continues on in the old way. How long? You don’t really know.

But what about yourself? That remains the most central question. What about yourself. To the extent that you are transient, you say: yes, I’m transient. But right away there is another element that goes beyond it, just as with the end of the year. You, yourself, extend beyond the calendar year that now comes to its end.

When you see through to this in yourself, you see that time only has to do with phenomena. That in your self-being there’s really no time to be found. As forms disappear, that within which forms appear remains – and that is the sphere in which you are.

This insight can come. Sometimes something hard has to happen, serious things have to happen, for instance, that you are fully confronted with the end of your life. But it can also occur just like that – when you return to yourself, where you can immediately confirm: here, there is no time.

We have often spoken about the groundlessness of the original source, of total openness, the groundlessness in which there is nothing left to hold on to and also no one left that would hold on to anything. The realization of this groundless openness makes the time-bound world so relative, because it’s clear that there is nothing other than the groundless openness in which you are present, where you yourself are present in the same way: as openness without forms.

When you can be a little present in that large space – be even more lucid there and see where it’s not yet completely open, where certain identifications still exist. Remain in the openness and you’ll notice that the last identifications dissolve.

In principle, you all have that knowledge. That’s where self-reliance lies.

What is the only authentic experience? Isn’t that the original, where everything has its source and is one? Every experience that has a form is conditioned. Therein sit all kinds of forms that you have learned and so that’s not authentic. Take a look to see what your authentic self truly is.

 Visitor: Can the path also be intense grief? 

Yes, of course. Everything can be a path to that authentic. Thus, if you have experienced sadness or love in the authentic sense, then you’ll have to enter more deeply into it. And then you’ll notice that there are still all kinds of elements there on a personal level. But when you continue through to the essence of it, totally, then you see that everything clarifies.

The sooner you realize that everything was always already good, the better. That’s pretty much the last formulation that is possible. Experience that there is this Goodness, previous to every separation including that of goodness or badness, previous to sorrow and joy, and that this was always, already there in a totally open way. Thus that is something that doesn’t belong to time, because it precedes it.

Stay there with it, stay there with it.

So you truly don’t need to be afraid of death, because you’ve already been the great space all along

Advaita Post Vol #23 – 11

Gouda, August 30, 2009

So you truly don’t need to be afraid of death, because you’ve already been the great space all along

I frequently find myself trying to improve [external] things and [internal thoughts, so that they might better match my goals and desires, so that they suit me better.

That frequently happens: you’re busy with your work or whatever else, and you think that things should be done differently, in a way that suits you better or is more desirable. That situation is always a mix, a mixture of one and the other. First of all, there’s a wider awareness, an awareness of something better and more authentic than what exists right now. Secondly, you quickly link that realization to all kinds of concrete goals in the world and in your life. Then you are going to go after all that with that tension [existing within those goals].

You can see your own spiritual path like this. Each path begins with a dual situation where a person believes that by following a path he or she can achieve something. ‘I am going to adjust my life to what I experience as more authentic.’ The positive thing is that there is already an awareness of the authentic that it really is about and that there is a desire to realize it. Of course you know that, because you are that already, though not yet fully aware. When you keep projecting that authentic [but] within certain conditions, you find you’re not making much progress and even getting stuck. So it’s best to understand as soon as possible what your real impulse is, your real desire, the real authenticity. It goes further and is closer than anything you could ever imagine. So look again at your situation and stay true to your notion and impulse from the very beginning. There is something of that infinite already in it. When you remain aware of “that which suits you better”, then within it you’ll get a certain development in which the limitations disappear and this continues on to the infinite openness.

When that takes place, then the life that remains turns out to be arranged in the best way, however it may go. Basically, it’s no longer a concern; so it’s free.

When the self-being recognizes its own nature of freedom, then, not only the self-being, but everything, is liberated along with it. Your whole life will be released, your claims against other people will be released. So, you release others.

So remain with yourself as an infinitely free realm. Very lucid. When you establish this very clearly, then there’s also an immediate internal knowing: this is good.

Sometimes I fall quite consciously into a deep sleep. But up ‘til now I always snap back awake again. It’s a startle response from the physical body.

It’s an I-residue with biological roots that suddenly becomes activated within that conscious sinking into deeper sleep. That mechanism is not on the mental level but much deeper. There, the feeling suddenly arises: I’m going to die now.

From that deep-seated I-residue comes the will of ‘I want to live’. Then you are at that level. As you sink away into a dreamless sleep, you experience that everything is going to disappear, that even you, disappear. Apparently, there is still such a strong ‘I-want-to-live’ will that it suddenly says: “Stop.” At that deep level, the I-want-to-live is a kind of cramp, which resists a further relaxation. In such a situation, the cramp suddenly kicks in.

And if that doesn’t happen, you go from the waking state to the dreaming state.

The point is that then there’s usually a closure of consciousness and then nothing else is going on for you. When this process becomes conscious, there’s the release of the last remnants of ego tension. Just try to be aware of yourself as you go to sleep. And then just hover in the sphere before this ego-reaction. Then consciously affirm: it’s so wonderfully spacious and relaxed here; I am myself and that feels good. In this trusted space with that formless self-being, the process can proceed. Then it becomes increasingly clear that you are not dependent on such an I-residue to promote existence. The self-being then need not be afraid of death at all, for it has already been the great space all along. When that becomes even somewhat clear, you can stay there longer, relax even more and feel at home.

How can you stop that falling process for a while?

That’s possible by being a little more aware of the relaxation process. “Delicious; I feel all heaviness disappear; I feel the deep relaxation; I feel myself dissolving in this infinity; that is wonderful, because I’ve always already been that space.” When that continues to dictate the situation, there is no fear.

You can compare this fear with agoraphobia. How can someone get over that? Of course, behavioral therapy can be helpful by getting used to [open] space, but then the fear can transfer and take on other forms. There will have to be a deep trust, for example, through someone else who goes with you and says, “Come on; you don’t have to be afraid; see, it’s going fine.” Only when there’s more trust, do you see that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

So have trust; all is well.

It is and remains good because you are and remain you.

The more clearly you are aware of this on the more subtle levels, the better it can go there, too. When you are not aware there, a panic can suddenly arise that completely disrupts the situation. You see that the same processes apply there as on a coarser level. When you are clearly aware of yourself there, you can have trust and let go. This can continue to proceed in your conscious feeling-sphere, until it’s clear that there’s nothing left to hold on to and that there is no self-being that could and would hold on to anything.