Volume 17, No. 7
Satsang Text
From a talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog, June 13, 2005
Dissolving and subtle resistances
[After a little silence]
You notice: again and again the quiet space does its work. Then too, just let this effect proceed radically, let whatever has to happen, happen. Don’t hold back, not even on a very subtle level. You can close yourself off and keep yourself fixed on a crude level but also on subtler, feeling-sense levels. There, it becomes very precise because when there is just an ounce of I-feeling the whole process of dissolving ceases. The only thing is to maintain such clarity, also on these subtle levels, that you see what happens. Then the releasing can go further. This release proceeds infinitely, to an infinite subtlety. Also, that can’t be otherwise, because the egocentricity has this depth with all these layers, in this infinity. The principles of the processes are the same on all levels. From a slightly more expansive level you can see how stuck you were on a coarser level. You also see how much suffering this stuckness has brought about. You become free of it by becoming aware anew of your own situation. “How is it now? Let go again.”
On the signboard in front of the chapel here is a short line of text with the expression: ‘Life is too short to be selfish’. I don’t know if you have read it. But you already see the truth of it on an everyday level. You see your little life from a slightly more expansive point of view. You see the limitations of it through the ego-tensions that exist within it. Do you want to stay in that for the rest of your life? Especially when it’s not necessary? Your life is short, too short to remain slow and ignorant. You see it, even on an everyday level.
It is so simple. Everyone noticed this during the exercises this morning. The feeling-wise opening from out of the bodily feeling proceeds. When you don’t stop it, it is an infinite movement, because you yourself don’t stop anywhere. Once the feeling of expansion has begun, it easily continues. You have noticed: it goes completely by itself. When you just don’t stop it, not even on the very subtle feeling-sense level. An important mechanism that stops it is giving attention to your I-center. Letting go of this center in your attention and in your feeling automatically means extension, expansion. Just let that happen and notice that this I-center is going to completely dissolve itself in this infinite expansion. Nothing remains of this center.
We have often talked about habits and habit formations these days. You see how strong the habit is to always return to this I-center. On a coarse level it’s very clear, but the tendency is even more deeply rooted to very subtle, feeling-sense levels. All problems arise from that central node of the I, because that creates the divisions between the me and the other. Even though it’s totally unnecessary. Then isn’t it crazy that you continually create that center again and again? On the beach you noticed that it was gone. During the exercises there, there in the cosmos, everything was included in the great whole. In that blank situation there was no center anymore. The energies could continue, life could continue, but there was no privileged center. When you don’t offer any resistance, this expansion automatically occurs in the space. The forms become increasingly subtler, becoming increasingly transparent, more cosmic, until you yourself coincide with the cosmos.
See these transitions, be clearly aware of them. See to what extent there are still resistances and to what extent the expansion can continue. We talked yesterday about this precision of confirming, observing, knowing. Everything in your own sphere can be immediately observed, as though it were very sensory. It’s very precise to experience, as we are rowing in the cosmos, in a very concrete way. You experience the space. You determine that the forms are transparent. Very light and airy. The wind comes and it blows these last forms away.
thegroundlessopenness 