Category: General

Many great Masters of the past talks about letting go and surrendering. And many who followed did and yet many failed. How to surrender, the question were asked. Letting go of what? Surrendering to what? And many sort themselves out by trying – by giving up wealth, giving up materials, giving up life, giving up practically everything and still find themselves miserable. I read Illusions by Richard Bach a year ago and find the parable enlightening….

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all- young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”

The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom!” But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.” But they cried the more, “Savior!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior.”

– Richard Bach, Illusions – The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

What am I still holding on? What is it that I am clinging to? The world is my reflection…

Not if I am ignorant. Jealousy is an inherent nature of the mind. So long as there are wrong ideas in the mind – ideas that are ignorant by nature – jealousy is set to arise. Why is that so? Idea creates projection. Whenever I have an idea, I can’t but not notice that the idea is a projected thought – though in reality ideas never left its source.  The projected thought creates a seemingly separation from me. It is either about myself or something out there. I don’t see idea as me but rather about me. The same with the world – it is about the world. It is like one looking into the mirror. I don’t see the reflection as me but rather about me. Whenever it is about something, I am prone to judgment. And each judgment has the tendency of right and wrong.

Every judgment is preceded by comparison – I can’t help comparing as it is part of perception’s work. Perception function is to memorize and each memory that does or does not matches the past will be automatically compared. If I am not present to recognizing c0mparison is a function of perception, and not me, I will automatically be compelled to  judge – as what I see, I see as something either better or worse than what I have experienced before. Even seeing things as the same is also a kind of judgment – a blind judgment that is ignorant by nature.

Whenever my judgment is about something better than what I had experienced before , automatically, I am in favor with what I seemingly perceived. I see myself one notch higher than the past, whether be it myself, a relationship or any event or situation, for that matter. I felt happy, not being aware that my happiness is about judgment – I am holier than thou attitude. In truth, it is a lie that I am more spiritual than before, except a hallucination, a fabrication of delusion.

I observed this pattern when I am helping someone for a period of time. During the help, I consider myself compassionate and ever willing to lend my hand as a gesture of goodwill and selflessness. I feel holy and noble with my action. The moment the situation changes, I am faced with my own demon of jealousy – that there is no reason to help anymore. I can only see through this illusion if I am authentic with myself for there is  no possibility I can lie to myself. But if I am not skilled in observing the mind, I will accept it as a moving on phase where help is no longer a necessity. In this context, I am been reminded by Byron Katie’s phrase – I only see it as a loan, when the person returns me what I have given out.

If it is a genuine help, I don’t event question what attitude the person has. I give unconditionally irrelevant what he does or does not do. If I am affected by his attitude I can be sure my help is conditional. I could have help from the space of seeing him as a victim – I am better than him. The moment the victim meaning disappears in my mind, I see him as a threat.  That is when jealousy or even regret arise from what I have given in the past.

For that I am not in favor of the word help, in my space. Either I give unconditionally or if I were to give conditionally, I am to accept the pain that comes with it – that is part of nature of how things work in the mind.

If my judgment is about something unpleasant, I can’t be having jealousy as I have the illusional mentality of  “I am better than thee”. Whereas if the situation does not reflect better or worse, but seemingly sameness, I will ignorantly go along with it. Seeing things the same is ignorant simply because there is no sameness in anything except now. There is recycled experience, but not the same – it is always presented anew, though not truly new.

Thus, irrelevant how I view the world, if I identify with my ideas, I am prone to delusion, to ignorance and I can be sure of error. I can be sure each aversion directed to anyone has jealousy in it.

I wish to share here with you an inspiring poem by Kabir, an Indian Poet, mystic and philosopher who lived from 1440-1518.

While You Are Alive

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think… and think… while you are alive.
What you call “salvation” belongs to the time
before death.

If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten–
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.