⦿ Wow, four days left. Some sorrow in doubt about how deeply rooted my conditioning is. I don’t know that the time spent in silence here can inoculate me against the coming onslaught of busyness. Which is not to say that busyness is to be resisted or reacted to negatively, just that it will rip me away from this practice.
⦿ Dance of the silent bodies. Funny how relatively coordinated we roughly 60 men are in mindful awareness of each other’s movement and space as we stream through various doorways and environments through and around each other.
⦿ During meditation, I received repeated images of clenched teeth. I’ve been holding a lot of tension in my jaw the past couple/few years, which has caused the constant tinnitus, and I’m seeing that it’s connected to a tension I hold in my abdomen, presumably around R2.
⦿ Ra describes perfect balance in the following way:
The catalyst of experience works in order for the learn/teachings of this density to occur. However, if there is seen in the being a response, even if it is simply observed, the entity is still using the catalyst for learn/teaching. The end result is that the catalyst is no longer needed. Thus this density is no longer needed. This is not indifference or objectivity but a finely tuned compassion and love which sees all things as love. This seeing elicits no response due to catalytic reactions. Thus the entity is now able to become co-Creator of experiential occurrences. This is the truer balance.
Ra
I believe that the equanimity that we are cultivating here is quite synonymous to this understanding of balance.
12:00pm
⦿ The Assistant Teachers—space holders and emcees for the event—are available for brief “interviews” from the students. I scheduled one such today. Whether through lack of knowledge or institutional limitations, the Assistant Teacher seems literally only able to talk about and reinforce the technique. I think it is an intuitional restriction. One critique I have of the course is that we listen to hours upon hours of the late Goenka, but hear next to nothing of the living and present teachers. I would really enjoy receiving some of their wisdom. They’ve qualified themselves for the position. They presumably have years of meditation behind them.
⦿ Tired today. Little progress, seemingly, in meditation. Beset by the same misery-manufacturing mind. And when feeling “low vibration,” I become susceptible to painful replays of malice received in recent years.
⦿ Throughout the journey of meditation, even long before coming here, I have grasped for some sort of stable platform upon which to climb onto and stand atop in order to witness the arising and falling phenomenon. I have been in search of some master key, some core healing. This may open the way.
⦿ In my cell in the pagoda today, I looked to the silence, the literal, actual experience of silence as the ONLY method and portal for healing. I have sought inner healing for years, and the silence, oddly enough, was the one place I haven’t really gone.
So today, I placed my trust in the silence. And I did so in a strong way during the night’s group sit in the experience described above. I learned that:
——-SILENCE IS MY TEACHER——-
Not in a figurative, poetic, or abstract way. Literally, there is truth, intelligence, and beingness where the thoughts end, where there is no “sound,” no object, no activity, no quality but eternal stillness and silent presence.
5:45pm
⦿ I had a breakthrough meditation at 6pm group sit in the dhamma hall. A big pressure in the 3rd eye again. I kept focusing, and focusing, and focusing. Fear came. What if I go crazy and lose myself in the group? What if I can’t control behavior or speech, and I break the silence? I recalled and exercised Ra’s insight:
This energy [of the north pole of the magnetic system] is brought into being by the humble and trusting acceptance of this energy through meditation and contemplation of the self and of the Creator.
Consequently, I listened not to the fear but, exercising humility and trust, I let go; I leaped; I continued the practice. And something… manifested. Light emerged and sunk slowly and warmly into my heart, where it stayed. A sort of power filled me as I rested and abided in focused, surrendered silence. It restored, cleansed, and strengthened me to a degree. It was a spa for the soul.
⦿ In 52.7, Ra says “There is great danger in the use of the will as the personality becomes stronger, for it may be used even subconsciously in ways reducing the polarity of the entity.” I likened this to a “hijacking” (as explored in-depth in the Kundalini entry in the section “Metaphysical Principles of Magnetism” in A Concept Guide). Maybe what does the hijacking is the “ego,” the false or illusory self. When this ego is opaque to eternity within, and when it comes into contact with the power available in silence, the power of the beyond, then the illusory self and its chatterbox mind may find cause to think that it is special, and write its story accordingly.
⦿ The thinking mind must die, in a sense. It must literally submit to that which is superior. It is humbling, because the thinking mind—as has never been clearer to me—wants to comment and reflect upon everything, to “know” everything,” to control and manipulate in the (wrongheaded) belief that it is directing the show.
The ego is a very powerful elephant and cannot be brought under control by anyone less than a lion, who is no other than the Guru* in this instance; whose very look makes the elephant tremble and die. We will know in due course that our glory lies where we cease to exist. The ego submits only when it recognizes the Higher Power. Such recognition is surrender or submission, or self-control. Otherwise the ego remains stuck up like the image carved on a tower, making a pretense by its strained look and posture that it is supporting the tower on its shoulders. The ego cannot exist without the Power but thinks that it acts of its own accord.
– Ramana Maharshi
*The guru can be, but is not necessarily an external source in this teaching.
⦿ The pressure and enhanced awareness continued as I returned to my room and lay in bed. I let it work on me again. I had a small epiphany that I’ve been here before, with Spirit, particularly with psychedelics in my earlier years. Getting here naturally, however, is infinitely superior. It doesn’t have the fireworks, but it is also without the instability, the randomness, and the overstimulated exhaustion of the chemically-induced experience.
⦿ Equanimity—neither grasping for the pleasant nor avoiding the unpleasant—is the way to trust the silence. The Power in silence will energize the many habit-patterns of the mind and all of its limitations. You cannot logic your way through it; nor can you try to control and manipulate, as you lack understanding.
As the various conditioned patterns of the mind rise up to try to run the show, equanimity releases both control and the need to understand. Why crave, reject, attach, or react to that which is impermanent? Which is what the mind is—impermanent. Greet it all the same with equanimity.
In that non-reaction is an essential trust.
⦿ When I took the leap this evening (mentioned above) and trusted the energy, it opened the third eye and continued to in-stream the intelligent energy for some time as I lay in my bed. I reached a point of fatigue. I spoke with it, as it were, and implored it to subside for the time being as I needed to rest.
⦿ REMEMBER: The unconsciousness will try to pull you down, so to speak. More technically, it will offer you catalyst for becoming conscious. But from a functional standpoint, it will seem to resist the light of awareness. It will stir up noise and drama and stories to generate negativity, to think endlessly, to steal the attention in the sleight of hand that gets the self to identify with the habit-patterns. *It will return.*
⦿ Each night we are greeted with a 1.25hr video of Goenka’s “dhamma talks.” (Dhamma being the body of teaching and the way of the Buddha, or Buddhahood, the remembrance of our essential Buddhic natures.) I love hearing the everyday stories of the Buddha. Makes it so accessible, relatable, and removed from the realm of myth. Also appreciate about Buddhism this notion of impurities in the mind combined with the ability to purify the mind.
⦿ One week completed!