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Applied Non-Duality is not Mysticism
I have no problem with the notion of ´Zen and the art of...studying, raising your children, doing your work, making money, satisfying your lover, bonding with your pet, etc...´ Or in the same fashion: ´Non-Duality for managers, mothers, teachers, dying people, gardeners, people who want to bond with their pet, etc...´
As long as people get a more happy, fulfilling life by viewing their everyday experience through a Non-Dual lens, then I´m for it. And perhaps, while you are still a seeker, then it´s even impossible to not apply Non-Duality to your everyday life in hope of a better outcome. We are seeking to become more...happy, peaceful, you name it. We can deny it, and say ´I simply Have to seek.´ Sure, but even for the most earnest seeker there still has to be some slight idea that if the search falls away, then there will be more peace, or something. As long as the notion of an individual seeker is appearing, then the Absolute is still seen as a something, in which we one day hope to abide. And as such logical conclusions can be drawn from ´it´, and they can be applied - with or without success.
If someone becomes a better parent by drawing conclusions from the notion of Non-Duality and translating them in healthy actions, then I have no criticism.
But, it can also get ugly. Especially when people use applied Non-Duality to criticize the behavior of other people. Example: ¨I met this woman who was still haunted by childhood memories of being bullied by other children. It´s unbelievable, that after 30 years she is still hanging on to that stuff. She´a a grown woman for crying out loud! She is so entrapped in being a separate person. I can´t stand to be around these people.[Sigh...] Wanna go outside to have a smoke?¨
The person in the above example picks up the notion of the Absolute and starts applying it to everyday life. To a certain degree all seekers do this. But it get´s nauseating when someone is not aware that he/she is looking at things through just another, more fancy, mental concept, that it´s not a direct knowing. And it get´s even worse if this person does not even see him/herself as a seeker anymore.
Often hypocrisy is the key word. They love criticizing other people, but they don´t see their own vasana´s (tendencies.) Let us remember that also the Absolute is a concept. The teaching of Advaita is a tiny, tiny, tiny spec on an infinite ocean of Love.
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If someone has a problem with someone else, why would I have a problem with that?
No need for that at all.And the Truth can never be tainted. But if people pick up the notion of the Absolute and start applying it in every day life (which has nothing to do with mysticism or abiding in the Absolute) then I think it´s very healthy if this loose interpretation of Non-Duality is not being used to hurt other people. If you want to use Non-duality to paint over the ugly parts in your own life, that´s fine, but don´t start making youtube video´s in which you make fun of other people´s misery.While in reality this is just a way to not have to look at your own vasana´s.
But perhaps it´s more a matter of esthetic's than ethics.
For the record: I´m a seeker, I am full of vasana´s,
I agree that projection happens all the time; or the seeing of something in others that you are unable, for the moment, to see in yourself.
But pointing that out to someone, who is participating in that dynamic, rarely helps him or her to see it.
What helps more often, I have discovered, is their interaction with someone who doesn't participate in the same dynamic.
The dynamic of seeing styes in other people's eyes.
I had to read the last two sentences a few times before they sank in - but they were the most useful.
thanks
As surprising as this may sound to some, too, there is a quality of attention... which you are placing on the styes in your eye... that causes you be blind to any styes in other people's eyes.
The only styes that you are able to see are the ones in your own eye.
I'm most fond of that particular quality of attention.
Interesting how this kind of spiritual teachings has reached such a wide layers of people. I`ve been waiting for that, it is always just a matter of time. I haven`t noticed it here in Europe yet, but I live in a very smal place.
Maybe one can now understand why most of the traditions kept the more esoteric teachings always very secret. By now there are barely few such secrets left, if there are any at all.
I think perhaps Dzogchen (maha-ati) has the pointing-out-instructions still hidden. The introduction is known as: "Without correcting or modifying your present awarness in any way, notice that...". The rest isn`t given to everyone.
But also here is just a matter of time...
And the preliminary practices in Mahayana take very very long time, maybe a whole lifetime.
Well as for the rest I agree with you, there are good sides also with this mass-spreadning of Advaita. Besides, it is as it is, isn`t it?
Yes within this movie everything has a good and a bad side. I always like it when I see two opposite sides being equally true.It´s healthy to have no secret teachings and at the same time it can be healthy to have secret teachings. Perhaps by seeing them both we can go beyond.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
Danish physicist (1885 - 1962)
Vasanas are the birthplace of karma; but it's still
in a dance of appearances. When you awaken to the dream
little changes, you may be awake, yet the dream
continues in its tendencies. In the turning world
only one point is still; there is only one point.
Nice post. There is a parade of people that take these philosophies, find out that they can parrot these philosophies to others, and then proceed to (falsely) think they are Realized/Enlightened. This turns into tons of youtube (fake) yogis that claim to be Realized, and they claim to be giving Darshan, which is even more hilarious. When the Realizer comes poking along, the intellectual realizer ends up finding all sorts of problems and criticisms. These people apply their dogma of 'non-duality' to everything, but their self. These fake Gurus apply their trendy ideas that there is nothing to do, and spiritual practice is a waste, and that Self Realization is simply parroting, and that the body/mind is not important or as if there is No Process of bodily transfiguration - LOL. These people say the body is just going to return to dust and that the flesh (or Awakening of all the esoteric anatomy) is not important because these people (fake Gurus offering Darshan) are completely ignorant of ANY bodily Awakening and the Process of bodily Transfiguration.
This next comment is for everyone here, and where ever else. You ARE NOT GIVING DARSHAN just because you can parrot some non-duality. You ARE NOT GIVING DARSHAN without a Extremely Deep Awakening of the esoteric anatomy of consciousness. If the kundalini, the ( at least two of the three hearts: left - center - right) Hearts of the chest, and chakras are not SHINING HARD Freely from the Source of Consciousness, so HARD that you are pretty much forced to sit down, and be still, then you are not even bodily Awake As the Source of DARSHAN. Darshan is something the Guru gives the devotee, and it makes me laugh when you see all these people talking as if they are Fully Realized, and not parroting some stuff they read in an eastern book. Their videos says Darshan with such and such, and you watch the video and these people are really like children playing with toy guns, and playing war games. It is all fantasy and imagination. The Guru is a function, and it is not a person, the True Guru is a Service to the Devotees of God. There are less than two hand fulls of people on Earth that can truly Give Darshan (not an accurate number, but the point comes across), you are probably not one of those people. Furthermore, Even those that do come to Realization, and can confirm the Guru's Realization, do not become the Guru. Spirituality is not about producing tons of Gurus, instead, it is about producing Realizers through the Guru, such that the Realizers out number the Gurus by the millions. This subject is dear to me, and I am glad you posted this thread. Good job.
http://www.HeartRealization.com My main site.
Once the quote ends the interpretation begins.