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Hello there ...
Spiritual argument so often whittles down to an argument about semantics.
But for the sake of today's episode, let me play with semantics
so as to facilitate your understanding of something
which can ultimately only be experienced through felt perception.
Thousands of years ago it was said that Desire is the root of Suffering.
Is this true?
No.
It turns out that it is not true.
The word that was used was "Taṇhā".
Now, the translation of "Taṇhā"
if you were to take it directly is Thirst.
So what is the difference between Thirst and Desire?
A whole lot!
Thirst and Desire are the opposite sides of the same coin.
Thirst is the shadow-side of Desire.
In other words, think of choice as a two-sided coin.
On one side there is Desire, on the other side there is Thirst.
Thirst is the shadow-side of Desire on this coin called Choice.
Thirst implies that there is a 'lack', first,
and that the 'lack' is what is motivating the craving that we are calling 'Desire'.
Thirst is an 'attachment'.
An attachment is 'craving of something' -
which is motivated by an aversion to something.
The root of suffering therefore is the state of perpetual movement
from aversion towards its opposite attachment
(the thing we crave, because of our acute awareness, of the lack of It).
Attachment which is the by-product of Thirst is nothing more than an addiction.
It's the desperate craving for something
because of something else that we're trying to avoid.
There is a difference between a craving and a desire.
The craving is the shadow-aspect of desire.
It is always the by-product of perceiving some kind of a 'deprivation'.
Desire is not bad.
In fact, you could not escape from Desire in this lifetime if you wanted to,
nor would you want to, if you really understood what it was.
You can however, transmute it - you can exalt it.
Desire in its purest form is like a "Yes!" to an experience -
nothing more and nothing less.
It is the "Yes" that occurs from sorting through the Contrast
but that is not the by-product of a "No".
In other words,
it is a "Yes" to experience (or the choice of an experience), that is not motivated by aversion,
and thus, it does not take-on the form of Attachment.
Desire in its pure form is absent of Resistance.
It is a tool of the True Self.
It facilitates Expansion, and Self-Awareness, and Self-Realization.
Craving is a tool of the Ego.
Are you ready for a bitch-slap?
'Ego' is not a word that the Buddha even knew!
If you said 'Ego' to the Buddha,
he would be completely confused about what you meant.
It is in fact a Freudian term -
a Freudian term which was adopted into Buddhist circles
and used to apply to the teachings of Buddha.
It was simply the best way that we could describe the difference
between an enlightened perspective where there is no separate Self,
and the unenlightened perspective where there is a separate sense of Self.
Later, Jung called this the Shadow Aspect -
meaning Conscious versus Not-Conscious.
When the Buddha accurately described his Enlightenment experience,
what he was trying to explain was that he observed a polarity inherent within him
such as Truth & Illusion, Conscious & Unconscious, Suffering & Happiness.
And that Enlightenment transcended all polarity (which it does).
Enlightenment is not Happiness any more than it is Suffering -
it is liberation from Polarity.
Up till now, all movement within this Universe has taken place
because someone wants to move towards something
because they want to move away from something else.
They want to move towards something that is wanted
because they want to move away from something that is unwanted.
This 'pain' is the Eternal Condition.
That is, until it is no longer the condition.
When you live your life moving away from negative towards positive
you are always in motion.
You can never stop to smell the roses in the present moment, so to speak.
All decision are made by 'pain'.
All decisions are the by-product of trying to move away from pain.
Imagine a life where there is nothing that you wish to move away from ...
Life is lived for Joy in total non-resistance to Pain.
In order to end this Trail of Tears,
this perpetual movement away & towards ...
... away & towards ...
this movement from aversion towards craving
(which is all that Attachment really is),
we turn in the direction of our aversion.
We sit with it completely, we embrace it.
We are unconditional towards It
because we let It know that we are willing to experience it without needing It to change.
We are set free
because of our willingness to bring the Light of the Presence of our Consciousness
into the Shadow of the Absence of our Consciousness.
We no longer have an aversion to our Aversion
and so, it is no longer our master.
Desire is transmuted because it is free of its Shadow.
And free of its Shadow, there is no longer a need for reincarnation.
The craving for reincarnation is gone from our Soul itself.
The Soul now chooses from a place not motivated by Aversion, or, Craving.
The process of Spiritual Awakening happens in three distinct steps.
Now, we have to understand, of course, that there could potentially, in future, be more steps
but for the sake of your understanding,
I have whittled Awakening down to these primary three steps - like the Holy Trinity.
I'm going to explain these steps to you now ...
Firstly comes "Spirituality 101":
It dawns on you that you might actually be capable of creating your reality.
You might actually be free.
It might actually be a choice for you to be happy, instead of miserable.
And so, you go in the direction of happiness.
You focus positively.
You do anything you can do to add to the well-being of your life.
You are flowing in the direction of your Joy.
You are allowing your Joy.
You prioritize how you feel above all else,
your life is dedicated to feeling 'better'.
You finally let yourself have what you want.
But still you want those things because of aversions to other things.
You are still running from feeling crappy.
You begin to feel, deep-down,
that this is an endless-cycle of Aversion & Craving, Unwanted & Wanted.
No matter what you get, you want more.
This is no longer as satisfying as it once was,
so it is time for the second step - "Spirituality 2.0".
In Spirituality 2.0, you realize that all movement towards your desires
is movement away from something that is unwanted that will never stop chasing you.
Just like a storm or a tornado, that's gonna chase you from place to place.
You decide that the answer is to turn in the direction of your aversion,
and to walk straight into the center of that storm.
Instead of allowing your positive emotions
now you begin the practice of allowing your negative emotions,
so that there is no longer resistance to them.
You're integrating and you're becoming whole.
The Unconscious is becoming Conscious.
Craving is becoming pure Desire.
You're becoming whole
as the Shadow is no longer separated from the light of Consciousness.
Instead of feeling better, your aim is to get better at feeling.
You end up in the present moment with no aversions and thus no craving.
You are not going anywhere -
Past ceases to motivate you towards the Future,
and you are left squarely in the present moment -
and then, you are ready for "Spirituality 3.0".
In Spirituality 3.0 you can choose to
deliberately create in your Reality because of Desire.
But that desire is no longer motivated by aversions to something.
Because of this, Spirituality 3.0 is the realm that we call Choice.
Instead of craving,
we recognize our infinite creator-nature and choose -
choose to be wealthy or not - not from a place of pain.
In other words,
"I don't want money because I'm poor ... "
"I want it because I'm curious about that perspective, "
"like I want strawberry ice-cream."
"I don't want strawberry ice-cream because "
"I so, so, so, don't-want chocolate ice-cream!"
Inspiration is what causes our movement towards things that we choose.
We are completely in the Now.
No Past is projecting into our Present or Future.
The state of Spirituality 3.0 arises organically,
as a result of shining the Light into the Shadow.
To begin with, you start in 'Unconscious'.
You are asleep.
And you are not aware that you are asleep.
When you begin to wake up you begin to notice the polarity of your existence.
You start to see that there might be
a Light-side and a Shadow-Side to that which is You.
You recognize the difference between Positive and Negative.
And because you notice
that so much of your Shadow-side is creating the reality that you live in,
you do anything that you can to crawl into the Light,
out of that dark abyss that you have been living your life in.
This is Spirituality 101.
In Spirituality 2.0,
after we have reached that 'Conscious' state
(we've crawled out of that hole into the light),
we capture that light that is Consciousness
and we descend back into the abyss of our own Shadow.
With the light of Consciousness,
that Shadow which we descend into ceases to be 'shadow'.
And then we evolve into Spirituality 3.0.
The Unconscious becomes Conscious.
Polarity dissipates.
You are Whole, in and of yourself.
You experience true peace - which is the transcendence of Opposites.
Peace is not what we think it is.
It is not just 'getting-along'.
It is not just the absence of war.
It is the absence of internal conflict,
and thus, the absence of external conflict.
It is the absence of Opposition and Polarity.
It is the center point of the symbol of Eternity -
no Opposites, only one unified Beingness.
That is the state that we have called Enlightenment.
And the state of Enlightenment is not a state of 'retirement'.
It is more like the by-product of the ongoing process of becoming Conscious.
As the Universe or Source becomes more conscious of Itself,
there is more to become conscious of.
And so, we, a microcosm of the larger Universe, must become more conscious.
And so, there are always further Enlightenments to experience - so far ...
The Three Steps of Awakening are clearly represented in the Eternity symbol.
That's why I'm going to use this symbol
to explain this three-step process of Awakening to you today.
Because of how I have named these particular steps,
(for the sake of your understanding)
we then fall into the trap of thinking
that one step is more 'graduated' than the previous step.
It's more important that we see this on a horizontal line.
The way the Universe sees this
is that one step is not more 'graduated' or important than the last step.
The same way that the Universe does not see Crawling
as an infinitesimal step compared to Walking.
They're crucial, they're important.
So it's important to think about these steps more like a scale,
where both sides are equally weighted.
Looking at the Infinity Symbol we can see that there is polarity.
On one side - Physical, on the other side - Non-physical.
On one side - Life, on the other - Death.
On one side - Light, on the other - Dark.
But in-between them is a point - the Still Point.
This is the part of the Infinity Symbol that actually represents Infinity.
It is not the balance between opposites,
it is the union and thus, transcendence of opposites.
So, here we have Spirituality 3.0.
On one side - Spirituality 101,
on the other side - Spirituality 2.0
and in the middle - Spirituality 3.0.
It is tempting to rush the steps of Awakening
cause let's be honest,
we would all love to rush to the place of Transcendence
where we were feeling amazing all the time,
where we were solidly in the present moment,
and we were absent of Resistance.
But these steps of Awakening will not be rushed.
The place where most of our 'rushing' happens
is in the practice of Spirituality 2.0
where we fall again into the trap of trying to resist the emotions
that we've been running from for most of our lives.
This is why I have not released
this particular teaching on Spirituality 3.0 for a long time.
Instead, I waited, so that people could be squarely in the practice of Spirituality 2.0
and not do Spirituality 2.0 for the sake of getting to Spirituality 3.0.
Cause if we're trying to do 2.0 to get to 3.0
we have missed the point of Spirituality 2.0.
We are no longer unconditionally present with the way we feel.
We are no longer allowing our negative emotions.
We are instead resisting our negative emotions
by trying to go into them in order to get out of them.
Some people spend years upon years practicing Spirituality 2.0.
In this Awakening process, like Life,
you learn how to crawl
before you learn how to walk
before you learn how to fly.
Different techniques - one which leads to the next.
You don't get upset at the process of crawling once you learn how to walk.
You don't get upset with at process of walking before you learn how to fly.
You realize that there are different techniques needed to facilitate your Expansion.
Spirituality 3.0 is the beautiful fusion of Spirituality 101 and Spirituality 2.0.
One could say that Spirituality 101 is largely about allowing the Light -
and that Spirituality 2.0 is about allowing the Shadow -
and Spirituality 3.0 is the transcendence or fusion of these seeming opposites.
To use religious terms,
Spirituality 101 is the Father,
Spirituality 2.0 is the Holy Ghost
and Spirituality 3.0 is the Son.
In other words,
if Light is God and Shadow is Goddess,
the fusion of Light and Dark is the Child.
In Spirituality 3.0, the techniques that we learned in Spirituality 101
'creating our Reality', 'deliberate Focus', 'positive Intentions' are added back into our process
but because of Spirituality 2.0, they have been purified.
These desires and these practices are not motivated by fear or by negative emotion
and they're not the by-product of avoidance or resistance.
Because of this, there is no pain in the moving towards a desire,
because you're not moving away from something else.
Because of this, we are now free to choose.
We are living a Free Life.
This is the state of Living Godhood.
This is the state of Self Actualization.
This is the state, of complete and total,
Awareness and Awakening.
Have a good week ...
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