Effortless Being, September 9, 2011

Participant: So the mind can partake of the Bliss of the Awakening and feel satisfaction from that, as long as it’s not trying to co-opt the experience, we’ll call it an experience. But if it does try to get involved with it, it’s going to be that suffering will result – guaranteed – because it’s overstepping its role.

David: The mind can receive it but the mind can’t dictate any terms, right. It has no power in that arena. That’s where it starts to actually buckle; it fails – gloriously – not dismally.

Participant: And it’ll learn. Well, I won’t put it that way. It’ll learn to flow with the Bliss that’s inherently there.

David: Of course. It has no choice.

Participant: Yeah, once it knows what it is.

David: Once it knows what it isn’t!

Participant: Yeah.

David: Once it knows what it can never be. And then it can innocently assume itself juxtaposed next to that which transcends it but it doesn’t pretend either to know anything about that process or to try to control it or to try to make something of it. Like, “Oh, I’m going to get rich through this now that this opening has happened”. If you’re doing that, you’re trapped.

Participant: And it’ll feel so fulfilled that it won’t even think of those things.

David: It might, for a while.

Participant: Ok.

David: Here we have to introduce the notion of deepened absorption over time because one little glimpse is not enough. So you have to keep communing and letting your mind commune in a spontaneous manner with that which transcends it, graciously with graciousness and ease, for as long as that is necessary for the mind to fully understand that it is That and That alone. But it’s always going to be something of a paradox because what is it that’s That and That alone. It’s not That. It’s the mind’s relationship to That that gives rise to a declaration like that. Even though that relationship has ceased in some very real sense, once you’re able to utter that truthfully.

Participant: And can that be good, in a way that the process is always, in a sense, reminding the mind of what Reality really is?

David: Of course it’s good.

Participant: So it’s going deeper and deeper.

David: Everything that happens is good beyond that point. Even if it’s bad. Even if it’s bad, it’s good. Because what’s going to unravel at that point is something that is not able to be organized by you in the same way that you organize your outer life; the use of the will, strategy, agenda. To get to work every day and work from nine to five, that requires an act of the will. It requires a deliberate focusing, deliberation. It requires effort. All that happens on the outside of existence, pure existence. On the inside you have a radically different sense. But there only the effortless being exists. And you will have to see the ins and outs of how effortless being relates with all this other organized stuff to understand the truly liberated condition. That you can, in fact, do things in a fairly controlled manner on the level of your senses and still be fully absorbed in the radiant bliss of the Absolute. There’s no contradiction there.