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The Paradox of "Turn to Me" "The foundation principle is that of being attracted
to Me, moved to Me. ... "What do you do to feel better? You notice why you are
not feeling good, and then you try to make a countereffort.
All your desiring, all your activities, all your emoting,
and all your thinking are a kind of monastic discipline.
They are what you are doing in the solitude of your
un-Happiness, no matter how many people you are associated
with. I suggest we must do more than make this
minimally intelligent and ultimately ineffective
countereffort."
"How can you turn
to me? Even trying to turn to Me is not how to turn to Me,
because that itself could be an ego-effort. In that case,
you will be a mummer, playing at devotion - seeming, bowing
and scraping, genuflecting, wearing labels of states of
practice, and all the rest of it. Everything is made into
complete nonsense. How do you become
turned to Me? Through devotional recognition-response to Me.
That statement itself is a paradox and tautology. The
practice is not a matter of just following an instruction
from me telling you to turn to me. If just telling you to
turn would do it it would be simply following my
instructions. But it doesn't work that way."
"Thus, there is
no force prior to understanding. All that is encountered in
the phenomena of life and consciousness is its proper field.
Therefore, once it has known the evidence of suffering, and
then also known the falsity of the alternatives, the paths
out of the suffering, understanding still
continues. And what has been
realized to this point? First, that separation or suffering
is primary to the whole of life experience. And, second,
that the alternative or counter response to suffering is
simply that, a counter-effort, and thus false because it is
founded in and inseparable from the continuous creation of
suffering."
"Turning to Me
transforms and purifies participation in the conditions of
life - it does not eliminate them from the view. Otherwise,
how could there be any "self'-understanding awakened in the
process? What would it have to do with life? What would it
have to do with anything? In that case, to be (so-called)
"turned to Me" would simply be another mode of
"self"-contraction."
"What is
transcended in the turning to Me is the "self"-contraction.
Turning to Me is not a "technique" for dissociation."
" I
was recently asked about working at a computer. For the
devotee who asked that question, the computer had his
attention. He wanted to know how he could possibly turn to
Me in the midst of working on a computer. Anyone can operate
a computer and be turned to Me at the same time. How is that
so? You must practice until you find out the secret
of this. You must practice devotion to Me until it is right,
until it demonstrates its fullness and establishes
equanimity in the midst of the functional, practical, and
relational conditions that are associated with the natural
circumstance of beginner's practice. That natural
circumstance is, generally speaking, in the context of daily
life. Turning to Me is not a dissociative strategy.
You are not
moving away from something and turning to something else. It
is not a movement of attention from something to something
else. In your presumed practice of turning to
Me, you have added the "method" of turning away from what is
in the field of view of the faculties. That is not the
practice. That is something you are egoically adding to the
practice. Some form of religion. You are applying a willful
religious "method" of your own, and not simply resting the
faculties in Me.
That is the cult. That is narcissus. You have
put a priest between yourself and Me. It is your own ego,
your own mind. It is performing the practice for you. You
must relinquish your association with this
priest.
Resting the faculties in Me does not mean that you
willfully turn the faculties away from their contents and
associations. Their contents and associations will be
brought into a condition of equanimity, by virtue of your
devotional turning to Me. Thus, purification of the
faculties will occur, "self"-understanding will awaken,
depth of Communion with Me will come as a Gift. You cannot
steal it. You cannot force it. Seeking is not the
"method". That intuitive recognition or identification is simply
rest of the current of the being in its prior Condition. It
is felt in the grosser body sense at first, and as we come
to rest in it, it is enjoyed in all kinds of ways, none of
which is in itself fulfilling as mere experience. These
enjoyments are simply the secondary reflections of our
fulfillment of the Law, our present resting in that
Condition which does not have any content, which is
unspeakable. Turning to Me
transforms and purifies participation in the conditions of
life - it does not eliminate them from the view. Otherwise,
how could there be any "self'-understanding awakened in the
process? What would it have to do with life? What would it
have to do with anything? In that case, to be (so-called)
"turned to Me" would simply be another mode of
"self"-contraction. You must find out how to practice this turning to Me
in the midst of all conditions. And that means you must do
the practice. You must do the practice until you get all of
its secrets. You must grow in the practice."
" Therefore, My
devotees must be committed to the moment to moment
devotionally Me recognizing and devotionally
to-Me-responding practice of ego-surrendering,
ego-forgetting, and (more and more) ego-transcending
feeling-Contemplation of Me. This is the counter-egoic
Principle that relieves My devotees of the struggle with
"Narcissus "."
" The common
religious or Spiritual cult is based on the tendency to
resist the disciplines of real (and really counter-egoic)
practice...."
" All cults,
whether sacred or secular, thrive on indulgence in the
psychology (and the emotional rituals) of hope, rather than
on actual demonstration of counter-egoic and really
ego-transcending action. Therefore, when all egos meet, they
strive and compete for the ultimate fulfillment of searches
and desires, rather than cooperate with lioth, Reality, or
Real God, and in a culturally valued and rewarded mood of
fearless tolerance and sane equanimity."
" That is to say,
the ....traditional gnosis (or Great Argument) is Liberating
(or has the Capability to Liberate the listener from "work",
or counter egoic effort, or intensive practice toward, or,
otherwise, preliminary to, Realization) only to the degree
(or in the Event) that the original subjective conviction
becomes Samadhi (or Inherent Identification with the
Perfectly Subjective Condition That Is the Great Truth) ."
" Therefore, the
sixth stage of life is the final stage of the progressive
counter-egoic action of submitting the conditionally
manifested being to its Perfectly Subjective
Source-Condition."
"....the
only-by-Me Revealed and Given Way of Adidam is characterized
by non-seeking, and by truly counter-egoic (and always
already ego-transcending and Divinely Infused)
self-discipline."
" Therefore,
because the true devotional relationship to Me is entirely a
counter-egoic discipline, it does not become a "cult"."
"The answer is
expansion. Contraction is suffering. It identifies centers,
locates and defines the being in illusion. The whole affair
of release, then, is expansion, counter to the reactive,
unconscious recoil to which we are subject by birth.
Transformation at every stage is a matter of expansion, not
through an effort to be expansive from the egoic point of
view, but through the undermining in consciousness of this
contraction. The conscious process is, effectively,
expansion, passage beyond the zero, the center, the
self-definition, the point of view that defines
consciousness."
"This Way is
fulfilled by Grace, not by personal efforts. But the
reception of Grace depends upon the response of responsible
fulfillment of the Law, or sacrifice. Thus, life and
attention must be wedded in the form of every action, so
that these become effectively equivalent to a counter-action
(no-self) to the root action (the actor) that is the signal
of suffering. Therefore, the devotee acts always in
relationship to the all-pervading Reality, making every
action, every moment of attention, every moment of
participation in the rising worlds a service to the Divine."
" Sin means, as
I've said before to miss the mark. So to seek God, to turn
to the Self, is a form of this sin. All turning, then, is
sin, all turning is to miss the mark. To pursue Truth or God
through experiences or on a lower level is to miss the mark,
to miss God, to miss the Self. To turn to the Self or God
through experiences on a higher level is to miss God, miss
the Self. To turn within to find, to turn away from
something to the within to find God. the Self, is turning,
is to miss the mark. All turning then, turning is the
quality. All turning is to miss the mark. All turning is
sin. So the activity of turning then is the quality of
separation, the quality of narcissus. is the quality of
contraction."
" Therefore, at
last there is no turning within, and no strategy without,
but dissolution in Ignorance-Radiance
itself."
" The Current or
Life of the Divine Person pervades the bodymind. Therefore,
we may, by turning attention into the Current of the living
body, concentrate the force of the Current of Life in
various aspects of this body-mind. By moving the attention
in a certain way, we can even have the sense of moving into
the psyche independent of the physical body. But we do not
Realize the Current itself by moving attention through the
body-mind. We do not thus surrender into the Current itself.
Rather, we move attention about within that Current, within
the confines of the body-mind. Generally, our effort moves
us toward the brain core, or the higher end of the spectrum
of experience."
"You talking
about "Narcissus" and how, as "Narcissus", or the ego,
you're helpless, bound by your tendencies and you must turn
to me, and so forth. It's true enough, but that's not an
expression of hearing. My discovery of
"Narcissus", the nature of the ego, or the nature of
bondage, was liberating. I didn't simply notice something
and then thereafter simply have some description of myself
that explained why I was so bound. The understanding, the
realization was utterly transforming, liberating. It wasn't,
"Meaculpa, I'm the ego, I'm Narcissus, I am bound, I am all
kinds of tendencies, I am boring, I'm limited and a seeker
and I cant get out of it." The understanding
of "Narcissus" is not a self-description. It's a liberating
understanding. To come to this understanding doesn't merely
give you a means to describe yourself and your bondage. That
understanding itself is profoundly clarifying, and its
coincident with self-transcendence"
Counter ego effort
Being moved to Me, then you do this counter-egoic
effort".
"The ego is the centre of human activity, and the attempts
of the ego to secure its own extinction may be compared with
the attempt of a man to stand on his own shoulders. Just as
the eye cannot see itself, the ego is unable to end its own
existence. All that it does to bring about self-annihilation
only adds to its existence, for it flourishes on the very
efforts directed against itself. Thus it is unable to vanish
through its own activity, though it succeeds in transforming
its nature. The vanishing of the ego is conditioned by the
melting away of the limited mind which is its seat."
Meher
Baba - God to Man - Man to God
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