Friday, May 29, 2015

Just because everything happens in the now, does not mean it does not take time to explore and understand what is happening in the now.

Exploration of the now through introspection and meditation reveals vast inner dimensions that open when the inner world is made the object of our attention which are not evident upon just cursory attention.

The same with the external world.

You can attend to it as Krishnamurti advises by being highly attentive to it alone without the intermediary of thought and conditioning, which gives the external world a new rawness, a new boldness, and great beauty.

Or, we can explore the external world in a million ways with a million disciplines such as physics, chemistry, geography, sociology, anthropology, genetics, neural sciences, medicine, zoology, oceanography, astronomy and cosmology, metalurgy, ornithology, geology, and forestry.  Millions of ways and methods exist to explore the world and all take time and thinking.

Yet many, many, gurus of the stupid eschew mind and the value of thought in exploration of either the outer or inner world and say all searching and exploration take you from a place of peace and rest.  So they say, "Just stop thinking and exploring, and just be," as if that sentence alone helped anyone stop doing anything or solved any problem.  It doesn't.  It just sets you on a new course towards the goal of doing nothing, and I saw what that did for Robert's Sangha.  It resulted in a deadening of interest in the external world as well as the internal world.

For other New Age or neo-Advaita gurus it can mean an intense focus on external world experience in the now, or internal world experience in the now but without the time-binding glue of understanding.  Mere observation only creates a duality and makes it impossible for any experience to be entered in the Self---our subjective heart of hearts, our essence, our vulnerability.

Thus the crux of my teachings is focused on how to allow experiences into our hearts, where it moves us, sweeps us away, caresses us, touches us deeply, magically, tenderly.

Keeping this state of tenderness is the hardest thing for most.

No comments:

Post a Comment