Attachment

Q: Is it the all-pervasiveness of attachment that is the obstacle, no matter where one starts self-inquiry?

A: All serious inquiry eventually uncovers the obstacles to realizing the Self.  To examine attachment or its corollary, aversion, is a time-saver; it is ubiquitous, pervasive, and the core element of every obstacle.  We can look at it and ask what is the intention of attachment.  There is an illusion or fantasy associated with all of them–security, survival, success, pleasure, and so on. That pervasive quality of attachment has an origin or root that can be uncovered.  The mind is attached to or identifies with what it values, including its hopes, dreams, and illusions.

Attachment is a very peculiar quality of the ego.  It can be totally undone in all its pervasive and multitudinous forms of clinging by simply letting go of one’s faith in it or belief in its value as a reality.  This one giant step is a confrontation to being unaware of one’s attachments.  The attachment to ‘self’ or ‘me’ or ‘I’ is a basic trap.  One can seek out its fantasy value–the self gets attached to what it values.  We note that attachment requires and is sustained by an energy and an intention.  The mind is attached to the very process of attachment itself as a survival tool.  Letting go of the ego is based on the willingness to surrender attachment to it as a substitute for God and just another illusion.

From I: Reality and Subjectivity, ch. 18,  “No Mind”, pg. 422-423

Stay with Holy Company

Spiritual endeavor starts with taking responsibility rather than depending on naïve impulsivity or prosely­tization. It is important to realize it is not just a literal wording of teachings but also the entire energy field of a teacher or organization that has a subtle, unseen field effect upon students. There is wisdom in the old dic­tum to “stay with holy company” and avoid that which is nonintegrous. Just on the face of it, it would appear to be foolish to disregard the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, or Krishna… and substitute for them the pseudo-deification of the teachings of atheistic anarchists whose false teachings have brought on the death of literally hundreds of mil­lions of people just in this lifetime.

The Ego

Q. Is the ego the source of karma?
A: It is the locus and repository. It is very important to realize that the ego and karma are one and the same thing.
… In Reality, there is only one life with periodic reincarnations because conditions are favorable for the resolution of certain problems.
The psychological ego mechanisms most frequently found are:
1. Undoing – one repeats past patterns in order to have the opportunity to make better choices this time.
2. Reaction formation – one takes an extreme opposite view in this lifetime to keep its opposite repressed and out of awareness.
3. Projection – that which is painful to own about oneself is projected onto others.
4. Return of the oppressed  in this lifetime, what one did to others one now suffers in reverse as the victim.
5. Denial – the motivations and thoughts are completely repressed and dismissed as ‘not me’.
…these concepts need to be available for quick recall, as these mechanisms are involved in spiritual purification.
From I : Reality and Subjectivity p. 439
The ego’s survival relies on the defeat of truth… For one thing, spiritual truth challenges the ego’s presumption that it is sovereign. This is seen socially in the rising popularity of secularism… The current appeal of relativism… is that it subserves the ego’s wish to reign supreme by virtue of the statement that there is no absolute truth at all. This currently promoted philosophy is actually based on nihilism…

Abandon the Ego

It may be dismaying at times to discover that surrender to the Self for one’s salvation and spiritual evolution is in conflict with the ego’s devious machinations to maintain control.  One can be sure that the narcissistic core of the ego is certainly not going to welcome humility or the fact that the ordinary mind, unaided, is intrinsically not even capable of knowing the difference between truth and falsehood.

It is also well to know in advance that all suffering is not intrinsic to spiritual gain but strictly due to resistance to it.  Suffering is due to dragging one’s spiritual feet and the ego’s insistence on having its own way.  Abandoning the ego as God and turning to Divinity is what serves the evolution of consciousness.

If all life experiences are surrendered as they occur, they become transformed by gratitude into the miraculous and seen as gifts.  This transformation is not within the province of the human will but is a gift of the Grace of God.  To turn over one’s life to be a servant of God, to grow spiritually, and to commit to the service of Divinity are very powerful acts of the human will.  Faith is reinforced by remembering the promises of the Ninety-first Psalm and Upanishads that “all who call upon Me by whatever name are Mine and dear to Me.”  Faith in the infinite benevolence of Divine Love is itself transformative.  At times, that is the only thing to which one clings in times of desperation.

From Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, Ch. 19, pg. 333-334

The Mind

The mind acts as a processor of data simultaneously from both within and without. It categorizes, sorts, prioritizes, contextualizes, and interprets simultaneously as it concordantly draws on memory banks, emotional centers, and conditioned responses and their correlations. All the above are orchestrated contextually with emotional/animal instincts that are sorted, rejected, accepted, or modified. In addition, this multilayered complexity is simultaneously subject to options, choices, and the will. Options and choices related to meaning and value overall are under the influence and dominance of an all-inclusive, overall field of consciousness having concordant and variable levels of power to the level of consciousness that is also influenced by karmic propensities. Simultaneously, the mind assesses degrees of relative truth, credibility of information, and suitability and probabilities of action within similarity multilayered behavioral social limits, including moral, ethical, social, and religious principles.
…To choose to forgive by giving up the ‘juice’ of justified resentments and grudges disconnects all the associated thoughts and grievances from them, along with their multiple rationalizations and memories…By removing the motherboards of each level, one witnesses that everything merely is just what it is, and judgmentalism is surrendered to God.
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