Mindrolling – Ep. 256 – Falling into Grace with Adyashanti

[Music] hi everyone its Raju and I'm back with another edition of mind rolling and this time around I get to chat with audio Shanthi a wonderful teacher who I was so supremely happy to spend time with he's really a delight but before we get into that just a little bit of an introduction around that I wanted to highlight something really wonderful around the 1440 Multiversity and the fact that coming up in October of 2018 there is a workshop with none other than Alanis Morisette who is a tremendously substantial deep being who's doing this workshop there that you can find all about all about it on go to 1414 org and yeah we just really appreciate our partnership with 14:40 and and I like to highlight some of the wonderful teachers and thought leaders that they have sharing these workshops in this beautiful campus I was near Santa Cruz so please check it out and also when we're talking about audio Shanthi the book that I use to as a premise or as talking points talk to him about it's called falling into grace and that is available in our Ram Dass org shop so go to Ram Dass org and go into the shop it's a great way there's so many wonderful things there but I'm suggesting you pick up this book because if and there's anything that I'm most appreciative of is the down-to-earth sharing many of our guests and do on mind rolling and Audia is just the epitome of that just straightforward down-to-earth ways in which we can get our life's in balance and get out of the movie of me which we've been talking about a lot and this idea of this chat with audio goes a long way towards that and his book so you can pick that book up falling into grace go to Ramdas org and go into the shop yeah so I just really enjoyed this time with Anya and so falling into grace so I found a little passage that really explains or suggests what we're talking about grace he said we let go into grace it's something we fall into like when we fall into the arms of another or we put her head on the pillow to go to sleep it's a willingness to relax even in the midst of tension it's a willingness to stop for just a moment to breathe to notice that there's something else going on other than the story our mind is telling us remember that story of movie of me in this moment of grace we see that whatever might be there in our experience from the most difficult emotional challenges to the most causeless joy occurs within a vast space of peace of stillness of ultimate well-being I thought that was just such a direct hit on the way that we can open ourselves through the grace that that is just self-evident in this universe if only we could let go of the movie of me and further I love the analogy around of grace that when you rains and you stand outside in the rain if you cup your hands of course you will collect a pool of rainwater but if you don't you're just going to get wet and putting your hands together is the practice and Maharaj used to tell us all the time you do practice spiritual practice and wait for grace so that's pretty much what is the most efficacious way of dealing with our day to day especially around being open and being in spacious awareness and if we carry that through all the various aspects of our lives and our relationships grace will be there that doesn't mean it's all going to be fun times either as we well know so here's this just I have to say that this chat that I had with Agia is one of my favorites that I've done and well and I have been lucky to really hang out with some extraordinarily gifted people and certainly odd just one of those so here you go Audio Shanthi and this is mind rolling on the be here now network see you next week hi everyone it's mind rolling and we're part of the be here now network and we are being here now with adyashanti who I've never met I'm so happy to meet you oh yeah thank you Raghu it's nice to be on the program with you you know so I don't know if I need to do any big introductions I'm not gonna I'm just a guy that happens to be talking to you at the moment yes yeah it's two guys in a chat and this is absolutely perfect but I will say one thing though one of what we try and do at the network and particularly of course on mind rolling is bring whatever it is we've gotten through these various lineages that we've all been aware of and working with over past many many decades and bring it into a practical and as you call it in one of your books fundamental way to realize that there is a way to be free if we can just put it in the most simple terms and so I'm really happy to have you on you because I'm not somebody I haven't seen you and been at any of the talks but I'm familiar with a couple of the books and it's exactly what it is that I think our audience would absolutely love to hear so I think what a good place to get started is I think for everybody is your book falling into grace I really think that that's I think really can give people an idea of what it is that we are made up of and the interior questioning and and how that can really help us to transcend some of the stuff is very difficult and I think I can if you don't mind and I know you've probably told this story many many many times but just a little bit about how you when you were growing up and I love the part where you're growing up and you're looking at all these adults and going what ins what is going on here that it's suffering and angry and god knows what and yeah let's talk a little about it and how you call it you you eventually figured out that they were insane that's right God has saved me it's got um it's funny since I've told that story when I was a kid maybe you know my memory isn't the greatest so somewhere between probably eight and ten years old or eight and eleven years old I it just occurred to me like what's going on with this adult world and keep in mind I grew up in a relatively normal relatively healthy family I didn't know till I started to teach how lucky I was you know I had parents that cared for me and loved for me and you know like all of us they had their imperfections but they were really dedicated to to to the kids and to the to each other and so eat but even with that you know watching the adult world oh there was a lot of things that just seemed to not add up to me I think you know I'm like most kids we're much more perceptive than the adults think we are you know we're we're we're paying more attention than people think we are and so that was became one of my questions like see the adult world seems to be odd that in the sense that they put seem to put so much energy into things that cause so much difficulty for themselves and for others as well and so this became like one of my kind of a deep wondering I guess you would say and then one day it just sort of popped into my mind out of the blue which for me came as a great relief which was I just thought okay now I get it they're crazy [Laughter] it's funny since I've told that story's over over the years the different groups how many people have told me they had the same insight the same kind of understanding as a kid and unfortunately the vast majority of them told me that they had that insight they either concluded that there was something wrong with them which was the normal kind of conclusion because after all these are the earth these are your gods these are the people you depend on you know but it seems like it's not an unusual thing for children to come upon you know and I'm just thinking back in in my case I encountered it pretty similarily except that I I did what you just described though okay something's wrong here and it's got to be me what am i doing just the constant self-talk around judging basically yeah yeah and I wish I would have said Jesus these people are nuts a little too late on some that I'd like to say that I that I didn't eventually become one of them but as often happens I kind of forgot this little insight as a kid and you know how we do we get in cultured into the into the same sort of unconsciousness in a way that everybody else does and then we seek to crawl our way back out of it yeah you know well now but you tell I just continue the story a little bit and as you got into an interest to say to find a way like many of us did back in the day to transcend this objective suffering and subjective suffering they said yeah yeah my my path was a it was a little bit unusual ragu in the sense that probably in my late teens maybe 20 around 20 years old I read was reading a book by Alan Watts I don't remember the title and and I didn't know what drew it to me I didn't know you know it's my kind of my first spiritual book that I'd ever really read and I sat down and I was reading and I went read the word enlightenment and it was like a nuclear explosion went off in my in my mind even in my body and I didn't know why I didn't like what's this enlightenment thing why did I just have such a overwhelming response to a mere word it was so powerful that I somehow knew even though I didn't understand it I knew that I just taken a fork in the road and in my life and that whatever my life was it was never gonna be the same somehow I had I had sort of gotten off on an exit or an entry rate however you want to look at it and so that became my obsession what is this thing called enlightenment and so it kind of dug tailed into that into that understanding as a child like that you know all the adult world has a fair amount of craziness in it and the suffering that comes and then that coupled with this strange and unusual I call it an intrusion because it was like an intrusive experience that came and I spent years literally walking down the sidewalk going to work in downtown Palo Alto and I would ask myself on a daily basis almost like a mantra like what is this what is this I felt like something got inside of me even physically and I could feel where it was and it felt like a kind of like an alien you know and I just wanted like what happened to me what why am i obsessed with this so in that sense the the strangeness of of that was that I didn't know it was unusual but most people I think the vast majority seemed to come to spirituality through the gateway of a lot of suffering a lot of personal suffering and a deep desire to to not want to continue suffering for the rest of their life sort of needlessly and of course I had suffer giveme we all suffer in life no matter what it is I had my ups and downs and and and so that was there and sort of a background but it wasn't the driving force the driving force with this sort of intrusive experience of the numinous that just showed up you know for for a reason that I didn't even understand mm-hmm and it'd be good just to finish this off really the a very very specific experience or incident however you want to call it that happened at 20 after you had been sitting and doing sitting meditation for a number of years yeah that happened at 25 and the funny thing was that in my late teens starting probably 15 or 16 I started to have this intuition and it was more than an intuition I just somehow was absolutely certain that on my twenty-fifth year I was going to die and the thing that seems strange to me about that was not only that how do I have this intuition why does it seem so true to me but I would even think about now why am I not more concerned about this because I wasn't concerned about and of course I thought it was some sort of physical death that was going to occur so you know lo and behold on my twenty-fifth year after undergoing probably for four or five probably about four years of serious spiritual practice lots and lots of meditation winding myself up into such a tight knot you know that something was either gonna break loose or my mind was just gonna break down you know something was gonna happen I had sort of driven myself so hard and and sure enough I sat down my meditation hut that I had in my backyard and and and it just sort of hit me all at once as things sometimes do you know it it hit me like a freight train and I just realized that I couldn't do this I couldn't make the breakthrough happen that I wanted to I I always look back on it as a moment of utter and total defeat and I literally said in my mind I can't do this and no sooner did I say that then a sort of another sort of very explosive experience happened I guess they would call it a Kundalini kind of awakening that's how it started and before I knew it within seconds my heart was beating and my lungs were breathing and I had been a very competitive cyclist so I knew what a maximum heart rate felt like and I knew that this was way past that yeah and I just at one point I was just like okay this is either gonna stop or it's gonna kill me and then the second strange discovery was kind of my from my guts it came literally came from my guts up and then hit my brain it didn't originate in my brain but it came up and it hit my brain and the thought that I had was is okay if this is what it takes for me to discover what this enlightenment thing is I'll die today and it wasn't you know matcha wasn't male it wasn't courageous in the conventional sense I had already been doing all that it was just like somehow I had discovered it was just true it was just true and it was simple and I was willing and I thought that it was gonna kill me but as soon as that arose and I thought okay I'm I'm willing to die today I guess this is gonna be it and you know like snapping your fingers the whole experience stopped it really threw me out of my body is what happened it threw me right out of my body right up at the top of my head and into a whole different sort of dimension of experience hmm yeah radical perception yeah yeah yeah I mean when I finally sort of came back from it I don't know how long it happened but I was I can't even say I cuz I don't have any I didn't have any sense of myself but that just a complete nothingness not a problem but a total nothingness and I had during that I did have the experience that somehow like hundreds of insights per second was being almost like downloaded into my system and a few of them I could catch a glimpse of and understand what they were but the vast majority overwhelming majority I didn't even it were too too many too fast and they were just being sort of downloaded into me and that happened for a while and then at a certain point that was over and at some point I was sort of back in my body and everything was very quiet calm and and I just it just seemed like the only thing to do was to get up so I got up and I head out to my little Buddha figure and somewhere between the bottom of the bow and me raising my head I was in absolute hysterical laughter and what I thought this is this is exactly the words that I thought and I was looking at that little Buddha figure up on my altar and I thought you little bastard I've chased you you've driven me completely insane for four years now and here I discover that you are me and I am you and it was just seemed like the most ridiculous thing in the world you know be in a beautiful sense and a lovely sense but still it was just it just seemed like overwhelmingly funny until I then turned around at some point and opened the door and all of a sudden it went from being funny to kind of just sublime you know it was just like seeing God everywhere and you know just kind of in a state of awe for quite a while hmm so that was the first that was when that was the first breakthrough that I had no kind of a grace right I mean because obviously I had failed in spite of me you know one of Brom does his main things these last couple of years that he loves to share with people is the the moving from egoic consciousness to spiritual heart soul consciousness via his phrase I am loving awareness so I'm gonna tell him about this and go yeah no idea he did exactly you know or what happened to him was exactly what you're telling people to do nowadays it's just become loving awareness and then then yeah which i think is a wonderful pointer yeah yeah so grace and one of the things now you're known as I mean this is all just mental formulations as a non dual teacher yeah I've kind of got thrown in heat you did the tone in that he you know and now we I mean I'm not sure how much you know but our lineage with Maharajah and karoli baba went between Ramdas Krishna's and others of us who have brought this back to to America I know ramadasa story yeah well that's pretty much all of our story even records and and the bottom line is that maharaj ji' certainly actually the best way to actually identify it is when we went to this temple in the Himalayas where the neem Karoli Baba was and you walk through the gate it's not there anymore but the inscription was pooja advice neem karoli baba Hanuman temple vite yeah it's on so and in our whole process with him and he didn't teach particularly by me said lots of different things that were we have as well love serve love everyone serve everyone and remember God that kind of thing yeah but somehow we did end up doing Buddhist meditation we did end up spending many of us spending a lot of time with the great Tibetan teachers and so on so there seemed to be something there where that the advice or it wasn't something that we consciously practice or anything but it was definite is definitely part of what who we are in in a very strange way but still looking at this particular book falling into grace and then I just got a I read this passage and I want to read it if you don't mind just so people get an idea beyond even any teaching though and this is from a gia the aspect of spiritual life that is the most profound is the element of grace grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available when we become open-hearted and open minded and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not know what we think we know in this gap of not knowing is the suspension of any conclusion a whole other element of life and reality can rush in this is what I call grace this is that moaned of aha aha a moment of recognition will realize something that previously we never could quite imagine and and this is at the very beginning this to me it it's not a contradiction to advice but it is it is a way that it opens it up and for me who's been in the bhakti tradition all these years but a you know this is any of any books that I read or any studies that I do would be more along the Tibetan version of reality which i think is pretty solid and so this idea of grace that you bring into this in that way I just it's a powerful teaching maybe you could just talk a little bit with mud how I mean that moment for you was grace I mean absolutely thank you it was it was grace and I think that you know that that statement it becomes from a lot of you know spiritual hard knocks I guess you could say that we're really condensed into a relatively short period of time looking back of course at the time like four years seems like an eternity when you're in your early 20s but but like I said I I had the mindset of a very highly competitive athlete and so Zen really made sense to me right it's it's oriented around self effort and doing it yourself and not you know it's not relying on anything not even the teacher and so it really you know it fit me it fit my conditioning well and I'm not saying that this is ends problem because it's much more profound and than the way I'm just stating it but that part of it is it fit me but of course that was a part of me that had to be that I had to get beyond and so it was like a dance that I had to dance all the way out and that's not pretty and it doesn't look profound when you're doing it because mostly you're failing but only over and over and over and over and over and yet there is something about about that that engagement you know it's like wrestling with a dragon that you can't defeat and then one day you just let it defeat you you know that's kind of what happened and that was that was the first time that I really you know got in my bones I mean I've heard the word grace and stuff but really God in my bones like yeah this is this is an intimate part of spirituality is the confrontation with what you can't make happen and we have an innate distaste of that very idea especially in the West no especially in the West yeah where we're so sort of hyper rational and competitive and achievement-oriented and all of that so so from the you know from that time at 25 you know of course I still had plenty of openings to come and clarifications and life experience and all that but from that moment of 25 I never struggled again in this terms of this effortful trying to trying to storm the gates of heaven mmm I just saw that that that wasn't the way to go about it that was not only was it not necessary but it's counterproductive in a certain sense yeah you know yeah so grace became from that moment on I kind of got in my blood and bones what how important grace was you know and yet we and yet it doesn't mean that then you know we just been cop-out and say well I'm gonna just wait for grace I think there is a way that we need to participate and really throw ourselves into our spirituality really bring ourselves completely to the plate and yet not be trying to forcibly make things happen it's it's a kind of intricate little balance gain I think yeah we all we all we all learn one way or another you know yeah yeah super important actually riding that edge of effort and grace I mean we could do probably a couple of podcasts just on that and a lot of effort is the mind trying to override the heart right it's trying to lead and think it needs to lead and that includes the personal will and all of that where the mind needs to sink down into the heart it's it's not going to override the heart really not successfully not forever it really needs it really needs to sink down into the heart I see it you know no absolutely now a little story you know Sharon Salzberg I think you know so I was doing a panel with her and a man named a comedian actually named Duncan Trussell who's just this wonderful guy who's got us turned on to podcast and that's why the be here now networking actually exists and everybody in Sharon including his different podcast now and he's you know somebody who really represents people in a and talked about wanting practical information so he says to Sharon one day you know Sharon what do you do when you get up what what's your practice and she said Duncan I get up I sit down on my mat and I get real from that little moment we have started to really investigate what are we talking about here getting real what are we talking about and and the first thing we have to address is is certainly what's in the beginning part of this book that you know around the things the stories we tell ourselves the belief system that we have around what we think and so on which I think would be invaluable to share at this time just talking about the ego of consciousness and how that's developed and in effect it you know and you also have a chapter on generational the generational effect than what's handed down and boy you know I could relate with that one so yeah just talking can you talk a little bit about how we set ourselves up to believe in that thing so strongly me the me yeah yeah well that's where that's we're oriented to do that right by our culture and our family and you know to establish to establish yourself and that's that there's that's fine that's not a problem with that in fact the stronger stronger in the sense of more whole and healthy that self is or that ego is the better and yet we're not really told about its profound limitations we're not really told like hey this thing you're creating isn't actually you it's more like a useful vehicle it's good to have a functional vehicle rather than one that's breaking down all the time but but that's what it is and sure what seems to hold a lot of it together I mean there's many many factors but is a lot of the beliefs and conclusions that we came to through the experience of growing up you know and we have what we came to a lot of some of those conclusions are obvious in the Senate their mental beliefs that we can connect with when we start to inquire and just look at our fundamental beliefs you know just number one is think of thinking of ourselves in terms of a self but also there's a lot of sort of emotional conclusions that get made and those aren't the those are also at the bottom there's a conceptual component but they're they're primarily experienced as all sorts of forms of emotional reactivity and sticking points and and those are actually kind of emotion and belief in the form of emotion you know and of emotion blockages so one of the things that I think so useful to look at is whenever you feel yourself in conflict with with what's happening with with yourself with life with God with your partner whoever whatever it might happen to be but that's kind of a way that like life is giving you this built-in biological signal that when you start to feel feel that that that internal conflict in new vision it's is it life is saying hey take a look again you may be looking at this through a lens through a conceptual lens that's that's not really as real as you think it is and you know that's easy to say isn't it you know it's it's simple and easy to say but to really get down there and start to notice that you know that most of our experience is actually derived from the way we've packaged life and ourselves and the conclusions we've made and the beliefs of them and you know the whole the whole package I think a lot of spirituality is is actually just dissecting you know one assumption after the other after another after another and it's not just the ones that cause suffering it's all of them have to be open you know even the most spiritual ones even the ones we we like and appreciate the most if they have to at least be held up to the kind of contemplative scrutiny I think because that's what provides the crack you know the crack and the sort of cosmic egg of our consciousness hmm you talk about something that I never really thought about that once I got a handle on it and I thought wow yeah this is truly something for us to think about and that's the you call the shadow side of language and how how that affects you talk about that a little bit I think maybe not many people have thought quite about this in the way that you expressed it yeah well I since I wrote the book a while ago I if I don't mention what you're looking for you can please remind me but you know I can tell you what comes to my mind now is the the the shadow side of language of course you know languages is from for a very long time it's been thought of as a sort of a divine tool or a divine instrument you know in the beginning was the word you know and the word was with god and this this ability to to name something and then to and then to be able to discriminate from one thing to another or one person there is this extraordinarily powerful tool in it and it has practical usage right so that's most of our education is some form of of honing that tool of discrimination how well it does that as a real question mark I think mostly we learn how to regurgitate information that's taught to us we're not often taught to to really discriminate really clearly but nonetheless we that's part of the tool but what we're not taught is this tool as far as powerful like because it'd be like cutting things open for you opening new vistas of understanding it has the equal and opposite ability to cut right back into you and that's when we start to experience the shadow side of the most fundamental shadow was that I am something separate from life and boy in comparison to life any of us as a human being seemed to be a most infinitely small and vulnerable when we view life that way and that varying lies one of the biggest shadow sides of the ability to conceptualize because we conceptualize ourselves first of all and then we spread the conflicting goodwill onto the rest of you you know and the funny thing is right underneath it like hovering like a quiet presence that we we try very hard not to notice but it is there anyway what hovers there in the presence of our being is the part of us that knows that we don't know like oh I think I'm dah dah dah dah alright you judge yourself but somewhere deep inside there's this sort of hovering acknowledgment this this kind of this sort of etheric presence that that always is always calling it all into question like no I know I'm not what I say I am I know I'm not what I think I am I know I'm not the image that I that I put out there nor the image that people reflect back to me I know that yet nobody encourages us to really let ourselves know that we don't actually know you know what I mean we spend 20 years having it rammed into our heads if you don't know you fail the test you get a bad grade Uther's and yet there is that that bet that like I said that sort of presence inside of us that knows that we actually don't know we don't know who we are we don't know what life is we don't know what God is we don't know what happens after death we don't know all of this stuff and to me real spirituality begins when we are willing to start to enter that door like okay what is it like to not know who I am let me start there let me start with being as you said I love the I mean you may not be use these specific words but with being just honest you know for any of us to be honest with ourselves is very very demanding yeah for anybody you know it's not an easy thing to do because mostly what we find out is at least initially is how little we actually know hmm you know and that can feel really challenging but later you realize it's sort of the doorway to a whole lot of grace you know and just to say for me that when people say well what don't you get why did you go to India why did you do anything you well I you met Ramdas okay but you know the reality was that what I heard immediately was this level of honesty that made me okay I can be honest it's okay yeah you know and that was such a huge thing I mean it up for many many people who you know he he's helped bring along over the years for sure you know that's I love that's a great part of that story I'm so glad you shared that because I think that's essential you know if you come to a teaching does this teaching allow me to be honest does this teacher allow me to be honest with myself does this to me that's what song is Sangha is those people where you can really be real mmm where you don't have to pretend and you're still accepted that knee right that's that Sangha so I think that what you're speaking about is is so incredibly important you know you know even I mean we Sangha is something that we emphasize big time through everything that we do a probably top thing that we talk about you know we have a fellowship program where we help people get together in different areas where they may not know people so on and so forth and and of course when the Buddha was asked so what is the most important of the three jewels it wasn't Dharma it was and it was Sangha yeah right yeah that's always thought that was so great yeah yeah so we're social beings even a hermit like me is a social being and we we we need to we need to find ourselves or feel that we are in some sort of a safe social structure even if it's only with one person that's a safe social structure you know and and I think and that Sangha when that shows up you know and we can also I think it's good for us to remember that we can also be that for someone someone else and then we we become we participate in there in being there song of life you suggested like what we what's so important to us that we need a foundation you know and I think Sangha provides a kind of foundation otherwise things the inner experience you can just feel so chaotic that we have no ground to stand upon that it can be really very challenging so I think it you get to the point that you realize the tyranny of that ego thought and so on can be and of course the ego is a terrible master as they say but could be a good servant right it's a great way to put it yeah and so then okay wake up we want to wake up so let's talk a little bit about the waking up process now obviously what we just talked about Sangha satsang and being with people where you can be yourself and be authentic and be honest its unparalleled in its support not to mention of course sitting together chanting together whatever it is you may a taking food together yeah very you know that's a that's a big deal that we we were told when we were kids back there with neem karoli baba so but steps to wake up particularly in relation to the way in which we believe in that me in these thoughts and so on yeah well so first of all let me say that there are there are lots of ways of going about this so what I'm gonna describe is just just just the way that I'll go about it if if somebody ask me right hmm but I'm always sensitive whenever somebody asked me about this is I want to know who they are I want to know what their orientation is because it's not true that one size fits all but my my sort of fallback orientation around this is I always focus right on identity that's where I focus right right right just bare right it right into that and it's right there and with you okay like first of all you know when we start to look into what am I really if we're honest which sometimes takes years but if we're honest we can come to very very quickly I don't know when I really look like I guess I'm not my thoughts and my images and them my beliefs and you know I'm that's I'm skipping over a lot of territory there that can take a long time to work through but doesn't necessarily have to it only depends on how honest we can be with ourselves of how long it takes but right there at certain point you start to see that all the ways you've defined yourself and other people have defined you isn't really you no wonder it felt so inadequate all along right and so right there the first thing I'll ask people is okay since we're so conditioned to think we have to know what I want to know is what's the direct experience of not knowing without the demand to know let's start there is it actually terrible to not know who you are now if you're trying to know it all of a sudden has conflict Ettore but if you just let yourself not know there's a there's a ease there can be like this incredible relief like it's not as bad as I thought it was it's not the end of the line of course but I think to enter into the experience the heart full experience of not knowing is a pretty open state of being and from there then we can really look and this is where for me inquiry and contemplation or meditation really go hand in hand because the inquiry has to be contemplative it can't simply be intellectual there's too much intellectual come asking and not enough contemplation I think in a lot of sort of modern-day non-duality that the contemplative element can somehow sometimes be forgotten the contemplative element like I said is always returning back to our experience of being our experience of being right what's my and I can't and your experience of being keeps showing you that you can't find your total self or your total being through any idea through any image through any belief that there's always something more primary and more primary and more primary and the funny thing that which is most primary doesn't have a particular form and it's not distinct it's not a distinct entity you know it's more like a presence than it is a person more like that I always like to say more like so it's people to get stuck on the word and so that's where I start that's where I start like let's let's just start to intuitively feel into into that into that which doesn't seem to have a a particular particular shape at a particular way to put it it doesn't seem too occupied duration it doesn't seem to last for a little or a lot of time it's it's it's very confounding to the mind but in experience we can actually be feeling it and experiencing it rather quickly actually if we can simply be honest about our experience hmm and that's that's the key and that's the danger in MA in the modern spirituality is because we all have access to everybody's answer to these questions yeah right so you know okay I've heard that I am consciousness or I am awareness or I am God or and then where we start to look to find the answer which really means we're looking to confirm a belief that we have instead of sticking with our actual experience like can you forget what while you're doing it while you're engaged in the practice let's say can you hold in suspension what everybody has said the way other people's definitions so can you actually enter into your own experience like a little kid you know like because otherwise something in us is corrupting the process because we're looking for an answer that we've already heard you know and I think if we can suspend that not necessarily discount it because it's not that it doesn't have some usefulness it can orient us in a certain direction right internally but once or I think then we have to let let go of the pointer and I think this is the sort of where where this miss this strange paradoxical thing starts to happen where where our our willingness or you could say even our will our our willingness and grace start to merge right because we're not pushing for a result we're actually looking into the nature of our immediate experience of being mmm beautiful way to put it just strikes me something I've mentioned before could we talk about that combination I was with the yogi and seeing a yogi in India recently a jungle Baba and he brought us to a spot where he's yeah I just sat here for six months and it seemed like a good spot I said well how do I just do that you have no idea that you will get fed you will have food shelter the things that's right certainly we from the West count on and how I don't know remember if I said where do you find the courage to be able to sit like to to be with in that primordial state of mine and he said God's will power to create yeah I thought well that's unique so he obviously he's just aligning himself with you know there's no mean there's no i n't be let go of that so yeah yes that's a great way of articulating it and i think it's a great question for anybody where where where do we go what is that what is that reference point that is that is not us yeah where is our connection with that which is bigger than than us as egos and not just in a concept but what does that feel like when you reach that limitation of as far as you can take yourself but then be kind of open open minded open harden to some way that the numinous can present itself and I think that's so important because that spirituality isn't it it takes us to that edge and it presents us with at least in the beginning it's a I think it's a relationship later it may become more something more along the lines of fundamental identity but I think it starts as a relationship to that which is bigger than myself yeah and yeah you know that's not necessarily totally kosher in in modern non-duality if you say something like that but I'm always interested in you know what works rather than what yeah Marty behind you maybe a little bit of an unco sure advised which is to me the only real artist I didn't even know what the word invited until I've been teaching for a couple of years until somebody told me that I was doing satsang and I said what's that yeah that's great I never I'd never heard it I just experimented and you know there we are although we're we don't have too much time left I did have to we have to talk about another thing I'm because you're talking this book and we've been talking about grace and you have a little thing love is the fierce embrace of life and just give us a little of your perspective on that well it's it's there is a side of love which is of course which is lewis and beauty and being held and the great ease of being that can come through some essential connectedness and there's also the fierce side of love and I think like ROM das would kind of articulated this when he I saw ROM das at a conference I was speaking at just a few months after he'd had a stroke and then he had a hard time talking it took him a long time to say what he wanted to say and but it was a beautiful time to be with them you know so so open it obviously been such a profound event along with the challenge but he articulated it at that conference and I think he's continued to do so he said I was my guru stroked me I think that this was sort of something something sent by by my guru or by life and it was in some ways something that I needed to me that's the kind of fierce fierce face of love the fierce faces we get what we need not necessarily what we want and may we all get what we need much more than we get what we want and sometimes that's like I said we feel held and comforted and it's it's its ease itself and sometimes it's a fierce experience like a stroke or a death or you lose your job or you get left or you get ill or sick or something happens you know we don't look at those the experiences ago well there's there's love coming to my aid but I think for most of us if we look back over the arc of our life however many years that may be I think almost all of us can look and see that we've actually come to our our most evolutionary moments are generally were preceded by some of the most difficult and trying episodes of life not always just often and that's also sort of a fierce embrace of love it's as if there's some force that is loving enough that it doesn't stop when we say will you please stop yeah again it gives us what we need but we only know that in retrospect yeah relentless I mean I used to think of maharaj ji' and every day it was just this relentless Ness of someone who had no nothing going on for themselves it wasn't anything but it was about getting everyone else free of suffering free to be who they truly were I mean that's such a the Buddha the idea of the compassion yeah what this is the part that I don't think is our talked about much in that I hear of I mean I'm sure it's there but in a lot of modern spirituality I think what often makes the differences but lots of people have let's say significant spiritual experiences however that may look the truth of the matter is there's a relatively small percentage of those that it really becomes in the in the big scheme of their life a really transformative thing that's living and vital and happening rather than an experience that one's happened and what I've seen is what what makes the difference is how much we owe how willing we are to serve what we've been shown mmm I don't know if somebody that I think of is really deeply deeply awake that their life isn't in service to the very realizations that they've had that doesn't mean they're all spiritual teachers the vast majority and that I know are not they have more good sense than that but I think this is that this is the element that's so necessary like you said with neem Karoli Baba and so many of this really this wasn't a segment in part of their life this was their life this was their life this is what they this was they were dedicated to and it wasn't even about it wasn't about them as as individuals it was it was about being in service to the grace that was given and I it seems to me that that's that's where the that's where makes an immense difference in the quality of our life and how deeply deep our realization is going to be embodied through the imperfecta nosov our humanity is how much we're willing to be in service to it rather than to remain a spiritual consumer you and just more experiences more experiences more experiences but hey how about if I went out today and in some way embodied and serve what I realized last week exactly let's start with one thing today one one gesture no matter how small that seems like a seems like it embodies something some significant insight that you've had and then you start to discover wow this is this is a whole different relationship with spirituality it gets you out of the spiritual consumer mode I think what Troopa Rinpoche used to call spiritual material yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean certainly the to me the biggest antidote to this gigantic obsession with the me is start thinking about somebody else that you can actually do one as you say small thing for yeah it really does that does change everything don't you think yes sir serve the world yeah serve the world out gosh there's an innumerable ways to serve the world and yet that's what I always think of today pick pick pick a gesture today no matter how small and then we see like I mean what if I the only the only time that I was really committed to spirituality like when I was up on a stage talking or talking to you on a podcast or you know because then there's the other 23 hours of the day and I think Theo's other 23 hours of the day those are those are just as significant as the moments that seems significant and maybe actually even more yeah I the older I get maybe it's just becoming you know now I'm 55 even I don't know if it's age or what it is but the older I get the more that it's the more clear it becomes to me that to be in to serve it to be in service to what we've realized and that is some way of contributing being a benevolent presence in the world is is just it can't be overstated how important that is hmm now just to here's my little closing thing from you that's so wonderful and then it is that what we're talking about right now radiating love is what we can do whoo and you upon that realization in that little Hut in your in your yard and you say and I walked out of the hut and everything I looked at was an expression of this love a manifestation of this love the whole universe was nothing but they seemed immense infinite love which I was bathed in and I'm so happy to have met you today and be able to hang out a little bit in this love it's just wonderful there isn't anything else I'd rather be doing so really thank you but before we go I have to tell everybody that we are wonderfully supported by 1440 and they are they 1440 Multiversity and for those of you who are listening to this podcast you have an opportunity if you're from anywhere in the world but certainly if you're on the west coast near Santa Cruz because Adjei is going to be there in November fact I'm gonna go there this afternoon what I'm gonna go there this afternoon because I'm gonna be I was there about a year ago when there was still in construction and since I'm gonna be there later I'm gonna go see it in its more completed form so I'll be there in just a few hours really yeah yeah I haven't been there but of course since we are in this partnership with them and I've seen course pictures and I've talked to so many people who have and it's an extraordinary place that that they've put together and you are going to be there from November 9th to 11 so plenty of time for people to register go to 1440 org so again thank you so much Anya and I hope we can do this again one of these days and and there's so much more I could go on for hours literally here ok it's just been wonderful to make your acquaintance Raghu and it's a it's an honor to be to be here with you it's it's really been lovely thank you so much this is the mine rolling on the be here now Network and we shall see you next week namaste you

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 27,655

Keywords: raghu markus, mindrolling, david silver, mind rolling, podcast, mind rolling podcast, mindrolling podcast, spirituality, eastern spirituality, be here now network, be here now, bhnn, meditation podcast, spirituality podcast, love podcast, loving podcast, adyashanti, adyashanti podcast

Id: -pj3S8-6hJk

Length: 62min 17sec (3737 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 23 2018