Go beyond apparent beginnings and endings
The word “beginner” has become a popular description assigned to individuals approaching the Sadhana of Satsang for the first time. But, where is the beginning? What defines the beginning? It is a clear example of a conventional assumption used as a “fact” for the purpose of excusing any further deeper enquiry.
There so easily arises the conventional assumption that one has “begun” or is “within” the scope and influence of the Practice of Spiritual Understanding as the means and motive of one’s conditional existence simply because they have “done so much for Yanchiji”, or they have been a “student of Yanchiji” for so long, or they “love Yanchiji”, or merely because they can talk the talk and so forth.
This assumption (on the part of those who consider themselves in one stage or another) only serves the troubled ego’s need for status. Furthermore, it deludes one in so far as it does not account for, nor reveal, that the Process is in Consciousness not in time or space or actions alone.
It is a misinterpretation of the process of Life. It is misplaced. If it is to be used, it is a description that more accurately characterizes the earlier and necessary deep examination and surrender of our own peculiar fearful beliefs, superstitions, righteous privileges, and altogether self-protective love-affair with ourselves – long before “trying” to understand Transcendental Instruction or Instruction in the Way of Life.
The Freely Intelligent Willingness of the individual to relinquish their casually accumulated grab bag of religious, spiritual, cultural and social beliefs, superstitions and apparently unquestionable (by threat of rejection or punishment) ideological “facts” is what prepares the Conscious Ground for one to become a Student in Life.
The fundamental Understanding (at the emotional level – not just the mental level) for the Sadhana of Satsang to become active is; I (as the Life-Force or Conscious Current of this body/mind) am prior to all conditioning, indoctrination and programming from others or outer world.
The Sadhana of ego-renunciation (the renunciation of the programming of self-obsession – self-consciousness) makes Its Way on the whole bodily (mental, emotional, physical, breath) Understanding of one’s Original (and still Present) Unconditional Spiritual Identity; not the identity given, or superimposed on me from others.
When this Understanding begins to pervade the body/mind of the individual, self-observation (relative to that Understanding) becomes the natural form of enquiry.
On the basis of the whole bodily feeling disposition initiated and sustained within this Spiritual Understanding one becomes capable of Sadhanic self-observation. In other words, from the point of view of this Great Understanding, why do I react from a lesser position? Why do I look for approval? Who is that one who feels they have given so much, but still remains un-acknowledged?
What is one’s motivation towards anything or anyone? How is it that I know it all so well mentally but react emotionally from a position of not getting what I want? I say I love the Spiritual Master and yet I am afraid of that One. Why am I still struggling with others? Why am I not rewarded?
Ah! Real Enquiry cannot begin until the individual is penetratingly and unforgettably absorbed in this fundamental whole bodily Understanding; the Understanding that prior to all outer worldly programming or indoctrination or conditioning, the Life-Force (the Spiritual Reality) is the Source and Substance and Master of this Life; the One I call I. And it is This One that must be Realised in the midst of all conditions. Not Realised for your own good, or your own satisfaction or personal salvation. But Realised in order that You can Freely Give Your Life to the Spiritually rarefied Liberation of all Beings.
This fatuous idea that one is a beginner or a student simply because they attend a study group, and/or physically attend Formal Satsang or can talk about Guru Love and have been around a Spiritual Master and so forth is a common misconception. It is based in the status of conditions not in the process of Consciousness.
And it always leads to further mis-understandings and unnecessary difficulties.
Before one can “begin” to whole bodily hear and accept (let alone absorb) Transcendental Understanding, one must be willing to relinquish all human made religious, spiritual, cultural and social prejudices and superstitions. One must begin to hear and see the entire human-made nonsense into which we have become the jailer and the jailed.
Throughout our known human history, wherever humans were unwilling or not able to become Love-fully and Intelligently distracted from their narcissistic fear of death, we created and imposed on others a system of reward and punishment sealed in deals with a dictator god, or some other supernatural spy.
Most human beings have a sickly obsession with the self-conscious victim that feels compelled to make deals in extravagant superstitions and righteous judgmental superlatives with the apparently separate supernatural.
Spiritual Liberation is not another panacea for mortal fear.
Transcendental Instruction is not about a better set of human-made religious/spiritual/social mumbo jumbo designed for any particular individual’s satisfaction.
Spiritual Liberation is just that; Liberation from all human-made nonsense.
Yes, a calamitous insanity that imposes on every young child a bunch of impossible tasks, expectations and rules that reduce us to the level of hysterical confessions of failure and guilt as the means of social conversation.
There is no beginning within the process of Spiritual Liberation until the individual has seen with healthy disdain the civilizing effect upon her or his Primal Being Intelligence.
And, truly hearing (within) and seeing (within) this outrage to Human Being Dignity, one no longer wants to support it or defend it. One truly begins to feel and see that the need for approval from another or through the attainment of socially-contrived success benchmarks is a mockery to Human Being Wisdom Intelligence.
Ah, but here is the rub. That entire hideous edifice is held in place by self-consciousness.
May I finally (for now) share an opinion from my point of view?
It is this; The human is a ridiculously overrated mammal.
Therefore, with a smile, let go your own locally peculiar self-seriousness and begin to Live.