The personal-mind-self distortion of the Devotional Love-Surrender of the ego-self and Student Spiritual Immersion Retreat in The Heart Hermitage

Spiritual Practice or the Practice of ego renunciation for the sake of Love is a confrontation with your personal-mind-self. Just so, here in a Heart Hermitage, your morals and beliefs are confronted – your conditioned idea of your-self is confronted. Not merely by the object form of Yanchiji or his words, but by the entire Sacred opportunity to Live the Unconditional Self in a functional setting with various others. 

We can talk about Spiritual Practice – abiding as the True Self - but it is in our ordinary daily human functions, our ordinary human interactions, that we are confronted with the Practice. It is in our practical, day-to-day functions with each other that we are most fundamentally confronted by whatever “self’ we habitually “play out” or “use.” It is in the midst of ordinary daily functions, ordinary interactions with an other, that the state of Consciousness in which you function is revealed. 

Good old friendship (as good as it is) is not about eliminating the personal- mind-self apparatus, the ego-self and its want for its own separate satisfaction. Conventional relationships are not about transcending the fear ego-self generates. Quite the opposite, the conventional relationship – that of a separate self-being with another separate-self-being - is, most generally, about keeping everything superficial for the sake of “getting on” with each other and getting from one another, what each wants for their own separate inward life. 

You come to the Renunciate Heart, you come to the Heart Hermitage and approach in the conventional way; you begin trying to work out the teaching, the Practice, which means in fact you are dealing with your personal-mind-self and pretty much always coming up with misconceptions and conclusions that suit your particular personal-mind-self bias. 

What does this mean, approaching in the conventional way? 

It means you are wanting a personally justified cause to actually surrender the personal-mind–self to and, if you do, thinking will you achieve the effect your personal-mind-self wants? 

In this way, you resolve sometimes to bear the Spiritual Adept’s (the Unqualified Self’s) critical insight concerning your personal-mind-self. 
You decide to strengthen your will, not to Surrender the personal-mind-self but to bolster it, in order to “put up” with the Renunciate Heart’s rebuff of your personal-mind-self and perhaps “learn” something out of it. 
But, who is that “I” that wants to learn something, that wants to realise something, that wants to be acknowledged by others? What effect are you looking for? 

You are not dealing with the Guru, the Renunciate Heart, the Unqualified Self - you are always dealing with your personal-mind-self and getting annoyed with either your self or, mostly, with others. Mostly getting frustrated and more judgmental and defensive. 

The Practice, the Relationship, is Devotional Love Surrender of the ego-self, the personal-mind-self. Devotional Love Surrender means to be aware of not being the personal-mind-self. Devotional Love Surrender is a Quality that arises prior to any cause or effect. 

 If you are looking for a justified cause you will never find it and if you are wanting a certain effect, you will always get in the way. 

 The transformative heat of the Practice is Devotional Love Surrender of the personal-mind-self in the midst of conditions - communicating and functioning with others - not merely when you are alone with all your favourite meditations or your conditional toys. The True Motive and Transformative Power of Spiritual Practice is prior to cause and effect seeking. Liberation from the self-conscious cramp of the personal-mind-self is based on a foundational spontaneous Insight; Spiritual Practice IS because It IS. It is the Way of Life. One is moved to Devotional Love Surrender into the Life-Being not because of any cause or effects; it simply is the obvious Self-Being. 

It is the Self of Love, the State of Love, the State of Free Expressive Life. 
It is the Body of Love, not the mind of personal self. 

The Practice of Insightful Devotional Love Surrender of the object-entity, the individual body/mind inward identity, will soften you. It will create vulnerability in you. It will release self-consciousness from you. It will overwhelm the urge to prove to others, to get approval from others. It will overwhelm the motives of your hurts, your seeking, your defence, your cynicism, your self-doubt, your constant suspicious wariness of each other. 
It will expose the Renunciate Heart, the Full Human Being. It will Transform you, it will Translate you from a personal-mind-self (that probably does not like it self) to the Life Self, to Love It Self, to the Body of Love, to Love of Self. 

Yes, the personal-mind-self can know the teaching. The personal-mind-self can speak the knowledge of the teaching. And this fashion, this method - this telling someone the teaching - has always been considered Teaching, or being a teacher.

About here, let us consider something - whether we are relating to the Substance of something or merely to the object, the form of the something. 

Well, the person is there, the words are there, the stories are there, maybe even the book is there. All the objects are there, but is the Substance there? 
What do I mean? 

A brief example of substance and object. 

Substance: An object made of wax - if I am relating to the substance, the wax, then when it is broken into pieces, I still have the entirety, the totality of the object. 

However, if I am in relatedness to the object (as good as it looks or sounds), then when it is broken into pieces, I do not feel or perceive I have the Whole Form, I only have a disconnected piece. 

The Substance of the Human is the Teaching, not merely the retelling of the words, the phrases, or the claim “I am enlightened.” 

To which are we drawn - Substance or object…? 

Substance is far more important than object. 

What do you teach when your bodily energy expressions, including the verbal, are controlled, modified and governed by your self-conscious desire for approval and your need to prove etc.? What do you teach when your bodily energy, your psychic energy is cynical, judgmental, analytical, suspicious, defensive and not wanting to be embarrassed? Oh, you may have the words, you may say “love” but every part, every word must carry the Substance of Love. Is your object form more important than the True Substance of You? 

There are many ways through the Human Body to Express the Real Substance that is Life. But what happens? People meet each other, talk with each other in very tightly controlled ways, controlled by the personal-mind-self, the object-self. 

The Naturally Expressive Life-Self is repressed, subdued, restrained, defensive, and altogether confined to all you imagine you are, as your object separate self. 

But the True Self, the Spirit, is irresistible, irrepressible, uncontainable, creative (meaning - expressing outside of your personal-mind-self). 
However - is it Expressed? Do you allow the body to express it or are you preventing it with your need to prove and get approval, to be defensive and cynical and analytical? In all these ways, the personal-mind-self is hijacking the Body of Love for its own motives. 

Are you more concerned with the self you want approved by others? Are you more concerned with the self that wants to be right? Are you more involved with the self that judges others? Are you more motivated by the self that wants to prove itself to others? Which self do you play out, which self do you communicate to/with others? 

The True reciprocation of energy between all manifestation and therefore Human Beings is through a Self not governed by societal approval, by fear, by proving, by wanting approval, by analytical thinking. A Self Free of object relatedness. 

You see me now sitting here with you, what do you “make of me?” I have rushed to the Renunciate Heart to speak of Love, of Surrender and give thanks that She/He opened me to the Real Life. I still do. 

The usual human, especially in the presence of others, seems compelled by the force of their personal-mind-self to conform to a tight, restrained, cautious, limited analytical form of expression – the learned one, the safe one, the acceptable one, the seeking one, the cultural one, the fearful one, the competitive one, the conditioned one. 

And, the European western psyche/cultural way is to portray yourself as self-reliant, smart, onto it, psychoanalytical, cynical, cool, winner, conqueror of the elements, physically strong, materialistically successful, knowledgeable about the latest, independent and - of course - no problem. 

And these are utterly not Devotional Qualities. 

These are qualities of hardness. 

There is a common attitude that goes something like, “I am fine with the teaching but it’s the people around Yanchiji, they annoy me,” or “I wonder what the hell they are about.” 

This is a very clear attitude/expression from a person who does not understand the Teaching at all because they are not in Relatedness with the Renunciate Heart Master. 

They are not in Relationship to the Heart, the Substance. 

They are fundamentally in relatedness to their personal- mind-self (their separate piece) and still pursuing the satisfaction of that self, just as all conventional humans are. They might very well know the teaching but they do not understand the whole bodily digestion of it, the Living of It. 
The bodily energy has not been allowed (by the personal-mind-self) to transmit its Inherent Free Spirit Self Energy. 

They have not eaten the Living God Force. They know about it, but they have not eaten. 

The days and nights set aside here in the Hermitage, called Student Spiritual Immersion Retreats, are the most critical practical substance of the Teaching. It is the functional practice of Enlightened Community - however, that may not be what you are making of it. 

It is a time where your common personal-mind-self talking stops. It is the closest thing to an opportunity to take part in ordinary daily functions wherein we can function with a Self beyond the personal-mind-self. It is a rare Sacred occasion to practice that Self with various others within the Siddhi of the Renunciate Heart Force of the Hermitage. 

It is not a period of time, or circumstance to catch up with people, to reconnect with others. It is not a time or circumstance to chat on about your-self. It is most definitely not a time to be involved in all your attention-seeking ways, your wanting to prove and get approval. It is not a time set aside to exchange your personal-mind-stuff with another. 

It is a rare Sacred opportunity to conserve energy that usually goes to personal-mind-self talk, to conserve energy that usually goes to the search, to practise the most ordinary conditions of everyday existence as a human being with less and less ego motive. After all, it is only seven or ten days. 

However, there is so much talk here during that time that one day set aside for Noble Silence is a farce. 

Spiritual Practice is not a private affair – private affair meaning something you know in your head, your mind. It is not something you know mentally and so – “hey, I have got it, so why haven’t all these other people?” It is not something you do in your own comfortable place, your own meditation, your own mind or with your very good friends, as opposed to all those random people who go to the Hermitage. 

It is not a thinking/talking practice; the opportunity you have to be in the Hermitage (at any time, for any reason or duration) is a critical time of practical opportunities for intensified Practice. 

You are here for seven or ten days, or you are here for a few minutes - it is the closest you get to the Transformative Heat of Wisdom Community. Where else are you constantly helped and urged to eliminate ego? Not merely by the Renunciate’s discourses but primarily via critical insight into what form of conscious self we use in our daily ordinary human functions. 

What is the point of sitting through a discourse from a Renunciate Heart Being only to walk out the door and in a few minutes carry on projecting onto others your ego-mind, your personal-mind-self stuff – your blah-blah all about you. 

It seems many do not want to submit their personal-mind-self to this period called Student Spiritual Immersion because of others. But, I ask, what does it have to do with others? My relationship with you has nothing to do with others. Nothing. 

Your Greatest Gift to me is to give up all your worldly qualified selves. There is no worldly qualified self that gets enlightened. Anyone who says "I am enlightened," is obviously not enlightened. What "I" is enlightened? 
What worldly qualified self is enlightened?

All one can do in enlightenment is tell people - if one wishes to and it’s not for acquiring status - how one is functioning. Explain to people "how" you function and then function that way under all conditions, everywhere. It is a Peace, a Freedom, a no expectations, a no need for approval, a no need to prove, a no self-concern, a no need for any worldly conditioned self. And it will mostly be an insult to another’s personal-mind-self. Are you that much in Love-Consciousness that you can bear it? Take Heart Only. 

Your devotional Love into the Real (the Unconditioned Self) is the Wonderful, it is the Gift to All. And I have lived this human condition in all its various self ways and people have always wanted me to remain in one or other worldly qualified self, and now students also want me to live a worldly qualified self because they live a worldly qualified self. They want to "know" me and be "friends" with me through or in one or another worldly qualified self. And when that does not work for them, they get disenchanted, annoyed, despondent, withdraw, throw a tantrum and most of all they blame. It’s as if humans cannot exist without blame. 

To those who "blame" others for their not wanting to "enter” into and function within the Heat of Student Spirit Immersion Retreats - over what really is a few days with others during the Hermitage student times - I ask/say to them: My relationship with You, in the Real, has nothing to do with what others are doing to me, around me. My Relationship with You has nothing to do with anyone else. 

I will not withdraw from you because others annoy me or do not understand or abuse me and so forth. 

These “games” of the worldly qualified self are all around me, yet I am here and I engage with you. There is not a single thread of blame that I can use to justify not being amongst you, while you use your worldly qualified self. In fact and in Truth, your worldly qualified self that you seriously act out with me only and always strengthens my Resolve to Live the Unconditional Self in the Face of You. 

It does not harden me - rather, it further softens me, further dissolves this body-mind into the Qualities of Life – the Unqualified Self. The Body of Love that came in Love and will dissolve in Love. I only ask you to do the same for the sake of all sentient creatures. 

 While you are able to have this rare Sacred opportunity to partake in ordinary everyday human functions with each other in this Heart Siddhi Hermitage, there is no need to use your egoic-self, your personal-mind-self with me or anyone else. That self is a poor means of expression, which only belittles you and insults the Renunciate Heart of All. After all, there are fewer obstacles here in the Heart Hermitage - so why put ego-obstacles in the way of Your Self or others? 

Every time you act out the worldly qualified self, you tear down the Temple and every time you come to me I rebuild the Temple. This body is the Home of the Heart Siddhi -the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer, which is always and only the Force of the Same Unconditional Self that Lives you. 

 I have always been subjected to (and still am) various forms of abuse, deception, duplicity, false gestures of love and so forth. I am not with you for your approval. I am not with you to “make friends,” so we can stay comfortable in our respective personal-mind-self bastions. I am here in Love with you, that you too will be here in Love. I am here with you that we can resurrect the Truth Condition, the Way of Love, that it may be available not only for you but also for young initiate humans and those yet to be born. 

Are these other people - who you think/feel do not understand - are they preventing you from functioning as Your Unqualified Self - that is, the Unconditioned Self? Are they preventing you from adding your Great Unconditional Love-Self-Energy to this far flung Heart Hermitage? It needs It so very much for the sake of a Transformation in conscious-self of all humans and for the passing on of a Living Siddhi Heart Hermitage for others in this land. 

If people first of all truly accepted what they call "the teaching," they would begin to develop healthy mental habits. Also they would truly understand the rare Sacred opportunity to spend time in a Heart Hermitage where the Siddhi of the teaching is Living. 

They would truly cherish It and contemplate on It - they would treasure "the teaching" and bear It in mind in the midst of their daily life. 

And, especially while they are staying in the Hermitage, they would not want to waste a moment exercising their ego-self-mind. 

The Heart Hermitage is the Sacred Circumstance wherein the Process and Practice of ego-renunciation is Initiated and Guided and Invigorated for the sake of Self-Realisation.