Bruce Morgen wrote:
>
> Wow, Michaelji -- "in 2998?"
> You sure have that time
> travel sidhi down pat! :-)
>
> Michael Turner <Michael112658@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> >http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFS
> >alt.meditation.shabda
> >
> >
> >SATSANG ON FREEDOM
> >by Michael Turner
> >(c) 1998, 2008
> >
> >(Author's Note: The following is based upon a Satsang I gave on March
> >11, 2998, following meditation and reading from the chapter entitled
> >"Freedom" from Paul Twitchell's classic, "Stranger By The River".
> >Much love in the LightSong of the Eternal, Michael Turner)
> >
> >********************************
> >
> >Freedom. I just want to make a couple points here, for starters.
> >It's interesting. The chapter's title is "Freedom," but Paul
> >Twitchell also talks a lot about love, and relation****p love more
> >im****tantly, which can be very romantic, as well as very
> >enlightening.
> >
> >It can also push a lot of buttons, whether you're male or female, by
> >using the paradigm of man and woman, and using the male pronoun as the
> >primary point of focus. It can easily step into some of our
> >preconceptions about roles. I don't look at relation****ps as being a
> >man is responsible for one part and a woman is responsible for another
> >part, too much. I think there are some natural biological
> >inclinations we have, some natural rhythms we get into as human
> >beings, as man and woman. But they don't have any real bearing on our
> >spirituality, in terms of our ultimate goal, which is self-realization
> >and God-realization. The goal is working off our karma in this
> >lifetime and becoming spiritually free. Which is what this chapter is
> >titled.
> >
> >But there's a secret in this title. And that secret is, learning to
> >love. Learning to completely fall in love, unequivocally,
> >unreservedly. Because when you do that, when you take that leap, take
> >that chance, everything drops away. You have nothing you fear. You
> >don't care if you live or die. You just step out into love, in
> >complete faith, and complete trust that the love will sustain you,
> >that the love will buoy you.
> >
> >That is exactly what it does. This is exactly how you find spiritual
> >freedom. You don't find it through postulates. You don't find it
> >through reading books. You don't find it through going to the right
> >seminars or hanging out with the right people, having the right
> >knowledge, learning secrets that some people talk about, thinking, "If
> >I know the secret, then I'll find freedom." Stuff like that. All the
> >metaphysical stuff, which has its place, extends from the mind on
> >down: mental, causal, astral and physical. And, as such, while it can
> >be useful and a good tool, ultimately it is part of the duality.
> >Ultimately it just creates more karma and keeps us bound.
> >
> >And it's really kind of funny, because it's like the ultimate joke God
> >plays on us. We're given all these instruments of perception. We're
> >given these faculties of reasoning, and learning and knowing. And
> >when we start evolving spiritually, we get beyond basically going to
> >church and we start looking at other stuff, seeing what's out there.
> >Concepts of other dimensions of existence begin to sprout up and we
> >think, "Those are really cool," and we're exploring. We think,
> >"Ah....if I can just figure this out...."
> >
> >And so all these little baubles are dangling in front of us, like
> >"supreme knowledge" and "perfect wisdom," or the various siddhas you
> >can find. There are things you can learn to do, like looking into the
> >future and reading the past, doing past life readings, or reading
> >future lives. You can discover the tap roots of every theory, every
> >philosophical system, every belief system, every religion which has
> >ever existed on this planet, or ever will exist. But, none of these
> >things give you spiritual freedom.
> >
> >And so you go through this whole process of learning more and more,
> >and developing incredible powers of discernment and perception. But
> >ultimately it comes back to one thing, really and essentially. And
> >that one thing is love.
> >
> >It's just like Saint John said. You are love. God is love. The way
> >to God is through love, because God is love. It is this complete
> >immersion in Divine Love that this path is about. That is really the
> >essence of the Light and Sound meditation. We talk about the Light
> >and we talk about the Sound, because these are things you can
> >visualize, that you have some sense of tangible awareness of. You can
> >see inner things and hear inner things, just like you can see outer
> >things and hear outer things.
> >
> >But really, this duality in a sense, this dual principle of Light and
> >Sound merges back into the one principle of Supreme Golden Love. And
> >that is the essence of the Lord. And it's been said over, and over,
> >and over again. It's basic. Almost all the preachers talk about
> >it.
> >
> >But is what sets you free. Pure love is non-dual. It has no
> >polarity. It's not "love vs. hatred" or "love vs. fear." Pure love
> >is the simple Isness. It is timeless. It is golden. It is warm. It
> >is absolutely amazing. It is singular and pure. It creates no
> >karma. When we merge with It, we become saturated in Its essence,
> >until every single atom in our fiber is It, and we no longer create
> >karma. When we no longer create karma, we start to move towards being
> >spiritually free.
> >
> >Now, of course, the question is, "How do you find this love?" And I
> >remember being a mystic in high school - I started out young - and
> >there was something I was looking for. I was reading lots of books
> >about it. And it was called "wisdom," it was called "love". It was
> >something unfathomable and intangible, yet everybody talked about it.
> >And I couldn't figure out what it was. I chewed on it, metaphorically
> >speaking. I reasoned with it. I pondered it for years. And finally,
> >through the grace of my Master, and through lessons and relation****ps
> >in live, I learned about this thing called "love".
> >
> >But it's something you can't read in books. Because reading in books,
> >all you will know about love - just like all you will know about God -
> >Is all in your head. It remains a theory. It remains a mental
> >abstraction upon which you've put your expectations, your
> >preconceptions of God. It's just like the thing falling in love and
> >running off into the sunset, like all the fairy tales we hear.
> >
> >How do the stories end so often? "They lived happily ever after."
> >The prince and princess, they go through some travails and
> >tribulations getting together. Usually there's some sort of
> >opposition force that gets in the way. And then they triumph over the
> >opposition. They get together and they live happily ever after.
> >Which is really beautiful.
> >
> >But anybody who's in any kind of relation****p will tell you that you
> >don't tie the knot and suddenly it's, "La la la la la. Our love will
> >keep us together." (like that old song used to go). It does in the
> >most fundamental sense. But, no, two can't live as cheaply as one.
> >There are all of these things that you find out. And there are
> >conflicts, because you're dealing with another human being. They're a
> >different person. So there are different ideas, different emotions,
> >different moods, different habits - whether it's where you put your
> >clothes, or your toothbrush, or how you cook, or whether you leave the
> >heat on at night - stuff like that. There will always be things that
> >bring up duality.
> >
> >And so we learn that, in this life in relation****ps, it's not a
> >destination, it's a process. It's about finding one with whom you are
> >amicable, with whom you get along, who you can stand being around on a
> >regular basis, and learning to completely love them. And to be loved
> >by them. To find a human being who is in the now, a real tangible
> >person who you can just completely dive into, and who in turn can dive
> >back into you.
> >
> >Because what happens is, you complete a circuit. That's really what
> >Rebazar Tarzs is talking about here referring to the different
> >qualities of male and female. They're like the different parts of
> >polarity in a circuit that you put together. When we put these pieces
> >together, and they interlock just right, we have a complete cycle of
> >love. You are loving this person, and they are loving you back. And
> >so it just keeps flowing through, and it keeps building up momentum.
> >
> >When I said, "living in the now," it's im****tant to understand that
> >loving somebody who used to exist, while very comforting to us -
> >whether it's past master or a past spouse, or a member of the family -
> >if that's where you confine your love, then again you take it out of
> >the here and now. You take it into another dimension, which gets you
> >out of the present, which puts you on the time track again. It keeps
> >you caught back up in the web.
> >
> >Now there's no harm in this. But we have to stay in the now. As long
> >as we're human beings, we have to interact with other human beings.
> >
> >I was thinking about a scene in the movie, "Truly, Madly, Deeply."
> >It's kind of like a British version of "Ghost". Alan Rickman and Emma
> >Thompson are in it, and Emma's in love with her late husband, played
> >by Alan. She's not dating. She just absolutely adores her departed
> >beloved. She talks to him all the time. And one day, he comes back.
> >She hears him playing his cello. Her love is so powerful it has
> >brought him back into the physical. But the lesson of the movie is
> >that she has to move on and be with the living. As Jesus once said,
> >let the dead bury the dead. They can take care of themselves.
> >
> >What happens is that Rickman brings all of his dead friends to hang
> >out with him, because those are the people he's hanging out with now.
> >He can't hang out with living people. And the house gets really
> >crowded with all of these guys hanging out watching the TV all day.
> >She comes home from work and there are all these people there. Until
> >finally, she's had enough and starts staying away from home a lot
> >(like when you have a roommate you don't like and so you find reasons
> >to not come home until it's really late). And she meets this guy and
> >they end up falling in love. And so her husband and his friends have
> >done their job by forcing her to be focused in life. And there's this
> >great look on Alan Rickman's face as he goes back to the other
> >dimension. He's kind of sad and wistful, but he knows he's done what
> >he came to do, which was to get her out of this funk she was in, and
> >be here - now.
> >
> >This is a very im****tant spiritual lesson we all need to deal with,
> >especially when we get into metaphysics, when we get into forms of
> >meditation which can take us into different dimensions. Believe it or
> >not, life here on earth can be a drag. Yes, I know that everybody
> >around here walks on water in perfect bliss and never has any problems
> >at work or anything like that, and it's always really groovy.
> >(laughs) But, rumor has it, life can be a drag. And there's a real
> >risk that, when we start doing serious interdimensional meditation, we
> >can really like it too much and start spending more and more time
> >there, and less and less time here, which in turn can lead us to have
> >an increased disability to deal with being here. You can't pull a
> >9-5. You'll find any reason in the world - and it's usually
> >subconscious, it's not usually conscious - to pull back more and
> >more. And this has its phase. But it really leads us to being
> >imbalanced. I would really call it a form of "spiritual neurosis,"
> >which is what a lot of mysticism is. You become somewhat of a
> >sociopath. And this is, again, why the masters always say, "Hang out
> >in your society. There's nothing wrong with being married. There's
> >nothing wrong with having a family, having a life, having a job. In
> >fact, these things are good because they keep you balanced. They keep
> >you participating in the family of humanity. They keep you paying
> >your taxes, so you're actively engaged in this flow of reciprocity.
> >
> >Okay here's my periodic harangue. Taxes are good. Taxes are very
> >good. And I'm really glad we have a tax because it keeps income
> >flowing and really creates a larger socio-economic balance. It's not
> >fun to pay them. But then again, it's not fun paying off our karma
> >either, now is it? But it's there. Trust in God, and tether your
> >camel.
> >
> >Work in this life. Learn to love in this life. Don't love something
> >in the past, or something in the future. Do it in the now. Find one
> >in whom you can completely, unequivocally dive into their eyes. Dive
> >into the eyes that hold only love for you. It is through those eyes
> >that you find God. Because one in whom God is saturated, one who is
> >saturated in God, is of the essence of God. And when you find that in
> >a human being, it is in the now. And it brings you into the now of
> >God. And that is really the essence of love and freedom. And once
> >you let go, once you completely let go to love in its pure form,
> >everything else falls away. And you are left as soul, pure, golden
> >soul. Nothing else exists, except you and God. Nothing else has ever
> >existed.
> >
> >All this stuff, it's just forms we take on to learn from, to interact
> >with. But really, when it all fades into the background, and
> >dissipates like the morning fog, it is simply you and God and the
> >Light and Sound, the Holy Spirit.
> >
> >Any comments, thoughts on the chapter? Go for it.
> >
> >Q. "It's kind of interesting because when you were reading from the
> >book, I found myself getting annoyed, like having some buttons
> >pressed, only because like, I love you, and I love them, and I trust
> >you guys. But as far as being able to trust anybody else, I see no
> >reason to because I've never, I don't have any reason to trust
> >anybody. And it's sad, it's pathetic. It really sucks. But I'd
> >really like to be able to trust people and women and stuff. But I
> >feel like I can't. It's impossible. There's just no way. I feel
> >like I've done my part, and I can't do any more.
> >
> >It's great that I've found you and I've found the meditation. And
> >unfortunately now those are the only real things that get me off, that
> >really bring me peace. And it seems like now when I just deal with
> >the real world, and the real people in it, it's nothing but
> >disappointment. It's either disappointing, annoying or boring, or
> >just - I feel I can't trust. It's not there. The women aren't going
> >to be there for me. The friends aren't going to be there for me.
> >They just come and they go, even faster than they did when I met
> >you."
> >
> >M. Thank you very much for that comment. You've basically laid out
> >the reason for the living master. And that is that it is difficult to
> >trust in this world. Especially - I think it's happening more than it
> >used to - but we go through multiple relation****ps in life, whether
> >they're multiple marriages or we just date more and stuff. We have
> >more interactions. It used to be, you went to court someone. Or your
> >parents arranged something and you went out on chaperoned hay rides,
> >and things like that, and eventually settled down.
> >
> >But these days, things seem to be speeded up, and we get burned a lot,
> >which makes it difficult to trust. And this is one of the reasons
> >that God blesses us with the living master, because this is an
> >individual, when they're real, who is simply there to love you. There
> >are no games being played. There are no strings being pulled.
> >
> >That's why I, for one, don't like to charge money. I don't want to
> >have any weird stipulations and angles happening. It's simply that
> >you have to have somebody in your life you can trust. And that is
> >absolutely essential.
> >
> >The only way you can really know God, the only way you can really let
> >go of your mind, and your intelligence and your cleverness and
> >everything else, is to find one human being who is saturated in God
> >that you can love. Through loving the master, you learn to love
> >God.
> >
> >And also, in the process, you learn to open up. You learn to trust.
> >And you find other human beings in your life who act as, you might
> >say, "supplemental education" to your spiritual education. And I know
> >it's not easy. It's tremendously difficult.
> >
> >Q. "Well for me, it seems just impossible. It's like I thought
that
> >at least, when I got on this path and I was willing to love a woman,
> >that I would actually get more help from God on this subject. But
> >apparently God doesn't care, because the same thing happens. I mean,
> >it was like worse than ever. I feel like I got burned in this last
> >relation****p worse than ever. And I was kind of like, "Okay God.
> >Thanks. I opened up, tried to love, and that's the thanks I get. I
> >appreciate it."
> >
> >M. Well Zak, let me tell you something. Hang on there a second.
Hold
> >on, Bubba Louie. Are you talking to this amorphous thing, or are you
> >talking to me?
> >
> >Q. "Huh?"
> >
> >M. You're saying, "God doesn't really care about me. This really
> >stinks, etc." But you come here to talk about this, and what did I
> >tell you when this relation****p went from one phase to the next to the
> >final phase? What did I tell you? I said, "You're doing great." I
> >said, "This is really good."
> >
> >Q. "I know you said that. But it doesn't feel good."
> >
> >M. I know it doesn't feel good. We make our beds, and we make
> >relation****ps that are based on countless other relation****ps that
> >precede them. Countless life experiences lead us. They condition us
> >to grow in certain ways.
> >
> >It's just like a tree. If you bend a tree in a certain direction and
> >push it, it will grow in a certain direction. Or it's like the old
> >thing about backpacks and purses. If you wear something over your
> >right shoulder or left shoulder, you'll start walking funny after a
> >while because you're used to certain habits. It's true. I remember
> >when I went from wearing a backpack over both shoulders to hanging it
> >on one shoulder, and I started walking funny. And I'm told women have
> >the same problem with purses.
> >
> >Our karmic patterns are the result of so many actions and reactions in
> >this lifetime, and previous lifetimes, you don't unlearn them
> >overnight. We tend to make the same mistake, even when we get all
> >right information. We still have free will to do whatever we darn
> >well please. And you might well say that God gives us pointers until
> >He's blue in the face. But have you ever given somebody advice who's
> >not ready for it? I mean, you can just yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. And
> >they're not going to listen, because they can't.
> >
> >Each of us has our own things that God's yakking at us about, and
> >we're all busy with out trip. We're not listening. We're not really
> >listening. We're not wholly and solely receptive. Instead, we're
> >saying, "Yeah. But...." or "Come on God, break with it. I want the
> >golden love now, man. Come on, put it up. Put up or shut up, Lord."
> >
> >And, on top of the fact that that's not how God operates, God's time
> >track is very, very big. It's like Michael Palin once said in "Monty
> >Python's Meaning of Life": "Lord, you are so very, very huge. And we
> >are so very, very, very small." So it seems to us like a long time,
> >but it's just like a little period of re-tuning, where we're just...
> >
> >Q. "I think of the word "tapes," meaning the little tapes playing
> >inside our heads. And my other thought is: Job. It's like, "Why
> >should I love God? Why do you do this to me?" So there are tapes -
> >and there are past tapes.
> >
> >And the other thing too is that I think you have to go through a
> >tremendous amount of experiences to even know how to love,
> >unconditionally. And see, there are conditions, "I love you with all
> >my heart, as long as you do it my way, or you can just take off." But
> >if you decide to let it be like a bird and fly out of that cage, and
> >if it was your bird it will come back and if it isn't it won't...
> >
> >Anyway, life goes on. And there's someone out there. And sometimes
> >when you're not looking for it, that's when you find it."
> >
> >M. In addition, every person is different. We have different
needs.
> >We have different backgrounds. We have different programs, and
> >responses. And it takes a lot for us to respond to stimuli
> >differently. They are so built up, they are so conditioned that you
> >have to retrain yourself over, and over again. You have to take
> >chances and make mistakes - because you are going to make mistakes,
> >just like your guitar is going to go out of tune. You're going to hit
> >wrong chords before you hit right ones. If you're trying to do E, A
> >and G, it will take a while before that E, A and G really sound good.
> >And then you're going to get that sounding nice, and then God's going
> >to say, "Let's try a bar chord." And you're going to try to get your
> >index finger down on the fret board, and discover muscles you never
> >knew you had. It takes a lot of practice.
> >
> >I have this very dubious talent of just springing into stuff,
> >sometimes against rational judgment. But when I found out about this
> >path in the mid-1970's, I said, "Great! Let's go for it! I don't
> >want to see the brochure. I don't want to see the future. I don't
> >want to see what's going to happen, or what price I'll have to pay.
> >Just lay it on me." It's kind of like going to the doctor for a
> >shot. I know there's a shot involved, but I don't want to see it,
> >because then I'd just be hanging back trembling, knowing that I had to
> >pay some big Visa bills. And that's never fun.
> >
> >So I said, "God, please, just give it to me." And so I've jumped into
> >more things, and gotten burned more ways from Sunday than you can
> >possibly shake a stick at. And for some reason, I just get up and
> >say, "Okay, hit me again. Please sir, may I have another?" Because I
> >figure - this may be rationalization - but I figure that, when you're
> >in the process of working off your karma, every time you get kicked in
> >the hind end, that's one time less time that it has to happen. You're
> >paying off a debt.
> >
> >And really, what it is, is like one of those devices you see on those
> >old Warner Brothers cartoons with the winch and the crank, and you've
> >got the 'ole boot behind you, and you keep pulling the winch on the
> >side to make the boot kick you. So really, we're just kicking
> >ourselves. Until we finally get tired of pulling the winch. It's not
> >fun when it happens. But the key is learning to maintain with the
> >meditation. That's a practical, tangible way that Shabda meditation
> >works. It gives you this beacon of purity, of clarity, of constancy.
> >So even when everything is kind of whirling around you looking funny,
> >where everybody seems like an alien or you feel like an alien, and you
> >can see all of the games that people play in their plastic
> >transparency - you'll get that at some point on your spiritual path,
> >suddenly you'll just see everybody's trip, and it's appallingly
> >scary. And you think, "My God! They don't see it. This is so
> >weird."
> >
> >But you have to have the emotional balance, the calm, the equipoise to
> >look at it like you're reading a book, or looking at a Petri dish -
> >not coldly, through the analytical eyes of the mind, but lovingly and
> >compassionately, through the eyes of soul, immersed in the golden love
> >and eternal beingness of God.
> >
> >May the blessings be!
> >
> >
> >Michael Turner
> >http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFS
> >alt.meditation.shabda
They are very scary, most refuse the truth, Willfully Blind
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