This isn't my message. It's what the crumbs on your dirty coffee table are telling you. It's the voice of your own numbness. I know you're tired--but so long as you're seeking to be excused from weariness, you'll find no relief. The Teacher first bore the Cross, then he died on it: rest is found on the other side of acceptance.
I am asking you to hit bottom. [bxA]
If you're any kind of intellectual being, know that mind, in the end, is ego. It's extremely helpful, until it's not. A vulture is Christ. One hand claps. This will seem contradictory, and will shake (to its core) the part of you that's addicted to logic. The Teacher lived Isaiah's words: he gave his back to those who beat him, his cheek to those who plucked out the beard. He turned to you and said "if anyone strikes you on the one cheek, turn and offer him the other." This isn't an instruction manual in being a push-over. When you are actively trying to accept sensations you're viscerally averse to, there's very little room for self, for preference, for finely tuned opinions. It's true, you are immensely valuable: you're a member of God's people, and you share his name. But you are also impermanent. God said "You are not my people and I am not your God" through some fairly loud prophets. When the legion is cast out of you, when sitting finds you fully clothed and in your right mind, it will be because you have ascended the cross within you--the one that brings reality out of the tension between who you are, and who you are not. The day on which that happens will be as all days are: great and terrible.
Beware the false bottom, the "lowest point possible." Explanations about how it couldn't get any worse often have an implied "you" at their core. Whoever this "you" is, it's not who you are.
If you're any kind of a spiritual being, know that your superego will co-opt everything you value, and every bit of wisdom it's yielded. A time will come--and it may be today-- when looking for God won't work. Listening for God won't work. The quantity of ego in seeing and hearing make it inevitable. The Father asks the prophets: "Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’" When superego uses religion to reengage our attachments, aversions, attractions and cravings, it's building a tower that not only risks collapse, but is inevitably bound for destruction.
Remember: Job, having been deprived of everything, demanded explanations. Elijah, facing the threat of death, talked about his own zeal and complained that his life was at risk. Neither received a fantastic and blinding divine manifestation. Both were rendered silent. In a whirlwind, God told Job: the reason for suffering none of your business. Elijah heard the still small voice of sheer silence. In other words, the two men had their egos reduced. All incidents of non-self are spiritual experiences, but not all spiritual experiences have non-self at their core.
Humility is an important movement. Non-self is the muscle you'll use to rise, take up your mats and walk. Don't ask me how to do this. Don't ask me what this looks like. The mind's unable help with the question or supply the answer. I am unwilling to help. God cannot do for you what you're unwilling to do for yourself. Jesus ascended, and I know how hard his absence is. I know that leaves you crucified between two sides of a paradox. It's okay. First, breathe. Then, clean your home. When you see the sunlight on the walls, and hear the room's quiet, rejoice: you have become the teacher.
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