Who You Are

What do I want? What do I believe? Who am I? These are probing and important questions if we are ever going to realize more than ultimate truth. There is within us an individual blueprint, a homing device that leads to happiness and fulfillment. For the Buddha it was to be the Buddha, for Christ it was to be Christ. But for you, it is different. You have a unique path.

It's great to return to innocence. It is great to be like an infant before it can smile, but life demands more of you. It demands that you find out who you are, not just that you are, or that you are Existence itself. This Existence wants to express. It is not in competition with you. It wants to express as you. You are unique in what you bring to the world.

It is no great accomplishment to collapse all into oneness, to fall out of existence as an individual. It is no great accomplishment to fall into silence and never find your voice, your expression. Resting is the beginning, not the end. Wake up, and more awaits you. What awaits you is the life- long journey of being who you are.

Another Trinity

If I am truly honest, what has been missing in my life is the inability to trust myself. Always, there is an authority. Always, there is someone to become like, something to change, something to control, and always, there is the comparative mind, the mind that says this is better than that, this is preferable to that. In a word, there is judgment. Judgment, and nothing more, prevents the possibility of radical acceptance. It prevents the possibility of being comfortable in your own skin. It prevents feeling connected to others. It creates adversity, polarity and the world of black and white.

The very thing spirituality is meant to effect, judgment prevents, and religion and spirituality are often crippled by it. There is judgment about presence, judgment about absence, judgment about the seen and unseen, and of course there is the wish to become something other than we are. This non-acceptance is by nature combative. It is war. It is an out and out rejection of what is. Judgment and non-acceptance are two sides of the same coin. Non-acceptance feeds judgment. Judgment feeds becoming, and becoming continues the non-acceptance. Where are we running to? What are we running from? Have we looked at this relationship, the interconnectedness of this other trinity? Have we looked at the trinity of judgment, non-acceptance and the wish to "become"?

Beneath it all is this belief: I'm not Ok as I am. You're not Ok as you are. Let's be different. Perhaps you could become like me, or I could become like you. Nothing is every loved, just rejected. This is what perpetuates the self-help machine. This is what creates the combativeness and the conflict, both within and without, and religion and spirituality have become part of this machine. They have crippled love. The idea of God, saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers, enlightened and unenlightened, awake and asleep have crippled the free mind.

If we read between the lines there is superiority and inferiority. There is chosen and not-chosen. There is God loves you, but... God loves you, if... or God loves you, when... Likewise. there is I love you, but... I love you, if... I love you, when... Neither human relationships, nor our projection of divine relationships measure up to this radical acceptance of a free mind.

The Balance of Two

Terror comes with the territory. To not have a different perspective other then the little me is terrifying. Always, the possibility of invasion is there. To secure our well-being is a life long endeavor, but at any time, something could invade our personal space and threaten our sense of well-being. At any time, we can be shaken. The human house is indeed built on sand.

To be at peace in the world, to survive the unforeseen, one must acquire a dual perspective. One must acquire the ability to look "from" the little me, ie. the sand, as well as the ability to look "at" the little me from the greater perspective of solid rock. To look from the greater perspective is to not be subject to insecurities and threats.

To have only one perspective is not balanced. To have only the greater perspective is to be out of touch with what it means to be human, to have only the lesser perspective is to be out of touch with what it means to be divine. Neither, alone, is true self-knowledge. If the local perspective is missing, the human perspective is missing. If the grander perspective is missing, the perspective of the inner being is missing.

The inner being is the perspective of the deathless. It is not subject to insecurities and invasions that threaten the person. The inner being has a different perspective. It's perspective is timeless. If the body-mind mechanism is trying to protect it, it need not. The inner being is indestructible.

To know the inner being is to have eternal life. To know only the local perspective is to find oneself at the mercy of life without an "out" or "in", depending on how one looks at it.

When we speak of a shift in consciousness, we are speaking of a shift out of one perspective into another. We are speaking of a shift from the dominating local point of view to the grander timeless point of view, which is the perspective of the inner being. If this were to happen on a large scale, we would speak of a planetary shift in consciousness.

There is no great mystery as to what this shift is or how it comes about. It is not so mysterious or elusive as "shift happens." I find that it is a power possessed by all human beings, as body and soul composites. The best thing to do, to discover this dual perspective, is to get with a teacher. Then, you will have the balance of two.

The Better Deal

What I realized through my own experience is that there is the possibility for two contrary perspectives. One is interested (passionate); One is disinterested (dispassionate). One is involved the other uninvolved. In the work that I have begun, I see this time and time again. It is particularly evident in couples. A partner gets infected by spiritual principles, either one or both, and there is a palpable disconnect, usually it is accompanied by condescension and a complaint that my partner doesn’t "get it" and is in the way of my spiritual progress. There is the attempt to wake them up, take them to satsang and share spiritual insights out of books. All is an attempt to remain nobody and to turn the partner into another nobody.

But, if you are lucky, the partner, usually the woman, will pull you back into involvement with life, and you will feel alive again. You will feel connected. You will feel here. You will see that beneath the complaint that "my partner doesn’t get me", is another complaint, much more true. It is the complaint that “I have not lived. I have not loved. I have not been loved. It wasn’t safe to come out, so I hid. I wasn’t welcome, so I left. I left ordinary life in search of the true life, eternal life.” Meanwhile resentment, criticism, and judgmentalism mounted. Tension came pouring in. There seemed to be a judgment about everyone who did not want to die, psychologically. There was a judgment that one who was uninvolved was much more evolved. A line from Nisargadatta Maharaj comes to mind. “I don’t even need my own self.” That’s this spiritual attitude in a nutshell. That’s the freedom from suffering, the freedom from desire, the freedom from I and my, but at what cost, absolute aloneness and complete disregard for one’s self, as an individual.

My experience and what I’ve noticed in others is that, while there is a connection to a universal, a sort of spaciness that keeps the mind quiet, the individual is not regarded, not cherished, not seen. Rather, it is seen through. The individual is dismissed and collapsed into oneness. What has dependent existence is collapsed into existence itself. “There is no other.”

Humanly, this is unsatisfying. It is not enough. The prospect of not suffering, of non- involvement is not enough. There is a complaint. “I’ve not been allowed to be me.” “I’ve not been allowed to be loved. I wanted to be liberated. As it turns out, I have liberated myself from the possibility of being loved, of being cherished, of being seen rather than seen through.

There is a felt sense of freedom, but it is a freedom from. It is freedom from the person, from the individual and all its concerns. The line from John of the Cross, “leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies,” comes to mind.” Yes, the cares are gone, but so is your investment and interest in you. The secret, as Krishnamurti put it, is - "I don't mind what happens to me."

There is something to be said for not being bogged down by self-concern. That is, in itself, liberating. The problem comes when you are complacent regarding your own self, when you are at enmity with your own "me." The dichotomy of true and false gets created, and discrimination begins. Discrimination then leads to elimination, and something or someone gets intellectualized out of the picture or "dissolved."

How is this wholeness? To say it was an illusion, so it doesn’t matter, to say nothing is lost because it wasn't "eternal" is not to deal honestly. Something is definitely lost. Selfhood is lost. Ownership is lost. Responsibility is lost. Ego is lost. Personal identity is lost. Ambition is lost. Choice is lost. Relationship is lost. Oneness in exchange for all of that. I can’t say that you got the better deal. Maybe “either or” is not the way to go. Perhaps, “both and” is better.

Man is neither an angel nor a beast, but if he tries to become an angel, he will become a beast.

The Simplicity of Self Love

I have learned much since we last worked together. The key to it all seems very simple. Addiction is just the way it gets expressed. The tremendous human angst is - "no one want's me here," or I'm not welcome. Once this message is received, we find ways to make ourselves pleasing. We involve ourselves in all kinds of compromises and try to strike a bargain. If you love me, then I'll behave. I'll change. I'll become someone else, someone more suited to your tastes. No matter what we do, it is never enough.

The discovery of God, or Being, or Love, if it offers anything, it is space to be as we are. If we realize ourselves to be this space, then naturally we allow everything space to be as it is, at least on a certain level, first for ourselves then for others. The original sin is not pride but judgment, rejection, and this causes hurt.

We are all deeply hurting, not because we are separate, or because of individuality, but because we weren't loved. Somehow the message was sent. I'm not OK as I am. I must change. I must become perfect, more like Jesus, more like Buddha, more like saint so and so. I must become holy, pleasing or some other future dream.

There is a beautiful truth in this counsel, "Don't become anything." Why? Because, becoming is a movement away from acceptance, and it will not counter the original sin of rejection. It only continues the momentum away from acceptance, which began long ago. Unfortunately, this message is reinforced by religious and spiritual teachings as well as moral imperatives.

"I am not welcome" must be reversed to "I am welcome." Existence is not refusing me; others are refusing me, and I am refusing me. "I have to get rid of me." This is the message: "I must decrease, He (the ideal) must decrease." I practiced this for a long time and have not found it helpful. I was pacified by this message, and I pacified myself with this message. The results were extreme. There came a point were I could no longer be passive. I became livid. I became furious, enraged, diabolical, even evil.

I don't blame myself, I was created to be, and suddenly, the message is sent that it would be better if I weren't, or if I were different, perhaps if I were more intelligent, more interested, more like Jesus, more like "you" whoever "you" happens to be. This is a subtle form of hatred, and love cannot flower in the soil of hatred. There is no greater hatred or self-hatred that the message, "you, or I should not be," And yet, this is what we do to ourselves and others and allow to be done to ourselves and others all the time.

Parents may send this message. Teachers may send this message. Spouses may send this message. Priests may send this message. Our concept of God may send this message. As a result we do not feel welcome here. We do not feel comfortable in our own skin, so we play roles. We bargain. We rebel or act out. Addiction is part of this acting out. It is a refuge from the pain of rejection, the pain of you're not welcome. Perhaps this is why Lucifer is so pissed off.

In my personal experience with possession and disassociation I have realized the power of hatred. Truthfully, there is a little Lucifer in all of us. We are all created to be light-bearers, but our contribution is not welcome. We try to change, try to become pleasing. When it isn't enough, we become resentful, bitter, enraged, demonic. The real sage will notice this for what it is and reverse the curse. He or she will say Existence is allowing you space to be exactly as you are. Why don't you drop all of this becoming business and allow yourself space to be as well. Why don't you welcome yourself back. Tell yourself that it is OK to be here. Existence is welcoming you. Nothing is in contradiction with you but ideas and others who are controlled by them, but Life is giving you space to be as you are, right now in this moment. If you can do the same, then you are Life. If you can be this for yourself, then you can be it for others.

Peace and Love, Kevin

Selfhood

Selfhood is a tricky thing. While it's true that if there is no self, then there is no identification and no suffering. It is also true that if there is no self, there is no one there to love and be loved. You can't love an illusion. You can neither love nor hurt a non-existent being. The comforting belief that God loves me or that so and so loves me or hurt me is a non-issue.

There is no separation, but also no individuation. The childhood mantra, "Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so" is not a reality. If there is no self, there is no me. There is only extinction, and really there is not even that. Extinction requires a prior existence. There is no one. No one to save, no one to save others, and no others. There is just oneness, no one was, no one is and no one will be, and all of this is based on the fact that no peceivable self can be found. Everything is causeless.

What if the separate self is also intangible? What if there is an individual intangible self, that allows for both the experience of oneness and individuality, something like a spiritual form? Self inquiry is a wonderful method to discover silence or the peace that's always here, It is a wonderful opportunity to know the nada, the nobody factor of the human being, but who says there is no individual? Just because there is no tangible individual, it doesn't follow that there is no individual. Just because there is a sense of an empty house, doesn't mean that there is an empty house. Perhaps the house isn't empty, but still. As John of the Cross writes, "When the house was all still, I went out unseen."

Not out of the Picture

I receive a lot of thanks for the work done through Enter the New, but something that many remark about is that the ego is still in the picture. Immediately, the response comes, "What is the ego?

There are many different concepts regarding this word ego. Etymologically, ego means "I". Some teachers go directly to the doership aspect of I and invite investigation into whether there is any "I" there during the activity or whether "I" comes later. This is significant. If it comes later than all activity is egoless. is it not?

Another understanding of ego is mind. But just as in the case of a doer, no objective I or mind can be found. Only thoughts are found. We don't find any mind. Still, the investigation as to whether this separate objective "I" exists goes on.

When we look into it, it seems that ego, more than just the letter "I", is a tendency to objectify oneself, Through self-referencing ego comes into existence. If we stop self-referencing then self or ego is a non-reality. Right?

There is also the question of thinking and the ego being the first thought. Before the first thought, no ego exists. There is no separation. this can be realized. This is not a suggestion to keep thought from arising, that takes effort, and effort implies ego. So, ego cannot be gotten rid of by effort. Effort implies ego.

With all of these, the invitation is to look for the ego, and of course none can be found. However, the belief in ego remains, despite the experience of no mind, no I, no self, no object or whatever. There are many different ways to realize the truth of no I, but even after such realizations the belief in "I" often remains.

The assumption is that "I" is objective. No object of course can be found, but the belief that "I" is objective persists even after investigation, even after self-inquiry. The belief persists because there is a sense of "I", though no objective or perceivable "I".

My guess is that this sense remains because "I" is not a mistake after all. "I" is the result of the wish to diversify. Why the ego is so reluctant to die is, perhaps, the wrong question. Perhaps another question is why are we so eager to be rid of the personal. Why are we so eager to get rid of separation?

Oneness is great. Don't get me wrong, but it is just one perspective, relative from where one is looking. What's wrong with having both? What's wrong with individuality? What's wrong with differences, or a personal point of view?

What's wrong with self referencing? Is it really arrogant to say "I" did it. Is it delusional or just a different perspective? If nothing can be gained or lost, why do we insist on losing or dissolving the ego or the belief in a separate self?

A Christian mystic by the name of Thomas Merton once said. "If you give up everything, you gain everything." My question is have you given up everything and gained nothing or have you given up everything and gained everything? Did you merely give it up, or did you get it all back? Perhaps it's not the "nada" factor but the "everything" factor that is missing.

Beyond the Contradiction

I have been asked to write about addictions. I, myself, am hesitant to approach this matter because so many programs, rather than identifying the addictive behavior, want to define you by it. My experience is different. I cannot say, "I am an addict" because I don't experience myself as a unified whole. My experience of myself is more akin to a bunch of fragments floating in space. Sometimes a particular fragment is present, and sometimes another is present. There really is no continuity. There is no continuity in what is ordinarily called myself.

In my case, addictive thoughts, or addictive chemistry or the addictive process, can vanish without a trace and weeks even months later, return in spades, complete with an entire repertoire of attitudes, perspectives and desires that simply were not there. They were absent, then they returned. They depart again, and I am left feeling not even like the same person. It is literally hard to convince myself that I'm an addict. I don't, then, feel like an addict. I feel as unencumbered as the sky once the clouds have gone. It's as if the addict has left the building. Who knows if it will return? But it always does. The clouds always return. The replacement consciousness can't believe this. Even the believer and beliefs are not consistent with the previous one.

If memory serves, I could come to some assessment as to what percentage of the time the addictive process is present. But it is difficult to identify myself in any way. Truthfully, I have no consistent identity. My name is consistent. People call me and I respond, but so much about what is called the personality abruptly changes. I'm not talking about growth or development. I'm talking about major shifts. It's like waking up with a different quality of consciousness. Sometimes the consciousness has a playful quality, sometimes an ugly quality, and sometimes a sage quality. Sometimes craving is present, sometimes distortion is present. Sometimes perception has shifted in such a way that it's as if I crawled into a different skin, and sometimes there are many at once.

I don't know if that matches any one else's experience, but it is my experience. It is complex, and surreal, and perhaps I should be the subject of a scientific study. All of it can be doubted completely, but this doubt doesn't deny the occurrence. It denies association of the remaining identity with the departed consciousness. The felt sense is that the addict came and went. The distortion came and went, the confusion came and went. The perspective is totally new and isn't experienced to be the same person.

Unless, there is guilt, remorse or some emotion that creates some sense of continuity, I am convinced that whoever remains, once the addict had gone, has no association with it whatsoever. Perhaps this is why denial is so hard to break through. And why psychopathic behavior is possible. Unless there is some emotional tie that creates an association, some identity as a sinner or as an addict, or a psychopath, the remaining identity is discontinuous with the past.

Most people, I assume, don't experience it in this way. For most people there is a continuity in personality. For me personality is not unified enough to be on one side or the other. It is not unified enough to say it is for this and against that. It is not unified enough to say it is a sinner. It needs memory for this. It is not unified enough to say it is a saint, history proves otherwise. It is not unified enough to say it is an addict. It is not unified enough to say I believe X.

Honestly, there is very little agreement or unity in this personality. Maybe, there is a dominant trait, but different traits dominate at different times that are completely contradictory. One dominant trait is the willingness to help wherever possible, and many have said this, but there are other traits that show up that are malicious.

Most don't experience Kevin or Prakash as malicious, but I and others have experienced myself in this way. Would it then be accurate to say that I am a selfless openhearted sadist. This makes no sense. Would I say that I am a sadistic kind-hearted man. This also makes no sense. Here, we can speak about what is authentic and inauthentic, what are the core values? But the core values for which? The fact remains. I experience both, sometimes equally and sometimes simultaneously. Faced with this perplexing scenario, I throw my hands up and say, beyond the conflicts, beyond the opposition, beyond the contradiction or addiction who am I?

There is no denying what happens. History keeps a record of events, but my experience is that there is no identity unified enough to say I did that, or I am that. There is no denying of events, but there is not always this association with a "me" who has lived the events. They happened to a me, but which one? Who am I? There is no unified sense of a personality. For me it is like fragments floating in space.

What is consistent is space, so the attention more often goes to that. The fragments play a part, but they are not cohesive. They exist together but don't work together. I mostly experience them as a collection of contradictions. Am I all of them or none of them? Perhaps, we can discuss it.

In the interest of clarity, I have added the following: Please don't misunderstand me. I am only speaking of my experience. My experience of the personality is that it has no unified direction. It wants opposite and conflicting things. My experience is that only space, silence presence, what have you, is continuous. For me, no other identity is continuous. Everything else changes. The addict comes. The addict leaves. The sadist comes. The sadist leaves. Only the sense of space is there all the time. For this reason, this spaciousness, the only reality that is not discontinuous, is called the self.

Because this is so, the former consciousness, or set of beliefs, is not continuous or consistent with the present consciousness, or set of beliefs, and there is nothing that links them. The only similarity is that they arise in the same space. What is ordinarily referred to as the personality or personal identity has disintegrated. There is no harmony or agreement within the personality. What is wanted at any given moment depends on which is present. All of this happens within a field. That field is the only thing that's continuous. This is my experience. It has not happened that the same consciousness is present always, so I have gone beyond to this uncontaminated field. If you ask, who am I? It is That, the only consistent reality.

Perhaps, as this space, I can harmonize these personalities, these energies. I cannot do it as one or the other, because my experience is that I am no more one than the other. One may be more frequent at times, but the other is sure to make its presence felt. Who am I? I am the only thing that I could be, the reality continuous enough to deserve the title "I", the vast field in which everything comes and goes. Only as That, is it even conceivable that I could harmonize all other energies and contradictions, only as That could I bring the lion to lie down with the lamb, or welcome the unwelcome.