Self enquiry and Shadows

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The Fool & the Lamb write a book

I am trying to … investigate life, the lines, the tales, the untold, the features, the honesty … without emotional investment or subterfuge  … as I guess a good novelist would.

Recollection is impossible in the sun-umbrella of another person’s flavour, or a strong surge of my own.   At such a moment, my mind truly cannot hold more than one impression.  What am I being shown?

Ramana’s raised eyebrow at the root of it, is way beyond and anterior to the modern advaita rattle.  Honesty flows with Ramana and his strange life.  The Teaching is a prattle.

Why do I like my cher ami (who doesn’t do “spiritual stuff”, and doesn’t read my blog – not one word!) – why the vitality there? Because he is an HONEST MAN, irritating as that can be.  He sees through everything.  He gets carried away by his own silly plans – but faces and endures the consequence, and that is the honesty.  I love him because he is honest.   Wow.   That is a gem.  This feeling when I’m out beyond the waves and swimming the deep sea – exhilarates.  Thought stops.  Reality shines.

Active “Spirituality” is the attempt to see through my own dishonesty.  For a long while, the noble effort pushes up a bow wave of exactly what I am trying to row through.  Ha ha!

fuzz tries to catch shadow.  Ramana used to tell this story.

Krishnamurti also urged, to just remove the jacket.  He never could escape from being Indian: his culture.  Once upon a time, the wind and the sun competed furiously, to take away a man’s jacket.  The wind blew and blew and blew, and the man wrapped his jacket ever more tightly round him until the wind ran out of puff.  Then the sun came out and shone and shone, and the man took it off.

Arrive then, at an updated form of Self-enquiry?  The vichara transcends any doctrine, and is applicable to all.  Recognising that I hold mentally/emotionally at any one moment, my full flavour or another person’s … pause, to get a hold on the rich imaging and components. Each is a door to perception.  It is even paper thin!  Hermetic clarity … how Sod sees Yod-yesod.

The who-am-I mantra is not much use, if used as a tin rattle.  But unspeeched perception, engaging my attention and sensory field, begins to “part the waves” as the Lovers’ Sword does.  It un-muddies the waters to what is clod and what is fluent.   I begin to see the drifting continents, unsouped, unsewaged.  Tempo changes.  Discriminate the subtle from the gross.  Self-enquiry is a way of viewing plankton, the floating piscean populations.  Keep confidence, that I learn to truly see, and am less hoodwinked by my handicaps.   In the thick of life, how can there not be handicaps?  Who plays golf without one?  Charismatic persons play God because they cannot see their handicap, the sun is too bright.

..taking off shadows?

The wisdom of the NOW is beleaguered and betrayed by what I ought to do or say later.  The NOW is an edge of the garment that I lift, like a bridal train.   Now I feel quite attractive and erotically game;  but this cannot be stamped onto an imagined “later” with my cher ami.   Then will be a different Now – another garment;  accept how it is.   This week’s acceptance has an October clarity and turn of leaf:  an informed sparkle.  Gamble only on Now, to win the other nows;  to be a “sun shine see through”:  rain wet windy cold.

The robe is vichara, the journey is life, the Realisation is all around it.  When I am dead I will see and be for real, all around, what I dimly and enticingly perceive:  the lifting of the veil.

The absurdity of the Eastern patent, as misinterpreted, is the notion of getting rid of the i-thought before it is Self conscious … it just pushes more and more dung into the Unconscious, to continue disturbing the universe for aeons to come, while the meditator momentarily basks and gives Satsang.

The strength and sobriety of the Western rose, is its determination to make the Unconscious conscious.  Then and only then, does the problem mature, become little, and dissolve.  It only takes all the time in the world to be in a hurry.

Essentially this is what Ramana did and said, all his life, but few would grasp it.  Few would grasp the nettle.   The consequences – peoples’ worship, immobilizing him on his sofa, with indigestible food offerings – aged and infirmed his body – that and his own youthful self-neglect.    The culture, the old, old tradition.

ramana & mother

But … here is a fresh angle on what is actually multi-dimensioned – how essentially different is the teenage Ramana taking no food and allowing the vermin to crawl all over him, from the bingeing and self-harming western way?   What shared root, on entering adult dolt-hood?  Basically, Ramana refused to go to school any more.

I was impressed and disturbed in JKRowling’s new novel The Casual Vacancy, by the agony of the girl trapped and cutting herself for relief, the criss cross razoring.  I wanted to at times.  The most recent time was a few years ago.  In unbearable pain from something concerning my daughter, I ran to the living room window, scratching and clawing my arms till it drew blood.  THAT PRESSURE.  I was shocked. THE PRESSURE is behind the drinking, addictions, street oblivion and violent self abuse.

Reflect on Ramana 107 years ago, himself under THE PRESSURE even if sublimated, abusing his young body in a hot hell-hole, obliviously.  OK, he had transcended his death and was with his Father Arunachala in Self ecstasy.  But Ecstasy is also a drug.

Down to earth smack!

So:  Buddha’s compassion with the obnoxious raucous young, coming of age, and confronted with the horror and barrier of the adult dolt, like a virus in the system.   In more intuitive times, a tough forest Initiation was provided – or war alas, or hard work.   As England has lost or given up its industry, there is hardly any real employment, nothing to engage with.   Rage.  Rage against … the dying of the … ight.  

Therapy … the rap…

To jump the hurdle into a-dult is really dreadful, because one hates that encroachment, the boring tyrant slamming into oneself.

Understood!

My reaction to my teenage parental noose was rudeness, the dark Labyrinth, travel and hitch hiking.  The Reckless Fruit.   Poems investigating amorality.

a “taunton black” drawing: Wild Thing 1965

There is a deep JKRowling insight here, into the quest for authenticity – that battle-call –  and its distortions.   The lad called Fats goes so far into his own parentally-dislocated authenticity, that it turns him round and he grows up.  Hey!   Her book which everyone is cross about, is excellent.  She has the knack of compassion – of making her characters as a whole, the youngsters AND their stressed out parents and community, so believable, you empathise them and see from different places.  I see my feelings and my troubles when young, and when parenting, and what they are now.

drawing my self without shading 1988

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My adventure invites fellow travellers.  I am a poet, an artist and a seer.  I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is  a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.  

I write, illustrate, design and print my books.   Watch this space.