addiction to pattern - avoidance and repression

 

 You cannot learn the Self. You cannot learn consciousness. 

You cannot learn love. 

You cannot learn trust.

 But you can learn how you deny all of that. 

For this denial, there are techniques and strategies. 

There is either indulgence or repression, 

and with both there is an avoidance 

of simply experiencing 

the power and the immensity of the moment.

We are speaking of a certain kind of addiction; the addiction to a pattern.

With addiction there has to come a point 

when you see that the desire is out of your control. 

Maybe the addiction is physiological. 

Maybe it has been practiced for so long that it has its own groove.

 But what is in your control, absolutely,

 is the willingness to not move when the desire appears. 

The willingness neither to indulge nor repress 

but to not move in the fire of this impulse of thousands of years.

 Have you ever experienced this?

Then you know the beauty of this fire. 

You know that in this moment, 

there is actually a willingness to die. 

Because the addiction to mind or to habits can be so strong that

 there is the sense if you don't feed the addiction, 

you will die. 

Eventually, through the maturity of the soul,

 there is a willingness to say, "Okay, if I die I will die.

 But I am not going to follow this demon down this road again."

This, too, is the mind, but it is the mind in service to what was betrayed. 

 It feels like a descent into hell

 because with any addiction, the impulse is strong

 to get rid of the craving, to get rid of the fire.

 How? How? How? There are millions of ways how, 

but to not get rid of it, to not go numb with it,

 to let it burn - this is the fire. 

This is the Buddha and the temptations of Mara.

 This is Christ in the desert. 

Everyone has to experience this -

 Oh my god, I am dying. Okay, so I am dying.

 I surrender. I surrender - and there is peace,

 there is freedom. You recognize what has never left. 

You recognize what is always here. In that moment,

 there is a break in the habit pattern. 

The habit may reappear, but there is something bigger than it, 

so it does not have the same hold on you. 

Do you follow this?

Justification can arise, and a kind of thrill from the adrenaline

 and the power that comes with justification. 

There can be quick excuse making, such as,

 "Well, so-and-so did it," or, "It doesn't matter," or,

 "We're all one, it is all the Self," but this is all thought.

 It is all the sirens saying, "Come, come back, 

back into where you were all-powerful, 

where you were in control, where you were God, 

where you got to say what happens."

 

 Don't follow any of it. DON'T MOVE. 

And an exquisite experience is revealed that can never be taken from you.

There is suffering, yes, but it is conscious suffering.

 This is very different from attempting to delay suffering. 

This is very different from following, 

indulging, or discharging suffering.

 Then suffering is spread out over time,

 and the suffering of the misidentification continues.

This willingness takes enormous resolve.

 Resolve is a little different from vigilance. 

Resolve comes after vigilance has been betrayed, 

after re-identification has set in. It is the mind's resolve

 to recognize the hell that has once again been created 

and to be here, to burn here, and in that burning, 

there is naturally redemption. 

No one is needed to come and redeem you. 

Redemption happens naturally.

Right here, in this universe, patterns of war still appear,

 and war is what we are talking about, right? 

Even though you have tasted peace, 

even though this universe has tasted peace on earth,

 how is it that conflict still has its way?

 This is true of every mindstream, especially in humans.

 War is inbred, and it has gone unmet. 

 So meet that war within yourself consciously, awake,

 refusing to budge. In meeting war, you will find peace.

 If you have tasted it, then you know it is so. 

If you have not tasted it, it may seem impossible,

 but taste it anyway and see. Just take one moment

 in the midst of one attacking pattern and don't budge.

Beneath the behavior is the energy of an emotion, 

and that emotion is fueled by some thought 

of protection from being wounded or hurt or not being seen.

 In the willingness to experience that wounded or hurt

 or not being seen, to really be wounded, really be hurt, 

really not be seen, then it is no big deal. 

Then the wound is nothing, the hurt is nothing,

 and you realize that you will never be seen.

 You are the Self. You cannot be seen. 

You are not an object.




~ Gangaji,
(excerpt from the Meeting, Immovable Resolve, San Diego, CA, January 18, 2001)

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