Chapter 18

The End

It seems that even after all this there are still those who misunderstand what it is to be a mystic, what it was that Krishna spoke of.

When Krishna said that you must renounce attachment not activities, many have interpreted this 'attachment' to mean their emotions, or other things that are in fact activities.
Anything you have no choice about is activity.
And you have no choice about the fact that emotions exist.
You cannot prevent yourself from feeling emotions.
Attachment is not the fact that you have them.
Neither is it a particular way to react to them.
You are equally attached to an emotion if you accept it, as if you reject it.
And neither of these are 'spiritual acts'.
There are some that think that embracing their joy and feeling it deeply is a spiritual act.
No.
It may be a useful thing to do under certain circumstances, under others it may be very hindering.
Getting swept away by joy is almost always counterproductive to meditative work.
Likewise it is not spiritual to reject or repress your joy.
Nor is it spiritual to let yourself get swept away by sorrow.
Again it may be useful, as catharsis, but if done too much or for too long or in the wrong time or place, it will make you useless for the purposes of meditation work.
Real detachment is not the acceptance or rejection of emotion.
It is the third way: the ability to transcend emotion without rejecting it.
If you feel joy, know it is there.
Do not fight it, but do not feed it either; and be willing to drop it as an issue so that you can go on to do your work.
Too often I have found students become unteachable, often for weeks or months at a time, because they operate under the delusion that they must (and worse, that I must) address and somehow 'resolve' their joy or their sorrow.
They actually believe that getting stuck on these emotions is proof that the Mystery School is 'working' because they are feeling something (a common mistake), or 'not working' because they are feeling something they dislike (an even more common mistake).
This is the way to stuckness.

Many people have misunderstood Krishna in thinking that he suggests that renouncing activities is unimportant, or undesirable.
In fact, it is neither of these.
It is simply impossible.
You cannot renounce activity.
At all times, in every circumstance there are at least three activities taking place.
Physical activity, mental activity, and emotional activity.
There is not a single second where your body is not active, breathing and moving.
Your mind is also always thinking or operating, at least at a low level.
And you are always in some form of emotional state, even if it is only indifference.
These are the absolutes of being alive.
You cannot renounce the body, mind or heart.
You could no more renounce thinking or emotion than you could 'renounce breathing'.
It could not happen, unless you were dead.
Thus, anyone who wastes their time with trying to regulate or alter the physical, mental or emotional selves for the purpose of 'stopping' them is not engaged in any spiritual activity.
To renounce, you must renounce your 'lust of result', your attachment to what is happening in these three areas.

Also, in the context of the spiritual, this is not the end, rather it is the beginning.
No real spiritual work can happen until you have begun to develop detachment.
By becoming detached to your physical, emotional and mental issues you remove them as blocks.
To be detached from them means that you accept they exist and let go of your interest in what they yield.
It is by this transcendence that you can focus on spiritual unity (yoga).

When you succeed in doing this, you will be able to develop real trust.
So long as you are attached to these issues, and under the idea that the only way to 'solve' the problems of these issues is to dwell on them, you will fail to be able to trust your teacher.
Rather than accepting your work, you will consider all work only in the context of your perceived issues.
You will be more interested in the work that you think relates to these issues, and will be uninterested in others.
Work that, done by itself, would help alleviate these issues, you will instead modify by your undue attention and alterations into work that will actually enhance your stuckness.
In short, you become unteachable.
Krishna describes the nature of a 'clever renunciate' as one who 'will not hate unfortunate work' and 'will not become overly attached to fortunate work'.

"Messed up"

Krishna is clear when he speaks about how to focus ones' self to spiritual work.
He says that someone who is focused unwaveringly in Yoga is in the state of truth (sattva).
Someone who is focused in lusts, desiring a result, is in a state of passion (rajas), and they will inevitably create new problems for themselves.

I have seen students who seek out constant realizations, constant revelations, new ideas that they think will explain how everything is supposed to work, how their practice is supposed to work, how their relationships are supposed to work.
And they are constantly doing this, it is always something new that they 'realize'.
This is because they are simply creating these realizations for themselves by first creating assumptions about what the problem is and then making assumptions about the solution.
Both are assumptions, not only is their solution an illusion, so is their 'problem'.
So their very 'realizations' will keep them frustrated, because even though they will feel great pleasure and bliss about having these realizations, they will know underneath that their answers are not fulfilling.
So they will have to assume a new problem, and go looking again...

But there is a third state as well, the state of someone who "never stops fantasizing, fearing, regretting, feeling sorry for themselves, and deluded".
Krishna calls this the 'foolish will', and says it is in the state of ignorance (tamas).
I had already spoken about this above, when I spoke about transcending the emotional level.
There are some students who will be deeply mired in this, in particular at the level of 'feeling sorry for themselves'.
In fact, this is an attempt to make yourself special, to separate yourself from the rest of humanity.
If you can't be the most fortunate, the richest, the most famous, then at least you get to be the most unfortunate, and have terrible problems that you couldn't do anything about.
Tamas is also sometimes called 'heaviness', it is a level of sloth.
And this 'feeling sorry for yourself' is also a way to be lazy, to avoid having to do any work because, after all, your problems are 'obviously' impossible to overcome.
Someone operating at this level will be unteachable if they do not change first.

But there are also people who are otherwise doing well, who suddenly come to a realization of their own scars, and then fall into a state of feeling sorry for themselves.
They realize more intensely than they ever did before that they are critically flawed, 'messed up' as one student put it.
This realization can come as a powerful shock, as it is something that most people struggle intensely to avoid having to confront.

I have had students admit to me that they were 'messed up'.
Some were actually filled with pride at admitting this, at demonstrating their own humility in being able to say what a coward they are, or what a jerk they are, or what a fool they are, or how uncertain they are.
There were others who admitted this to me with great trepidation, sure that they couldn't possibly become mystics.

In reality it is important to admit that you are 'messed up', but it is also no great accomplishment.
Everyone, everywhere is 'messed up'.
Remember this, there is no one who is any less or more messed up than you are!
It is true!
You are in no way special for being this way.

Have you ever looked at patients in a mental hospital?
They can scream, shout, swear, spit, act like animals, let out all their rage.
It is because society has decided that they are 'messed up'.
Of course, society has only done this to try to convince itself that everyone else isn't just as 'messed up'.
But these people in the mental hospital, society has decided that they can be completely messed up, that they are allowed.
There is no more hiding it for them, not like the rest of the world that tries very hard to avoid admitting it.
So they can scream, they can shout, then can writhe on the floor.
They can beat the walls.
Whatever they want.
And there is no difference from these people and yourself, only that they are allowed to do this.
You would all do the same if you had permission.

That is why in a mystical practice a bit of catharsis is necessary at the beginning.
When you want to become a meditator, first you have to do meditations that let you release your hidden nature.
You do Kundalini meditation, and let out your issues.
But to linger too much on this is pointless, it is actually counterproductive.
You could keep doing catharsis for fifty years, you could keep shaking and dancing in Kundalini meditation for fifty years, you will never get rid of these issues.
You cannot 'stop' being messed up, you cannot be 'fixed'.
All you can do is know it is there, let yourself experience it a little bit so as to remove some of the immediate tension, and then let yourself move on to do the spiritual work.
This work will not 'fix' you, it will make the problem irrelevant.

The Greatest Magickal Power

It is for this reason that Krishna has called detachment the 'greatest of magickal powers'.
If you achieve real detachment, you can move past all those barriers of your ego.
They do not need to be resolved.
So in essence, detachment allows you to solve the unsolvable problem.
You can accept that you are a flawed entity, and nevertheless move forward to do the practice of union.
This is why Krishna had said never to give up an action that comes out of your nature, even though all actions will have imperfections, just like smoke obscuring a fire.
In other words, this is natural too.
It is not natural to become obsessed, or disgusted with these actions.
It is not natural to revel or to be trapped and linger in these actions.
But to simply accept them, and then move past them, is highly natural.

Why then do most people get trapped at this level of mental/emotional stuckness?
Why don't more people understand this key of moving past?
The answer is simple: most do not want to move past.
Most people wish to be attached.
More than anything that is their desire, because the attachment gives them the sense that something is theirs, something belongs to them; that they have something to hold on to that will keep them alive.
If you realize that you can simply move past your 'issues', you end up with the realization that you own nothing, have nothing that is your own.
This realization many equate with death, and it causes great terror.
If you have nothing to hold onto, you will have to confront that you are just a very small and passing phenomenon, that you will soon be gone from this world.
The world does not revolve around you, nor will you any longer have your own little world of issues to mask your inherent emptiness.
To transcend your issues you must truly be ready to confront the reality of death.
You must be ready to accept and discover death, and to confront your fears about both the termination of your existence and your lack of importance in the 'big picture' of things.

These are very difficult tasks.
They are addressed in part by devoting yourself to the practice of union, of meditation.
To come to realize that there is no difference between you and the rest of life.
As you develop in meditation, and if you are willing to confront this truth, you will see that there is no difference between life and death.
The two are one and the same.
IF you can find that which is essential within you, that essential will exist eternally beyond death, even if you do not.
There is nothing that needs to be held on to.

In the End

This is all I have to say on these matters.
There is nothing more that needs to be added.
So do not add, and do not miss anything.
Simply practice, and simply remember.
Sammasati.

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