Asking Questions, Facing Life

Q: (after a long pause) You know the trouble is there really are no words.
A: Is that trouble?
Q: No.
A: Ah ... (laughter) It's right here, no words.
Q: There are all the questions that go on forever.
A: Yes.
Q: And you wonder if they really are needed.
A: Yes and no. Needed and not needed. But all of them bring you back here (indicates the heart) and no questions bring you back here. You can't really go astray.
Q: You can't really go astray.
A: No. You see, questions, they can be important. Questions are just the mind trying to relax itself. It gets an answer and the mind relaxes. Maybe then you drop into the truth. The answers? Those aren't the answers. I have no answers.
Q: There's a sense of that, that the questions are kind of just interrupting the silence.
A: Ah, you get it now (laughter).
Q: But then the mind gets like an itch ...
A: That's okay (laughter). The itch is there until it's not there, it's fine. It's not about "I'm supposed to have questions," or "I'm not supposed to." It doesn't matter.
Q: Yeah because it's really just about this.
A: That's right. What's really here. Do you see, as we sit together, what's really here? As you talk and then I talk and all this talking happens, there's already something that's already connected with itself ...
Q: That's what I come for.
A: That's where the truth is. It's already there. All we do is notice it. And notice it as yourself.
Q: There's this kind of real subtle attempt to scramble it back together into something coherent and recognizable and I guess that's what I want to talk about, the tendency to dissolve and then reconstitute. One of the ways that seems most convincing in this person is the body, to contract in the body. The body is kind of a loud body, it has a lot of drama and seems to attract a lot of attention.
A: It likes that.
Q: It's interesting what you were saying about what went on with you; you didn't quite believe it.
A: No, it's not so much that I did or didn't believe it; it's just experience, good, bad, indifferent, it's just experience. Experience unfolds in a completely different way when the mind isn't telling itself a story about the experience. Then it's just experience.
Q: That's the thing where there's a loop around the possibility of objective ... , it sounds like you're talking about objective reality.
A: No, it's totally subjective.
Q: If it's subjective, it's a story.
A: I understand. In our culture subjective is a bad word. Subjective means personal opinions, this is what I think. But what I'm speaking of is more subjective than that. Closer than that, closer, closer, closer, so close where there's only that. Only what you are.
Q: There's no movement at all.
A: What could be more subjective than that? It all disappears into the one. Just like now.
Q: My mind is off tripping.
A: It's okay.
Q: Let me do that then for a minute. There's this instant immediate perception, or whatever you want to call it, instantly an interpretation is on it so quick and then you kind of catch that but it's already too late; you're already doing that.
A: Right, so what to do?
Q: Oh, it's just endless.
A: I know.
Q: It's a lot work.
A: I know.
Q: It seems very arduous what I'm doing and I'm wondering if that's ...
A: Give up (laughter). That's surrender.
Q: (laughing) Then I'll just fall back asleep again in all the opinions and evaluations.
A: No, no, no you won't. Or at least try it and find out. At least try it. I mean give up in the sense of give up. The truth is what sets you free. I'm not speaking about some ultimate truth, of course that sets you free, but of the relative truth that we don't want to deal with. Maybe your relative truth is that "my mind keeps taking me away. I get a little glimpse of something and then my mind quickly appropriates it, grabs it."
Q: Yeah.
A: And then, "I can't do anything about that. Try as I may, it keeps happening."
Q: Yeah.
A: "All the ways I try to deal with it, it keeps happening anyway." All I'm suggesting is, what if you just faced that truth and go, "it keeps happening, that mind keeps taking it away." That's your experience so therefore for you, that's the truth. Can you just say, "that's the truth."?
Q: And not build another reactive cycle on top of that.
A: That's right. You just say, "that's what's happening." And you feel the mind when you say that's what's happening, it wants to go, "but I want to do something about it."
Q: Yeah, there's a lot of pressure in there.
A: So you have a choice. You can either go into that which says "I want to do something about it," again, which you already know won't work, probably, given your past experience.
Q: Right.
A: Or you could say, "I'm trapped! My mind takes me away and then I come into the present for a moment and then it grabs me and takes me away and so wow, I'm trapped." It's the wisdom of failure, of telling the truth. "I can't do this."
Q: I can't control this.
A: I can't control this. And then you face it. Now you are actually facing what your experience really is, that you can't control this; that's what you told me. My question is just, can you face what your experience really is? That's not so difficult. And you might be amazed what happens when you face your own experience, the truth of it. Just face it and not try to do anything with it. That's where the divine works, in that space. Where we're not telling ourselves a story, where we're just being with our experience, even if we don't like what our experience is. Even if you're trapped.
Q: That's a recurring theme in my life, feeling trapped, by everything, external, internal, all over the place.
A: I know. And probably the other recurring theme is trying to get out of the trap.
Q: Panicking in the trap.
A: Yes. So your set up that way, to be in the trap and then panicking because you're in the trap. Then you have to get out, which only makes you feel more in.
Q: It's like that monkey who reaches for the banana ...
A: So that's my homework for you. See how it works. This is all just an experiment. Everybody is free to do as they will. You try it out, you check out the results; if you like the results maybe you'll keep doing it. If you don't like the results, you can say, "oh, Adya said that, I'm not going to listen anymore." Fine.
Q: Speaking of free will, is there any point in discussing ...
A: No (laughter).
Q: (laughing) I didn't think so. It's endless.
A: Right, it's endless, completely endless. It's just (makes a repetitive noise).
Q: One last thing, may I?
A: Of course.
Q: There seems to be this real subtle thing that maybe isn't so subtle. I'm not sure how to explain it. Like there's a truth and then an attachment to the truth that the ego usurps.
A: Grasping it.
Q: It uses it to justify itself. The biggest one I just bumped into is the whole resistance to life, the withdrawal from life that is cloaking itself as detachment.
A: Oh, yes.
Q: And it's huge. I've been running away from life all my life and somewhere along the line I discovered spirituality.
A: As a means to help you do that (laughter).
Q: It was so convenient.
A: Welcome to the first spiritual personality type. It's generally more afraid of life that it is of death.
Q: Terrified. And the same thing is happening in relationship, of being so afraid of getting attached in an unhealthy way, like I don't even want to do this because it's so sticky.
A: Yeah. Which means you're already attached in an unhealthy way (laughter). To the fear.
Q: Attached to the detachment. That seems to be happening with everything across the board. Everything under the sun seems to be doing that. I can't think of anything at the moment but it's a phenomenon I've started noticing because the ego has discovered spirituality, it has its highest advocate for its own existence.
A: Right. I don't really want be here so now I'll practice spiritual detachment.
Q: Et cetera.
A: Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Q: So it's less questioning but rather witnessing that.
A: Yes.
Q: Because when I sit with you something shifts, regardless of what I talk about.
A: That's the power of seeing the truth within yourself. Our minds want to see our experience clearly. Well, you're seeing your experience clearly right now. And our mind wants to see our experience clearly and then DO SOMETHING about it. And that stops all the transformational value. See it clearly and just see it clear and just see it clearly.
Q: And don't make anything of it.
A: Right and be willing to see it and be willing to see it because when it gets clear enough, it just drops.
Q: I guess that's the last thing I wanted to talk about.
A: Oh, we just did (laughter).
Q: Can I just tell you a short story ...
A: Okay.
Q: About the truth. I was trying to find that place of commitment and there was this backpedaling, like maybe I'll die before it's necessary (laughs). Because all the motivation for life has been going away and it's gotten pretty flat and weird.
A: Right.
Q: And I couldn't even find the motivation for myself because even though it was flat and weird, it wasn't that bad. And then I realized it was really for love. And that's what you are for me when we sit together, that affirmation that that's the only thing we're doing here, the only reason we would even bother.
A: That's right. That's why you're here. We do go through that desert where personal motivations stop being appealing. They might still be there but you're just like, "oh, I don't want that out of life and I don't want that," because something unconsciously, sometimes consciously, stops believing the next thing is going to make me happy. So then all the personal motivations start to drop. It's just coming into what's really there, which is the love, that's the divine love. It doesn't have a motivation other than to find itself. That's all you're doing, finding yourself. The love coming back to itself.
Q: This huge self, not that little ...
A: Right.
Q: That kind of love is not enough.
A: No, no, no, it will never be totally satisfied. It's a piece of the love, it's a piece so it's not bad but it's this love that you really are.
Q: And not to lose one's humanity in that.
A: You can't, you can't; not if it's the real thing. That's the beautiful thing about the truth. You can't lose your humanity and if someone does, then they haven't found the true truth. The truth actually delivers us back into our humanity. Into that human love, that compassion; it delivers us back into life. It's not that we've been trapped in life; we've been trapped out of life, in some virtual life. Enlightenment is not actually transcending life, it's "hey, I've finally made it here!" (laughter) "I've been looking for heaven out there and it's (raps on the table), there it is." What could be more divine than a flower, or being in the hospital in the middle of the night (laughs).
Q: Thank you so much.
A: I enjoyed it, you're welcome.