--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote: > We all understand what it means to say everyone is > enlightened, Xeno. As true as it may be on one level, > some of us think it's unhelpful and counterproductive, > even obfuscatory, when used in an exchange like that > quoted above. [post #343925] >
As you present this Judy, yes. But it is not ultimately unhelpful. These kinds of statements have a purpose. They program the mind so that when awakening finally occurs, the mind has something to hold on to; gives it an anchor. Some people are very disoriented upon waking up because the character of the experience is so different from what they expected, from what they had been led to believe or what they made of what was said about it (in a reasonably decent tradition, it would be the latter). In the meantime the somewhat cryptic and seemingly irrational nature of the statement can provoke a curiosity in some to just ponder what it might mean because obviously the mind can only formulate an intellectual picture based on imagination. This kind of pondering, contemplative thinking can also push the mind to expand. Contemplative thinking seems to be less evident in the TM tradition than in some others. It comes to some people more naturally than others. So these kinds of statements, such as Maharishi saying 'in unity consciousness nothing ever happened', or the statement 'you are already enlightened', or 'if you do not see the way, you do not see it even if you walk on it' (this is from the Sandokai, a foundational poem for Zen Buddhism), kind of lie dormant, but they come to life when the individual wakes up out of their individuality. Then the mind can say 'oh, that's what that meant', and the disorientation that could have happened instead becomes recognition. I wasn't trying to bamboozle Nabby. Nabby and everyone else has the full value of being inside, outside, through and through. We could not discover it if it were not. The only difference is if you think it is something other than what you are experiencing as ordinary everyday experience, something you have to look for, you do not see it. All the practices we do are just to get the mind to stop dead and give up looking. It is so odd it can take such a long time to come to a truly persistent standstill.
