Liberation While Alive - Part Two

Unconditional joy is the result of freeing ourselves from the most entrenched veils of duality.

If liberation is what we seek, how could it be anything less than joyful to remove another layer of non-liberation? By doing that, we are fulfilling our obligation to God, our duty to reveal the highest in ourselves. But our work of loosening the grip of the ego requires the complete dissolution of all self-absorption, because experiencing individuality in that manner is the opposite of revealing the highest. 

It takes as much work to sustain a state of awareness as to attain it. Sādhana doesn’t stop: We don’t just get enlightened and go on vacation. That kind of thinking demonstrates the inherent capacity of the veils of duality to cover back up what looks like apparent freedom. The state of jīvan mukti is hard to attain. It is the complete dissolution of any separation, any difference, any thought that “I am the doer.” Even a person who is deeply established within will, at some point, become beguiled by one or all of those veils if they don’t surrender day by day and moment by moment. 

We see this in every arena. The more power we have, the greater the opportunity to get seduced by it and to think we are the doer. Even though you gathered that power by deeply trying to understand that Śiva does everything, it is still very possible to get puffed up and think you’re the dude. The natural processes of expansion and contraction, of concealing and revealing, are going on all the time, and integrity requires profound surrender. Great people throughout history have had the pendulum swing from freedom back toward bondage. 

Focus on the Joy 

Liberation while alive is a state that will develop if we focus on the joy in life instead of on everything else. Focus on the joy and celebration and understand that the conditions that come and go as the ebb and flow of life just aren’t that relevant. All of them are designed to enhance that joy, even if the process of revelation hurts as it unfolds. Transformation is only painful if we do not allow a new level of awareness to be revealed to us, if we block it by holding on to the obstacle that was exposed—the very limitation from which we need to be freed.

The process of attaining jīvan mukti requires acting on all the opportunities that present themselves for our liberation. We free ourselves by surrendering everything that keeps us from Śiva. Unfortunately, we have the most powerful database within our mind that categorizes what we will and what we won’t surrender. There is a reason and a justification for every form of holding on. Why not try something different? You might like it. Take all your experiences in life up to this point and trade up. Really ask, “This, or joy?” One option is distinctly different from the other. 

All the mental activity necessary to function in the world has nothing to do with liberation. We can keep doing whatever we need to do to engage life. We still pay attention when we drive a car. It is simply a matter of not giving so much meaning to the things we do; not being so attached to everything that it consumes all our energy. We attach so much importance to all the stuff that goes on in our mind. We invest it with reality. Liberation has nothing to do with the mind. Rather, it has to do with freeing ourselves from the misunderstanding inherent in functioning only from the mind. 

Stop Struggling With Your Ego 

We wish to have the permanent experience of Oneness, but that only happens after we have freed ourselves from two-ness. In other words, freedom arises after we are liberated from the grip of the ego, which is the doorkeeper to the veils of duality. To be free from the ego, we have to stop struggling with it. Stop trying to prove or disprove the validity of your ego. Stop believing that all the aspects and dynamics of your ego are real, and that you therefore must experience them on their own level in order to be free of them. So much of that activity just stirs the soup of duality and perpetuates concealment.

We use so much of our energy to reinforce the most superficial aspects of ourselves. We can fix all the problems or change our psychology. We can change our partner, or how we relate to our partner. All of that is good, but don’t mistake it for freeing yourself from the grip of your ego.

We must get deeper than our mind, deeper than our understanding of what life is, by penetrating through all the surface rubble. Only then can we focus on bringing a deeper consciousness into our life. We have to spend less time working through our issues and much more time surrendering them. Just drop them. And when they come crawling back home at night, bar the door.

I cannot overemphasize that revealing the highest in us means looking for the highest and not getting caught in the things that obscure it. Instead of trying to fix and change things, we need to function from a deeper place, and we do that by opening our hearts. We tune in to the higher Consciousness that is intrinsically in our hearts and then we keep our awareness there. And every time our mind, our life, or our need to reach begins to pull us out of there, we surrender and let it go.

We spend so much time doing the opposite: closing our hearts, reaching, and demanding in a vain attempt to fill the emptiness we’ve just created. Spend one-hundredth of that time focusing on opening your heart, and when something difficult arises, take that energy into the fire of Consciousness and let it burn and free you. Focus on Unity, and on the source and the experience of that Oneness, instead of reinforcing the experience of duality. Focus on the joy of the extraordinary magnificence that is within you. That experience is available to you as soon as you want it.