be as you are?
Hi Robert, if there is no free will how is it possible to realise that I am awake? Ramana Maharshi said “Be as you are,” and you said, “I'm am awake and I know it.” So it seems that you say the same thing with different words. But is it possible to rid oneself from delusional thinking if there is no free will?
So Ramana Maharshi said, “Be as you are,” but few heard that. Instead, the project seems to be “Don’t be as you are, be as Ramana Maharshi was because what you are is insufficient, and Ramana Maharshi was perfect— a ‘realized master’ or whatever.”
If one sees the foolishness of this—truly sees it, I mean—that’s the end of the search. One has understood that being is choiceless. This is it! Right now! Like it or not, this aliveness, this moment, is you.
As a human animal, Ramana had no option but to be the way he was. You, another human animal, are in the same boat. What you are you already are: this aliveness.
Just as for Ramana, each moment is what it is, but for many of us, that’s not good enough, so we keep trying to escape from “myself.” There is no escape.
If words like these cannot awaken you to choicelessness, there is no reason to imagine that walking in circles around Arunachala Hill for a day or a lifetime could. Whatever you do, there you are. There is no escape from myself.
You cannot decide to end delusional thinking. Part of what makes a delusion delusional is that you don’t see it as a delusion; you believe it and are attached to it. With good luck, some new information may snap you out of your usual self-hypnotic trance so that delusions lose their credibility.
Reading a book, meeting another person, coming face-to-face with mortality through accident or illness, or anything else in the daily rounds might shine a light on one’s biases. That cannot be predicted nor chosen either. Any straw might be the one that breaks the camel's back.
There is no later. This is the only moment when any awakening could occur.
It’s like a joke, but only some of us get it.
Robert, thank you for writing these pieces. I enjoyed 4T and Depending on Nothing. Something seemed to resonate with me and uprooted a lot of what I would now call ‘spiritual-addiction’ or ‘self-help addiction’ for the past 18 years. I have finally been able to free up time from this endeavour to pursue more of my interests and live knowing that this is most likely our one-shot on this earth and we may as well live it well without seeking constant escape-hatches.
Hope all is well,
Steve
I spent most of my life trying to escape my "shitty life / relationship / job", endlessly twisting and turning in circles, feeling suffocated and trapped, no matter what the circumstances were. Spirituality / religion was just one of the many ways that I sought to alleviate the agony that I perceived. It's so nice to feel all of it winding down now! I'm older, not so much wiser, but more at ease and, dare I say it... happier? It certainly seems calmer and more sane. Thank you Robert, both 4T and DONT have played integral roles in this...