August 24, 2021

The scent and the taste of Freedom

When you are on a pole, the other one is always present. If you are seeing one side, do not worry, the other one is there. It is just one side, but that side is hiding the other one. In the mind, what is known as joy is the opposite of sadness; what is known as love, which is a form of sentimental, emotional pleasure, is not real love. It is just the opposite of disappointment, pain, anger, hatred. All this is in the realm of the mind. All this lies under the mind's contents, which are beliefs.

The freedom of not being imprisoned, entangled, mixed, confused with the mind, is what we name as being disidentified – disidentified with stories, beliefs, thoughts, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, with the pleasure and pain caused by others or the world (which are only images).

There is no formula to keep disidentified. You need to find this out within yourself. You need to know when you are in this position, entangled with the mind, which means all these contents of images, thoughts and beliefs, and when you are not entangled with all that, are not mistaken for it. What I can tell you, although I cannot give you a formula for this, is that it has a completely different scent and taste. The scent of being identified is one thing, the scent of being disidentified is quite another.

Identified means being tangled with the mind and its contents, it means being circumstantially, sentimentally and emotionally involved, both at the level of thought and behavior. The flavor and the scent are quite peculiar when you are not identified. The flavor and the scent are freedom; freedom of stories, of beliefs – beliefs such as: "how beautiful my daughter is!"; "How can that be? I do everything for him but he doesn't see it." "How can that be? I give everything to her and she is not thankful." "How could she like him more than me?" Beliefs of this sort...

Thus, when this identification is present, the taste and the scent are very typical and well known already. When that is not present, the freedom of beliefs becomes clear, as well as how pointless are these worries regarding other's viewpoints and expectations towards you and how pointless are your expectations towards others.

Disidentification has no story and there is no you (you, with this image you have of yourself when entangled, identified). When disidentified, there is no you, "someone" or others. When you are disidentified, you are not a person, a relative, a friend… you are not a neighbor, a child, a mother, nor a father ... When you are disidentified, you are Freedom! When you are disidentified, you have no signs of judgments and opinions, therefore there are no conclusions. When you are disidentified, there is no conflict; no pleasure nor pain. It is not your story. It is just a story. Is it clear that way? When you are disidentified, there is no person, thereby, there is no personal frustration, no personal disappointment. When you are disidentified, there is no "someone" there waiting for something from others next to you. When you are disidentified, any thought about this supposed "you" doesn't even matter, because whatever the thought still believes to exist are still beliefs, but not beliefs of this "disidentified" one.

This is the scent and the flavor. Living like this is possible, but not for this self-image that you keep reinforcing, this image of being a mother, husband, son, boyfriend, girlfriend... To live like this is possible, but this does not reinforce pleasure. So, this is not possible for that illusive system dismembered by thought, which we call as "I," "me," "person."

Living like this is a life in the joy of Being, but a joy with no opposites. It is not the result of some thought-created pleasant excitement, in this euphoria named as happiness. It is not that. It is another joy. It is a causeless, reasonless joy, free from anyone, therefore being plain Joy. It is a joy with a definite article: "the Joy." If the Joy is present, then the smell, the flavor and the taste are different.

Say something from within and from that unlimited Presence that You are, and this talk will be born of this Natural State, free from this mix of emotions, sensations, feelings, images, stories, concepts, differences ... Say something now from this "place" where the person is not present. Whatever is said, it will be told from this Silence, this Emptiness, this Presence, which is pure Joy. A Joy that is not a smile, not a "small leap," not a "little excitement," which is not personal fulfillment, personal satisfaction, not a personal pleasure. Tell me from this disidentification ... look, smile, cry, eat, play and date from there. From there, everything is normal, everything is natural.

In the Natural State, there is no sadness, because sadness comes from images, imaginations, conditionings of a hurt, insulted, offended, annoyed, disappointed and frustrated "me." All these adjectives are attached to this imagined subject that thought has created and named as "me," "I."

As long as the mechanism (body) is there, there may be emotions. Anger, for example, is a neurological, psychological thing, an action of self-protection of this mechanism that has nothing to do with you. It is the natural state operating in the mechanism. If you ask a doctor, the doctor will say that an electric shock produces anger. You take an electric shock and it affects your central nervous system, which produces an emotion on the machine, a rage without story. Feelings need stories, but emotions don't. You should not mistake emotions for feelings.

Anger is an emotion, but the anger the ego knows is a feeling; a feeling that appropriates the machine. We're used to say this anger is an emotion, but it is another feeling, since it requires imagination. Anger is a very dangerous expression when there's a content story. Thus, it serves to some purpose. So, the anger present in this "I" is a very dangerous thing, because it will tell a story, and the story is: "Kill it," "kill him," "destroy what causes you anger." However, anger itself is a beautiful thing. A nerve irritation is anger, but when a story creates a feeling that creates a nerve irritation, which is the anger, this illusion of a present "me" is driven to kill or destroy what caused that anger. The anger itself will not do that.

Participant: Is it the same about fear?

Master Gualberto: This goes for fear too, because fear is an emotion, but fear as the ego knows is not an emotion. It is an illusion created by this thought-produced sense of imagination. So, fear in the ego is 99.9% of the time pure imagination. A fear that seems too real to the ego but has no truth at all.

There is a real fear, as an emotion, when facing some danger, when the body protects itself using defense mechanisms. An object comes towards your eyes and so you close them with fear. An escape movement, a flight. When in fear, you can move your legs or freeze, depending on the mechanism reaction when facing a danger, but this is a natural fear. However, there is a fear created by thought, by imagination; a fear with story. It is the fear of elevator rides, the fear of heights, airplanes, closed places, to marry, to relate, of public speaking, and so on ... All this is pure ego! All these are images that create this so-called fear.

Don't you see how absurd is the fear of death? You have to imagine a lot to be afraid of death, you have to make a huge effort. Right now, no one was afraid of death, but when I said "fear of death" you have started asking yourselves: "am I afraid of death?" You have to wonder to know if you have it. Only those with free time to think are able to picture and fear death.

When death comes, it comes suddenly, nobody fears it, there is no room for the fear of death, it is a fulminant thing. But if someone says: "You are dying," the mind will build a post-mortem scenario and will produce fear. But the fear of death is an absurd thing, like these fears of elevator rides, height, etc. Pure imagination!

We are still talking about the identification with the mind's contents, which has this scent and this very specific flavor. When this is present, there is no freedom. In this disidentification, this freedom, any emotion is possible, but without a story, it is natural. Anger can be something like that, fear can be something like that ... but you can count on the fingers what would be an emotion in the Natural State. However, you cannot count on the fingers what feelings and emotions means for this illusion of a present identity, which is this belief of being someone, this "me," this "I," this ego.

That is why when you are before the Sage, before the Guru, the Presence, you do not see this wave, you do not see this sea full of waves of emotions, feelings and sensations. You do not see these chaotic reactions. You see emotions, but you do not see this turbulent thing. This chaotic thing is a superficial thing, depthless, unreal, it is something created by thought.

The ego lives in this ups and downs of joy, sorrow and pain. With extraordinary speed, it goes from joy to sadness, from sadness to anger, anger to fear, from fear to despair, from despair to anxiety, anxiety to courage, from courage to daring... Isn't it just like that?

Identified with the ego, everything is circumstantial. The sense of a "me" moves circumstantially: a compliment makes you cheerful; a mean comment makes you sad, angry, offended or willing to kill, because the desire to kill the one who hurt you comes along with the anger.

In fact, it is all happening inside you. There is nothing going on outside. It is all within that same content, which is the mind's content. The mind teasing itself – being teased and reacting to it – searching for the ones to blame and living all these dramas. It is a hopeless case, without salvation. The ego is a miserable state of a useless complexity.

*In-person meeting transcription, originally held on May, 2016. First published in Portuguese on June 15, 2016. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Share!