What we have been saying to you here on the channel is that what we call pleasure in life carries, in a very close, very intimate way, this matter of pain, and we need to understand this, because our psychological life, this life of the ego, this life of the “I” – and this is the subject that we are investigating here with you – is very much based on this pursuit or search for pleasure. What we call “life” is actually a very complicated psychological way of living, because one thing we don't realize is that in this so-called “pleasure” there is something very close, which is this pain. People approach asking questions about how to get rid of suffering: “How to get rid of suffering? How to get rid of fear?” This is very common: “How to get rid of fear? How to get rid of suffering?” Suffering and fear are pain.
We have been raised, since childhood, on a quest or a search and very strong fixations on some form of fulfillment and pleasure. So, we are always looking for pleasure and escaping pain. We don't want fear, we don't want anxiety, we don't want depression – which are states of unhappiness, which are states of psychological pain – but we do want pleasure. So, our childhood conditioning was always to sustain an identity in this search for something that fulfills us psychologically. This search for psychological fulfillment in pleasure is, in fact, an escape from pain that we already carry within us and are not aware of, we are not conscious.
So, I want to talk to you here today about the existential void. We are not aware of this emptiness, the pain of existential void, so this training that we have had since childhood is exactly to escape this pain. The human being carries an existential pain within him, an existential void, as if it was the absence of something. And what we have as a model since childhood was people around us hiding this pain from themselves, and the path they followed, we are following; the training they went through, we are also going through, and we continue to sustain this; and this training is the constant search for pleasure and this search for this escape from this pain.
If we look at ourselves, how we are living our lives, this way of life, this way of living, we will clearly see how many fears we have. We are afraid of getting old, we are afraid of disease, we are afraid of accidents, we are afraid of the past, we are afraid of the future, we are afraid of getting old, we are afraid of parents, we are afraid of husbands, we are afraid of wives, we are afraid of children, we are afraid of the boss. We are afraid that something we did yesterday, in the past, will be discovered and we will suffer from it. So, we have countless fears. Note that the psychological nature of the “I,” of the mind, of this ego, of this “person” – because that is the ego, the “I,” the “person,” the sense of “someone” that you believe yourself to be – is that, carries many fears, and to escape these fears we are always bringing something into our lives that fills us, even if it is momentarily, provisionally, temporarily with some kind of pleasure.
So, this pleasure seems to gratify us, it seems to present us with peace, with joy, and we call this “peace” and “joy” “happiness.” People often say, “Happiness is a momentary thing” – that is their experience. Yes, the happiness of the “I,” which we confuse with pleasure and temporary gratification, with accomplishments, with fulfillments, we call that “happiness,” so “happiness” is something temporary.
Our psychological structure – listen to this – our mental structure is such that we easily settle into a pattern, a model, a way of feeling and thinking, and over time we get used to it and accept it as something very natural, so it turns out that we are neither aware or conscious of these fears because the way we take a life linked to this pursuit of pleasure. This is a cover over this condition of suffering caused by fear. We are not aware of the present fear, because we are, psychologically, so used to running away from looking at what is happening here and now and seeing it. We are so used to running away to some kind of temporary fulfillment of pleasure in something, in some level of satisfaction, that we call “happiness,” that we are not aware of the unhappiness present in this psychological condition of being “somebody,” of living in the ego, of living in this illusory identity.
So, another thing with regard to not confronting, not facing the existential void – which is the cause of pain, which is what is behind all these forms of present fears, present anxiety, apprehensions –, one of the typical ways of sustaining ourselves for thirty, forty, fifty, eighty years of life in this way, in this way, is because we are specialists, specialized in running away, we have different forms of psychological escapes. We have an arsenal of psychological escape resources, the human being lives in this escape from himself, in this confrontation with himself, with that “I.”
All the ego does is find in satisfactions, pleasures, and fulfillment a temporary relief from the pain it brings. So, the various psychological escapes that human beings have – human beings are fleeing to all kinds of fulfillment, temporary satisfaction –, some of them are destroying the organism itself, this body-mind, as in the case of the use of drugs and several other harmful practices to this body, to this mechanism, to this organism. This is something that is sustaining the illusion of this “I,” this illusory identity and accelerating this condition of the body to the grave.
So, there is no recognition of the Truth about who we are, because we are always running away from this existential void, this existential pain. In the ego we are always involved with something that makes us forget this need to look at ourselves, to observe ourselves, to become aware of what is happening here and now. Thus, this psychological condition is one of great neurosis, it is of great and profound dissatisfaction, so the state of mental insanity is present. There is a normality, which we call “naturalness,” to this insanity. This condition of insanity, we take it for something very natural, all this behavior in the ego for us is very natural.
When we go through some pain or some strong frustration, we soon replace what gave us frustration and pain for something else. When we go through a certain situation of frustration and existential pain, we soon put something in its place, so we feel a certain relief, a certain “peace,” a certain temporary “happiness” and, thus, we hide this pain from ourselves – we never clearly observe it, we never look at it. Having an approach of the Truth about who you are, here and now, the Reality of your Being when faced with the existential void, this existential pain, this sense of an “I” present within this experience of feeling and thinking, abandoning the illusion of a present identity, this is the end of fear, this is the end of this existential pain, this is the end of the “I,” this is the end of the ego, this is the end of the illusion of the sense of an identity present in this search for fulfillment and pleasure, sustaining pain, sustaining fear.
So, this psychological condition of existence and life without the understanding of the Truth about who we are is what is sustaining this internal condition that we are not aware of, we are not aware of because we don't look at it. And what is the reason for this pain? What is the reason for the existential void? Why do human beings feel that something is missing in their lives? As much as one may accomplish externally, having a good marriage, children, family, businesses, a successful entrepreneur, a well-recognized person publicly, perhaps with a certain degree of extraordinary public acceptance, as happens with those who are famous, however, there is this emptiness, there is this pain, there is this constant search for fulfillment in the external world, in the material world. This search to definitively drown this dissatisfaction that is born exactly from this pain – this pain is the “I,” the ego. And what is the reason for this? Why is this pain present? Simply because there is nothing real about the life of the ego, the life of the “I,” it is an illusory life, sustained by an illusion. The only Reality in Existence, in all Manifestation, is the Reality of God.
As long as you're seeing yourself as a person, seeing yourself as “someone” living inside the body, having to run your affairs and sustain your personal life, having control of everything, naturally scared of everything, within that sense of an individual identity – here I mean this illusion of individuality – as long as this is held, this sense of “I” is there. And here the illusion is what is guiding your life at that moment, the illusion of this separation between you and God. In India, they call it Dvaita; Dvaita is that condition of illusion, Dvaita means the “illusion of duality.” The condition, in the illusion of the ego identity, of this sense of an “I” separate from God, is Dvaita, the duality, the sense of “someone” separate from God, “someone” separate from Life, “someone” separate from Existence controlling, resolving, deciding, getting rid of, achieving, and struggling. As long as that remains, suffering remains. The ego sense is dissatisfaction, the ego sense is suffering, the ego sense is the illusion of an identity separate from Life, separate from the Whole, separate from God. This explains this existential void, this existential pain. This explains all the suffering present in this condition of egoic identity, of separate identity; explains all this insanity built by thought, giving this psychological formation to this “I.” And all this is the result of a millennial conditioning in humanity. What are we missing? Understanding the Truth about who we are.
The realization of the Truth of our Being, what some call the “Awakening of Consciousness” or “Spiritual Enlightenment.” If this is present, the sense of “I” is not. With all that this implies, this is the end of duality, that is Non-duality, Advaita, that is the presence of Truth that there is only One, without a second. There is only one Reality, that is the Reality of God. This is the end of fear, of pleasure as the ego knows, the end of this so-called “love” as the ego knows. Something entirely new is present, that Something new is the Reality of God, it is the Reality of your Divine Nature, of your Essential Nature, it is the Truth of your Being.
We are dedicated on this channel to exploring with you what a Real approach of this is, what it means to live this directly in this life here and now, for this you were born. There is nothing in this world that can replace that which is God’s Truth. So, it’s no longer this “my life,” “my story,” “my world,” “my business,” “my home,” “my family,” this whole notion of “I” and “mine” disappears when the Reality of your Being flourishes, the Reality of Consciousness, the Reality of this Divine Presence. So, that completeness, that sense of Divine Reality, is the end of that void, that’s the end of that pain, that’s the end of all that insanity, that’s the Beauty of Grace, that’s the Beauty of Truth.
This is our subject here on this channel. If this makes any sense to you, leave your “like” and subscribe to the channel. I want to invite you: we have online meetings, face-to-face meetings and also retreats where we are working on this with those who approach. If it makes sense, we have our WhatsApp group in the video description.
Let’s work this out together. OK?
Thanks for the meeting and see you soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment