The meaning of your life is purification...
Michael A. Singer
We need to purify!
Just Another Experience; No Need To Make It Another Samskara
Readership is registering zero to one over the last few days and I am okay with that. I let that phenomena: the realization of a pretty much non existent readership, come all the way in and then watch as it goes. I am not clinging through attachment or grasping for more readership nor am I clinging to it through aversion by telling myself, "This is bad wrong, shouldn't be". I am just letting it in and then letting it go like it is meant to. It is an experience, just as writing this is...I have an opportunity to experience it and everything else in the world. How can any of it be "bad, wrong...shouldn't be", when it just is? By not attaching or pushing away the realization of no readership, it will not become another samskara. It will not act like a second arrow bumping into and aggravating the samskara that reverberates a sense of inadequacy in me.
The Purpose of the Body
I heard Michael A, Singer speak today in one of his weekly talks from The Temple of the Universe which he founded way back in the 60's or 70's when he began his own yogic "forest dwelling" experience.. He said something interesting about the meaning of the body and the meaning of Life. First of all, as someone who taught Anatomy and Physiology for years, I was very interested in what he had to say about the purpose of the body. It actually made sense. He said the major components of the human organism were the special senses. Everything else...every system, organ, piece of tissue or cell is simply there to keep the body going so it can sense. Why? Because, he explained, senses are what allow us to experience and we, as consciousness or these spiritual beings who inhabit these bodies for a period of time, are here to experience Life...all of it. As consciousness we observe whatever is before us and experience it through the body. The body offers us the means to pick up such information through our eyes, ears, nose, taste buds and our touch receptors. Experience begins with the sensory information we pick up which is later taken to the brain for interpretation. From there, at a level we cannot see or understand , it is absorbed, interpreted and understood by the mind.
Ripples on the surface of a clear and still lake.
It is said by yogis such as Patanjali, the mind's natural state is clear and as pure and undisturbed as a still lake. Our minds and therefore our life potential is peaceful. It is from the clear state of the mind that we add the beginning strands of knots or disturbance. Somewhere along, instead of just accepting all phenomenon as valuable experience material, we begin our judging of that sensory information as good, bad or ugly and this dictates how we experience Life. We begin to want and not want and go about seeking what we want(that which is interpreted as pleasant to the senses and pushing away what we don't want (that which is judged as unpleasant). Through the judging, thinking, believing, analyzing, and differentiating we come up with ego mind. It is from that mind state that we create the egoic little me. The egoic me is a mind created "thought" or "concept" that likes, dislikes and bases all its actions on that liking and disliking. Our consciousness, our beautiful, wise, non judgemental awareness gets directed to this "concept" of "me". We focus on it, and all its likes and dislikes. It absorbs all our attention and energy. We forget who we are beneath it (the lake). We "believe" in it as if it were real when it is nothing more than a "ripple"in our pure and perfect consciousness...a "mental modification" as Patanjali would refer to it as. This self is just one mental modification. (Satchidananda, page 7)
Purpose of Life: To Experience
Life unfolds in front of us and everything it offers, like all sensory material it is meant to come all the way into body and mind ( heart)...be experienced and then flow out. We as consciousness are here to observe it all but because of our liking and disliking we judged certain things as "bad, wrong, or shouldn't be" and pushed those things down into our store consciousness so we wouldn't have to deal with them. We close our hearts so we don't have to focus on these samskaras. The problem is not what the senses pick up, that is just experience making material, what we are here to simply experience. The problem is with our grasping at things we like and pushing away things we don't. We are misunderstanding the purpose of and misusing the body and mind to feed a concept...this idea of "me".
We are not fulfilling the purpose of Life when we do that...which is to simply experience...to let it all in and to let it all go. Our clinging creates ripples on the surface of the clear and still lake of consciousness. We focus on the ripples and we cannot see the lake beneath them. Everything is distorted and disturbed because of our samskaras. We are here to be the lake , the observer,,,not the ripple. Ripples are meant to come in, be experienced and then let go of.
Purify
We need to get rid of our ripples and our impressions so we can once again be pure like the lake. Our major life purpose, then, is to experience but because our samskaras are in the way of our experiencing...we need to make our life mission one of purification, of getting rid of these samskaras...so all can just flow through...o we can fulfill our Life purpose.
Hmm! Anyway, so much to say to that but I have been watching my grandson all day. What normally would have taken me an hour to write has literally taken eight hours. Another thing I need to let go of.
All is well
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe (January 19, 2023) Setting Your Polestar on Real Inner Growth. https://tou.org/talks/
Satchidananda (2011) The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Integral Yoga Publications
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