Sunday, July 4, 2010

computer doctor

i love it when people
need their computers fixed
by me
i'm glad there is at least
one thing in this world
that i can do to help
someone
-if i had lots of money
i'd love to give money away
but alas i do not
have lots of money
so i can't give money away

5 comments:

Guru Kurt said...

The ideal of helping others is actually egoic, although you haven't been exposed to any higher patterns in this world, not even the religions. This is treating them as objects and dualism, to presuppose you are the one who can bestow benediction to those who crave it. Most likely, the people whose computers you helped to fix played into this model, which is a type of exchange, offering profuse thanks for your munificence.

This is an ideal from dhyana, the spiritual state before samadhi. This type of thinking is what guides the “goodniks” as I have called them, that can be seen in many places trying to “help humanity.” I have many complaints against them. To list a few, I say their response is only a partial one, to a partial comprehension of the problems. Then also, these people remain unfit to dwell in a harmonious community.

The higher ideal springs from a more advanced interpretation of the Golden Rule than the world has yet imagined. You don't want to help them, which casts them as “needy” persons and you as the “benefactor.” Instead you want to cooperate with them. You appreciate their personalities and enjoy being in their presence, and alongside them you hope to build a sustainable and enjoyable society.

In this case, the persons approached you in a form of exploitation, “Give us that,” and you agreed to the exchange, perhaps conceiving that God would be so negligent that He'd appreciate work without warmth behind it. But you didn't form a loving community with those people, and you didn't make selfless work a general life-principle of yours.

I don't mean to be hard on you as an individual, I'm only saying the world has not approached goodness. Instead the humans remain pitted firmly against their Creator, defending the animal ways.

Sophia said...

i can see the truth in this
-that it is actually
a selfish motivation of my ego
to help someone because it
makes me feel good.

although i should say
that this most recent event
is me helping someone who
has helped me many times
before, and who i feel indebted
to, even though i'd have helped
him anyway just because he is
one of the most kind persons
i have ever met on this planet.
he really would give his last
shirt off his back to anyone who needs it.
i've never met anyone like that before.
it's my mom's boyfriend
of nine years by the way.

Guru Kurt said...

Your mind is still trapped in the world. If you feel good for doing good, this could be a sign of a living connection in your soul, between ecstatic feelings and righteous actions. My question is whether you can adopt this as a general life-principle, instead of following piecemeal applications which smack of duality or exchange.

Giving the shirt off one's back is of course a cliche, and perhaps this individual is the noblest one you have so far known. But if you had a serious spiritual experience, and wanted to tell him about it, how would he react? Will he listen and support you, even if this experience proves to you that you have authority beyond his awareness? Or will he just call you crazy?

There are many cautious ways to test this, if you do not already know the answer. But knowing him for a long time, or engaging in these exchanges of aid with him, do not ensure that he will accept you as a spiritual authority.

In the non-dual view, you never feel indebted to people. You are keen for God-service, but this does not resolve itself in exchange. You are like an artist who wants to paint a glorious painting with your life, and who is aware of the consequence if you stop painting.

Guru Kurt said...

Sophia,

I wanted to mention that it is highly interesting to me, that you identify feeling good about doing good as potentially egoic, because this is what the egos tell themselves. I experienced this during my time as a sadhu; it is the typical attitude at monasteries and ashrams. They tell themselves that too much work reveals pride on the material plane!

Andrew Cohen was offered a chance to help in the kitchen at the ashram where he attained nirvikalpa samadhi, that they called “service,” but he declined, stating that he had come to the ashram to meditate only.

There are higher states than Andrew has attained, where the soul is ruled by reason. In these higher states, the divine Atman draws a connection between objectively good actions, and feelings of ecstatic bliss. Such a person is extremely independent and self-motivated. They do good because it feels good, but because their mind is also objective, God also smiles on them, and calls their work God-service.

Andrew cannot yet enter these states, because unaware of the soul, as such, the ego (which he still possesses) finds the smiling face of a happy other to be a conundrum and a source of jealousy. Upon seeing another in an ecstatic state, a powerful soul can fly up to his or her own ecstatic state to accompany this other. The angels thus rejoice over one another’s happiness. But the ego does not have this option of entering ecstasy at any moment. Finding another that is happy, and finding no option of entering immediate ecstasy to accompany the joy of the other, the ego presumes it is a question of ownership and possession, that the other has something that he or she does not have. They begin to hate that person, who has somehow taken something that they wanted, and this is the root of much social discord, particularly as humans attempt to enter utopian arrangements.

So if you feel good about doing good and let it show, the egos attack you viciously. This teaching that doing good and feeling good are egoic, spread among the spiritual aspirants, is one form of this attack. This is the another part of the “interpersonal magic” that I crave, that two or more people should enter into unrelentingly positive energy cascades, that they rejoice to do good to one another, and don’t mind letting it show. If I show a positive state and you cut at me, the cascade stops. However, if I show a positive state and you bring another positive state to stand alongside me, the world is an ecstatic place.

Anyway, your ability to notice and mention this key variable, is suggestive that you may be an authority of some kind. Although you weren’t making a conscious teaching out of it, your mind selected one of the central regions of dispute between the higher and the lower souls. In my conceptions also, “doing good to one another” means mainly supplying the necessities of life for one another, gratis, which is something very alien to capitalism, that is the ego’s devil-baby alone. As the ego attempts to “do good,” very often it is presumptuous, that you analyze the person’s needs as if they are an object. Instead the Noble Society is one where people work joyfully to supply all the basic and obvious needs for one another, without presumption. The goal is to enable the others to experience their highest ecstatic states while in the body, which requires a solid foundation of physical security.

See, the ego really hates this. Easwaran used to try to think about selfless work, but all he could imagine was volunteerism, a little weekend work in the midst of a selfishly chosen career. The materialistic mind, paradoxically, does not face material realities very well. To actually make working for the physical well-being of another the goal of your labor, is thoroughly outside the ego’s concept-ground. Yet it is only natural, if you really perceive others as spirits-in-bodies, and desire their greatest ecstatic joy, as you’d hope they’d desire yours.

Guru Kurt said...

Sophia,

I wanted to mention that it is highly interesting to me, that you identify feeling good about doing good as potentially egoic, because this is what the egos tell themselves. I experienced this during my time as a sadhu; it is the typical attitude at monasteries and ashrams. They tell themselves that too much work reveals pride on the material plane!

Andrew Cohen was offered a chance to help in the kitchen at the ashram where he attained nirvikalpa samadhi, that they called “service,” but he declined, stating that he had come to the ashram to meditate only.

There are higher states than Andrew has attained, where the soul is ruled by reason. In these higher states, the divine Atman draws a connection between objectively good actions, and feelings of ecstatic bliss. Such a person is extremely independent and self-motivated. They do good because it feels good, but because their mind is also objective, God also smiles on them, and calls their work God-service.

Andrew cannot yet enter these states, because unaware of the soul, as such, the ego (which he still possesses) finds the smiling face of a happy other to be a conundrum and a source of jealousy. Upon seeing another in an ecstatic state, a powerful soul can fly up to his or her own ecstatic state to accompany this other. The angels thus rejoice over one another’s happiness. But the ego does not have this option of entering ecstasy at any moment. Finding another that is happy, and finding no option of entering immediate ecstasy to accompany the joy of the other, the ego presumes it is a question of ownership and possession, that the other has something that he or she does not have. They begin to hate that person, who has somehow taken something that they wanted, and this is the root of much social discord, particularly as humans attempt to enter utopian arrangements.

So if you feel good about doing good and let it show, the egos attack you viciously. This teaching that doing good and feeling good are egoic, spread among the spiritual aspirants, is one form of this attack. This is the another part of the “interpersonal magic” that I crave, that two or more people should enter into unrelentingly positive energy cascades, that they rejoice to do good to one another, and don’t mind letting it show. If I show a positive state and you cut at me, the cascade stops. However, if I show a positive state and you bring another positive state to stand alongside me, the world is an ecstatic place.