Secrets of Making Money

Goddess of wealth, Laxmi. The most worshiped deity in modern India

A seeker is exactly like any other ordinary person except for the presence of a bit of awareness and knowledge, and must fulfill his worldly needs just like others. A big difference is that the goals of a seeker are completely different and hence worldly matters take a low priority. Anyhow, one must act in the world in order to support a worldly existence, there is no escape from this.

Even though it is boring and seems like a waste of time, the issue of survival is important. We are here for something, and hence must manage it somehow. This article contains some tips on this matter, that are based on my own experiences. Note that this is written for seekers only, and will mostly fail for others. The lifestyle described below can be a disaster for a worldly person.

Spiritual Lifestyle and Stages of Awareness

By Min Wae Aung

This article is a short summary of a talk given during my personal meeting with a group. Its probably not exactly what I said in those 2 hours or so, but is essentially that, as far as I can recall. The group is a newly formed meetup.com group.

Its my own perspective on what being spiritual means and how does such a lifestyle look like. Then we go into deeper stuff - stages of awareness.

The Flip !

When you start progressing on the path of knowledge, you will notice a strange pattern - your old beliefs will be most of the time an exact opposite of new knowledge. This is quite amusing and enlightening. Everything you "knew" gets reversed gradually. I call this - the flip !

As you progress, your views go on flipping and soon the entire picture changes, the foreground becomes the background, and the background jumps forward. This is the figure-ground reversal that you will notice. We will take up some examples to demonstrate this. What's the point? Well, besides fun, it can be a good indicator of your progress. More things you flipped, more you have progressed. What's your score?

Obstacles and Their Cures: Part-1

Remover of obstacles. We invoke him first before we start on a path.

We have studied in much detail what can go wrong when you start on a path or even before that. All those pitfalls and traps that trap you even before you start your journey were discussed. To summarize, these are –

• Absence of a path itself 
• Afflictions of the Mind 
• Afflictions of the Ego 
• Solidified beliefs and conditioning 
• Physical limitations of the body 
• Absence of a good teacher 
• Lack of certain qualities in the student 
• Resistance, lack of effort or lost opportunities 

If you expand this list it can fill up pages. Somewhat disheartening I must say, but then I've said many times, this path is not for weaklings. It is not like walking on a carpet showered with petals. Deeper the ignorance, more are the obstacles. The good news is - once you start jumping past hurdles, it becomes easier and easier to overcome them. You pick up speed exponentially and if you stick to it, it shouldn’t take a very long time. There is a learning curve of sorts that makes everything seem impossible at first, there is an entry barrier for people and only those who are seeker material are allowed past it. Once you get past the hurdles, and fall into a few pits, you start getting the knack of it all, you learn the art of not falling and of picking up yourself as soon as you fall.

Resistance, Effort and Opportunity: Part-2

In the last article we saw how resistance slows a seeker down on his path. Lack of effort and lost opportunities are other reasons that can slow one down. Are these three the only hurdles? Of course not, but one can classify most of the hurdles under these three broad terms conveniently. I’m not saying that there cannot be other strange forms of hurdles (like Karmic hurdles, or evil entities, or jealous deities), but its beyond my pay grade to write about them, I can write about things I directly know of or at least somewhat sure of. In the end, its all Mind, you see, and we can use Mind itself (its more favourable parts) to defeat Mind.

Effort

The dilemma of effort is a familiar one for most of the seekers. Do I reach there by enough effort or can I achieve it effortlessly? The answer usually given is familiar one too, which is – It is not possible to reach there by effort, but one must still make some effort.

Resistance, Effort and Opportunity: Part-1

A path is rarely seen with a red carpet laid on it, padded with rose petals, mostly, especially for new travellers, it is full of thorns, pits and steep climbs. It may sound discouraging and ironical since this blog is about encouraging people for taking up a path. But then, instead of showing a rosy picture its better to share something useful which provides you instant solutions in case you fall, and something which warns you beforehand, to prevent the fall. Following is a brief write up of things I found that may cause trouble and some solutions that I found useful.

The Art of Introspection

The best teacher is the Self, your own essence. Even when you have the luxury of a great master teaching you or an amazing book that answers all the questions, you will need the Self because without it nothing can be known. Ultimately, one needs to get the direct experience pointed towards by the teachings, and the Self is the ultimate receiver of those experiences. In the end, the teachers and books are merely forms of Self, just appearances.

Gurulogy

It seems there is a natural evolution from the depths of ignorance towards knowing. This is often called Ripening. I do not really know why it happens, but I can sense it faintly. It also seems that the human experience is an important milestone on this path of evolution, at least that’s what is seen in this world. From time to time some humans realize their true nature and emerge out of this deep ocean of ignorance like a bubble. This happens irrespective of place, race, gender or time. It also appears that this process is speeding up, but it can be an illusion because human population is growing rapidly, there are more people and so more wise people. Some people out of these few come out in open and try to tell others what they have realized. We call such a person a teacher or a Guru.

The literal meaning of the word Guru is "remover of darkness", it also means great, mighty or giant. The former meaning is implied when its about teaching. Darkness implies ignorance. Note that it is not "bringer of light" or something like that because as we know, the light is always there. It is occluded by ignorance. So such a person does nothing but shows that you are in a dark pit and often suggests a way out. A teacher does not and cannot pull an ignorant out of the pit, he merely hints at it, maybe gives a helping hand. The student pulls himself out. The teacher acts as a trigger.

Acting without actions - Service

We have discussed throughout this blog, some preventive measures one can take to remain in a state of happiness. These mostly involve preventing actions arising out of Egoic tendencies, mental afflictions and ignorance. Usually nothing else needs to be done in order to remain happy and free. However habits die hard. People continue to behave in old ways that cause bondage and suffering, sometimes even after made fully aware of various pitfalls. Many seekers also get entangled in the web of actions simply because of habit or partial knowledge.

It is almost impossible to not to act once you are in a body which lives in a world. Non-action would simply mean an end of human experience. In other words - death. One must act if one desires to continue in a body till its natural end. Great masters have recommended some tricks to achieve a smooth and happy ride in a body. These are - Service, Forgiveness and Donation .These can also be used as corrective measures, if one fails to choose correctly and unknowingly invites suffering. We will discuss those now.

Happiness and Freedom

Acting in the World 

Having checked what the world is about we are now in a position of asking an important question. Given this world, and a body made up of worldly stuff, what is the optimal way to act here?  In simpler terms, how should one live his life in the best possible way? The short version of the answer is - actions must be such that they lead to more and more happiness and freedom. The long version is the following article. As long as there is a Mind, there will be worlds and bodies, and actions will follow. Our actions determine the quality of our worldly experience. So it is imperative to learn how to act here. Needless to say that our actions must be aligned to our goals, namely - happiness and freedom.

Why happiness and freedom? 

I'm glad you asked. Never accept blindly whatever they feed you. Question the teachings and then question the questions. What else you'd want, if not happiness and freedom? If you dig a bit here, you'd find that every human being or the Self having human experiences wants nothing but happiness and freedom. This is a necessity, not a choice. In other words, whatever you do, you do it for happiness and freedom. You are incapable of doing anything else. Lets examine more.

Bodies and their Drivers

By H R Giger

We talked about this weird thing called body that possesses us and we are seemingly incapable of controlling it much. However we do perceive ourselves as drivers of this biomechanical biodegradable monkey suit. It seems, that we can command it and it takes us wherever we want. In return it demands fuel and rest. It comes with an auto pilot installed - the Ego, which takes care of most of the driving tasks. Its so efficient that people are hardly aware of it and think they are doing all the driving, because it fools us into thinking we are the Ego. The huge colony of cells takes care of most of its functions from growth, repair and fighting invasion of other colonies of cells. The auto pilot ensures preservation, defence and copying of it. The higher mental functions provide it an overall direction. The journey of a body is presented to the Self in its full glory and with all the bells and whistles in Technicolor 3D. The Self merely witnesses this experience, that we call a human experience.

The Secret Life of the Self

By Android Jones

This is the secret of spiritual life: to think that I am the Atman and not the body, and that the whole of this universe with all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is but as a series of paintings - scenes on a canvas - of which I am the witness.
-Swami Vivekananda

We have seen in the previous article that the Self arises as a result of the process of Experiencing that is taking place in the Presence. Experiencing is just modulations of Presence, so the Self is nothing but one such modulation. In essence, Self is Presence, like everything else is…. although its much more pure form of Presence compared to other forms. One can say that it’s just one step away from the Presence.


Self can be experienced, just as anything else can be. The act of experiencing the Self is truly wonderful. It’s the knower knowing itself. A blissful feeling. Presence likes to do it. This experience is also called self-awareness or self-consciousness. Nowadays, it’s a fashion to call it simply as Consciousness. It literally means to know together. The problem with this word is that its being used as a noun, verb and adjective all in one! This causes confusion. As a noun, its same as the Self (the experiencer or the knower). As a verb it’s the act of experiencing (as in, to be conscious of a thing), and as an adjective, it’s a quality that something has. Its also called the Witness consciousness or simply, the witness.