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.

How to Die Like a Seeker

You will find tons of literature and advise on how to live, but very little information is available on the topic of dying or how to conduct one's own death. As you know, we do not have a choice about whether or not to die, we can only decide about how to act or be when the time of the death is near. So this article is a discussion on how to arrange situations and how to ready yourself for this important event. Its obviously not about how to kill yourself, just in case you thought so.

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.

Qualities of a Student

Alex Grey - Metamorphosis

After discussing the matter of teachers, its time to turn to the students. For an effective teacher-student interaction, student’s own abilities and qualities are of prime importance. If a student possesses the required qualities, he benefits from any teacher. We stand firmly on the formula of - fix yourself, do not try to fix the other. The other being a teacher in this case. It is of no use spending all your life trying to get an ideal teacher or running from one teacher to another, if you have not cultivated yourself as a good student.

So who is a "good" student? For our purposes, he is any seeker who has an immense desire for knowledge, happiness and freedom, firstly, and secondly, can learn from anything and anyone in as less time as possible. Thirdly, he also implements the learning practically, i.e. converts himself into a living example of the teachings.

Apart from these three essential qualities, there are many more such as high intelligence, open mindedness, curiosity, patience, attentiveness, logical and critical thinking etc. All these qualities were discussed in fine detail in previous blog articles, so please refer to past articles, if you haven't read them yet. There are ways to sharpen these tools, some of them, and some are innate. These qualities are desirable for anyone, not only for students in particular. But then everyone is a student anyway. Here, we are going to discuss these qualities and some more, especially as applicable to a student, a newbie student in particular. As a newbie student, I've already done most of the mistakes they do, so I will mostly share what not to do.

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.