We have to accept what we bring to the table in our lives. We have to accept that we love the vibrations we perpetuate. We have to accept that we misdirect our attention. We have to accept that we remain addicted to the vibrations that make up our “love machine”, and hold on to them for dear life.
Attention is the fuel. We maintain our addiction with our attention, our will. But attention is also the cure—if our attention is in the Heart. Depending on where it is, our attention will feed the addiction or starve it. Boring into the Heart burns away our attachment to twisted love.
The mind is not self-illuminative. Sometimes it is a subject and sometimes it is an object. When the mind is a subject, when the voices within our mind appear to be who we are, our attention fuels our love machine. The vibration we are attached to at any given moment is our addiction; we believe it is who we are, and even life itself. This wrong understanding leads us to cling for dear life to a false identity.
When the mind is an object, we are able to see our vibrations for what they are, accept them, and work to give them no attention. We then can disentangle from them and redirect our attention back toward and into the Heart. We are actually withdrawing our attention back Home. Once we have accomplished this, our attention is in the Heart and from the Heart. Our will is directed by the Heart. We are then realigned, and we function from the Heart.
“Whatsoever makes the wavering and unsteady mind wander away let him restrain and bring it back to the control of the Self alone” Bhagavadgītā VI.26 (Radhakrishnan)
“This alternative is in short the direction of the thoughts and energies of the mind towards God. Direction, rather than repression, is the method… for achieving self-control.” (Swami Prabhavananda, The Spiritual Heritage of India,122).
People ask, “When did things go wrong?” The answer is, “When they were going right”. When things are “fine” is when we lose our vigilance, forget, and turn our attention back to our shrunken self.
We have to keep letting go of our wrong focus and redirect our attention into the Heart. When we are attached to our vibration, cannot redirect our attention, and in truth do not want to redirect our attention though we know we should, here is how we can do just that.
Cease all outside action. Stop reacting to whatever is going on outside. When the outside no longer supports your reaction, you will not be able to make your vibration “reasonable”.
Strap yourself in a chair and go for the ride. In other words, find a place where you will have no distractions. At the very least, allow yourself no distractions.
Now be with whatever vibration you have and do not waver in your attention. Sit with this internal experience; give yourself permission and have the courage to be with it. Let yourself have what you have always wanted and resisted. Hear your story; do not be in your story.
Accept that your life, like everyone’s, is based on wrong understanding. Practice is not the annihilation of the small self, it is the annihilation of our wrong understanding. Listen to all the rationalizations and know them for what they are. “I can’t accept I did this”. “I am not a bad person”. “I am a good person”. Accept what you have. Then stop listening, let go, and redirect into the Heart.
Still the vibration not with words, because words will not still your vibrations. Words only mask our vibrations. Will stills our vibrations. Attention is how we shine our will. When we focus our attention on our vibrations themselves, the light of our consciousness burns up the vibrations. We have faced our addiction with the only weapon that works, our will.
Stop holding onto the world, either by grabbing it or by rejecting it. Renunciation is not rejection. Rejection is repulsion, which is a form of attachment. By rejecting all we say we want to get rid of, we hold on to it. If you do not let go, the vibration and its expression only get worse. You are then attached to suffering. You have to know what you are surrendering; it is suffering and misery. True renunciation is letting go of what is not Real and surrendering to the Real.
We must not let the small self regain control after we have let it go. In order to regain that control we will have to trash the person who loves and helps us. Practice ruins our miserable lives. We are then no longer separate or special; instead, we become human.
So give up now before your misery gets bigger. We have to be really strong to let go of our ego. Discipline on all levels strengthens on all levels. We have to face what we do not want to face and accept it. Let it go. Then, using your will, redirect your attention to the Heart and to God.
Once we change, we have to reap what we have previously sown; then we can and will find ourselves saying “I’m sorry” a million times. We see what we did, learn from our past, and are able to accept, let go, and redirect our attention to now.
We change the future by being conscious in the present. As Kālidāsa wrote in the Kumārasaṃbhava, “They whose minds are not disturbed when the sources of disturbance are present, are truly brave” (1.59, translation Radhakrishnan).
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