How To Drive Your Mind Through Live
Spiritual Musings featuring "cool dude Jesus" and other driving instructors
6 hrs ago Liked by Ma Mu
I share your interpretation of the Jesus story as described in the New Testament. His life was an example. He wasn’t about hierarchy or power. He was about humility (washing people’s feet) and generosity (fishes and loaves). Maybe the coolest dude ever?
just now Author
I prefer "cool dude" over the holier-than-holy "Son of God" any day. Also a rebel and an amazing mystic. As more I think about it who Jesus was as more I get pissed off with the traditional institutionalized Christians that hijacked him and twisted his message into an unrecognizable confusing world salad.
But it seems more and more people who feel drawn to Jesus, are distinguishing now between Jesus and the churches. Two completely different things.
Hopefully, they will get more sceptical about what in the Bible is authentic, makes spiritual sense and aligns with other great mystics.
I am specifically aiming at the very problematic "the only way to God is through Jesus" doctrine which defined the Christian religion like nothing else. This statement is at the very core of all Christian wars, torture and countless atrocities committed against "non-believers" in the name of Jesus.
In modern terms: They weaponized Jesus for political power gains. Everyone who reads up on other mystics will realize that no true mystic would ever say that the only way to God is through them.
Of course, the Muslims do the same. The Jewish are even more problematic in their arrogant dogma that "they are God’s chosen peoples". This is probably the ultimate weaponizing of spirituality for political power purposes. The ultimate collective ego trip.
Only if humanity can let go of these extremely hierarchical and tribal spiritual concepts can we ever hope for more peace among us.
Many people recognized the weaponizing of spirituality and the hypocrisy of the big religions over the past two or three centuries.
Hence, millions turned their back on the established religions worldwide. Many thought that realism and the scientific, democratic, philosophical approach could replace spirituality. However, it led to an ethical crisis in the form of arrogant transhumanism.
A materialistic worldview leads to soul-destroying nihilism. If we believe that all we are is this body-mind, we are reduced to animals - be born, replicate and die. We are then also destined to live according to the laws of the animal world: Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed. A world where power is the only currency. A transhuman totalitarian world.
People slowly recognize this. But where from here?
Millions feel lost between the old corrupted religions and the soulless transhuman nihilistic new world order approaching rapidly. And they desperately look for meaning again.
A new surge in spirituality is evident. Attempts to weaponize that spiritual need are evident. That’s when left, centre and right ideologies thrive. That’s when wokeness thrives. They are all misguided substitutes in the search for true meaning.
People feel safer if they feel they belong to some group, any group. It is a deep survival instinct. Deep personal thoughts about these things are exhausting. It is easier to subscribe to an ideology that provides general guidelines on what to think and how to behave. This will only satisfy for a limited time.
New false religions will try to capitalize on that - from ultra-conservative to new age.
How do we navigate all this?
I suggest reading up on mystics. A mystic is a person who found God. Wouldn’t that be the best people to consult about how it is done? Then I would compare what they said. If we find continuity in their teachings across millennia and cultures, it would indicate that they just didn’t make it all up out of thin air.
Here is an example: I was introduced to Nisargadatta Maharaj some ten years ago and it attracted me. He is a deceased Indian mystic who died in the 1980ties. The 10th child of a poor peasant family he was poor and lived in a humble small apartment. Uneducated he still found God, greatly assisted by a Guru he met in his forties. His charisma and lucidity were so impressive, that he soon became a magnet to spiritual seekers from all over the world. Despite being offered generous big housing by devoted followers, he refused and taught from his small place until his death. He repeatedly sent disciples away because they got attached to him and not his teachings. They looked at the finger and not at what it was pointing at. He wouldn’t allow that.
Then I discovered Mooji, a Jamaican man with a Christian background who grew up in England and who is still alive. Also poor and living on the streets for a while, he lives in a big, beautiful Ashram in Portugal now, financed by someone else. His teaching style, character, attitude and presentation are quite different from Nisargadatta's, but he pretty much says the same things.
Then I discovered Adyashanti, an American living in California. He used to be an elite cyclist aiming for the Olympic Games. He has a Buddhist background. After a profound spiritual awakening, he became a non-dual teacher. Once again, different backgrounds, different styles, different attitudes, different words and stories - but the same core message and teaching as the previous two.
Then there is Eckhard Tolle, a German non-dual teacher in America and hugely endorsed and promoted by Oprah, of all people. (Definitely the most useful thing she ever did for humanity). A deeply humble and simple man with a vastly different character and attitude than the three above. And yet, the same core message.
Rupert Spira is an English pottery artist turned non-dual teacher with almost 500.000 followers on YouTube now. He couldn’t be more English if he tried. Lovely chap. I briefly listened to him two years ago but it didn’t click then. I just rediscovered him and this time it clicked big time. He is a brilliant teacher with the best analogies I heard so far to explain the unexplainable. Within weeks, so many things fell into place in my understanding of non-duality.
And lastly, Rupert Spira read from a spiritual book of a Persian Muslim man (I forgot his name) from the 13th century in one of his teachings. This man, from a completely different culture, faith and background discovered the same eternal truth about God as all the previous people mentioned. Once again, the same message - different delivery. And these are just the teachers I came across - there are hundreds if not thousands out there.
Many people can’t see beyond the appearance or even the words of spiritual teachers and miss their profound teachings because of that.
What the vast majority of people consider “spiritual” is highly conditioned by the dominating big religions. It is full of fictitious spiritual heroes, fantastic supernatural stories, dramatic events and a lot of pomp and glory. Therefore, when simple human beings come along to teach spirituality, those conditioned people judge them straight away as non-spiritual and charlatans. They don’t fit the religious mould.
Those few that give them a chance, are then taken aback by their message which doesn’t fit their religious conditioning either.
It requires them to think deeply and work on themselves. Not just simply “belief”. That’s too hard for many. But they are between a rock and a hard place. Something feels off with the big religions. That’s why they wandered off in the first place.
But eventually, when they are ready the right teacher will appear as a stepping stone. But even mystics can only teach their way, the way that worked for them. It is very important - and true mystics will remind us constantly - that their way can’t be copied.
That’s why all organized religions consistently fail to take people to enlightenment. (The corrupted big religions have all but abandoned the idea of self-realization or enlightenment - which should tell you everything you need to know)
Every path to enlightenment is a unique and individual path and on the last part of the journey - as true mystics will also remind us - the mystic teacher also has to be dropped.
This is hard work and only people that dropped the illusion that lasting peace and happiness can ever be found in this dualistic world of appearances will be motivated to do that work.
But it is worth it. Nothing is more fitting here than the proverb “The path is the goal.” As soon we are convinced we are on the right path, we have a strong desire to start walking on it and look forward to the journey. That’s when spirituality becomes very easy and looks after itself. If spirituality feels burdening, suffering, heavy, a chore or an obligation, we are not on the path. This is true for traditional belief-based religious practice through to the wildest esoteric endeavours. It should feel settling, content, joyful, unlaboured and not very intellectual.
Initially, the carrot of enlightenment and the promises of uncaused permanent inner peace and happiness are used like carrots to motivate the ego to get going. Every spiritual path starts as an ego trip to get enlightened. But very smart proper spiritual teachings (as opposed to the mind-numbing opiate-like illusions of religious dead rituals) were developed and refined over millennia and know how to deal with the ego and use it rather than fight it.
And if we stay earnest and motivated and make our spiritual path our number-one priority, ever so slowly and subtly, the path itself turns into the goal and the ego dissolves itself as the wooden stick that stirs a fire will also be consumed by it.
An ever-increasing calmness and quiet happy contentedness will slowly replace the frantic superficial ever-changing fear-and-desire-based ways of our lives. A mind-based egoic way of living is slowly replaced with a soul-based unassailable deeply centred happy still contentedness.
That is the royal path of spiritual work through introspection and knowing ourselves, promoted by all true mystics, including Jesus. (The Kingdom of Heaven is within you). In non-duality, it is also called the “Direct Path”.
What is meant by “going within you” or “knowing yourself”? It is not mystical or complicated at all. It is almost scientific. Nisargadatta explains:
What I teach is the ancient and simple way of liberation through understanding. Understand your own mind and its hold on you will snap. The mind misunderstands, misunderstanding is its very nature.
Then there is the devotional path - absolute faith and dissolving your ego in an imagined deity. Like the direct path, it has many traps. Many people who rely for their happiness on faith, do pretty well as long things go reasonably well until they wail: “Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?”
One last observation everyone can replicate in their own experience: Where is the world if you are not there?
In other words, isn’t being conscious that creates everything? More precisely, isn’t it yourself being conscious that creates your private world with all your Gods and symbols and beliefs? And this repeats itself every morning when you wake up. It is like you switch on the TV of your perceptions and imaginations. All this is mental and unreal if you closely examine it.
The only real thing is your beingness that is always present and never comes and goes. You “are” when in deep sleep. Not as a cloud of thoughts, beliefs, sensations and so on that come and go, depending on your mind and body. No conscious mind is needed to exist. It is only beingness that matters.
Or imagine yourself just being born. Close your eyes and really imagine it. You haven’t learned one thing yet. You have no name. You know no gender. You belong to no family, race or nation. You know no mother or father. You are still One with all there is. Even the division between you and “a world” hasn’t been taught to you yet. You just are. You are home.
Is there anything more attractive and beautiful than a newborn baby? Why is that? Because a baby just “Is”. That’s home and we all know it from our own very experience. We have just forgotten it.
A mystic has returned home. That’s why mystics are so attractive and beautiful to those who recognize them. A mystic has fully realized how the mind created all this separation when in reality there is none. A mystic is one again with existence.
An analogy comes to mind. It is the difference between driving a car or the car driving us. A not-understood mind is like a car driving us. Just imagine that.
You go to sleep and you wake up in a car that is driving you. You never learned how to steer the car, break it, stop it, turn it off and get out. No control and at the mercy of this car that goes wherever it wants. That is our unchecked, not-understood free-roaming mind in action. It drives us through life.
We think we have some control - and some do. Some learned to break when they were about to hit a wall. But many hit the wall.
Some learn to steer to the right or left at times. Some even manage to get humming along on a motorway for some time - until another car - with a very bad driver - hits us from behind. That’s how random and unpredictable life and minds are.
Spirituality is all about learning how to drive your out-of-control mind properly through life and, eventually, to leave the car and watch it driving around with a skilled body-mind doing its best to not crash it. Now the driving lessons with various mystics pay off.
I can only imagine how amusing and entertaining this will all get.
Yes love this continues on wonderfully from previous post, I have found,
Divine Truth cannot be organized or compiled in a “written word by God.” Scriptures can serve as a guide to an extent, but distortions and dogma are inevitable, especially if one is very identified with a certain teaching and Faith. Whenever there is an attempt to organize it, we only succeed in manipulating through a grain of Truth and deceive to seek salvation outside ourselves, like the Jesus saviour program – the most cunning traps of all distorted spiritual truths.
We look for god in letters in a book but never sincerely go deep within ourselves.
Below is from Paul Brunton, The Inner Reality
Then he will see that God is to be found not in any particular form but in all forms, not in any particular place, but everywhere, not through any single vehicle, faith, cult, religion, building, or man, but in the Infinite. You will never find God anywhere else but in those conditions; the rest is merely your idea of God, your mental picture. These are purely intellectual things, they are not God or Reality. So if man wishes to awaken, if he wants to understand himself, he must face the fact that the real avenue to contact with God is not outside himself but within, directly inside. He must find his own way to God through and within himself. That is, if he seeks God there is no other way, but if he is looking for ideas, concepts, or mental images, then he can take what orthodox religions and cults offer him.
Spirituality is driven by curiosity, whereas religion is driven by certainty. Spirituality is flexible and cosmic, whereas religion is rigid and dogmatic. Spirituality is liberating (courage-based), whereas religion is authoritative (fear-based).
I'd not heard of Paul Brunton til now, either. Then again, I'd not heard of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaja til you mentioned him in an earlier post. I bought the book and it's edged me closer to where I know I should be.
As an aside, I am living in Wolverhampton which is in what's know as the Black Country because of its Industrial Revolution ties. The locals are known as "yam yams" because of a feature of the dialect is the verb to be is - I am, we am, and you am; pronounced yam, yam, yam.
So I must get a t-shirt printed with....."YAM THAT" on it!
Intriguingly, the book is black and old gold, Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club's colours.
Good article.
Regards.