Wilder, thanks but that lesson doesn’t cover this topic at all. Since I have gotten to know Bernie Prior I have lost all illusions about “the perfect divine”. This is more about… what is operating? (And the advaita answer “the stillness” or “That” is not taken for an answer! 
) When Yogani in the lesson mentions “In this earth life, everything is a mixture of light and shadow”, what is operating the shadow? Is it the Jungean shadow meant here - repressed thoughts and emotions - or is it just meant “up and down” in a more general sense? If Yogani would like to comment it would be great, if not - what does others think?
David,
I’ve granted you too much already in attempting to convey the point, and in doing so find further from the mark than ever.
Namaste,
~ Eric Putkonen
Eric, I suggest you just don’t approach it as if there is something for you to ‘grant’ us at all. Instead, think more in terms of giving us our due.
I’ve explained it up there. It’s solid.
yeah, eric, honestly, I suggest you just join in the fun, be human for once. I’m like you, I like pointing to nothing, but I’ve learned a thing or two about that, and one is acknowledging that… I’m not enlightened, and neither are most of the people I’ll deal with, and so always pointing to nothing doesn’t help others or myself. It’s just avoiding the something that’s going on here and now. I can always rely on nothing… but there’s nothing there to rely on, so might as well go into something haha.
Honestly, enlightenment… I don’t even speak of it in daily life, I mean, it comes up, but it comes up in my being human and other’s being human, in the normality of all life, in the search, in becoming the question instead of always pointing to nothing. You’re a good pointer, you’ve got a nice “zen facade” but… you hit one side, explore the other side for a little. Bring your nothing to something instead of just “nothing nothing nothing”. I almost said it weeks ago, but it sounds to me like you’re avoiding something by facing nothing. Nothing may seem perfect, but it’s found in all somethings. You know that, just look at the other side or something, nothing gets boring haha.
O.K.
Now we need to get somebody in here who is truly enlightened to set us all straight!
Who’s up for that?
(I just felt this thread needed a touch more humor. I hope I succeeded a little.)
If all seeking and becoming is over, then there was a time when it was not over, hence a change has occured at the point of realization; a change in perception.
emc,
I think the shadow will tend to fade away upon further enlightenment for a couple of reasons.
One is the outpouring love would make one more empathetic.
Two, an enlightened person would tend to watch his own behavior instead of getting involved in it, and this would tend to minimize destructive habits.
Having said this, what constitutes a personality is an interesting mixture of dark and light, so it is likely that some traits would hang on.
Also, I was about to start another topic on this: God sometimes makes things happen that have the exact outcome you wanted, but don’t necessarily make you look good. It’s like he couldn’t care less about your ego! This has happened several times to me lately.
So it’s possible that some stories that make a guru look bad may not be true, but may be serving some other purpose we don’t know about.
Nisargadatta could be one example of the shadow thing.
He continued to smoke, be loud and argumentative, and majorly intense. But the personality that continued didn’t stop the directness of Self coming through and touching others in helpful ways.
I don’t know for sure but I would guess those personality traits existed “before”, but without the full on direct expression of Satchitananda shining through.
So How about them Yankees
before, you have ideas about yourself
after, you no longer have ideas about yourself
all the while you remained yourself
the awareness shining through your eyes is the same awareness that everything rises from, is sustained by, and falls back to. for any “state” to be there has to be an awareness of that state. the states appear to change but the awareness is ever present, all pervasive, eternal, unchanging. before an infant learns language and is able to have ideas about himself (I am so and so, I am this body), the infant is aware. the good news is that the quality of the unborn child and the quality of the born child are the same–and you are ALREADY that. before your “birth” during your “life” and after your “death”–that prevails now.
“what you are looking for is what is looking”
“know yourself and you know the kingdom”
“be a light unto yourself”
“if you cant find the truth where you are where do you expect to find it?”
pay attention to what is paying attention ; )
there are no higher or lower or different states of consciousness in the truth
you either see it, or you dont. if you dont see it how can you talk about it? if you see it, then it doesnt matter of you talk about it or not
all above and all below are concepts
awareness is a concept
only pointers not the truth
Ah-ha! I KNEW the Yankees were enlightened!
And check it out, before enlightenment, play ball…after enlightenment, play ball.
Uh-huh! Now I get it!
Meg said:
… if it’s possible to hang onto negative patterns of behaviour once one has reached a level of enlightenment.
Hi Meg, that would again depend on what we mean with enlightenment. If we work with the term as to what extent it is realized in an individual’s conscious awareness, enlightenment is not a definite stage, “on” or “off”. Inner silence in itself, as Yogani has described, is an aspect of enlightenment, which gradually increases on our spiritual path. Many have testified here how this inner silence, even in minor amounts, has affected their outer approach to life and to others, and how others have found these changes to be positive.
Some habit patterns like the ones you described are based on attachments of the ego and lack of awareness about what is going on in one’s own psyche, as well as others. With enlightenment, at least as I see it, comes more and more freedom from attachments and profoundly heightened awareness of what is going on, both in ourselves and in others. If we add in “outpouring divine love”, which Yogani describes as a major aspect of enlightenment, I think it makes sense that many habits like these would likely be dropped spontaneously, probably gradually over time. There may of course be traces left. However, there may also be cases, like Balance described, with Nisargadatta, where he chose to keep some behaviors that maybe some objected to.
Even if we work with the concept that enlightenment is (mainly) about perception, that perception will have an effect on how a person chooses to express themselves toward others. What we do is usually a reflection of our perceptions, conscious or subconscious.
emc said:
… that the “shadow” in Jungean meaning - that is our suppressed thoughts and emotions that influence us from the unconscious, creating annoying behaviours - will still be left after enlightenment! Since we continue to create karma, and we continue to have feelings and thoughts (even if they are seen as objects) it is argued that we also continue to have blind spots!
Hi, emc, very interesting considerations! Yes, there will be blind spots, at least temporarily, but with the heightened awareness of enlightenment there will be greater ability to deal with them, as Etherfish also talks about. So, I would make it part of my definition of enlightenment, as the extent to which an individual chooses to deal with these blind spots and chooses to transcend them, as they appear. I would consider it quite unenlightened to let them sit there and cause stuff to happen that would be less than the highest ishta, or chosen ideal that that person can envision.
For example, the phenomenon of awakened gurus that speak about celibacy and claim they are celibate and then are discovered in scandals to have had a vivid hidden sexlife could perhaps be a result of a such shadow that is hanging on???
I would not call any individual involved in things like this enlightened. Deception is not part of enlightenment. Deception is connected to delusion and openness and truthfulness are connected to Reality. A case like this would also indicate that there are still attachments involved, for example wanting to appear in a certain way publicly that doesn’t reflect what is real.
It could be that when awake… there’s just awareness about what the shadow does, but it still does it! 
How about telling the shadow: “Now that I can see you, the light is on you and you are no more!”
Hi Balance
That’s It
Let’s Just Play Ball
Ah-ha! I KNEW the Yankees were enlightened!
And check it out, before enlightenment, play ball…after enlightenment, play ball.
Uh-huh! Now I get it!
Etherfish, I really enjoy your posts in this topic! And your latest post here weaver is also interesting. I’m taking a part of both here and mix them:
And Etherfish wrote:
Ether… Could your suggestion be the case in the example above? Could it stretch that far, so to speak? I’m more prone to believe that such guru’s indeed are not so well washed as they and others think. They must still have great pendulum swings between an awareness and mindyness.
“Heaven on
earth” with a lot of laughter inside and out that’s smthg perhaps lolz.
just take things easy and explore them yourself, there are no limits and no one’s experience is exactly the same as the other.
Free yourself, from yourself.
Namaste
Ether… Could your suggestion be the case in the example above? Could it stretch that far, so to speak? I’m more prone to believe that such guru’s indeed are not so well washed as they and others think. They must still have great pendulum swings between an awareness and mindyness.
Thanks emc i enjoy your posts also. I tend to think as you do also about gurus, but what I'm saying is we don't know for sure. Every story has two sides and it is quite common today for the news to be manipulated by incomplete journalism. The common man is too distracted with entertainment to investigate anything. He thinks if he hears something from a major news source, then it must be true. I recently had a former friend make false accusations about me, tell several other people about it, then cut off all communication. Those other people believed what they said without asking me about it. So I'm saying how do we know what the real story is? A powerful person is likely to be followed by a couple egotistical parasites with an agenda. If they are ignored, they could easily create negative stories, and be eager to talk to the news. Who knows how many times this has happened? a realized guru would probably just ignore it rather than have to go on the news and defend himself.
Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water
After enlightenment: Higher a good house keeper
Maybe the zen person should have just said:
Before enlightenment: Do laundry, pay cable bill
After enlightenment: Do laundry, pay cable bill
That way, people of the future would not be confused. Unless it’s both literal and symbolic, since people of the time would understand chopping wood and carrying water, and they knew people of the future are able to discern a concept from the latter. Although, the reverse is impossible without spiritual evolution.
Anyway, I’m under the suspicion that most sages were drunk when they said half the the things they did. And the above saying may have been employed by a harsh task master upon his students.
In other words, maybe there was a ruthless zen master who really despised chores, but understood that people needed to provide for themselves, since that’s what they did, before and after enlightenment, but when a person claimed enlightenment after chopping wood and carrying water and decided to dig a hole, the outraged master said to this student, “What on earth are you doing?!” And maybe the student replied, “I’m digging a ditch from the stream to the hut, so that we no longer have to carry water, Master” - Whack! The master hit him in the head with his cane. And so the student understood what was more important, which was to continue to chop wood and carry water.
Namaste:
VIL
Great point, Ether. It’s an act of ignorance to believe any kind of vicious or unkind rumors, simply because we have NO idea if they’re true. Even if the rumors can be substantiated, we don’t know what the motivation behind them was.
Regarding the shadow, some Jungian scholars write that in order to reach the higher states of consciousness, you have to become comfortable with larger portions of your shadow. In other words, to fly high, you have to dig deep. Shamans, for ex., have to go through rituals which bring them to some very dark places within themselves in order to attain their powers. Undoubtedly some of the great gurus, in their path toward the higher levels of awareness, had to do the same, and some of their ‘digging’ may have been perceived as unseemly for a ‘holy’ person. As for the swelling of ego that sometimes accompanies adoration, what better way to smash the ego than public disgrace? Ya just never know what’s going on behind the curtain.
This morning I ran across an interview with Joan Tollifson and thought it might be good to add to this discussion. I like Joan, she’s groovy:
“One of my main teachers, Nisargadatta Maharaj, smoked cigarettes and died of throat cancer. He sold cigarettes for a living. He ate meat. He lived in (or near) a red-light district in Bombay. He got angry, yelled at people, threw them out of his satsang. I never knew him in person, but this is what I hear. I think that’s part of what drew me to him. It was instantly clear that awakening did not mean a person had to resemble Ramana Maharshi or Thich Nhat Hanh. You did not have to be soft-spoken, beatific, gentle and vegetarian.
Another person who has been very important to me is Tony Parsons. He joked once that the people who were coming to him were giving up vegetarianism, putting on weight, and dying of heart failure. He thought that was just fine. He said, ‘You can’t not be in grace. Everything about you is totally absolutely perfectly appropriate. All the things you think are wrong with you are absolutely right.’ That was enormously liberating to hear. I realized how caught up I had been for such a long time in trying to perfect the character, trying to have some Big Bang awakening experience, trying to get rid of all Joan’s neurotic little habits, trying to turn into somebody better, trying to make something (other than this) happen.”
http://www.ods.nl/am1gos/am1gos7/index.html
I can’t get a link direct to the article, you will have to go to the link and click on Joan Tollifson at the top of the page.
Even the guru of Paramahamsa yogananda, had his positives and negatives as a teacher. In his book “Autobiography of a Yogi” yogananda mentions this about his guru, saying that he would have been a better teacher if he overcame his negatives.
-wilder