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« Last post by Tony Crisp on December 27, 2023, 02:30:45 PM »
Thank you, Anna, you as wise as ever. I too have been on a long journey through various illnesses, and are recovering from an operation, but am perky as ever though lacking work energy.
You talk as though the indigenous spiritual practices are the only way, but the west has been there through the ages, much of it hidden by our cultural biases. I have explored the Western path, which now has also explored all the Eastern paths. I feel that each culture has a particular way that it has to face, and they are often very different to what a westerner understands or needs to meet.
I have trodden the path of psychedelics many times with great benefit. But as Carl Jung says {A great man who trod the Western path} Liberation is achieved by the practice of non-activity, say the Masters of the Secret Teachings.
What is, according to them, non-activity? Let us first of all notice that it has nothing in common with the quietism of certain Christian or oriental mystics. Ought one to believe that it consists in inertia and that the disciples of the Masters who honour it are exhorted to abstain from doing anything whatever? Certainly not. In the first place it is impossible for a living being to do nothing. To exist is, in itself, a kind of activity. The doctrine of non—action does not in any way aim at those actions which are habitual in life such as eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, reading, studying, etc. In contradistinction to the Taoist mystics who, in general, consider that the practice of non—activity requires complete isolation in a hermitage, the Masters of the Secret Teachings, although prone to appreciate the ‘joys of solitude’, do not consider them in any way indispensable. As for the practice of non-activity itself, they judge it as absolutely necessary for the production of the state of deliverance.
What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain? It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon.
In the Buddhist meditation called Vipassana, the process of self regulation is allowed to let the flow of consciousness present one's innate images, fears, hopes and imaginings about life and death, and to recognise them for what they are — images, fears, hopes and ideas. In this way the attachment and even pain we experienced in connection with them falls away in some degree. That is liberation.
My summary is, "LEARNING TO ALLOW THINGS TO HAPPEN." Especially the unknown or unexpected.