LOOKING AT MY LIFE THROUGH THE EYES OF SWAMI DAYANANDA
The following is a meditation about my looking at myself in the light of the Vedantic teaching as unfolded to me by Swami Dayananda
One of the most interesting things about Swami Dayananda was that in the light of the teaching he unfolded I was able to see my life in an entirely different light.
However, this Vedantic light had no respect for my vanity. Which I have plenty of if I was to be honest. You know my picture of myself that protects me from the all-pervasive sense of insecurity centred on myself and the continual sense of not being at home with myself because of the continual self-dissatisfaction that is active within me.
The problem with this universal problem of insecurity and self-dissatisfaction centred on myself is the compulsive desire to remedy it through gaining experiences. Any object that gives me the experience of being free from this psychological misery centred on myself I develop an inordinate passion for.
When I feel loved and approved of there is a delicious sense of ego satisfaction. Why is it so delicious? Easy. The experience of being approved of gives the experience of being free from conscious or unconscious self-disapproval and gives a sense of security. This passion for love and approval is what Swamiji calls a binding desire. Under the sway of binding desires, I am not free I am bound. Whether I like it or not I can’t help but pursue them because I think consciously or unconsciously that my wellbeing and security are at stake.
I am in trouble here as well. If happiness and security come from other people, they now have the power to MAKE ME HAPPY or MAKE me unhappy. Therefore, in the presence of other people I quite understandably feel fearful.
What about binding desire for physical possessions? I live in a culture that is aggressively acquisitive. I of course want to amount to something. There is a pressure in me to amount to something. Why? Easy because if I amount to something I can feel like a success. Feeling like a failure is a very painful psychological experience hence the compulsive pressure to “be a success”.
Again, I have the pressure of a binding desire determining what I see as important and what I strive for. Again, the pressure of the desire is in direct proportion to the intensity of the insecurity and self-dissatisfaction active in me. In other words, my problem is not the acquisitive desire but rather the psychological pain that determines the insistent pressure of this binding desire.
Now I get to the most tenacious binding desire of all. The desire to be important and better than others. The binding desire of love and approval is nothing compared to this pressure of my being outstanding and better than other people. The same goes for the binding desire for material possessions.
What is behind this desire of mine to be important. Easy again. The experience of “being nothing” is a very frightening experience. Having such an experience of myself is an intense form of self-dissatisfaction. I might not notice this fear but I can notice my many forms of showing myself in the best light. My subtle forms of bragging and self-promotion. They have to be subtle because this is a desire that I have to hide not only from others but especially from myself. Bloating my vanity is a delicious feeling but seeing that I am full of vanity is a very deflating experience so I have to pretend to myself that I am not vain. I have to lie to myself so I can look good in my own eyes.
According to the teaching the mother of all my fears is the fear of death. This is why the desire for power and status is so delicious. I might say I don’t fear death. But on the other hand, when I feel “put down” I can’t stand it. Being put down is the feeling less than the bigness I want to be.
Again, the fear of being nothing is a powerful dynamic behind the binding desire to be important, better than other people and outstanding in various ways. If I say that I don’t fear death but fear being put down I am lying to myself.
Do I like this light of Vedanta that shows up my pretentiousness and self-deceptions? Of course I don’t. My psychology according to the teaching is built around looking good in my own eyes and looking good in the eyes of others. This binding desire to look good in my own eyes and in the eyes of others makes me resist seeing the truth. I don’t want the truth to interfere with a good story. I don’t really want to see that I have the very problem that Vedanta resolves.
PSD says we won’t value the teaching unless we see that we have the disease that it is designed to cure. The word sincere is important here.
In the old days when people were doing a sculpture and they made a mistake they would fill up the crack with wax. Well the Latin meaning of sincere means without wax. All the cracks are exposed. This means to be sincere is to be without all the wax of self-deception and vanity. Vanity is derived from the Latin meaning empty. It is like a hot balloon it contains nothing.
Now I knew before I met PSD that I had strong compulsive desires. I could see at times at least to a degree the various forms of self-dishonesty and the compulsive drive of self-promotion. I also knew I was helpless before them and I hated myself for being like this. All my self-efforts to do resolve all the different ways the insecurity and self dissatisfaction centered on myself manifested themselves came to naught.
Of course they would because unless what Swami Dayananda called the basic fundamental problem of insecurity and self dissatisfaction was addressed the pressure of binding desires would be relentlessly present whether I liked them or not.
Swami Dayananda showed me how to look at my life in the right light. My problem was that looked at my life from the perspectives my upbringing and culture. I thought my problem was psychological. There were psychological processes that operated in me that were causing my problem and if I could get rid of them everything would be fine. I had studied the Freudian theory of ego defenses and could clearly see that I was stuck within something to which there seemed no solution.
Swami Dayananda liberated me from my well entrenched views on this whole subject. I said to him once “you don’t see pathology do you” and he replied ‘no there is only order”. This to me was dumbfounding. Well to cut a long story short let me make an analogy which will show clearly what he means.
Lets say I am locked up in a dark refrigerated room. I cant help but not be able to see and I will be cold and miserable. Given my relation to the sun things are cold and dark. Being cold and blind is a lawful consequence of my not being in the sunlight. My problem is not the darkness or the cold. These are just manifestations of being cut of from the sunlight.
What happens when I step out into the sunlight. I can see and I become warm. I have not successfully changed myself rather the action of the presence of the sun transforms me by providing the light in which I can see clearly and transforms my experience of myself by warming me up. In the presence of the sun the darkness and the cold and the shivering all go.
Now I come to the crux of Swamiji’s teaching. When we know what God is in the sense Swami Dayananda means it and are right now, right here AS WE ARE abiding in this vision we feel secure and at home with ourselves. We don’t make ourselves this way rather because we are resting in the lap of Isvarra we appreciate ourselves in an entirely different way. As a simple conscious being related to the whole. This is without any psychotherapeutics on our part or on the part of others. Swamiji would always say Isvarra is the best therapist.
Lets see how this understanding of God transforms me psychologically. When I am secure ( free of fear and chopping and changing states of being) and are at home with myself (released from the compulsion to be something different from what I am) I am freed relatively speaking from the basic problem of insecurity and self-dissatisfaction. This neutralizes the binding desires which arise out of the basic problem.
Of course now I have the practice of remaining in Isvarras lap in the face of the four categories of experience that are continually occurring. Things I like. Things better than what I like. Things less than what I like and things that are opposite to what I like. This remaining the same in the face of different experiences is called by Swamiji yoga.
This sameness is born out of the understanding of what PSD means by God. Living in the context of God means seeing every experience as the presence of God as a fact to be gracefully received and every experience as the presence of God as a duty to be done. This is the way of life that frees me from my relentless self absorption. PSD says that it is being rooted in God rather than being rooted in ourselves.
Am I good at living this vision. Not really. Does this upset me. No. Why? Because when Isvarra appears in the form of a clear perception that I have fallen away from the vision this allows me to shift back into what PSD calls living in Isvarras world. I am LEARNING to live IN God not trying to improve myself or prove myself .
I don’t have to fear seeing I am bragging for instance. If I am bragging this is the truth I need to be alive to. If I say I love God but refuse him in the form of an unflattering view of myself I don’t love God at all I am in fact caught up in loving myself.
The great thing about Isvarra is that I can come to him as I am. This makes me “as I am” available to the action of His grace. “What I am” undergoes a transformation without any thinking or action on my part when I come to him exactly as I am. The more willing I am to receive him into my life in the form he presents himself (everything that is happening as well as how I am at any one moment) the more relaxed I get. I don’t really know why this is but it is just how it works.
The presence of Isvarra appreciated is the transformative factor. This is because IN the appreciation of the presence of Isvarra I feel secure and relaxed. This being relaxed and secure is in the face of myself AS I AM is a wonderful thing. Accepting myself as I am AS the presence of Isvarra allows me to look at myself without resistance. I can look at my daily stupidities without self-condemnation and these stupidities recognized simply become an instruction to shift back into Isvarras lap.
Being perfect is not possible for me. I have tried that and failed. But BEING truthful is possible and with practice I get better and better at it. It is not a question of my trying to be saintly or pursuing some nice spiritual notion, but rather welcoming Isvarra into my life by being alive to facts no matter how unpleasant in my eyes those facts might be. When I am not being truthful to see I am not being truthful. When I am engaging in subtle forms of self-promotion to be willing to see this fact without resistance. When I am acting harshly or unkindly to see that I am doing this.
Seeing the truth is the grace of God. It is a gift. It sets us free.
Accepting myself as I am is only possible when I right here right now AS I AM abide in the vision that EVERYTHING I am looking at is the presence of God in the form of a functioning order which is PERFECTLY in keeping with the intelligent arrangement it is.
This is the vision my beloved Swamiji unfolded to me. When I take refuge in this vision right here right now AS I AM I am released from insecurity and self-dissatisfaction. No matter how many times I fall away from this vision, which I do continually the presence of God calls me back to itself by awakening me to the fact I have fallen away.
God talks to me by indicating to me: You are being unkind. You are bragging. You are caught in imagination. You are not doing what you need to do. You are caught up in a mood. In spite of my vanity he keeps talking to me and calling me back to Himself.
It is true I am not very constant but He is. I don’t have to depend on myself. But I can depend on him. And the more I depend on Him the more relaxed I get. And for an uptight guy like me this is good.
The rest I leave in His hands.
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