Satsang Monday

5/12/2022

"I hope you didn’t come here to learn anything new tonight because you'll be sorely disappointed to hear that nobody showed up to teach nothing to no one...the exit door is to the left, and trust me when I say it's now or NEVER!"

A woman in the audience, Mary, has stepped up to the microphone with tears in her eyes and begins to tell her tale of woe. After five minutes, he starts getting hot under the collar, fearing he might snap and blurt out what he's thinking. DON'T YOU GET IT YET!? YOU DON'T FUCKING EXIST!!  He's biting his tongue, trying to keep his cool, crafting a new self-obliterating play on words he hasn't already regurgitated ad nauseam

Before he can get it out, she chokes out the words, "My husband George doesn't take me seriously, it's like I don’t even exist, I don't know what to do!”

She's made it too easy! He's ready to deliver the final blow, but he needs to build suspense. Drawing from the the Playbook, insert drawn-out awkward silence, blink erratically while staring blankly ahead, sip water from the glass next to funeral parlor flowers. After several more minutes of exaggerated blinking and lobotomized stares, he's ready to execute.

"Okay Mary, imagine you’re George right now in a moment where he’s not taking you seriously. Really try to be inside his mind. What words are going through his head?"

She's closing her eyes, her breath becoming ragged as she breathes in deep and loud, holding it in her chest for several moments. On the out breath she whispers, "Mary…...is…...a…...joke."

"BINGO! The bad news is that George is right, Mary is a joke! She doesn't exist. But neither does George! You are both illusions in a nightmare that never existed. You're free, don't you see? Mary doesn't exist and nobody gives a shit!"

Snickers from the crowd...

She's taken aback at first, her face all scrunched up and eyebrows deeply furrowed while she whispers the riddle to herself "I....don't exist...and no one gives a shit?" Silence...and then BAM! Mary gets the cosmic joke and erupts into laughter.

"Thank you," she whispers, wiping tears from her eyes.

"So, who wants to go next?"

4 Comments

LucasK

5/15/2022 10:03:59 am

What does it even mean to say that someone "doesnt exist"/"is not real" - its such a ridicolous statement if you really think about it. Great post!

Jessica

5/15/2022 10:38:49 am

The thing is that it used to make so much sense to me, and for awhile, it seemed to save me. Self-inquiry has been something easy for me to do, in terms in terms of having an experience in which your sense of self seems to be simply a phantom. And that can be such a relief when you are suffering! But, I don't believe it to be the case anymore, because I experience that it is a real phenomenon, of course it's not solid and you can't touch it for example, but since when does that make something non-existent? You can't touch or see the wind, but it's pretty real and you can the effects of it. And you can feel the effects of the mind on the body all the time! It's true that the ego is not all of what we are, but it's not superfluous, it's that we are MORE than it. But try to get rid of it at your peril!

Lucas Koinegg

5/15/2022 10:57:16 am

Completely agree.

I think what often happens is that when spiritual teachers dont disidentify from ego but disassociate from ego, that this then creates a certain blindness. You can never evolve beyond ego, you can evolve beyond exclusive identification with ego. If you adopt that kind of tradition which bashes the ego, then you lose your ability to discern the contours of the individuated essence of the divine mind-heart which lives in you and as you.

Jessica Nathanson

5/18/2022 03:27:34 pm

Wow, your last reply really struck a chord. "you lose your ability to discern the contours of the individuated essence of the divine mind-heart which lives in you and as you." How beautifully said! Especially that you didn't stop at "in you" and added "as you." That's the divine immanence that burst my heart open, realizing that all of the things I'd been taught were concealing the divine, ARE the divine, revealing itself not just in all things but AS them. I hope for more people to soon look around and see the divine's infinite faces everywhere and then know that whatever they reject of themselves they are rejecting of the divine

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