Higher Education – 11.11.10

Student Question: As one grows in the many levels of love, one also comes to discover the many levels of the mind, which can be very strange, like visiting another planet or something. And though they may not be altogether unpleasant, they can still be very disconcerting because they are unfamiliar. How does one overcome that in meditation?

“If you meditate long enough, you’ll realize you’re not a person at all,” begins Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “You are pure consciousness that has no limits. And that is interconnected with all that is. And it’s only in that state that you can really tolerate all of these phenomena that otherwise make you think you’ve gone mad.” This world is a school, and if you go about learning in a natural way—through your meditation practice—then you will be given only what you are ready to handle, though you will be pushed to your limits. And you can’t truly begin this type of higher education until you have fully individuated from your family, your friends—and all of your identity markers. “And you have the absolute right and duty to do that. If you are truly honoring your parents, you do that by growing beyond them and then being able to help them to grow, not by staying a little child. And the deep secret of every ego is [that] in the unconscious everyone’s still a child, refusing to grow up.” Recorded on the evening on Thursday, November 11, 2010.