Nonduality"
Nonduality.com Home Page

Click here to go to the next issue

Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day

How to submit material to the Highlights

Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3232, Sunday, July 20, 2008, Editor: Mark 



Gangaji: Hi.

Questioner: Hi. I want to ask you about an experience that I have been having. I have moments where I experience a vastness that just doesn't have edges and it isn't really about me, and...

G: Aha, let's wait a moment. Let's not go too quickly. What a statement. To be able to make a statement like this is so beautiful. And to know, to recognize, that "it isn't really about me".

Q: My suffering usually comes in when I experience a personality that seems to have a lot of problems.

G: Personality means problems. It's a code word for problems. Even charming personalities.

Q: Well, what do I do about the personality?

G: What if you do nothing about the personality?

Q: It just goes on being miserable.

G: I believe that you have never done nothing about the personality. I believe that you have fought the personality, or you have changed the personality, or you have sworn you are never going to have that personality again, or you have tried on other personalities, or you have adapted the personality, or you have put on a façade for the personality, but to do nothing for the personality is to really meet what is driving the personality - which in the moment we were speaking was a huge fear. It is usually fear at some point for everybody, huge fear, divine fear. If you do nothing, this moment, about your personality; you don't fix it, you don't deny it, you don't go to sleep over it, you don't indulge it, you don't tell yourself some story about it, then what?

Q: Well then it is gone.

G: What a mystery!

Q: But what is that? That is what I need the help with.

G: When it is there, that is when you have to do nothing. When it is gone, do whatever you like. This is so subtle, but if it is said any more explicitly it becomes some kind of dogma. And that is not the point. Then we have the "do nothing's". "I am a nothing, are you?" Q: There is a poem about that. Something like, "I am a nothing, are you? But don't tell anybody, because they will form a club of nothings".

G: Yes. There is a secret hidden in your heart that knows itself to be no-thing at all. And we are at a point in time where somehow that can be spoken, actually spoken in public.

(From the sangha.) Yea!

G: Yea! It is a celebration. Then the habits of personality, which appear in time and disappear in time, are recognized to be, gnats. Gnats. You can still see the light through the gnats, but you don't take your shotgun out and try to wipe them out. It will not work. And if you try, then you are a shotgun person. Then what are we going to do with you? It is possible to just be still. In the stillness there is the meeting of what is underneath the personality and the desire to change the personality. Are you aware of that?

Q: Yes.

G: What is that?

Q: There is a revulsion, disgust-to that personality.

G: Yes, it is a kind of hatred, isn't it? Are you willing to just let your consciousness go into that, to really experience that all the way? Are you willing to experience it without telling a story about it? This is the challenge. We know the story of self-hatred, but instead, go into the pre-verbal self-hatred all the way, without fighting it. And, if you are fighting it, you stop the fighting and just let your consciousness sink deeper into that disgust.

Q: There is a belief that I am bad.

G: That is an insight that has bubbled up from the exploration. That is fine, but I am more interested in the direct experience of the revulsion itself. So let's say you are bad, that the belief is correct. You are bad and it is disgusting. What does that mean when met? Not fixed, but met. What are you experiencing?

Q: I'm not sure.

G: What do you experience, what do you feel, without telling a story? Just tell the truth right now, what is here?

Q: Just some blocking or something in the...

G: That is a theory.

Q: I don't know.

G: Is revulsion there? Earlier you knew immediately when it was there. You did not have to question it. Now you can generate it again. There is a strong attachment to this self-hatred as identity.

Q: Yes, yes.

G: The, "That is really the core of me." And, "That is what has to change for this limitless expansion that has nothing to do with me to be in my life permanently." I am saying that if you will just go into that very core and experience completely all the disgust, you will find that in the core of disgust there is limitless, perfect, expansion. Disgust transforms immediately into that. But it requires your willingness to meet it all the way. It is like kissing the frog. You know a frog is a disgusting thing to a young princess. But that is the requirement. Do you know that story? You are a princess type. And we are talking about the frog that lives inside, that is your perfect Beloved, but it looks so disgusting to you. So your wise old fairy godmother is telling you to go inside and kiss that frog. You got very close, you actually couldn't even find the frog for a moment, and then you began doing whatever it is you do, subconsciously or consciously, to generate frogness, reptileness, disgusting, slimy, ugliness. Perfect. That is what is waiting for your embrace. That is what has to be set free. The limitlessness, the truth of who you are, is already free. The frogness is appearing in you to be set free, and it is your kiss that sets it free. Not your rejection, not your clubbing it. You have tried that and it won't let you go, because it needs you to be set free. What is that, what are you feeling? It's right, it is good, it is beautiful.

Q: (Sobbing.) It is beautiful. Thank you.

G: It is good news, isn't it? Yes, such good news. It is not your beauty that needs to be set free; it is your ugliness that you keep hidden. That which cannot be exposed. Just a simple kiss, which is an acknowledgement, which is a meeting, which is, at the very least, a lack of pushing away. Just an, "Okay, you are here, so come in." Very good, thank you for coming up.

- Gangaji, excerpt from San Diego, California, Intensive - February 9, 2002 PM

top of page