This assignment page includes:

• Assignment Details ▸
• Your Response ▸
• Early Feedback ▸

Highlighted sections will be covered in more detail in our next summary review.

ICONS — 🔎 QUESTIONS 💡 INSIGHTS 📓 SOURCE TEXT

Assignment Details ¶

= PATH ASSIGNMENT #N002 =

• What: Read Bhagavad-Gita 6.6-10
• Where: PDF ⇓; and at: https://ananda.icu/trans/bg/06/06-10
• When: 2024-10-27 ⇄ Today
• Why: Continues several topics from yesterday. Touches on equanimity and also the "Omni-Soul" aka. "God".
• How: Just read it, PDF or online, they're the same.
• Notes: As you've noticed yesterday, the bigger part of the assignment was the reflection and feedback. That is exactly how it should be. You eat (quickly) a small portion of dense nutrients. Then you take your time digesting it. Eating is not what gives you strength. When you digest and metabolize the meal, there will be strength.

Your Response ¶

The context of this readings starts by understanding the relationship of the self and the mind. It seems to me that it could be compatible to a horse and buggy. The buggy is directed by a horse and can be fantastic machine for travel only if the horse is tamed and controlled. If the horse is traveling down the road and every moment turning its head to look at other pastures or flies or horses, the direction of both the horse and buggy will shift from its true path.

This relationship between the mind and the self plays out internally and externally. If the direction of my mind is based on self centered desires that leads to internal conflict. 💡 This would imply that the guiding self is not truly pristine or cleaned well enough to guide my mind correctly. This would also lead to the circumstances outside of my self to be less favorable as I would be acting out of self interest therefor against the truth of union and against the flow of how things should be.

The self must detach from the circumstance of everyday life. It seems that once there is a mastery of the higher self than one can almost sit in the seat of "supreme" consciousness. The ultimate goal is to shatter the veil around our consciousness and expand our perspective into the all knowing all encompassing supreme consciousness.

This is where a person can live in a deep satisfaction with all things life presents because he is living beyond the happenings of life itself. He is merely watching the movie and 💡 can watch his life with humor and entertainment knowing that it is illusionary in comparison with what is reality.

This is what union means. Union means having a unique perspective shift from the shattered individual into the universal all encompassing and being able to be in both the self and the "supreme" at the same time. When a person reaches this union the materials of the physical world are nothing but materials. With the connection to the "supreme" gold, rock, and clay is all the same because the man does not need these materials to fill any holes with in his own definition of himself.

In a simple sense nothing of the physical world could compare to the fulfillment that one receives when in union with "supreme" consciousness there fore making material substance obsolete. Desire for material substance comes a fractured self, a self unrealized.

🔎 This perspective extends into a humans interaction with other humans. If I am in a place of a fractured self then I see others as separate, as good as bad, as useful, as inspiring. If I reach a place of self realization and union I see past the separation between me and another human being. From a place of supreme consciousness I have no choice but to see the supreme consciousness of others of which I am eternally connected.

💡 Therefore it benefits us to act in a way that is beneficial to others and in service of other peoples needs as they are my own. The way that I attain this union is to consistently be aware of my mind and my self at all times. I must consistently question the nature of my thoughts and actions and steer towards a life uncontrolled by desires. I must consistently bring my mind to the present moment and not allow my horse to run crazy. A mind must be controlled then let go. Once I can control my use of awareness then I will not be a victim to my thoughts and desires but just a spectator.

Also would love an understanding the last sentence of the reading.

I believe the last phrase directly answers my question on developing a strategy to build a path to follow into the pursuit of the union of my self.

Early Feedback ¶

Horse and Buggy

I like the metaphor you conjured. It reminds me of another classic metaphor where the horses are likened to the senses, each pulling in different directions; the body is the chariot; the self is the passenger; the intellect is the charioteer; and the mind is the reins, the fluid/flexible interface between understanding and urges. We gain more control over the "habitual drives" that govern our lives by "deconstructing" the factors that constitute us, and looking at their specific issues both individually and as interactive components. In place of looking at ourselves as "one big problematic blob". Breaking down a problem into more manageable individual components, and handling them one at a time toward a resolution, is a good strategy.

Filling That Hole

The insight on how we seek to fill that gaping hole with something, any-which-ever damn thing, is a very important realization. It leads us to a higher vantage point in evaluating what we want to do – and why. When it becomes clear that we're just trying to fill the feeling of a gaping hole in the soul, a hole we don't quite understand, that insight deflates the power of the urge to pursue the objects the mind may become obsessed with. If we don't understand the true need that leads to fulfillment, or the actual nature of the lack that we experience, it's very unlikely that scoring a particular "fragment" would patch that hole in our disconnect from the unity of all existence.

And yes, when we pursue the tunnels to score fragments to patch a cosmic hole, indeed the ceilings are low and the walls are closing in, it is a fundamentally claustrophobic dimension of awareness. In the initial pursuit we are absorbed into the momentum of that "urge tunnel" and it keeps us focused on a particular goal, which results in momentary stilling of the urge that consumes us. However it all comes crashing down when, inevitably in time, the nature of the pursuit for the perishable, for stuff that rises, lingers for a moment and then falls away from our horizon again, or transforms to disappoint us, becomes evident. Then we are back in the hole again, and catching even the biggest wave in the hole will not make your ocean truly calm.

On "understanding the last sentence of the reading", do you mean the last sentence in the actual text ("The resulting potentials must be wisely regulated by the dispassionate self..."), or the words you highlighted at the end of your reflections?

Overall there's a lot to unpack again in your reflections. It's very informative over the nature of your cognitive process, and contributes toward future tunings of the process/program we tailor for you, including more specific meditations that better harness your capacity, requirements and inclinations. It's clear that we don't have a "one size fits all here" between the two of you, and our initial trainings with the videos some months back have been just that, initial explorations and experiences, that have enriched us all with feedbacks on how to proceed into the future.

There's more that deserves to be said, observations and questions on everything you've written. I would suggest we run with a bi-weekly feedback cycle, where every three or four days I take record and provide more thorough reflections that do better justice to the attention and effort you put into all of this. How does that sound to you?