HEARING REASONING CONTEMPLATING
Reason is part of the means for getting you to the door, dissolving the cultural beliefs, removing the coverings. Saying with Byron Katie: is it so?
Traditions is: first you hear or read the truth words, then reasoning, then contemplating.
The inability to believe in or detect the presence of a divine power in the universe is to be overcome by a threefold process. The first part some people overcome by “hearing” the truth directly uttered by an illumined person or by other people by reading their inspired writings. The second part is to reflect constantly upon the Great Truths. The third part is to introvert the mind in contemplation. 2.5.11
*************
“Reason prepares the way for intuition by removing all doubts as to the possibility of the experience. … Vichara, or constant meditation and concentration on spiritual problems, or rather on the nature of Reality, that is, on the nature of the self or atman, when it is done by the purified inner organ (antahkarana) prepares us for the realization of the self.
One is instructed to have ceaseless meditation on the conclusions established by reason; deep, unabating and constant concentration on the firm and secure possession of reason, so that not only the conscious and self-conscious reason alone can accept it, but also that it may illumine and be accepted by the subconscious self as well, and thus lighten up the whole field of consciousness– the circumference and the margin as brightly as the focus and center itself.
This is what is necessary for realization. it turns the rational into the real–this is realization (making real) of the ideal attained by thought. It no longer remains merely an intellectual process as isolated from the emotional and the volitional, but becomes spiritual experience which comprehends and harmonizes all the partial aspects within itself. — Nalini Brahma Philosophy of Hindu Sadhana.
[NOTE; see more in separate section on Thought and No Thought.]
*****************************************
Open a space in our mind: un-covering and discovering.
PB: Purpose of thinking, feeling, creates an atmosphere that invites a response.
Nisargadatta: do your part. The rest is done for you.
Nisargadatta: “put aside the unreal and the real will swiftly take its place”
Do, not over-do. Put down the baggage you don’t need.
One metaphor is the doorway. “What takes you to the door does not bring you through it”
We can say that the I Am is the doorway through which infinite consciousness comes here as I Am Avery, and through which Avery leaves, or is left, to find I Am Infinite Consciousness (Rupert).
In fact, there is no door. Reality is omnipresent, and there is no inside or outside.
NM: it is your mind that has separated inside and outside and created all the miseries of the world.
What if… not to get something, but to loose something, so you can recognize something!
Practicing the four immeasurables: shift from the local limited seeing, to looking out through the eyes of Loving Kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity.
As Rumi says. beauty is all around, but it takes a garden to get us to recognize that.
Being is all around, but it takes a Sage to point it out to us. But once we do recognize it, once we do remember it, we can find it everywhere.