esse jay

This isn’t an area where you can ‘fake it until you make it.’ From Perfect Brilliant Stillness by David Carse (around the discussion of speaking truthfully in non-dual/Advaita contexts): “Most of the folk I come across who are ‘into’ Advaita are intelligent people. They are quick studies, and after they have read a few books and been to a few satsangs they figure out what words and ideas are acceptable Advaita concepts. Ask them a question and they don’t answer right away; you can almost see the wheels turning in there, weighing and rejecting one answer after another as inappropriate or likely to get them branded as one who doesn’t know. They’ve been to enough teachers that they’ve learned to try to find that ‘right’ answer that won’t get them shot down. And it’s hardly their fault: there are a lot of teachers out there whose sole functioning seems to be shooting down anyone whose answers are not phrased correctly. What good does this do anyone? Is it necessary to point out that this isn’t about ‘right’ answers? Speak your truth. There is nothing acceptable, there is nothing appropriate. There is only what is. Talking in circles, painfully and awkwardly trying to avoid using personal pronouns, when it is clear that your simple everyday experience is that you live your life as an individual, is pointless. Obviously so. This isn’t an area where you can ‘fake it until you make it.’ One person says, “I’m glad you came.” And the other answers, “Who? Who is glad?” And I think, the Advaita thought police never sleep. An old Ch’an master would give you a whap upside the head with his stick. What are you saying, ‘who is glad?’ She is glad, you dope, and she’s being honest enough to tell you so. Descriptive, not prescriptive. When there is no sense of a separate self, words referring to such a mythological thing will be superfluous, will naturally be used much less; not because they are avoided, but because they do not express what is, and are used simply because that is the way language is structured, and it is often the most convenient way to speak and be understood. There will not be searching for words or actions or responses which are imagined to be most appropriate, but rather there will be the simple spontaneous expression of what is here. Speak your truth. That’s what this is about. How can it be about saying the right thing, fitting in, using acceptable language? Stop. Go back. Self inquiry is about going deep within to see what is your truth. Never mind what you have heard or what anyone else has said. This is not about learning the right thing from some teacher. A true teacher will deflect any such attempts back to you: what is your truth? Inquire within, find out for yourself. Who are you? Who is the Self from which all these things arise? No one can show you this. No amount of trying to guess right will reveal this. Discover it yourself by being relentlessly and ruthlessly honest, authentic, true.”