--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "L B Shriver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > > > > > snip > > > > That's not it. The thought is, "That hurts. I am > > > > in pain. I don't want to be in pain." > > > > > > > > That's not a "story," that's a visceral response. > > > > > > > ******** > > > > > > No story no pain. > > > > Bull. The story is that there has to be a story. > > Attachment to attachment.
I'm going to expand upon this, trying to speak as Rory does to the enlightened being that is Judy rather than the person who is going to interpret my three words above as a slam. They're not. They're a direct commentary on what I see as the real issue here. Rory (if I have interpreted his words correctly) seems to be saying that the "pain" of feeling "hurt" when someone tells you the truth is not your pain. It's not even pain. It's the death struggles of an ego trying to assert itself and survive. It's nothing more than a shadow that is growing darker as the light shining on it becomes brighter. The "pain" of feeling bad because someone tells you the truth about realization IS, as far as I can tell, just a story. And the story is fiction. You seem to be trying to make a case for the story being "real," just because you feel it. In these discussions, Rory has been telling you that you are free, and you have been asserting, over and over, that he is mistaken and that you are not. Your *stories* are what are imprisoning you, Judy. You are like a person pacing back and forth in a tiny jail cell, the bars of which keep you from walking into the world of freedom and liberation that you glimpse through the bars and that you read about in the works of those who have "broken out of prison" before you. What I think Rory is trying to say is that the bars of your jail cell don't exist. They are just a hologram, an image of a jail cell that has no real existence. The bars have no substance. The only thing that keeps you in place within the cell and keeps you from walking into the world of liberation is your *idea* that the cell is real, that the "bars" are real. For now, in my opinion, you seem to be terribly attached to the cell being real. You don't even try to rattle the bars or to examine them to see if they're real. You already "know" that they're real. Anyone who says differently is obviously fucking with you. So what you do when some- one tells you that the bars aren't real is to try to make the person who's telling you the truth feel bad about telling you the truth. You try to make the person who has caused you "pain" feel pain himself. You talk about pain...well, I'll tell you...this whole process is more than a little painful to watch. The attachment I see here is your attachment to things as they have been for your whole life. You've learned to cope with things the way they've been for your whole life. In your own words, you've "developed a thick skin." You've learned to ignore any information that seems contrary to the way things have been for your whole life. You say, "The bars are real; the cell is real; I really *am* a prisoner here, and I resent you who have tasted free- dom telling me that the reality I see around me *isn't* real." The attachment, in other words, is to attachment itself, to the status quo that you have developed a thick skin about, to nothing ever really changing. The cell isn't real. The bars don't really exist. One day you're going to get tired of trying to intellectually under- stand enlightenment and just go for enlightenment. One day you're going to forget your self and its attachments and just start walking. And when you do, you'll find yourself outside the cell. It'll surprise the shit out of you. You'll probably walk back and look at it, just to see if it was real all this time. You'll reach out and touch the "bars" and your hand will go right through them, as if they weren't there. They weren't there. All that was ever there was your *story* about the bars, your sad, sad tale of being stuck in jail, unjustly. You'll realize that there was never anything you could DO to escape from jail, because you were never in it in the first place. There IS no doing when it comes to escaping from the imaginary prison of self. I hope for your sake that this happens soon. I know that it'll happen, in spite of your self's efforts to keep it from happening. That's the magic of self realization -- even the self can't keep itself from realization. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
