What Signs do you show? –
A Beezone study on the signs of ‘realization’ or ‘conscious responsbility’
So human beings in their ordinariness not only demonstrate the fact that they identify with the body-mind rather than with the Ultimate Reality, but they show signs of the play of opposites physically, emotionally, mentally. The breath changes as a sign of it. All the leading faculties are constantly modified by the egoic or separative presumption of being identified with the body-mind. So human beings are full of these adaptations, and this is why Realization, Enlightenment, which is to be established in the Condition of Light – that’s what that means-Unqualified Consciousness, is not something that, in the usual case anyway, is entered into readily. It requires profound practice that overcomes these adaptations-identification with the body-mind itself, but everything that came about as a result of that, all this negativity, this suffering, and pain, psychological pain, emotional disturbance, and so forth. These are all signs of contraction, self-contraction, the effect of it being that the inherent Nature of Reality, Which is Radiant Love-Bliss, Self-Existing, Self-Radiant, is apparently an experience lost . You feel Lightless, un-Enlightened, tending toward un-Consciousness, and identified with all kinds of limitations that you don’t enjoy. Sometimes you enjoy them. Most of the time experience is mixed, with a lot of negative associations one way or another.
As an idealist you may say you are committed to this particular intimate relationship you are involved in. You hold very firm to that and all discussions about the matter constantly present yourself as somebody who is happy in this relationship loving and satisfied in it. There’s no motive elsewhere and so forth. But if you’re an idealist, that won’t be true. You will be either secretly or periodically, overtly even, manifesting opposite sides. So you as an idealist may be committed to an intimate relationship but your idealism is weak because it is founded on egoity therefore you will inevitably show signs of promiscuity, unlove, dissatisfaction, reactivity and so on in such a relationship. You will continue to phase with your devotion and your failure of devotion.
If you are not obliged by right understanding of your practice to submit yourself in totality to the spiritual process, you could seem to be even an advanced practitioner at any moment. However, if you are obliged to consistently demonstrate a stage of practice beyond your level of real responsibility, you begin to show signs of difficulty. You simply cannot practice any better than you practice at the feeling level, in the emotional domain of your hidden personality that only comes forward in difficult confrontations. You practice no better or deeper than that. That dimension must be brought to school. If it has not been touched, then you are still in the domain of listening, and listening is your discipline, then. If you assume any other discipline, you will either show signs of obvious emotional aberration or you will simply magnify your relatively feelingless social personality, which looks like it has got it all together. You will be an idealistic character who can conform to orderly patterns rather easily. Of course, none of that has anything to do with practice.
I notice that children often do not show signs of real interest in anything in the universe. They often act very dull, as if they are completely uninvolved and unenthusiastic about anything in the universe at all. This is a sign that they are only involved in dramatizing their egoic dilemma.
A Disciplined Life is about Enjoyment
The release from the imaginary disease of self-bondage. This disease is apparently real. We do suffer. We do show signs of the absence of equanimity. We do exhibit the qualities of boredom, doubt, and discomfort, mental agitation, emotional distress, physical disease, and all the patterns of bondage in relationship. Wherever there is the self-contraction, there is bondage in relationship. Self-contraction is always associated with object-bondage or object-dependency.
So the process of the religious life, the God-ward life, is moving toward En-Lightenment, or Identification with the Divine or Native Reality. But the sign of having done so is that you display those Characteristics, you enjoy those Characteristics, you are the manifestation of those Characteristics, the Characteristic of Unqualified Being, of Unqualified Radiance, Unqualified Love-Bliss. That’s not something you can put on with the faculties of the body-mind, this play of opposites adapted to suffering. That can be manifested, truly and consistently, only if there is true Enlightenment, or inherent Identification with the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Reality, Which is Light. It is Conscious Light. It is En-Lightened Consciousness, Self-Lighted, Self-Radiant Consciousness. That is always the Condition, no matter what the apparent experience.
So you must go through that purifying process in the midst of self-frustration, difficulty, binding psychological tendencies, and go beyond them. So the process is purifying all along till the “Perfect Practice” becomes your capability. It relieves knots, you see. And the sign, then, in somebody who’s My devotee, who’s advancing in the practice, is that you are feeling beyond the knots consistently. Its noticeable by those who know you over time that previously you showed certain kinds of signs in certain situations, had a certain disposition, or whatever-your egoic personality showed itself in some way-and now ten years later, somebody who’s known you all along can notice for you how those things have changed, they’ve disappeared, even, you see. You may feel you’re still dealing with a lot of it on some subtler level, but others notice all kinds of signs in your physical, emotional, and mental qualities, your relational qualities and so on as well, and all your behavior, that its become-one good word for it is benign, relatively En-Lightened, so to speak. In other words, Light has been brought there. You released it in Communion with Me and found the State of Light. It is Radiant, Love-Bliss, not contracted, not negative. And so It shows Itself in everything about you.
So you are presuming darkness or negativity. And you notice everybody you meet, then, in the general attractions of people, is constantly showing signs of going through changes-different every hour, or day, or week, or year, or whatever-they’re going through all kinds of changes that have to do with being less than Happy, less than Enlightened, or “Bright”. They go through signs, in other words, of being, to one or another significant degree, not Radiant. They show the sign of being contracted rather than Radiant.
Sadhana then is not about the good life, what people would commonly call the good life, the western idea of self-fulfillment. It’s not that at all. However, the person who does sadhana can and rightly should and in general maintain positive life signs, healthful signs, positive relational signs and so forth and all these are simply expressions of the dispositions of sadhana in fact.