“You must give up your life, as you understand it, the identification with this rhythm, this contraction, this recoil that defines you. And how do you give it up? It is impossible. It cannot be done by the one who would do it.” Paradox of Instruction
The First Great Relief that is Understanding
Double Bind
1971 Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj)
One who is beginning to understand first recognizes that he (she) is suffering, fundamentally unhappy, unsatisfied, and chronically in double-bind that cannot finally be consoled. This recognition puts a qualification on the ordinary force of seeking and life indulgence.
On this basis a person begins an approach to his experience, habits, thoughts and actions that would perceive the root of his dilemma and at last he will come to see that all of this, his dilemma, his suffering is his own. It is not the product of some process outside himself or his control It is not hidden in the events of the world or in the events of his internal or non-volitional life. It is in fact the evidence of a process that is always occupation of his very existence. His entire dilemma, manifested now in all all the conscious, unconscious, internal, external and transcendental events of existence is in fact dependent on the action of the avoidance of relationship, to which he is utterly, presently committed. When he sees this action directly he finds that it is a radical action, one that is reinforced but not dependent upon any effect or manifestation of his dilemma. This action, presently enforced apart from any other cause, is in fact the source and fundamental experience that is his dilemma.
This perception is the first great relief that is understanding. It is an extraordinary form of cognition that relieves the whole force of dilemma and search of its awesome necessity. Consciousness acquires a form, energy and intensity that is already prior to the force of dilemma, search and suffering. It takes on the form of understanding, which is degrees of enquiry into the moment to moment events of conscious life.
As this enquiry itself becomes radical in its force (just as the activity of avoidance was formally the radical action of existence) the form of life and experience appears in the light of a new cognition. Then the man sees that reality is itself relationship, actual and unqualified, as the always prior condition. In the beginning he knew he was suffering, in dilemma then he saw that all his suffering was caused by his own action, was in fact his own action. And this awareness gave him great relief. But now he sees that the nature of reality, of existence itself, is relationship, always and already. Against this the activity of avoidance appears not only unnecessary but impossible. Then he sees that the adventure to which he was committed is in fact a schism in reality an impossible, insoluble effort that must always be experienced as suffering, dilemma and present unhappiness. The force of this degree of cognition is such that, whenever it arises, the whole dilemma and search is dissolved in a direct, present, unqualified peace.
As such a one continues to enquire, his understanding becomes more and more radical, fundamental, dependent on nothing whatsoever. And soon he becomes present as the force of reality itself, unmoved, untouched, without trouble, already full, unqualified relationship itself. This is radial understanding, the independent “cognition” that is reality itself.
1971 – Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj)
From Alethon
“Suicide and utter passivity are the only final and, in any case, merely and entirely reactive, seeking, enslaved, and utterly ego-bound options for the intrinsically pattern-bound ego-“I”.
Perfect Freedom is Not Free Will
This simple functional observation is the ultimate key to actual control of obsessive subjective activity, indeed, to responsible control of all life processes. To seek to control any living process directly only reinforces the process itself. This is felt as an irreducible double bind, the tacit sense of dilemma. Such a state is constantly motivated and remotivated to seek its own solution, but it remains forever in the condition of the problem.
Psycho-Physical Principles of Observation and Concentration
“The wrong relationship to experiential phenomena is to presume that you are a separate person, a separate consciousness, in the midst of a world that you know nothing about, that somehow encloses you, that is objective to you, that is separate from you. In that case, you see, experience is a very serious business. You have no option but to submit to it, to be distracted and tormented by it.”
“you know that there is at least one time when you have to deal with everything, when you know you will come to the point where you have no options, no strategies that apply. The whole mass of it will be so overwhelming, so complex the maya cannot be figured out”
Be Surrendered to the Degree of Beatitude