Dear Ram,
You asked about my practice on the
phone the other night and I didn’t give a very good answer. The answer is that it has been pointing me to
pay more attention to my thoughts and feelings, and human needs. It's also pointing me to pay more attention
to other people’s thoughts and feelings, and needs, which is quite a transformational
activity. This is very good work for
me. I haven't spent much time trying to
understand other people, and understanding that everyone says and does
everything out of some need is helping me to see the world as an expression of
love.
Ram:
I don’t necessarily see the connection between needs and love but I’m
glad it’s helping you to see the world as an expression of love. I think it’s important to pay attention to
other people’s thoughts and feelings if you want successful relationships. They are at least as important as your
own.
Perhaps you mean that concern for
another person’s feelings is love. I’d
agree with that. I don’t have any
feelings to speak of but if someone were trying to injure me I would understand
that they didn’t love me. I said I don’t
see the connection between needs and love because they have very little to do
with each other. And very often excess
consideration for someone’s feelings can cause you not to be straightforward
and truthful; of to avoid unpleasant issues.
I would imagine that at least some of your reluctance to get out and get
on with your life is based on a reluctance to hurt your husband’s
feelings. You know that he will see it
as a kind of abandonment or disloyalty.
Very often
‘feelings’ are just a way to manipulate others.
One is constrained to do what one wants for fear of upsetting someone
else’s feelings. Take, for example, that
woman whose feelings were hurt when you declined to help her with the charity
work. So much of what are called ‘feelings’
are just frivolous likes and dislikes operating as a kind of fortress around an
insecure ego. Look at how shamelessly
your sister tries to manipulate you with the threat of hurt feelings. When you know that someone is going to get
angry and make your life difficult if you don’t do what they want, you often
cave in just to keep the peace. It took
me a while to work through that one.
The more true to yourself you are,
the less ‘feelings’ you have because you know that relating to the world through
your likes and dislikes is a recipe for suffering. You love, you are sensitive and feel, but you
do not have feelings that need to be indulged or that can be hurt. If your feelings can be hurt you haven’t
understood who you are. You are taking something
that has no power to affect you and allowing it to affect you.
Understanding other people is really
important if you want a stress-free life.
I’ve been coaching this fellow for a few months now and while he has a
lot of positive gifts he tends to get into problems with people and the reason,
which he finally admitted, was that he just took them as they seemed on the
basis is his immediate desire; he did not take time to get to know them. This usually happens because one is too self
concerned. One is only interested in
getting what he or she wants from the person or judges them from some
preconceived standard, or just indifferent to them. Perhaps the reason you don’t know what my
views about emotions and feelings are (because I’ve certainly stated them many
times) is that you haven’t been observant.
I see that as a lack of love. To
me love in relationship is paying attention to the person with the idea of
finding out how they see the world. One
needn’t necessarily sympathize with their views but one should know what they
think and feel if one is going to effectively communicate with them.
Joanne: I have the idea that you think it best to
ignore feelings and needs... a kind of absolutist Vedanta perspective. But I don't know that you think that... and
I'd like to understand what you do think about it. Would you be willing to try again to explain
your perspective to me? What is the
distinction you make between feelings and emotions? How do you hold them, etc.
Ram:
After all these years I’m surprised to hear that from you. Maybe you haven’t been paying that much
attention to me. I’m not against any
needs or feelings. They are just a
normal part of life and, like everything, have an upside and downside. I have few needs (simplicity, efficiency,
friendship, freedom, wisdom, beauty and peace) and almost no feelings. About the only thing that generates deep
feeling in me is devotion to God, uncompromising honesty, and the overcoming of
adversity but I don’t have ‘feelings’ waiting to be indulged or hurt. I basically only feel love but love is not ‘a
feeling’... meaning a sentiment.
Sentiments are abstractions of love, the ego co-opting something true
and good that it perhaps senses but doesn’t really understand. Occasionally I feel anger, very
occasionally, a few times a year... and it is usually dharmically
justified. I don’t ignore anything and I
think that people that ignore their feelings do so at their own peril, but this
is not to say that I think one’s feelings should be pandered too. The positive ones usually indicate that some
good and truthful idea is operating in the intellect, and the negative ones
suggest that one has a faulty view of oneself or reality. My advice to you about getting out of the
house is about helping you to acknowledge and act on a feeling that you must be
repressing and ignoring, perhaps out of some imagined sense of duty or
attachment to physical comfort - the feeling for freedom and love.
Feelings, which are almost a kind of
body consciousness, are situated at the grossest level of the mind, right next
to the senses, so if you are focused on your feelings without inquiring into
the ideas that are supporting them, you will not have much success dealing with
them. Recently I met a psychologist who is
here doing sadhana and she told me that the therapy world has now embraced the
idea that the ideas that one holds about oneself and the world are the key to
understanding one’s feelings. It took
them a long time to figure it out, but they are right. For example, if you expect someone to do
something and he or she doesn’t do it, you find yourself getting angry. But the anger is not justified. If you understood that the fruits of action
were not up to you, you wouldn’t invest emotion in getting them. You would do what you do to achieve the
result but you would let your involvement with the process drop at that
point. Remember how long you hung on to
your anger about that tradesman who ripped you off?
The most fundamental spiritual
practice, that without which you cannot gain a peaceful and clear mind, ‘karma
yoga,’ is simply an understanding about the nature of reality that effectively
removes ‘feelings’ from the center of
your life and puts them on the periphery where they belong. A person looking for freedom would want a
feeling free mind is because feelings are a major cause of disturbance. Or, more specifically, placing a false value
on the importance of feelings causes the mind to be continually disturbed. By ‘false value’ I mean not understanding
the whole picture of the Self, not seeing that feelings are just one small part
of the puzzle, and therefore placing how one feels about things at the center
of one’s world view. The more dominated
by personal feelings one’s consciousness is, the more difficulties one
encounters in life.
Vedanta says that shakti,
divine energy, flows from the Self through the causal body, into the subtle
body and then out into the world. So all
thoughts and feelings are just shakti, energy. Energy feels good when it is flowing
unobstructed toward the object of desire.
It ‘feels bad’ when there is an obstruction and the ego sees that it may
not reach the object. I’m enclosing a
letter to a friend who asked the question ‘What is emotion/feeling?’ I think it might be helpful. The word ‘feeling’ can be substituted for
emotion. Just so you don’t think that
I’m down on feelings you should note the bit at the end where I talk about sublime
and spiritual feelings of bhakti.
Joanne: The practice of tuning in to
thoughts and feelings is quite different, obviously, than just acknowledging
them as they pass through awareness.
It's not pointing me to the Self as the absolute, but to the Self as the
self.
Ram:
This is very good. You can’t
really live as the Self until you have learned who you are as a little
self. .
Joanne: I am appreciating it as a
more alive experience than enlightened passivity.
Ram:
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because I don’t think it is an
either/or. The body/mind/ego is always
alive and the Self passively watches. I
wouldn’t think you would have very good luck getting the ego to do both. Let the ego body/mind live to the fullest and
watch it dispassionately...as the Self.
Vedanta is not about turning the ego into the Self. The ego is the ego and the Self is the
Self. Each has its nature and each
follows its nature. There is nothing to
be done about it except to understand which is which.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘an alive experience.’ Do
your mean that you are having ‘a dead experience?’ Perhaps that life has grown a bit dull and
uninteresting since you have been cooped up in that small house with a boring
husband that does not want you to grow spiritually?
Joanne: The encouragement to look
closely has unearthed habits of self denial and self deception, and this
honesty is invigorating. I got it again
the other night that the voice of God is truth...and it's so purely joyful to
me.
Ram: This love of truth is one of
the things that I find most attractive in you.
As far as self deception and self denial I’m very happy you are becoming
aware of it. I could have helped you a
lot on this but you are remarkably well defended and I never felt it was worth
it making problems for our relationship by directly pointing it out. So I just sort of nibbled around the edges
with oblique comments, good natured chiding, and a bit of humor. It might be useful to you if you would allow
me to just tell you right out front when you are kidding yourself...without the
fear that you would take it as a personal attack. Anyway, that’s enough for now. I’ve got to do some things to prepare for
leaving
Much love,
Ram