Samuel: Hello, Sundari. Thank you for your reply, and I apologize I haven’t followed up sooner. It has been a hectic year with my work closing down and having to relocate. Nonetheless, during these events I have a new kind of confidence in that the changes to my standards of living have no affect on me. I find I can take what life throws at me with hardly a skipped beat.

Sundari: No worries, Samuel, we never have any expectation of people who write in. I am very happy to hear from you again and to hear the self talking with dispassion and discrimination.

Samuel: Reading my original email to you, I can see that even though I had glimpsed the nature of awareness I was still very agitated with a need to go do something or travel somewhere. Now I find that I like to spend time sitting and doing nothing. I could sit in a park or stare at wall and not move for hours and just enjoy the freedom. For a while I felt awareness but also this depression around it, but that passed after a while as I realised it was my thinking mind struggling with not being able to feed itself with pursuits. It’s virtually impossible to go back to the old ways, so I am content to sit and see what path presents itself. I hope this makes sense.

Sundari: This makes total sense and you describe the process of dispassionate discrimination eloquently and accurately. The depression the ego experiences when the mind is no longer extroverted because it knows there is nothing to gain in the world and objects are empty is quite common. We call it transcendental boredom. It takes a while for the ego to get on board with the idea of freedom from desire. The depression is just a vritti in the mind. It dissolves when self-knowledge has fully attained in the mind and it knows that it is the knower of the emptiness. The ego has to make the shift to understanding that it cannot experience awareness, because reality is the other way around: awareness is (apparently) experiencing the ego.

Once self-knowledge has obtained in the mind this is the only time objects can really be enjoyed for what they are, because one no longer needs to possess them or fears losing them. Objects do offer a limited kind of bliss – so when you no longer need them to deliver more than they are capable of, you enjoy them without fear. One sees everything as the self, and enjoys life giving thanks for one’s many blessings, as transient as they are. Isvara’s world is truly beautiful when seen from the perspective of the self.

Samuel: The rest of your reply makes perfect sense. I’d also enjoy a chance to open a dialogue with your friend Ben. I’ll send an email to him. Thank you to James and yourself.

Sundari: I am glad that you have made contact with Ben; he wrote to me and told me he heard from you. You are in good hands, as he is a great teacher. Thank you for your appreciation, and James says to send his love and hopes to meet you one day.

~ Love from both of us, Sundari