Frances: The vertical integration that you and Ramji spoke about at Trout Lake has certainly taken on new meaning for this Jiva program. The avoidance/procrastination monster is deeply ingrained in it, but by Isvara’s grace I know it is not me and yet simultaneously know that taking responsibility for the karma it creates is part of my svadharma. What else would be? Obviously nothing, but insofar as there is still identification with the doer of action, there is also the idea that the achievement of overcoming it would be “mine” as the doer. Of course, the voices of diminishment lay in wait right behind the doer’s best intention.
Sundari: Thank you for sharing your process with me. I totally understand how tricky nididhysana is. From the nondual perspective it’s just another thought object, so why bother too much with anything jiva related? As you say, the doer cannot improve the doer, though it is happy to take credit for doing so. There is no way and no need to perfect the jiva and there is nothing wrong with accepting it warts and all, if you are happy with that and it does not cause too much blow back karma and mind disturbance. The pesky voices of the internal judge and jury notwithstanding.
Frances: Ramji’s “take it easy” message, as well as the simple admonition to “do what is right in front of me to the best of my ability” that I have heard him and also Swami Dayananda mention frequently, are my mantra in this battle.Â
Sundari: What I found when my jiva Durodhyana factor got dug up from the Causal body  was that it was a hidden joy thief. In terms of the jiva’s experience of complete satisfaction, avoiding it definitely has a cost. Freedom is not that free.
At the same time, taking it easy is a great salve for those pesky universal voices of diminishment that Isvara torments all jivas with! It is so strange how hard it is for the jiva to accept its true greatness and beauty, sans the inflated fear ego of the limited small-self interfering. Because the gunas must have the potential to express both positively and negatively for jivas to work out their karma, and they do a very good job of messing with our  minds!
Frances: Thank you for your further response. You really nailed it with the phrase “hidden joy thief.” You describe the whole “conundrum” beautifully, seemingly trying to “fix” something that can’t be fixed and yet isn’t actually broken! But, why allow even a seeming limitation, especially when it’s a thief? 🙂
Sundari: The thing with Self-actualization is that one can really be quite happy enough just being Self-realized, which means applying karma yoga and guna knowledge to our lives. Self-actualization is not up to the jiva; only Isvara is in charge of it – as with everything. But particularly with that last bit of ignorance.
The thing with vertical integration is that everyone has what I termed in my talk at TL an ‘ignorance setpoint’. For those of us who are scheduled to grow past it, being busted cannot be avoided; Isvara will make sure of it. And that is a good thing – though it certainly will not be fun. I got my kick in the butt, which was painful for the ego, and am very grateful for it.
Yet the jiva has a certain Isvara-endowed temperament which never changes much. I still have to reign in the tendency to lose dispassion over certain emotional triggers, particularly (perceived) dishonesty. So I am not completely free of them yet. But I am free enough because I catch them in time so that Self-knowledge can dispense with them. For me, the mantra when dispassion gets challenged is: “Life is always benign, love is behind everything. No bad results.’
All the same, complete or ‘perfect’ dispassion can seem very cold and unengaged – almost disassociated – sometimes. And it is because the Self is never involved in life, only the jiva is. Life is beautiful, ugly, complicated, messy and impossible to tidy up. If I am free to experience ‘my’ emotions as a jiva, what’s so bad about accepting that they are there, for the jiva? Maybe sometimes jiva me just feels like getting ‘down and dirty’, you know what I mean? It’s Ok to be a jiva if I know my out card is the Self.
Procrastination is a stubbornly tamasic jiva holdout, and it is a problem because it will keep  the jiva in a cage of limitation. But even though the deeply buried jiva programs are joy thieves, if they are known to be that, and known to be not me, one can work with that and still Self-actualize. I have been having this discussion with another friend – about how actualized or not – it’s not possible for the jiva to always feel good, Maya being so tricky. Everything is a result of a big guna muddle that is life. And that’s OK. It is not a matter of Self-knowledge not assimilating; it has. The truth is the jiva will never be perfect, nor will life ever be.Â
And neither need to be for perfect satisfaction in the form of knowledge to take hold as your baseline jiva experience. Anantam, the experiential bliss of Self-realization comes and goes. But anantum, the bliss of the Self as permanent knowledge, does not. The Self is always unaffected, even if jiva me is ‘having a moment”….
Freud called it ‘functionally dissatisfied’ – and he had something there! He was obviously referring to an acceptable and unavoidable level of human neurosis which he saw no cure for. From the mithya perspective, that is very accurate. There are no solutions in mithya because life is a zero sum; the field is an anxiety inducing machine because we are never in control of the objects. But functionally dissatisfied is not what being free is, certainly not. Freedom from limitation means you are free of the jiva and as a jiva. And that means you accept the jiva as an object known to you (yours and everyone else’s), as it is. Even with some known temporary dissatisfaction thrown in!
So do go easy on Frances, he is a really good guy.
Sending you much love
Sundari
