Dear Sundari, I was intrigued by the satsang you posted yesterday on how hidden unconscious content is a ‘joy thief’. Could you explain this a bit more? I find it confusing how being functionally dissatisfied fits into freedom from and for the jiva. It sounds like such a contradiction; it messes with my mind. How can I be dissatisfied and dispassionate? Surely if freedom means freedom from the jiva applying the knowledge means mind control, which means facing my shadow side?
Sundari: Yes, you are right. If I am dissatisfied and identified with the feeling, I cannot be dispassionate and therefore, am limited and in bondage to my jiva persona. But if dissatisfaction or passion appear in the mind and I see them as just thoughts appearing in me, the Self, am I really dissatisfied or lack dispassion? No, I am not. And if so, those feelings cannot hold me up because as the Self I am whole and complete, lacking nothing.
Freedom from limitation means applying the teachings and practicing mind control through karma yoga and guna-knowledge to my jiva life 24/7, no fine print. There is no lasting peace of mind without this. Understanding what the jiva is, which means understanding its common identity with Isvara as the Self, is unavoidable. It is tempting to employ the ‘Advaita shuffle’ and claim that as the jiva is not real and not me (the Self), why bother with it? If only it were so simple.
Jung used the term “shadow” to describe the darker, more primitive impulses and weaknesses buried in the unconscious, which contains our repressed flaws, hidden desires, immoral urges, irrational fears, and the inferior traits we do not wish to acknowledge about ourselves. Everyone has these, no exceptions. It comes with the human program. That this means it is not personal does not mean it is easy to depersonalize.
Many people deny or suppress their shadow side, seeking instead to present their persona, the facade they want the world to see. However, this leads to a tamasic lack of (small) self-awareness, mental and emotional imbalance, and unchecked negative behaviors. As a person in the world it means failure to fully integrate the personality and how it relates to its karma. Life is fraught with difficulty and is unfulfilling. As an inquirer, it means failure to fully integrate or actualize Self-knowledge.
If we deny the darker aspects of the psyche and refuse to bring them into the light, they never go away but fester, leaking out in harmful ways – like radioactive waste. As inquirers, no matter how advanced we are in terms of understanding the scripture, it blocks access to Self-knowledge when these shadow aspects get triggered, which they will. A small amount of remaining ignorance has a lot of power to keep us stuck in duality and cause suffering. Even if it doesn’t, this is the thief of joy I was talking about in the satsang you mention.
It may not be in big obvious ways; our lives may still work pretty well on the whole. We may even consider ourselves mostly happy. But there remains a joy dissonance underpinning our life experience, and a corresponding lack of self-confidence and SELF validation. We may feel like imposters and still be affected by what people think of us, plagued by the voices of diminishment and judgment, struggling with transparency. There remains a small rat of desire/dissatisfaction eating away inside us, or a small mouse persona cowering and afraid of the world.
Jung asserted that making the shadow conscious and coming to terms with it was essential for becoming a psychologically balanced, wise, integrated human being. Even though he did not have Self-knowledge, and he meant this only from the mithya perspective, he was right. He cautioned, “That which we do not bring to consciousness appears as fate.” We cannot escape our shadow, it follows us everywhere causing trouble for us until we integrate it into Self-knowledge. Only then does it completely lose its power over our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
The difficulty in understanding this, and what makes nididhysana – the final stage of self-inquiry – so subtle is the apparent both/and aspect of this teaching. Vedanta also makes it very clear that the objective of self-inquiry is not to improve the jiva because it is not real. We do not need to endlessly pick through the unconscious to be free of it – we can resolve all jiva issues with reference to the gunas – in the moment.
However, while the conceptual jiva is just an Isvara-given program, and it’s not real, it must be seen and understood in its entirety to be dismissed. Even though I am never not the Self, only when we face our jiva identity or egoic-self holding nothing back, can we safely claim that freedom means that the jiva is me, the Self = JivAtman. While the aim of self-inquiry is not to improve the jiva, if there is no improvement in its quality of life, or if negative thought patterns keep recurring and persist, then you have a karma yoga/dispassion/knowle
dge failure.
Carlos: I know you have spoken about dispassion before and I find it very hard to commit to when challenged. But often I find I do not need dispassion because feelings that should be upsetting me just don’t. I am not sure if this is because I suppress them or am free of them. How do I know the difference?
Sundari: I have written about this topic often, especially as it has worked out for me. Life requires a great deal of dispassion for everyone. If we think about it, all agitation, anxiety and mental stress come down to a failure of dispassion. Isvara never makes mistakes, so when a lesson in dispassion comes our way and a deep samskara is triggered, it is always necessary and a blessing, assuming freedom from limitation is the aim. It is only when these emotional issues get triggered that we get an opportunity to see what mischief is programmed into our subjective cognitive network, and therefore, how we score regarding dispassion.
However, you cannot be dispassionate about feelings you do not allow yourself to have. This is called suppression, or denial, a deeply tamasic tendency. A common coping mechanism for many is to put off looking too deeply into the unconscious because its uncomfortable. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? While it is most unpleasant to be emotionally triggered, it is always a gift if we can apply karma yoga and not allow our limited biased cognitive filters to respond. But if we suppress the negative feelings we may feel like we dodge a bullet, but they will come back.
Whether or not I am an inquirer, I am free to think and feel according to my svabhava – inborn nature as a jiva, and svadharma, inborn jiva path in life. But if I am an inquirer, and if assimilation has taken place and I know I have nothing to hide, I will do so without ever confusing my identity as the Self with the conceptual jiva. Once the conceptual jiva program is seen for what it is – a phony tyrant with no real teeth – we have control of how we respond to what thoughts and feelings appear in the mind without denial or suppression. We can allow them to be what they are, enjoy them or dismiss them without identifying with them, so they no longer have the power to confuse or cause injury.
In essence, this is the reflection teaching because to fully take a stand as the Self, we need to permanently discriminate between the reflection – the conceptual jiva identity and its world – and the Self. The reflection is dependent on me, the Self but I exist with or without the reflection.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying and accepting your relative nature as the jiva/reflection. Being free of the jiva does not mean the jiva always feels good or is permanently dancing on moonbeams. That’s just silly and impossible because the jiva is subject to the ever-changing gunas. But you as the Self are not conditioned by the gunas.
The small print is that there is no getting away from identifying your personal jiva program in order to disidentify with it. The latter does not happen without the former. If you get caught up in the limited jiva identity and lose dispassion and discrimination, then there is still residual ignorance blocking access to the bliss of the Self in the form of knowledge.
I know it’s confusing, but I hope this helps.
Much love
Sundari
