The Integrity of Allowing and Looking - 26th Sept. 2016

It's very... I'm very happy to hear whenever someone says that 'I'm allowing this burning to happen.' This allowing is very important. This allowing is... it actually is allowing the moment to unfold as it is unfolding. Allowing is the opposite of ego because resistance means ego. Allowing our own reactions also, like Zia was saying some time before, that not to fall into the trap of belief in guilt. With integrity, you see, there's a fine line, but from the ultimate perspective it is also irrelevant. But the fine line is that Advaita is very useful if our urge is for full freedom, but Advaita can also be very harmful if you're looking for excuses.

So this allowing, this 'everything is just happening,' can also become a very potent excuse because anything that we do, we can just say 'But I'm not the doer.' But that is why in the play, this integrity... I used to always get confused when Maharaj used to say 'You must have full integrity.' Okay, but who's here to have full integrity? Isn't this contrary to what he's been saying in the rest of the book? Where does this integrity come from? And I realized why the pointer is made: because we don't run away from our looking. We don't fall for any concept. Some excuse can give us the best excuses also.

So like we said at the beginning of Satsang, my invitation now is to just... can we look without conclusions? Can we look without proclamations? Can we just look at what this is? We are truly here just to look. Look at even the looking. Who is aware of looking? How do we experience this world? How many of us actually see how is this world experienced? You see, most of humanity is seeing outside, then thought, then some pain, then some other visual comes outside. It's a very scattered sort of existence, isn't it? But just to see this itself is very useful.

He asked me, 'What is it that changes or seems to have changed?' One is this: that it's not so... doesn't seem as scattered now. Of course, thoughts still come, feelings still come, sensations still come, but there is memory of the time where it used to be just one second here, one second thought, one second feeling, one second idea about something, with one second this will to do something. A very scattered sort of existence, and most of us don't even realize we live like that. You have to be able to see what is really happening.

One second I'm with the words that someone is saying, the next second I'm with my thoughts, the next second I'm with the pain in the body, the next second with... it's a very... it's a flow like that. Then the flow sort of streamlines also in a way as we just look and we're not buying the voice of the interpreter anymore. Then it can seem much more settled, much more relaxed. Oh.