The Tree Does Not Reject Its Fruit
El árbol no rechaza su fruto
A student shares that she has lost interest in life through her spiritual seeking, and the teacher suggests that embracing life fully may itself be the path to realization.
The Tree Does Not Reject Its Fruit
A student shares that she has lost interest in life through her spiritual seeking, and the teacher suggests that embracing life fully may itself be the path to realization.
There is this belief that I cannot get it, and it becomes a belief.
You're right. You can't get this. Not in the way you're wanting to get it.
In our understanding?
That might be an intuition. You can't get this. Your mind cannot get it.
Your words are hard, but still, even as an idea, it's fascinating.
Then go there. Keep looking at that, and then notice: what is the frustration? What is frustrated? What is the experience of frustration? What are the sensations?
It's just slightly uncomfortable, that's all. It's not dramatic, but I can feel the frustration, the struggling to understand these words.
The feel of frustration
A question just came up. What in life calls you? What in life do you love?
I love this. I don't know what this is.
Aside from this.
Just to survive. Just to live.
You said survive?
I think I'm surviving, but I don't really worry about it. I don't really love anything now. I love to know what I am, but I don't have a way to describe it. I think I've arrived at the understanding, at least as a mental concept, that there simply isn't a "me" to be understood. So when you ask what I love, I have no idea. It feels like I don't feel that I am here, much of the time.
I think this may be the key. Let me put it differently. What if you could imagine, using thought and imagination: life created you. Life created you as you. Not you as consciousness, not you as everything, but you as the particular person you are. Can you imagine experiencing something in life that is beautiful?
What the heart remembers
At the very bottom of my heart, I once met someone who triggered something in me. I experienced what felt like no time at all. I couldn't tell if it was no space either, but I just felt so light, and it was triggered simply by meeting that person. I didn't understand him at all. I was living in the village where he was born. That encounter is what brought me to even listen to someone talking about "there is no me." Before that, I was a businesswoman. I had no religious background. I would never have believed someone saying there is no self. But it was literally because of that meeting. That's how I came to satsang.
There was no other event like it, so I believe that what I love most may be linked to that encounter. But at this point, I can't tell what I love, because after all of that happened, I lost a lot of interest in life, apart from just keeping the body alive. Maybe because there's no me. I feel very lost.
Embracing the whole of life
I understand. What I'm proposing is that this work, this question of what you are, embraces life. It embraces everything you might want to live, experience, or even discover.
Putting aside who you are and what you want may not be fruitful. Think of a beautiful tree growing to give fruit. You could equate self-realization to the tree giving fruit. It is the natural process of the tree to grow and bear fruit. Even in that sense, there are not two things: the tree growing and the tree giving fruit.
If a tree were to focus on self-realization, on the seeing that "there is no me," and forget about growing to give fruit, it would be dividing itself. It would be splitting in two. You need to be embraced fully.
Do you mean my addiction to what I like?
Not addiction, no.
I know that's a negative word, but that's what I see.
Judgment as a fear-based thought
That's the trouble. There are some things that are not addictions; they are true love. The tree doesn't give fruit because it's addicted to the fruit. Calling it addiction is a judgment, and that judgment is a fear-based thought.
Yes, I agree.
It is possible that the quickest journey for you to realize what you're looking for is the long way, through life. It might appear that you can abandon everything and just ask this question, and that is the fastest way. But the fastest way may be the journey of the tree giving fruit, to the point where you see there is no difference. There is literally not two. There is no difference between spirituality and business. There is no difference between self-inquiry and living passionately, living an abundant life.
If the fear you just spoke about, based on the judgment that what you love might be an addiction, if that becomes true for you, if you don't see through it, you are back in the world of thought and belief.
The natural rhythm of interest
There is a natural place where we lose interest in life. That is a phase, and it can come and go. But it doesn't come through rejecting life out of judgment and fear. It comes naturally, and it goes naturally: just the rising and falling of energy and interest.
What your heart longs for, which is the question we talk about here, what you are, is also life. It includes all of the experiences, everything you might want, everything the universe might want as you, through you. In that sense, it is also not two. You are not "not you."
I will stay with that. Thank you.
Thank you.