Pada One, Sutra 33: Building Bridges

Art By Peppermintea

"Friendliness toward happiness does not simply mean to be friendly to happy people, it means primarily to be friendly to those parts inside of each of us that are happy."

This Sutra clarifies actions we can take towards four emotional or feeling qualities inside us. First, there are aspects inside us that represent "happiness" - towards which we cultivate friendliness; then there are the "suffering" aspects - towards which we respond with compassion; then there are the aspects within us to which "virtue" is an all important directive - towards which we shine joy. Lastly spoken of is vice (or "the wicked", my preferred word that merges magically with this current moment in which we find ourselves).

Within all of us are aspects which know the rules, but they don't care about them; the feeling towards it all is 'wicked'; and towards this aspect of ourselves, we do not cultivate guilt or shame when the ultimate goal is to find Clarity of Consciousness.

No; towards vice, we cultivate a feeling of total indifference.

This will affect even our judgement towards it - but it will GROW our ability to wisely discern which of the four qualities any specific aspect is acting out in the moment, and the appropriate way to respond towards it.

Ram Dass would often say that his neuroses are still swimming around inside him. That is going to be true of any 'enlightened' or self-actualized person (and aren't we so lucky to have come across such an honest saint?)

It is the pushing away of vice that strengthens its resolve to continue to Exist, and separately; whereas, Patanjali simply writes -- well, I don't know Sanskrit enough to keep it simple in English, so I will take from MSI: "...and from indifference toward vice is born clarity of consciousness."

This is a statement of Truth that the me-who-began-this-journey could not cope with, but since then I have been on a quest to figure out,... what the fuck, man? Why do we hate each other so much? I think at this stage of my journey, I'm turning around and looking at all of the self-hatred I displayed here-to-fore was only perpetuating the hatred I see all around me. It isn't that we hate each other so much; it's that I hate my selves so much.

It's that we individually hate the individuated parts of ourselves so much; and that is what spiritual tools can help us do: build bridges so we can walk these parts home into us. "If your act comes out of separateness, at some level you are perpetuating The root cause of the problem... "And that's why spiritual work equals social action from my POV, ok? So here we go." (Ram Dass, from the lecture "On How Spiritual Work Equals Social Action", Here & Now #238)"