Neeru

try to lose it

I'm in Goa at Arambol, staying on the Cliffside. And being here reminds me of a spiritual teacher named Neeru. She lived for many years in a small house on the Cliffside. I've not seen her this year, so I'm not sure if she's still around.

Although Neeru is not in the same league as most of the other teachers I'm talking about in this series, she's popped into my mind, so I'll say a few words about her. I went to one of her satsangs many years ago. It was enough for me, really. Neeru was quite dreamy. She kind of floated into the space and carried this dreamy air. In a way, though, I came to the conclusion that this was a swing from some opposite extreme, perhaps of Germanic conditioning. She seemed to be so irrational now.

She didn't really resonate with me, but one thing she said did stick in my mind. I'd said that I'd been experiencing states of perfect bliss, enlightenment, really, but that they came and went. And I wanted to hold on to them. I wanted to live in that state of the buddha nature. And she gave me a suggestion, which I remember to this day, and that was: try to let go of it, try to lose this buddha nature.

And I feel it showed a deep understanding of our psychology. There's a part of us that is still in that two year old phase of negativity. When life is telling us to do something, we say no and do the opposite. It's a way of asserting our uniqueness, our independence, our will, our power as an individual. It's a crude form of individuation and asserting the control we have over our own life.

Often though, life is playing a game with us. And just as a parent of a two year old might suggest the opposite of what they want the two year old to do, knowing that the two year old will say no and do exactly the opposite. In the same way, Neeru was suggesting to me, try and lose this buddha nature, knowing that the more I tried to lose the buddha nature, the more existence would put it in my face.

And that's one of the bizarre things of our psychology. The more we resist something, the more we are actually engaged with it. We see it in all aspects of life. If you want to give a terrorist power, start talking about the terrorists, put them all over the news. We've engaged with them. We've given them strength. We've given them an identity.

The same thing with the dark side of our psychology. If we resist it, if we push it into the unconscious even, we're actually giving it energy, giving it power, influence in our life.

And the same can go for positive things, if we try to resist them. It's a bizarre thing to try, and yet, it's's a great way to give them more energy. There's something beautiful. If we try to get rid of it, it will come back more strongly within us. And so it is with our buddha nature, as Neeru understood.

One way to strengthen it is actually to try to dismiss it, to try to get rid of it, to treat it as an enemy, as something to be got rid of. This will all add energy to our buddha nature. It's a clever technique. It's using some negative aspects of our ego in a subtle way.

Anyway, that was the teaching that I received from Neeru many years ago, here on the cliffside at Arambol.