”How can I get out of my chains, my attachment, my ideas, my prejudices?”

[Raz]

A man came to Sheik Farid, a Sufi mystic, a great Sufi mystic and a very strange man. The man said, ”How can I get out of my chains, my attachment, my ideas, my prejudices?”

Farid had his own way of answering things. Rather than answering to the person he simply ran to a pillar which was nearby, clung to the pillar and started shouting, ”Save me from the pillar!”

The man could not believe what is happening – is he mad or something? And he was shouting so loudly that people started coming from the street in. A crowd gathered and they asked, ”What is the matter with you? Have you gone crazy? You are holding the pillar, not the pillar holding you. You can leave it!”

And the man also said, ”I had thought that this man is a man of great understanding and he seems to be just a madman! I had asked a very subtle question, a very spiritual question which has always been asked by seekers: how to get out of my attachments with ideas things people? And rather than answering me he simply jumped and clung to the pillar and started shouting, ’Save me from the pillar!’”

Farid looked at the man and he said, ”If you can understand this, then you don’t need any answer. Go home and ponder over it. If the pillar is not holding me, neither your chains are holding you – you are holding them. I can leave the pillar – look I am leaving the pillar and I am saved!"

-Rajneesh

[Raz]

There's this phenomenon called Stockholm Syndrome, where a person is held hostage and through all the trauma they start to sympathize and identify with their captor. They may even try to defend the person abusing them. Sound familiar? Most people do this with their own fearful thoughts, the ones that bring them so much suffering. They become those thoughts, and aggressively protect them.

People are usually too proud to admit they've been abusing themselves. That would make them look stupid. It's much easier to play the victim role and act like something totally out of your control is causing your suffering. Of course, suffering always occurs within your own mind, even if it is triggered by "external" circumstances. You have enormous influence over your own mind, you have the power to no longer suffer. It's your choice, you don't have to cling to it. Most people are still playing the "damsel in distress" role, a favorite of both the masculine and feminine ego, and waiting for something else to come save them.

Who can force you to let go? Nobody else can do that for you, you can only do that for yourself. If you understand this then you understand why it's impossible for another to truly heal you. They can provide temporary relief to your mind, they may even trick you into healing yourself, but ultimately it's you releasing the thoughts that were holding you back.

*sniped and edited for context* from TGFP

[Guardian]

Great post

[Melissa]

There's this phenomenon called Stockholm Syndrome, where a person is held hostage and through all the trauma they start to sympathize and identify with their captor. They may even try to defend the person abusing them. Sound familiar? Most people do this with their own fearful thoughts, the ones that bring them so much suffering. They become those thoughts, and aggressively protect them.

People are usually too proud to admit they've been abusing themselves. That would make them look stupid. It's much easier to play the victim role and act like something totally out of your control is causing your suffering. Of course, suffering always occurs within your own mind, even if it is triggered by "external" circumstances. You have enormous influence over your own mind, you have the power to no longer suffer. It's your choice, you don't have to cling to it. Most people are still playing the "damsel in distress" role, a favorite of both the masculine and feminine ego, and waiting for something else to come save them.

Who can force you to let go? Nobody else can do that for you, you can only do that for yourself. If you understand this then you understand why it's impossible for another to truly heal you. They can provide temporary relief to your mind, they may even trick you into healing yourself, but ultimately it's you releasing the thoughts that were holding you back.

*sniped and edited for context* from TGFP

I think these kind of messages are well intended but they're often full of imaginary, dehumanizing, 'shortcuts' and guilt tripping. I find it quite appalling to read.

[Matt1]

I agree with the basic message Raz but desires are not always that easy to let go of if we have built the habits up over many years. Ra also said that no desire will be overcome but accepted, understood and balanced.

[Raz]

Matt, I view heart felt desire as a gift. It is what makes my stay in this frequency interesting and enables me to live with a sense of passion. It is not heart felt desire that we let go of, it is the self-destructive thoughts that we attach and embody that desire in that can become a challenge in transmuting.

Melisa, as a person with a story of plenty self-abuse I found it refreshing and self-empowering, acknowledging that we are more than human does not have to make us less of a human.

*edit*
to clarify, I´m not defending the above words, but I do believe in turning points, radical change and universal inspiration

[zenmaster]

Raz, would you define "human"?

[Steppingfeet]

Great allegory for the human situation. I really enjoyed it.

Though, like many such stories, it's incomplete in that it conveys what is possible, and *something* of the nature of the situation, but without quite elucidating the how.

Taken in isolation it leaves more questions than it answers, but taken in the context of a system of spiritual study it's a perfect gem of thought, I think.

[Raz]

Raz, would you define "human"?

What we call our physical condition

[zenmaster]

Raz, would you define "human"?

What we call our physical condition

which is known as "3D"? Would you separate human physical from human metaphysical?

[Matt1]

Indeed i agree that we should cultivate our positive nature and let go of the negative after it has been accepted understood , balanced then finally integrated into experience.

Matt, I view heart felt desire as a gift. It is what makes my stay in this frequency interesting and enables me to live with a sense of passion. It is not heart felt desire that we let go of, it is the self-destructive thoughts that we attach and embody that desire in that can become a challenge in transmuting.

Melisa, as a person with a story of plenty self-abuse I found it refreshing and self-empowering, acknowledging that we are more than human does not have to make us less of a human.

*edit*
to clarify, I´m not defending the above words, but I do believe in turning points, radical change and universal inspiration

[Steppingfeet]

Indeed i agree that we should cultivate our positive nature and let go of the negative after it has been accepted understood , balanced then finally integrated into experience.

The accepting, understanding, balancing, integrating speaks more truly to the process, I think.

After posting earlier I remembered an incident when this story sort of played out in my own life.

I had a friend a generation older than me who self-styled himself my teacher; he thinking we had a formal, even contractual student/teacher relationship. Me not thinking that.

When describing my own particular pattern of suffering to him once when we were outdoors, to illustrate the situation to me, he had me hold a big rock in my outstretched arms. He then had me drop the rock, and told me I could do with my challenges what I had just done with the rock.

(The rock in this case equivalent of the pillar - something which is unnecessarily (and perhaps, as the story implies, stupidly) being held onto.)

Though I understood the gist of his message, I didn't quite appreciate the exercise as it in no way conveyed how I could drop the attachment to suffering as easily as I could release the rock to gravity's pull.

[Raz]

which is known as "3D"? Would you separate human physical from human metaphysical?

2 sides of the same coin.

[zenmaster]

How can you honestly acknowledge something greater than your condition without an awareness or understanding of that condition's actual limitations?

Also, if there is recognition of something greater to acknowledge, then what of yourself are you actually recognizing or acknowledging and how does experience inform you of that?

[Raz]

for me, it´s a little like being in a dream but having a touch from memory of being awake.
while you are sleeping in your physical body your awareness is contracted, sometimes, if you are not too distracted by the dream you tune in to the memory frequency of your day to day, more expanded awake state. When you wake up from the dream there is an increased level of "realness" making you feel that your life within the physical body is a more real reality compared to what we call a dream reality.

During my NLE I got a 3rd contrast to this, an expanded state of awareness that felt so much more real that it was just ridicules.
After a dream you can marvel at your confusion and assumptions within that dream. This was very much the same but at a higher frequency.
I get flashes from it sometimes, a memory of a memory that is forgotten…

Don’t mind me, I´m just a tourist passing through, just like you

[zenmaster]

But you just said "2 sides of the same coin."

[Raz]

Indeed, focusing our attention to one aspect of the coin creates the illusion of separation but in my experience there is only one coin. On a side note I find it misleading to speak in terms of dimensions like 3d and so on. I find the word frequency feels more accurate. When you switch channels on a TV you don’t consider that switching to another dimension, you are tuning in to another frequency.

[zenmaster]

Indeed, focusing our attention to one aspect of the coin creates the illusion of separation but in my experience there is only one coin. On a side note I find it misleading to speak in terms of dimensions like 3d and so on. I find the word frequency feels more accurate. When you switch channels on a TV you don’t consider that switching to another dimension, you are tuning in to another frequency.

Was trying to understand how your notion of dreaming relates to "more than human" if dreaming is just the other side of space/time (which is just as much a part of your condition.)

But now you are saying dreaming is another frequency which is outside of the human condition?

[Raz]

Im saying that I feel that every frequency is part of the same spectrum
Every channel on a tv can be perceived as individual but the spectrum can also be seen and experienced as a whole

wrote a song on the subject, apply melody after taste:

tune in
tune out
that's whats life, is all about

When you feel a connection
to a frequency that is outside of your detection
it just might be, your eternal family

sing it with me!

tune in
tune out
that's whats life, is all about

if you come to an understanding
you are on vacation; life is not demanding
the rest can be perceived with ease; if you so please

And now only the kids!

Tune in
Tune out
that's whats life, is all about

[Raz]

So back to the subject of letting go. Why are some things hard to let go? a karmic momentum that we confuse as our self? I find that as soon as it involves other people with situations where I acted in a way that I regret is the hardest for me to drop, I can feel that I learned the lesson and still it would come to mind from time to time. For some reason I seem to have higher expectations about my self and a higher tolerance for others. Some balancing is clearly needed.

I think why the "holding a pillar/rock" metaphor falls a little flat, is it lacks the momentum there usually is in the 'holding'. I feel it´s more like finding your self on a moving train (of thought) and taking a leap of faith. a tad bit more scary and you might be walking with a limp for a while.