The Power of Dispassion
In scriptures we read about liberation through the cultivation of discernment and dispassion. But how do we cultivate discernment and dispassion, and what is the spiritual essence of dispassion?
To naturally liberate our awareness from the hallucinatory and conditioned experience of the dual, projected reality, we must first mature our own perception and attitude towards the projected reality.
Dispassion is the outcome of this maturity, and it paves the way to a further stilling of the wandering and grasping/clinging mind and a transcendence into the clarity of pure perception.
Yet, how can we cultivate dispassion through the active mind? How does dispassion affect our actions in the projected reality? And does it mean the rejection of life, or an abstinence from action and emotion?
True spirituality begins with the realisation of the Natural Being, which unfolds life in all its natural and unnatural or forced forms. Yet, this Natural Being is so far beyond any projections or transitory states of the human or any other subtle expression of existence. That, which is the Natural Being, has the power to reveal the immortal substance of life through everything that this life means and represents for us. However, without realising stillness within, at any moment of our existence, we will keep gliding along the surface, looking for the spiritual essence in the superficial, ever-changing emanations of our limited-to-the-physical-body and unrefined being.
Dispassion is not something we can force or cultivate in an unnatural, voluntary way. True spirituality begins when the controlled way of being is simply surrendered to the Natural Flow of existence. In this gradual surrender, we realise the beauty and essence of our natural existence, where existence is not limited by the obscurity and dogma of our human, man-made and controlled reality, so that, even amidst the projected flow of such reality, the essence is not lost but remains intact, consciously, within our very being.
Dispassion is the way to maturely address and connect, communicate and learn from the experience of the self within the projected reality, where, with discernment too, one is able to learn from the reality by feeling and realising things deeply, by sensing the moment of inner action and abstaining from it or surrendering it to the being. Dispassion and discernment are the natural qualities of the awakened and evolving consciousness in the projected reality, of the one who has realised the natural perception of the flow of life, which could be seen as wisdom, where one’s mind consciousness is in pure alignment with the natural conscious flow of being and its evolutionary cycles of embodied existence.
As we are deeply rooted in the projected reality at present, and consciously ignorant about the spiritual essence of our existence, we tend to hold on to the superficial values of our projected, emotionally-coated man-made reality that limit and obscure our intelligence or level of awareness and perception of the self on the collective and universal levels.
Such living (through the limited perception) pushes us to hold on to the ideals and intellectual patterns of existence that drain our self-expression and intelligence, limiting our intelligence to the human context, and limiting ourselves to a deeply ignorant and largely painful existence. Yet, this pain or suffering is the way that consciousness actually indicates within the self (to us), the pain of its own limitation and obscurity, as well as the lack of awareness of the self on the Universal Level as an expanded Natural Existence. Consciousness is indicating its own bondage through the perception of pain, of this imprisonment of awareness which has been limited to its current context within the limited self. This is how ‘pain and suffering’ becomes the natural mechanism of expansion and evolution for the consciousness that has realised it.
Through the process of contraction and limitation, consciousness descends into the matter, and through the process of expansion and the penetration of awareness into subtler levels of being and knowledge, it evolves and returns to its essence or restores it’s Natural Being. These processes are cyclical and allow consciousness to have all experiences and gain the knowledge of creation, of it’s various cycles and multitude of emanations.
Dispassion and discernment can be seen as the natural qualities of consciousness to penetrate into the subtler dimensions of the self, resulting in a deeper awareness of the reality and thus, a lesser emphasis or focus on only one aspect of this gross-emotional reality that we now know. Such awareness means the expansion of consciousness and thus, a self-awareness that reveals the subtler reasons behind our gross-emotional existence. Such awareness gradually takes over the physical existence and one’s intelligence level heightens. One is then able to tap into the subtler levels of awareness and gain deeper knowledge about the creation as life.
Such knowledge moulds a new paradigm of reality – a new perception – that could be understood as ‘spiritual maturity’, ‘natural dispassion’ and ‘wisdom’ (from the ordinary, contemporary level of human self-awareness and perception).
Our contemporary human perception is sunk in conceptualisation and a fragmentation of reality, whereas the expanded awareness can simply be described as ‘being’, ‘knowledge’, ‘wholesomeness’ and nothing more. The human mind will always find many ways to express the Natural Being through words, to conceptualise it and make it look as if it is made up of many different phenomena such as love, god, bliss, dispassion, equanimity, wholesomeness, knowledge, contentment, spirituality, wisdom and so on. Yet, in reality, it is simply the Natural Conscious Being, penetrating through various limited areas of our conceptualised and boxed existence, interpreted by the limited mind to the degree of its self-awareness.
The cultivation of being, means surrender, and allowing the Natural Being to take over the obscure and controlled existence of the self. This is why surrender is difficult for the limited mind, which foolishly believes that it’s in control of its existence. Such obscurity is called ego or ignorance within the conscious existence. Such ignorance is the root of all diseases that penetrate into the human flesh and limit and drain its originally-eternal Being. It is why our physical expression of the spiritual essence is limited and obscure, where various levels of obscurity and ignorance drain and disperse our energy and conscious power throughout the projected reality.
The cultivation of the being means becoming aware of the spiritual root of existence and holding on to it with awareness, thus immortalising our being on all levels, including the level of the flesh. The goal of spirituality is not to immortalise the flesh however. The immortal flesh is only the fruit or outcome of the unveiled, naked consciousness that reveals itself through its embodiment in an unobstructed way, thus penetrating the projection with its immortal, eternal essence, and, with time, dissolving this essence back into its subtle state.
This is the path of Natural Spirituality and its qualities that manifest themselves – through the individual mind and its body – as dispassion, discernment and the evolving intelligence.
The dispassionate mind is the mind that has awakened to its Natural Being and essence. It’s the mind absorbed into its essence. When one remains in such absorption, naturally, for a long period of time, both in external action or inaction, one is cultivating the essence, or in other words, one is preserving and cultivating energy or spiritual power. Such cultivation certainly leads one to self-born knowledge, natural purity and longevity, further evolution and eventually, to transcendence.
Absorption is natural spontaneous meditation that, with time and more maturity, leads to dispassion and inner transformation. Such absorption into the Natural Being gradually shatters all illusions and unifies one’s perception of Reality, thus bestowing the knowledge of creation, life, death and immortality.
Dispassion also means disillusionment – or seeing the projected reality from the subtler layers of awareness, thus allowing one to observe the temporary conscious states as transitory and to therefore notice the patterns and ways consciousness manifests and refines its impurities through the manifestation.
To dwell in the Natural Being does not mean to be withdrawn or abstracted from life. This is a false belief, still based on the fear-based idea of force or ambition as a necessary way to ‘push life around’ or ‘get what we want.’ Everything we have in life is just a reflection of our own being. Thus, nothing can be forcibly changed in the external to improve our life without facing the internal distortions. Over time, by delving into experiences in the projected reality, our conscious distortions must eventually be faced. They will either become the means of our liberation, by surrendering to the Natural Flow, or the means of our further entanglement, by continually escaping from them, thus propelling the distorted self into deeper falsehood and ignorance.
When we begin to still the mind to some degree, we begin to notice the seemingly unstoppable and consistent restlessness of the mind, how and why it still grasps and clings, and how we are still ‘passionate’ for and support the dual, projected reality by our constant thinking, analysing, judging and projecting. We are thus able to create some space and observe how we invest our power of creation into the limited meanings and purposes and myriad forms of the collective projection.
The naturally arising state of dispassion dissolves these subtle channels through which consciousness streams outwards, until every projection or strain of passion within the self has been brought to the surface and neutralised. Such a mind is fixed in its own essence, because there is nowhere for such a mind to roam or run to. There is nothing that can arise within the manifestation to pull its attention away from its own inner Being (awareness). Ordinary thoughts don’t carry any force or hold any power over such a being, whose awareness has become contained and centred entirely within itself.
This is the great point of surrender, where every idea of a separate, limited self on a linear path of life or evolution is sacrificed to the Natural Flow, where one has understood that life simply takes care of itself despite the never-ending interference by the individual, fearful, thinking-mind and its unnecessary projections superimposed upon the actual, selfless Reality.
This is the point where we realise who we truly are, as the still, absorbed mind gives way to the experience of the omnipresent blissful, all-encompassing Self, which is pure knowledge, unconditional love and space-like empty Being.
