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LinkedIn This is a reminder that on November 20, Charles Gibson sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn. Your invitation will expire soon! Follow this link to accept Charles Gibson’s invitation. https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/878666550/sQA8hnqN/ Signing up is free and takes less than a minute. This is a reminder that on November 20, Charles Gibson sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn. > To: [] > From: Charles Gibson [chalig4727@gmail.com] > Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn > I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. > > – Charles The only way to get access to Charles Gibson’s professional network is through the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/878666550/sQA8hnqN/ You can remove yourself from Charles Gibson’s network at any time. The pending expiration of your invitation is an automatic process triggered by system maintenance. This is the last email message you will receive from LinkedIn about the expiration of this invitation from Charles Gibson. © 2009, LinkedIn Corporation

Reminder about your invitation from Charles Gibson

LinkedIn This is a reminder that on November 20, Charles Gibson sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn. Follow this link to accept Charles Gibson’s invitation. https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/878666550/sQA8hnqN/ Signing up is free and takes less than a minute. This is a reminder that on November 20, Charles Gibson sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn. > To: [] > From: Charles Gibson [chalig4727@gmail.com] > Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn > I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. > > – Charles The only way to get access to Charles Gibson’s professional network is through the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/878666550/sQA8hnqN/ You can remove yourself from Charles Gibson’s network at any time. © 2009, LinkedIn Corporation

Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

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Relax

Relax. Smile . Live a little. The mind needs drama to sustain it. Don’t give it the drama. Whenever you are too serious in this way you feed the mind. Seriousness, glumness, anger, fear, they reinforce the impression that the mind is something real. So relax, smile, laugh, live a little. Don’t feed this seriousness to the mind.

It’s as if the mind and body are a boat on a lake. The sail is set, the wind is god’s will, taking you inevitably to your destiny. If you thrash about with your paddle in the water, you won’t change the course, all you will do is muddy the waters. If you relax, smile and let things occur as they will, the water will become calm and in it you will see your reflection.

You will know that you were never stuck in the boat, in the little body and the mind. You were never this little boat passing above the water, you were in fact the sun shining down above all. You are the sun of consciousness. This consciousness reveals all but it is never touched by what it reveals. Know this and know that nothing can hurt you.

If the boat enters choppy waters or has plain sailing, the sun is always unaffected. Let the boat take it’s course, let life take it’s course. Smile. Relax.

Thoughts

No experience you have, nothing you perceive, ever defines YOU in any way. Any experience is the perception of some kind of thought form, be it in your head as a thought, in the body as a feeling or emotion or in the world as some sense perception. This is all a veil of thought unbroken, but appearing different, the same way the camera film is all plastic but appears to contain different forms.

Who you are is the Consciousness perceiving, not that which is perceived. So nothing you experience, nothing you perceive, ever defines you in any way. You may perceive a mortal individual, with this and that desire, this and that thing to be accomplished but that was never YOU. The perception that this is otherwise, that you are that false individual, is attachment.

Just know that that is all it is, it is just attachment that causes suffering, you are not bound by anything external, you only bind yourself. This is like the story of the man with the donkeys who stopped for the night and had no rope to tie them. Simply going through the motions of tying the donkeys, they believed that they were bound and would not move all night nor in the morning. In order to break this rope, the rope of attachment to thoughts, dont pull against it, resist and struggle with thoughts attempting to subdue them. Why resist and struggle with something that never has anything to do with you?

RELAX and let the rope go slack, let the mind do as it will, just be still, calm and relaxed, there is nothing you have to do. Know that you are in no danger, no matter what the mind comes up with let it do as it will. This indifference to the mind will develop and attachment will dissapear of itself. Smile and be happy, you are free and always were. The mind may appear otherwise, but you are not the mind, you are not a human being, you are only conscious of a human being.

Some Ideas

As human beings we suffer. Normally this suffering on what ever level leads us to attempt to accumulate more and to protect that which ourselves. This can be on the level of the mind as the accumulation of more knowledge, more intellectual prowess, recognition and the like. With the body to the endless pursuit of greater physical perfection, to the endless perfection of this and that healing technique or diet. In the world we seek always to ensure on a greater and greater level our financial security, and the security of a select few around us. This is the natural behaviour of the human being and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. The problem is that we do not examine this behaviour closely to discover that it is in fact, though natural, it is in the end completely futile. The mind is a limited and simple tool, how will it comprehend infinite existence?. The body is a temporary abode, in a matter of years it will stop functioning and die. The world is in a state of constant flux, any personal security attained is only temporary and indeed that which it secures, the mind and body, will soon be gone.

Does this mean to stop, to give up, to abuse my health, to quit my job and family and live in a cave? Of course not, spirituality is the key to understanding this. If the actions in the world are undertaken in order to create an environment for spirituality, then immediately we see that the real purpose of these before seemingly futile activities is being realised. The mind then gets trained in order to be sharp enough to contemplate and understand fully spiritual instruction. The body is kept healthy in order to be able to perform spiritual practice. Financial security and material well being are pursued in order to not only ensure the possibility of one’s own spiritual practice but to serve others and enable them also to do the same. How is someone to become spiritual if they are starving to death or in constant danger? Spirituality is never about causing or allowing suffering to come to any other. That suffering may come to others and ourselves does not permit us to drag down the ideal, the great and shining ideal that we are all One, that my neighbour is none other than my own Self.

So if worldly activity is there to enable us to practice spirituality, what is the practice of spirituality? Spirituality is the use of the mind and body as tools, in order to completely and systematically establish oneself in the knowledge that one is not and never has been a mind or a body. The object of spirituality is the direct experience, the confirmed knowledge of this, the false nature of the perceived mind, body and world. Vedanta offers us a step by step and scientific approach to this practice of Spirituality. It is of course not the path for every human being, diversity is the basis of duality. However Vedanta admits this, it admits that it is only a tool to be transcended. It is the very basis of Vedanta that in fact there is nothing to be attained, no path to be followed. You always are all that exists, you are existence itself. The destruction of the appearance, the ignorance, that it is ever any other wise is spiritual practice.

Many times we say we have no free will, the God does all and we are his playthings and this is true. The perception that I am a doer, or a thinker is completely false, but we can only say this when we have realised that Truth and experienced it directly. To transcend work, one first has to work. To get better, one has to take the medicine. As Buddha said, ‘First comes meditation, then enlightenment.’ Many times we cry ‘no free will’ when lethargy arises or some pleasurable but unfavorable desire has us in it’s grip. If after this God then came and said ‘Well as you said, those are not your hands but mine, so hand them over.’, would we give them up so easily as we had given up the ideal? Be strong, determined, say ‘I must and will rectify myself!’ That true and infinitely powerful nature of yours will come to your direct experience and you will be free of all spiritual practice, free of any perception that you were any thing other than the Self.

Unlock

When we turn a key in lock, in order to unlock it we turn the key in the opposite direction.

Suffering comes from the attachment to thoughts. We only attach to that which we perceive as real. That which is perceived as completely unreal carries absolutely no weight and therefore there is no attachment. So attachment to thoughts arises from the perception that they are real. The mind is a unified whole, ranging from the subtlest sense of individuality or the ego, through the intellect, thoughts, emotions, the perception of the body and the perception of an external world. All these are just variations of vibration that is all. When these are taken as real, we become attached to them. The key is turned in the lock.

Know that everything perceived is completely unreal. Only you, the Consciousness perceiving, is real. First we hear this, that the mind is unreal. Then we think about it, contemplate it until it becomes clear in the mind that it is certainly possible that the mind is unreal and is not who I am. Then we come to realise simply and in a confirmed way that this is true. This requires no intellectualisation, only the willingless and desire to listen, contemplate and realise. The key is turned back and the lock unlocked.