Solar Braids by JanCarol
I believe that there is Something
Whether it is “weird action at a distance” or a soul –
That connects All Life together.
That Something is greater than all of us.
A dear friend speaks to me about “The Neutrality.” I had never heard that name used before, but it is useful.
I have always called it The Witness (meditation) or The Self (Advaita Vedanta) or Atman (yoga), Causality (also yoga), the I-AM (Judeo Christian) or That (also Advaita Vedanta), Eternity (many religions) or Permanence.
You can be personal, or you can be neutral.
You cannot be both at the same time, even though that is exactly the definition of you. You can breathe in, and breathe out – and still be both you (the individual) and You (the Divine).
In a personal perspective, your emotions are large, your thoughts are mile-a-minute and you engage with them and ruminate. Your problems are insurmountable, and the next goal is all you want.
Stepping back to the “neutrality,” is like getting into a jet plane and looking down – observing – that tiny city – those emotions become tiny, the thoughts – are just brain firings, and the problems and goals – are just one small life.
You can do both, but a shift is required to even perceive the neutrality (most people can’t do it), then you can Be Here Now, truly in the now.
You can get lost in the personality, and have to remind yourself that the neutrality is still there, you are still connected to the Oneness, and the personality fades as you realise that.
This is how you set the ego free.
It is also how you refine the personality, by ‘witnessing’ it. (a meditation event). By stepping back into the Permanent, your problems and emotions are diminished, but when you return to the Impermanent, the Personality – your experience as a Divine, Permanent Being – influences and changes your personality.
Personality is the things we are as a human. Emotions, feelings, memories, thoughts, identity, history – all the things that make up the individuality.
Causality – or beyond is the permanent part of us.
Papaji and Eckhart Tolle explain. When you ask, “Who am I?” Papaji wants to know – who is asking the question? Who is “I” and who is asking to define I? Eckhart Tolle had a flash of insight when he realised in a state of depression: “I don’t like myself.” He then realised that there is a split between “I” and “Myself,” and in his delving into this split, he found the difference between the Eternal (“I” in this sentence) and the Temporary (“myself” or the personality).
The clearest way to be aware of causality is mindfulness.
My first lesson in mindfulness was about train cars. As you are meditating, your thoughts are train cars going by on the tracks. Your brain’s job is to think, to produce thoughts. In meditation, you let the train roll by, observing the train cars, then letting them go so that the next one can come. To engage in a train car is to “get stuck,” so you go back to the breath, and observe the thoughts again.
Personality is the cars and their contents, and it can be useful to explore the cars and their contents. There is self knowledge, and a move towards individuation, to examine these feelings and what they are teaching you about the human experience. “That” is the observer which watches the cars go by, the cars are always changing, but That is Permanent.
Who is it that observes your thoughts?
That’s Causality.
Once, all of my religion and spirituality existed in personality. “I believe this because -” and I was very invested in religion as the identity of my personality. Now I am finding that I am able to use my personality (the train cars, the body, the emotions, the thoughts, the passions) to drive my own train, and yet I can still, observe it from a position of Permanence.
First, I explored the Personality, to learn more about why I am Human and made this way.
Then, I stepped back into Objectivity/Causality, to detach from the Personality
NOW, I am plunging that Objectivity back into the Personality to infuse my existence with the Holy.
This is also called “not taking it personally” in the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.
Neutrality is the observer, the witness, in meditation. I am not thought, feeling, pain, relationships, I AM lies beyond that.
There is a movie. It is projected on the wall. The neutrality is not the story of the movie, nor is it the wall upon which the story is projected. It is not the projector. It is the light upon which all things ride, and the darkness which dances with the light.
Because I am human, I have a mind, and my mind wants to attach to the stories, to the wall, to the projector, to the methods and the practices. But the truth is, I am not those things. I am That.
Neutrality is identifying with the permanent, the Whole, the One, That, the Self, instead of identifying with the personality, the temporary, the emotions, the thoughts, all of the things bound up in individuality.
To Channel neutrality is to open oneself up to the openness and possibility of the Divine, and to let go into that, knowing that all will be well.
The permanent will always care for the impermanent, and has a deeper understanding of the layers of causality in this existence.
From Neutrality comes the drumming, comes the words that I share with the people who ask for them. From the Neutrality comes the connection, the gifts of animal, plant, stone medicine, earth, sea, sky, space. From the Neutrality comes the gifts of the Gods – though the Gods themselves are personality, they, like me, are channels for the eternal gifts.
