Elena Sidelnikova – Lessons Enlightenment (страница 8)

But how can this be done?

Gradually open this depth within yourself, step by step, dissolving drop by drop everything that is not this depth.

Are you speaking about dissolving one’s ego and renouncing worldly things?

Yes. For you are simply clinging to the illusion surrounding you. When you come to understand that everything is an illusion, to truly feel this moment, within you arises the desire to know what is not an illusion. It’s like the painted fireplace in Papa Carlo’s closet. Behind the fireplace is a beautiful door. Will you cling to the painted picture, knowing it is just a picture? The problem is that the illusion created by and for you is so detailed and believable that you don’t notice the difference. You don’t see that the fireplace is painted on a canvas. And you don’t see the magical door behind it. But it’s right in front of you.

Consider everything you see as a fireplace painted on a canvas. By viewing everything this way – any object, any event, every feeling – you will begin to understand that everything surrounding you distracts you from the magical door behind the canvas. And so you will begin to ruthlessly tear these canvases from your life because the thirst to know what lies behind the magical door will become so great that no canvases or barriers will stop you.

But life has many beautiful feelings and experiences that can teach us a lot. Is none of that necessary? Why then was this illusion of the canvas created? To distract us from the magical door?

That is the path. To return to yourself, you must first leave yourself. To return, you must leave. Do you understand? Otherwise, you won’t return.

Why leave at all?

To find a new path of returning to yourself and knowing yourself. To once again be convinced of your perfection and the unnecessary desire to leave yourself. To discover new facets of yourself and test yourself again in new qualities. There are many answers. But this is the Way: to leave in order to return. If you never leave, the desire to do so will always be present, even if leaving is forbidden or impossible. But once you leave yourself, you will realize you left in vain, and you will return with the knowledge that there was never any need to leave. For you are everything. When a person has no bars on the windows and no locked doors, they do not strive to leave because they know they can do so at any moment. But your illusions have become prisons, and you don’t even notice them.

But these illusions contain many temptations, many details to live through, like toys for a child. And many still want to play with them.

That’s why I speak of those who are ready to leave. To leave everything because all of it is just a painted canvas with a fireplace, nothing more.

We began with meditation and how to meditate correctly.

There are no special meditation techniques. Meditation itself is simply your natural state. You could say that meditation is seeing the illusion of the painted fireplace on the canvas. And if you see the illusion in everything, your life becomes meditative. And you will treat it exactly like a canvas with a painted fireplace. Many of you sit in different postures and stop your inner dialogue. This, of course, allows you to submerge into the depths for a few moments and understand what that is, to not fear this submersion into yourself. It’s like diving into the ocean while holding your breath. You go deeper and deeper, but you still fear letting go, and you return to the painted fireplace. But sooner or later, you won’t want to return and will submerge completely, taking the risk or being ready to dive.

Therefore, your whole life should become meditation, the understanding that everything around you is just painted canvases that miraculously come to life. And then you will learn to see in all events, in every person, the beautiful but hidden door to the unknown. And the door to Divinity. There is such a door in each of you. And if you discard the external “canvases of illusion,” you simply open this door within yourself and pass through it.

It’s easy to say, but harder to do. What you suggest could take decades. A person lives through many experiences, tries everything, and eventually realizes that everything is illusory and fleeting, and only then begins to search for deeper paths within. But renouncing the external is so difficult for people. Few will dare to give up everything they have to gain something unknown.

Deep down, you know this. But you have forgotten it. You simply need to remember. I speak of those who are ready to give up the painted fireplace.

How did you achieve this? How were you able to give up everything? After all, you had much.

That’s precisely what made me give up everything. I had everything, but it didn’t bring joy to my soul. And I realized that it was all just painted fireplaces on a canvas.

You spoke about Jesus and Buddha within each person, about the path of wisdom and the path of love. What happens when Jesus and Buddha balance Love and Wisdom within themselves – when Jesus finds Buddha in himself, and Buddha finds Jesus?

They become one. They open up like the boundless ocean of consciousness, which already possesses all these qualities – wisdom and love.

So, to know wisdom in oneself, one had to become unwise? And to know love, one had to become unloving? Why so complicated?

So that the thirst for love and wisdom would outweigh the desire to turn away from them.

Where are the forces of Light leading us? Are they perhaps just leading us through a maze of illusions, showing us all its sights? Where will they ultimately take us?

At a certain stage, you will realize that this, too, is just painted fireplaces.

Are the forces of Light an illusion?

Everything that is not the boundless ocean of consciousness is an illusion, a painted fireplace. View these illusions as beacons on the path. You are moving toward your Divinity through the boundless ocean. And to avoid getting lost, to avoid wandering in circles, to find the right path to your Divinity, you need beacons in the night ocean that show you the shallows, reefs, and dangerous places. That’s what the forces you call the forces of Light are for.

And the forces of Darkness? Are they also beacons?

Yes, of course. They are, so to speak, anti-beacons, trials waiting for you on your path to attaining Divinity. And beacons for those who don’t want to return to their Divinity but prefer to wander the maze of illusions.

So the forces of Light aren’t leading us anywhere; they’re just training and pointing us in the right direction?

They point you in the right direction. But your path to your own Divinity is unique and unrepeatable, as unique as the journey of each drop in the ocean. It’s unique. And as many drops as there are in the ocean, there are that many paths to one’s own Divinity.

Does the Boundless Ocean of Consciousness consist only of the Oceans of Love and Wisdom, or are there other Oceans that we don’t yet know about?

The boundless ocean of consciousness contains everything. But love and wisdom are simply words that can approximately convey the nature of these energies. Because both love and wisdom have their own depth, love and wisdom are deep. So in the ocean of consciousness, there are all depths, that is, all deep qualities, including those that are unknown to you and even to me.

But you have submerged into the ocean of consciousness. Why are some of its qualities unknown to you?

Because becoming the ocean means having all the qualities within you, but not knowing about them.

I don’t understand.

The ocean is calm. It is stillness. In the depths of the ocean, of course, there are currents. But there is no external. There is only internal. And you can only know something by encountering it. But if you are the depth itself, with what or with whom can you interact? You are the depth. Unfathomable and eternal.

So, is the ocean of consciousness a kind of oblivion?

You could call it that. It’s an entirely new level of consciousness. Presence in everything and the absence of everything. Do you understand?

Vaguely. So, you are everything, but you don’t differentiate or identify anything within yourself.

You could put it that way. I don’t separate anything from myself, and I am not separate. Therefore, you could say that I do not exist, that I don’t exist as Buddha. But I exist as buddha. Do you catch that?

Do you mean that you, as the person Gautama Buddha, have dissolved, but the consciousness of the buddha remains within you?

You’re right. And that buddha consciousness is a completely different kind of consciousness than what Buddha had. It is broader and deeper. But there are no words to describe it.

And having found the path of wisdom, are you now searching for the path of love?

I seek nothing now. I simply am consciousness that Is.

Sorry for the silly question, but what does this give you? I mean, individual consciousness of separation allows one to experience many details of the illusory world in all its diversity, and many of those details are very attractive. But then we lose all of this and become nothing. What does that give us?