The mind is the world. Its love, its sufferings, its pain, its pleasure, its bondages, its conditioning create the world, which is seemingly outside.
At the level of the body surviving in the world, the mind plays the role of devising strategies for survival and pleasure for the body.
Survival of the body is understandable. But when survival of the self enters the picture, then the distortion starts. The self is what I am internally. The "Harman", whose dream it is to attain salvation, is the self which is itself the bondage.
"The spiritual journey is not about attaining salvation. It is the process of utter destruction of the self which wants that salvation." (Swami Brahm Prakash)
That self sustains itself by fantasizing about the future. Its FUTURE is ITS future. It has a dream of a better state for itself. A state in which it is more evolved.
To live in the present is possible only when the mind is not indulging in the future. That is, when the distorting factor of my continuation and evolution in time is absent.
"Becoming"! I had heard so much about it. Why did I lose sight of this?
Abandonment of self-concern, of self-evolution, of self-improvement is the only salvation.
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Not to let the mind interfere in what is not its domain is the essence of spirituality.
Spiritual enquiry is the quest to show the mind its own place, literally.