The Search For Love And Problems Arising Between Couples

da Filippo Falzoni Gallerani | Mar 30, 2014

It is not for love of your wife but for love of “Self” that a man says I love my wife dearly

A Hindu text

Happiness of individuals depends firstly on the quality of their loving relationships. When you are in love all problems seem to disappear. However search for emotional happiness is a painful path, full of frustrations and disillusions. The days of passion frequently give way to conflicts, boredom, and various forms of dependency, jealousy and possessiveness. These and many other destructive elements which soon occur in a relationship make a great part of love relationships difficult and painful. A lot of people try to forget their love troubles by settling for superficial relationships, others try to hide their inner emptiness investing their energies in the pursuing of power and money and focus onappearances.

The problem is more serious today because a lot of men are not prepared to adapt to the deep changes of nowadays. According to changes in the way people think, a woman is no longer subdued to a man and considered an inferior being in his service, a means of procreation without almost any rights.

For centuries love problems were considered secondary because marriages were arranged by families, generally for reasons for interest and practical issues. Roles were accepted as an inalienable universal rule.

From the Sixties onwards roles have changed totally, however contemporary man does not seem to be able to relate with a woman as his equal. He often seems nervous and insecure, or reactive and violent.

Separations and divorces are constantly increasing. Psychotherapist have more and more patients with love problems not to mention men killing their partners because they don’t accept to be left by a woman whom they consider their personal property.

I remember that, as a young student of psychology, I had the impression that all books I was studying faced the real problem of every man or woman indirectly; the problem of finding love. Nevertheless I found that psychology did not give enough importance to the most important problem of human beings which was, in my opinion, comprehending and overcoming obstacles that prevent all of us from establishing relations of true love.

Freud considered sexuality of main importance, but did not talk specifically in detail of love and completeness in a couple. He focused mainly on the development of sexuality and the overcoming of the different stages children go through in their first years of life until with puberty, genital maturity[1], and the impulse to reproduce take over.

I thought the only fulfilled man was one who could live an authentic and happy love relationship at any level, and not the one who had solved only his sexual problems.

I remember that one day, I expressed this idea to prof. Beluffi (head of the department where I was training at Hospital Paolo Pini and my mentor in my psychiatric studies).

I asked him: “Don’t you think individuals are sane and balanced psychologically when their inner evolution allows them to love with maturity and harmony and to build a really happy relationship with their partners and their families?”

He answered me with a short question: “don’t you think, on the contrary, that evolution may lead to individuals developing not only their male but also their female side?”

I thought deeply about this notion, which I had never considered before. I perceived the cultural contradiction on the one hand of the fact that men desire a relationship with a woman (or women chase men) considering a handicap to spiritual life and on the other hand men search for romantic love and see the union of male and female as a sacrament, a universal symbol of completeness, the summum bonum for ordinary people.

It’s like saying: “God is love, but if you aspire to freedom you had better avoid relationships which involve you deeply.”

In fact a woman was seen often as the main obstacle to a man’s self realisation. He has to go beyond being the slave of love, a situation that darkens his reason and the slavery of his sexual instinct if he wants to become wise and spiritual.

At the same time the Hieros Gamos[2] or the mystic marriage between the male and female principles (King and Queen) was the heart of symbols of alchemy I studied when learning of the psychological interpretation of Jung[3].

The Philosopher’s Stone symbolised the inner realisation of the alchemist and was externally projected onto the level of matter. The union of male and female principles of matter had the power to convert ordinary metals into gold, in the same way that within the being of a person the integration of opposites led to the realisation of “Self”.

To give one of many possible examples, the symbols of Hindu Tantrism have as their  zenith the union between Shiva and Shakti, the male and female principles, emptiness and form. A Yogi can reach the Absolute through erotic rites[4].

In Hinduism Shankara[5]’s philosophy is highly valued and his commentaries to the Upanishad still represent a peak of human thought.

Even if Shankara never refers to sex, he expresses the same concept of the union and integration of opposites, like other mystical paths. According to Shankara and the Vedanta Masters only Non Dualistic Conscience leads to the true reality beyond the illusions of mind[6]. I was very impressed by part of a sentence written by him. To the questions: “Which is the most difficult thing?” and “Who is a real hero?” He answered: “Understanding women” and “The one who doesn’t let them confuse him”.

With regard to Tibetan Buddhism, this sentence from Mahamudra[7] by Tilopa[8] suffices to indicate the importance of tantric sexual union: “When serving a karmamudra[9], the pure awareness
 of bliss and emptiness will arise:
 Composed in a blessed union of insight and means,
 slowly send down, retain and draw back up the bodhichitta[10],
 and conducting it to the source, saturate the entire body.
 But only if lust and attachment are absent will that awareness arise.

 Then gaining long-life and eternal youth, waxing like the moon,
 radiant and clear, with the strength of a lion,
 you will quickly gain mundane power and supreme enlightenment. May this pithy instruction in Mahamudra
 remain in the hearts of fortunate beings.”

In ancient Chinese philosophy a man was a mediator between sky and earth; in Taoism, the union and balance of Yin and Yang (male and female principles) leads to the path to liberation.

Through experience, I realised that the union between a man and a woman is possible and can be happily achieved only if an individual accepts his essential loneliness, which is the acknowledgement of real Self containing male and female polarity.

A man will resolve all his problems with the opposite sex only after he has achieved self-sufficiency  and the integration of opposites.

Most men and women live unhappy relationships because they avoid reality.

Through self-analysis and the observation of many cases, I realised how wrong it is to search for happiness and completeness outside oneself without recognising first the inner emptiness we all want to fulfil.

IN OUR THINKING WE WILL NEVER FIND REALITY BEYOND OUR THOUGHTS

If there is no integration in the conscience of “animus-anima”, if we don’t surrender to our most intimate feelings without being confused by desires and identification with the self, this lack will be projected outside of us and continue to manifest itself in unsatisfactory relationships.

As long as we hope to find (or fear we won’t find) something in life, our attitude of desire and fear will make us live blocked by our thinking, which distorts a right perception of reality: if we continue on this path we will always be deluded.

In the tension towards the outside we loose contact with ourselves i.e. with a clear perception of the present day originating in a free mind. Endless illusions and delusions will originate from this lack of clarity.

Alchemy of the Male-Female union must first occur inside ourselves. The union between Shiva and Shakti, Sky and Earth, Purusha and Prakriti, emptiness and form, to be or not to be, is the mystical marriage of an individual who has in himself a complementary polarity, and represent the awareness of the individual in the Self. It is not a solipsistic androgynous perception, nor a closure into ourselves which leads to loneliness, but the certainty of being self sufficient as an indispensable condition of establishing healthy relationships.

The emptiness, “the non-being and death” scare us because we don’t see them as polar and complementary processes of the being. We must find the courage to embrace the reality we cannot escape from.

OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH MENTAL IMAGES IS THE ROOT OF SUFFERING

When we are internally ready, when we have accepted reality, our relations become harmonious and we are free from dependence. Or it will let us leave troubled relations without resentment, recrimination and regret, and without fear of the future and solitude.

That is the time when the partner we have been looking for all our life will unexpectedly appear.

Being self sufficient, having the courage to show ourselves as we really are and to accept the inner solitude that nobody can fulfil, are indispensable conditions for not being dominated by illusions and for understanding others, and thus avoiding establishing relationships of dependency, which inevitably will end up in trouble.

The inner balance of self sufficiency is therefore a prerequisite of any healthy relation[11].

The mistake comes when we relate to life trying to resolve the problem outside ourselves and to find someone capable of filling our inner emptiness we have never dealt with. Nobody will ever fill this emptiness completely: we can fill it only if we recognise it and accept it as it is, without escaping into illusions and hopes.

It may happen that we have to go through painful experiences to grow which allow us to know our neuroses in the theatre of projections. Only if we are sincere with ourselves and can recognise them can we be free from them.

In love relations it is also easy to delude ourselves. For example we do things to please our partner even if these actions are not spontaneous. When we do this, if we feel loved we still have the doubt that the partner does not love us but the person we’ve tried to look like. What’s more, acting in a non-spontaneous way will soon begin to be a burden.

Certainly with these premises, relations are a reason for suffering. In this perspectives love relationships are “dangerous” for those who look for inner peace. This is why men and women sometimes choose the monastic life. They are not always moved by a spiritual conversion, more often they want to avoid entering the dangerous arena of love life.

Only when there is harmony between life and us and we spontaneously go with the flow, without fears or hopes, can we establish happy relations. There is harmony between us and life only we are free from the conflicts, which our thinking creates when we live amid desires, fears and conditionings.

Our thinking creates the self, with its memories and expectations. Until we free ourselves from the false identification with the character created by our thinking we will not find harmony with our partners. We will not be in harmony withwhat is.

BREATHING AND IDENTIFICATION

One of the reasons why the technique of Transpersonal Rebirthing is so efficient lies in the fact that during an intense breathing session one is predisposed to feel pleasant and painful feelings. We know we have entered areas of the subconscious and that with the recognition of what we are able to purge ourselves of, we free ourselves from its influence.

With this unconditioned attention to strong sensations that breathing produces, we can tune in with the present experienced from the perspective of the witness who has no desires or fears.

The absence of thinking leads to a state in which the observer who is separated from sensations disappears and everything is seen in the clarity of a non-divided conscience.

A clear perception of reality, beyond the cage of thinking, often helps the patient in only one session to resolve deep problems and open new horizons for him.

The moment of awakening lived during the breathing sessions become

characteristic  of an individual when this attitude of being a witness without alternatives or goals is pursued in daily life.

At this point we will perceive that it is sufficient to make this inner step of surrender to reality in order to approach intuitive wisdom, which spontaneously manifests itself when the ego leaves it space. We will live experiences we would never have imagined. And now that we do not need them anymore, we can finally establish happy love relations.

[1] Take a look at the site “maturità genitale”: http://www.pieropriorini.it/index_file/dipendenzeaffettive.html.

In an article Piero Priorini analyses love dependence in a modern psychoanalytic perspective. His analysis is similar to what I affirm here, even though I see the limits of Freudian perspective compared to the Transpersonal one.

[2] Hieros Gamos = mystic marriage or holy union was an ancient symbolic ritual celebrated in the Spring. People who attended it acquired a divine nature and often were a means to the deity concerned. In alchemy the union between the male and female principles of matter is the key to the philosophical stone to transform not only ordinary metals into gold but also the conscience of the alchemist.

[3] See the inspiring book “Psychology and Alchemy” by C.G. Jung

[4] A Yogi can experience ecstasy of union with Absolute through an erotic rite, only if he does not feel any lust, i.e. he identifies himself with the transpersonal self and with the cosmic forces that express themselves through it.

[5] This is how Shankara analyses Absolute Subjectivity: If you recognize it [the Absolute Witness], you will be freed from the bonds of ignorance and obtain liberation. There is a self-existent Reality, which is the basis of our consciousness of ego. That Reality is the Witness of the state of ego consciousness and of the body. That Reality is the constant Witness in all three states of consciousness — waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep. It is your real Self. That Reality pervades the universe. It alone shines. The universe shines with its reflected light. Its nature is timeless Awareness. It knows all things. Witnesses all things, from the ego to the body. It is the Witness of pleasure and pain and the sense objects. This is your real Self. the Supreme Being, the Ancient. It never ceases to experience infinite release. It is unwavering. It is Spirit itself. Conscience –consciousness is a witness of our “Self”. Ramana Maharashi calls it “Ego-self”, Absolute Subjectivity…

[6] This fulfilment leads to the Self-Fulfilment seen as an absolute subjectivity without any attributes.

[7] Find the complete Mahamudra instructions by Tilopa at http://www.keithdowman.net/mahamudra/tilopa.htm

[8] Tilopa (928-1009) was a tantric practitioner and mahasiddha. who developed the mahamudra (Tibetan: phyag rgya chen po) method, a set of spiritual practices that greatly accelerates the process of attaining bodhi (enlightenment). He is considered the patriarch of Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Nine of his books have been preserved and translated into Tibetan.

[9] Karmamudra: when you practise tantric sex.

[10] Sanskrit word Bodhicitta  “mind of enlightenment” or “awakening mind” is characteristic of Mahayana Buddhism.

[11] Naturally, this apply to homosexual relations as well, since sexual roles are psychological attitudes rather than physiological conditions.

The Insidious Masks Of The Ego

da Filippo Falzoni Gallerani | Feb 1, 2014

… Investment in samsara is futile; it is the cause of every anxiety.
Since worldly involvement is pointless, seek the heart of reality!
In the transcending of mind’s dualities is Supreme vision;
In a still and silent mind is Supreme Meditation;
In spontaneity is Supreme Activity;
And when all hopes and fears have died, the Goal is reached.
Beyond all mental images the mind is naturally clear:
Follow no path to follow the path of the Buddhas;
Employ no technique to gain supreme enlightenment.
Mahamudra, Tilopa

A Little story of Awakening

Few years ago in India I had an experience that, although at first sight may seem a trifle thing indeed proved to be a memorable teaching.

I think it exemplifies in very simple terms, with a trivial episode of daily life, one of the crucial  mechanisms by which the mind deceives us, if we do not recognize the difference between thought and actual awareness.

Since the late ’70s I spent all winters in an ashram in India situated in a beautiful valley at the foot of the Himalayas, crossed by a pure stream ‘s: There I met the Sri Haidhakhan Baba, that many knows simply as Babaji. After he left his body I continued to spend 2 or 3 months there every year.

I do not intend to tell my long story and I’ll be right to the comic circumstances that once again, sowed me the deceptions of the ego, that are, as we can see very common, in the path of spiritual quest.

One evening, before bed, I listened for a couple of hours a recording of Eckhart Tolle, the author of “The Power of Now.”

Many people know that his writings, on topics that largely agree with, have had a great international success. He covers the subject pure awareness, and liberation from the illusion of a separate self. In many ways he is in line with the message of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Advaita philosophy.

I find interesting characters like Tolle, because they are ordinary people who, after periods of neurosis and depression, awakened to a new state of consciousness characterized by bliss and serenity, without particular techniques and without a Guru.

Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo for example seem to us exceptional people with a special destiny, favoured by social and historical contexts, while these “new masters” are ordinary people of our time, living within our culture, without anyreligious stigmata, that look very ordinary.

In simple words Tolle was speaking of “awareness beyond all thoughts” and total immersion in the here-now, in a way I appreciated.

Listening Tolle that night I remembered the experiments I did as a boy trying to remain conscious during dreams, or cultivating mind control focusing attention on every movement such as the conscious walking of Zen. As they say: “when walking, just walk” and other similar things.

In those days in India I was in a very clear and peaceful state of mind, I was feeling really at home, and the environment made it very easy to live in the here and now without any mental conflict. I used to spent many hours a day in meditation and studying the best Indian Philosophers, or translating some Upanishads an so on.

But that night, I decided that it could still be “good for me” to intentionally apply the practice of attention that Tolle suggested, with an ongoing commitment for the following hours.

When I turned off light I consciously move from wakefulness to sleep.

As I promised myself, a certain presence remained in the background in my sleep. I woke up at 3.29, (one minute before the alarm clock) feeling that I have been aware of dreamless sleep.

I got out of bed with the intention to keep on doing my best in practicing mindfulness.

I put a special awareness in every movements:  awareness of the toothpaste on the toothbrush   carefully spread, the coffee pot filled without spilling a grain, the gas stove lighted with the first piezoelectric spark, and then the conscious feeling of every sip of the steaming black drink .

It is ten minutes to four o’clock and I go out in the starry night and walk, a conscious walk, through the mango grove, past by the nine temples and the dhuni and down the stairs that lead to the rocky bed of the river, attentive to every step and any sound and feeling.

The moon and the stars are reflected on the surface of the pool created by the dam of stones I built in previous days.

I take off the jacket, kurta of heavy wool, the two sweaters, t-shirt and woollen tights and pants, necessary in these cold days of January.

Every gesture is tasted by knowledge, I carefully put my clothes neatly folded in order to wear quickly and do not get cold after a bath, without getting stuck in a sleeve that is inverted or exchange the front with the back of a sweater.

I’m paying attention to everything and very concentrated. Now I am naked in the chilly night, ready to dive in the crystalline waters of the Ganga.

A biting wind from the North enters the valley just as I’m about to dive into the deep pool … and here… I realize with amazement that for the first time in thirty years, I forgot to bring with me the bathrobe! !!!!

The bathrobe is the most difficult thing to forget because we always remember that just out of the cold water it is fundamental to have something dry.

The funny thing is that I have forgotten it the very day on which I had committed more than ever to cultivate attention!

In trying to live in the present, I left out the most important thing, and, by searching, I have lost touch with the present that is actually always and already there.

A lighting flash through my mind! I understand that I touched one of the classic paradoxes of the ego in is quest for self-improvement.

My uncontrollable laughter echoes through the valley. My God!

I am already Awareness and I strive to become it?

The thought and effort to be aware is not an obstacle to the very awareness that comes from a clear mind free of purposes and not divided in self-observation?

The map is not the territory

I felt like never before the stupidity of research of mindfulness through thought, and at the same time, I understand that it is an act of intelligence to realize the deception own ego that wants to “be present.” The ego and thinking are the product of the movement of time and memory and do not lead to this which is beyond conceptualization and planning. The filter of thinking divides the perception “in observer and observed”, while there is only observation, there is only That.

It is so difficult to recognize because this is a collective illusion shared and promulgated by the society in which we live, which is based on ego and thought (and we see the results are a world in which conflict and confusion is rife at all levels ).

To overcome the deceptions of the mind we have to expose ourselves and realize the paradoxical nature of this challenge, which ultimately leads to surrender and genuine transcendence of the ego and the psychological time.

But “Nothing is easier than to continue along streets or children to return,” said Jung.

This is a radical change of perspective and not a gradual improvement within our ego illusions.

It is to do away with the desire to change over time, with the claims of an effort of self-improvement that, from this perspective ego, proves self-defeating.

It takes effort and commitment to build a house with his own hands, but certainly not to be yourself, to realize the natural state … should perhaps make an effort a wave to feel the she is the ocean, or just simply recognize reality and leave the illusion of its own imagined independent nature?

How true all that repeated Krishnamurti!

And how easy it is to betray in practice what has been understood on an intellectual level, as soon as the ego to want to implement himself spiritually.

We don’t realize how foolish it is to be fooled by these “trips” of thought that can never grasp reality by the very nature of its limited areas.

The spontaneous awakening comes when there is no I who pursues and expanded states of consciousness occur in the total inner freedom.

And then: Who is trying to become more aware? Who wants to reach a particular state of consciousness?

As soon as there is the ego, consciousness is clouded by the thought fear and desire.

The ego is made up of thoughts and it is the root of every thought and of the creation of past and future. Wile the chronological time exist the psychological time is a mind creation. Awareness arises when the mind is silent. The mind is silent when we do nothing, in fact: we did not own, so there is no one who wants to silence. The action occurs spontaneously. We are one with the reality because there is only This and That You Are …

The non-dual Self appears spontaneously in the mind free from desire and fear, expectations and choices. Only when we are free from the compulsion to achieve something disappears division into observer and observed and consciousness is one with the All.

Only when attention is spontaneous, meditation occurs without divisions.

How many times I repeated the effort to meditate is antithetical to meditation, which is the inner silence that leads us to the reality, but the deception hides as well even in “reasonable” going to practice mindfulness.

This situation showed me once again the camouflage of the ego in the most subtle: the spiritual ego. Recognizing this mental trap seemed more illuminating many hours of meditation.

Only when the sense of self dissolves we wake up to reality.

Just by seeing clearly the shadow enter into the Light …

Only discarding the mental illusions are Reality …

Just dying to ourselves we live in the Eternal Now …

Filippo Falzoni Gallerani

Self-Knowledge And The Illusions Of The Ego

da Filippo Falzoni Gallerani | Gen 31, 2014

(The Tao we can deviate from is not the real Tao)

“If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.”
A.  Einstein

The meaning of religion is: to gather all one’s energies to understand the nature of thought, to recognize its limitations and go beyond.
J. Krishnamurti

Let’s imagine that life is like the ocean, and each individual is a wave. Just as human beings identify themselves with the body-mind, and feel separated from universal consciousness, the wave endowed by conscience perceives itself as separated and different from the ocean. Perceiving yourself as a wave, you realize how small you are compared to the immensity of the ocean that one day will absorb you. Reflecting on this fact, you will face (without any fear) the problem of death. The space that separates you as a wave from the coast will soon inevitably come to an end; the journey of the wave inexorably moves towards its meeting with the shore and that’s its Ending. The wave knows that when it laps against the cliffs, it will lose its identity as a separated wave, it will become an indistinguishable part of the ocean. Even worse would be to lose its identity absorbed and made one with a calm sea.

The fear of “not being” has generated marvellous fantasies of paradises and heavens but at the moment reincarnation is very popular among more and more people. (From this perspective resurrection and eternal life are terms completely misunderstood). A frustrated wave may say: “given that I’m an insignificant little wave in this life that nobody pays any attention to, in my next life I will be a magnificent wave fit for expert surfers and (as a person) I will be a famous celebrity.” A second wave, who’s thinking is confused might say:  “I hope all the dead waves from heaven will show me the right path for my life.” A third may think: “if I meditate all my life, through meditation I will remove all the ups and downs in my life and achieve a kind of frozen immortality”. The narcissist one hopes to be admired by everybody. When a violent storm stirred up by powerful winds lifts and buffets the wave, the wave feels strong and brave and probably believes that it’s dancing like Lord Shiva (the magic of Indian Ocean). Yet another is preoccupied by the fear that other waves may be bigger than itself, and if any of them cause any obstruction in its passage over the surface of the sea, it gets very angry. One has the insight that it belongs to something bigger, and it imagines that one-day it’ll meet God, and so become the highest wave ever, as it has always dreamt of being. Just like those waves which come from the East. These marvellous waves, when questioned about themselves reply:  “we rise up effortlessly very high, we are so big only by the grace of the Ocean, and we are not different from you”. It is said that these giant waves reincarnate year after year because of the holy coincidence of some stars (casually it happens always during the monsoon). The petty waves think: “these are the teachers that we should follow. They reincarnate one life after another just to give teachings, they don’t have any pride in their greatness, on the contrary they are so humble that they say that they are nobody, and they do nothing to be so great”.Nobody ever listened, neither understood the message that has been always repeated by the big waves which is: “It’s not me, but the Ocean that acts through me, The Ocean is not different from me because there’s no Me! It’s the mind which separates the Ocean from me.

Everything is the same indivisible Nature, only the Ocean exists, my form is only a temporary appearance, the Ocean is the only truth, with its unchanging movement. So surrender to Him and be in peace, and stop your illusory thoughts interfering”. Very few waves understand the importance of this, the majority continue to look for the magic myths of the Indian Ocean to become better waves with time and practice. The very rare, less narcissistic waves, instead of competing for height, will direct their efforts to find the root of their own soul, establishing a serenity that liberates them from the ups and downs of life. The little wave guesses the depth of the ocean, but is still influenced by the imagines of the superficial polluted water, where many self appointed gurus sell dreams of Omnipotence that suggest that once you find your soul, you will become a wave with a crest but not a valley, and you’ll have the power to create your destiny, and so realize all your worldly desires. But all the mental efforts to become wise and a balanced wave lead to frustration, because storms, currents, winds, and earthquakes are uncontrollable natural forces, and finally one accepts that it is so, and, above all, that a wave that has a crest but hasn’t a valley does not exist. Sudden hurricanes that elevate waves to the sky don’t depend on the number of mantras the wave repeated, neither the depressing dead calm are punishments for its impure acts. The most awakened ones understand that the solution is in the reunion of their individual self with the ocean, but effort in this direction is useless all the time  that the wave sees itself as an individual entity. Some waves think: “Maybe it was better to live like those waves that don’t search for liberation and live day by day. What’s life about? It doesn’t make any sense, all dies all finishes… take the most you can, lord it over some smaller waves, there’s always someone to dominate, enjoy yourself until you can”. The wave that has reached a certain spiritual dimension cannot turn back. It feels that there’s something bigger inside, and guesses that the depths of the abyss exist. After trying in vain for long time to find a stable self, the wave understands that there isn’t a crest without a valley, and no effective methods to stand up when is dead calm. Once it is free from this illusion all of a sudden it remembers in an unclear intuition, that long time ago, at the moment of its birth it was feeling part the Ocean itself. In that moment it had no personality and history, life passed spontaneously moment-by-moment, but this sensation soon vanished with the effort to create a character according to the ideals generated by the ones that surrounded her.The spiritual path that New Age groups suggested consisted in using mental stratagems in the illusion that it’s possible to have all their wishes fulfilled. It was said, that wise waves handed down knowledge long long ago, but the original source was the Creator, finally some authors of bestsellers have rediscovered all this knowledge.  Those stratagems unfortunately were totally ineffective, and with deeper analysis they appeared not inspired by the Ocean, but only a distorted version of the sages’ insights, diffused by fearful waves who were scared of death, afraid of facing life, and anxious to become saints (being without the “valleys”). They pretended anyway that with these methods they would be protected, they will reach illumination and  after death they would reincarnate in the happy seas. Wise traditions were transmitted in a very distorted way, so that the vast majority of the waves keep on looking for illusory hopes to escape from the inconceivable idea of “not being anyone”. The sages only realize to be one with the ocean, and they have no need to change anybody. They speak very little, because when they do, most of the time they are misunderstood. If you don’t stop identifying yourself with a separated self, you are in an illusory world and you distort all the deepest truths. The wave doesn’t want to see the death of the illusory self it identifies with, even though this is the only way to eternal life and resurrection. The wave wants to get rid of faults, but it wants to keep all the good qualities it is proud of. It doesn’t want to give up its illusory projects, and the drama it has created in its mind: the samsaric theatre of life. And so persisting in the impossible task of becoming what it is not, the wave is the victim of the frustrating and insatiable desire to be better. All of a sudden the wave realises how stupid it is to strain for everything, and surrenders and accepts to be the way it is. SURRENDER TO THE OCEAN, OM NAMAHA SHIVAYA… These sentences are no longer a slogan to be repeated, staying still well fixed in separateness, but right action. At once with great relief the wave will realize that there has never been separation between the Ocean and itself. It realizes that if you surrender to it, your life will anyway go the way it should. What happens is inevitable. A clear mind reveals the gap of the separated “I” that’s the end of dualism, micro-macro, high-low, good-bad, heaven and hell, all coexist in interdependence and not in conflict with each other. Finally, this is liberation. Nothing has really changed. The crest and the valley are still there exactly as before, nor does this awareness increase the height of the wave. It’s only the end of all inner conflicts and fears. Without any effort, the problem of becoming someone, the problem of time and death, dissolves. Eternal movement of waves, eternal abyss silent and immutable! Mysterious creatures live within  us and dolphins are playing on our shoulders. Everything is one. More over also the ocean disappears, even that is only a hologram created by consciousness. The Void of the Buddhist, the Brahman of the Hindu, the Holy Spirit of Christian, The eternal Tao of old China, the unthinkable Quantum-mechanic of the New Physics, pervade the apparent reality. And you are That.

Filippo Falzoni Gallerani