Tip for Gentle Healing Year 2 – Day 318 – A Contract for Awakening

Today you will read another conversation between a student and her awake teacher. In today’s message, the teacher asks the student for a commitment. The teacher asks:

“Do you agree to follow me and to do as I ask?”

At some point, every student must make this commitment to his/her teacher. Without this commitment, the ego will never allow the student to awaken; the student will continue to listen to the mind that thinks it knows best, and the mind that thinks it knows best will keep the student’s attention firmly attached to it.

It’s interesting to note that in today’s message, the teacher points out that he isn’t asking the student to put the mind aside. He’s asking her “to see that it is nothing.”

What’s the difference between putting something aside and seeing that it’s nothing?

I can decide to put a cup of coffee aside. I can’t decide to put Santa Claus aside, because there is nothing there to put aside. If I think I have a relationship with Santa Claus, I am deluded. A counselor wouldn’t help me heal from that delusion if he said, “Put Santa aside. Stop talking to him. He’s not good for you,” because the idea of putting Santa aside reemphasizes that there is a Santa. A counselor would be most helpful to me by helping me to see that Santa doesn’t exist.

Our teachings have been teaching us that the mind doesn’t exist. What we experience as mind is consciousness appearing as thought and world, but it isn’t thought or world. It is consciousness. It appears as thought and world through our believing-attention and the loop of experience. In other words, delusion breeds more delusion.

We aren’t being asked to put some thing aside. We are asked to see that a delusion isn’t true. It isn’t real. It’s false. It doesn’t exist.

We are being asked to stop giving attention to the false and to give attention to the true.

Today, consider if you are ready and willing to make a contract of awakening with your inner teacher. Consider this decision with heartfelt seriousness.

As we go into Gentle Healing Year 3, you will have more opportunity to commune with your inner teacher than you’ve had in Year 1 and Year 2. I will step away from the teaching role, which I temporarily accepted during Year 1 and Year 2. I will step into a supportive role in Year 3. I won’t provide daily tips anymore. Instead, you will contemplate four quotes from The Seven Steps to Awakening  each day, and through contemplation, you will commune with your inner teacher daily. The awake inner teacher will guide you as clearly and as consistently as the tips have guided for the last two years.

The last year of consistent gentle healing will come from your relationship with your inner teacher.

What you receive from your relationship with your inner teacher will be extremely helpful. However, if you receive it, and then walk away and forget what you have received, it will not awaken you. In order to awaken, you must be fully committed to your inner teacher. You must give yourself to the inner teacher with complete trust and devotion.

As Nisargadatta Maharaj said:

“Your own Self is your ultimate teacher. The outer teacher is merely a milestone.* It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for [it] is the goal.”

* A milestone is a significant point on a journey, but it is not the destination.