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Yaani's story is an incredible example of how a dream of awakening can
come to replace a dream of death. This subject is so important, and so
key to the mind transformation necessary to awaken, that I will focus
my talk today on many of the same ideas that Yaani presented earlier,
repeating them in different ways, with the hope of evoking a deeper experience
of the truth in you. Let me begin by recapping the story. It is of an
apparently innocent girl, the victim of a dreadful assault. She's a devotee
of Sai Baba in India where she spends six months per year. In the other
six months in America, she is a much loved teacher of little kids, who
lives a very simple life and is very active in service projects helping
many others throughout her area. This is the Dr. Jekyll persona, the good
being, the benefactress, the modest, shy one that everyone likes and that
is visible on the outside. It is the attractive ego front.
But behind this face of innocence, in the human condition, there's also
a dark Mr. Hyde persona; this we will do everything to deny and keep hidden.
It is what we swear we will never look at. It is the predatory side of
the ego which defends its self-identity at all cost, ready to do anything
to keep its separation and independence from God alive, even to the point
of brutalizing and nearly killing the body. And so in this story, it makes
up an incident, a dream, in which a criminal form breaks in during the
middle of the night when our girl is innocently asleep. It holds a knife
at her throat, screams at her, threatens to kill her, ties her up, beats
her, rapes her and robs her. Not a pretty picture.
Now if for a moment you think we are speaking of her story and not of
yours, you haven't gotten the message of this powerful teaching. This
is your experience, your dream, and it is playing out in your own mind.
The story and the characters may appear to be different but the purpose
is the same and the capacity for savagery is the same. You have chosen
to shelter the ego, because it serves your wish of maintaining your autonomy
as a little separate being in a great big world independent of God. That
ego you have allied yourself with is a serial killer, a rapist, a cannibal,
a heartless terrorizer. And dressed in its Sunday-best, it lodges in you
and dreams your dream of death. You're walking around with a war zone
playing out in your mind. Every hurt, every bit of suffering in the world
is of your making. You are responsible for all of it.
When you stand in the total guilt of having done all that in your mind,
the devastation is so enormous you will do anything to free yourself from
it. You just don't want anymore suffering. In the past what you've done
in an attempt to get rid of the guilt is to project it out. And so you
peopled your world with images that contained your guilt. They became
the bad guys, the guilty ones, the victimizers, while you could play the
role of the good guy, the innocent one, the victim. But alas, it never
worked. It couldn't work. The guilt remained, although now well hidden,
even from yourself. When you finally realize that you cannot solve your
problem by yourself, that you've never been able to solve it, and you
cry out to God for help, and you're mind is open and willing for a real
alternative, then you are shown a possibility that really works. The answer
you receive initiates a complete and fundamental change of mind.
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