Sticky fingers

 Just be happy. Have fun, enjoy life and don’t get caught. When I say, “don’t get caught,” I am not talking about someone else catching you. I am talking about your own mind. Choose the kind of fun that won’t bind you.

Swami Satchidananda

 

I sometimes picture God watching a Bruce Willis movie and laughing heartedly. Obviously, not at the dead “bad guys” who fall by the wayside by the dozens since all lives matter in God’s Kingdom, but rather at the romantic naivety that the good guys always win in the end and all the clever one-liners the scriptwriters come up with.

 

How is it that some activities stick for some people but not for others, and vice versa. Nisargadatta Maharaj was a chain smoker. It seemed that this didn’t prevent him from living and expressing “That,” though smoking may have contributed to his cancer death in the end. I figure that we all have that space where we can have a little fun, whereas other areas where we have to tread carefully not to get bound. Our demon might be a person, an activity, an entertainment, an object—whatever it is where we were primed earlier and where the neural network can get triggered in resorting into old trodden pathways.

 

The 11th century sage Machig Labron put our spiritual homework beautiful when she warned:

 

Son, listen. These are the characteristics of devils. That which is called ‘devil’ is not some actual great big black thing that scares and petrifies whoever sees it. A devil is anything that obstructs the achievement of freedom. Therefore, even loving and affectionate friends become devils with regard to freedom. Most of all, there is no greater devil than this fixation to a self. So, until this ego-fixation is cut off, all the devils wait with open mouths. For that reason, you need to exert yourself at a skillful method to sever the devil of ego-fixation.

 

We always know what it is that binds us. We can feel it and taste it even. As the Bhagavad Gita put it, that which tastes like honey in the beginning but is poison in the end. Have fun with the puzzle. Put all your efforts in disentangling where you are stuck but otherwise simply enjoy the ride!