Context: Don’t Pay the Ferryman.
The ferryman is your lower self- attached to corporeal worldly concerns for the self.
This is incorrect order in spiritual terms, or reverse order in the language of the abundant intelligent universe.
Correct order is: connect to spiritual first,
proceed with all action from that connection,
and through an inner awareness, dharma philosophy of practice method (vehicle) for example,
engage with what arises from the higher awareness.
This is paying off attachment to your previous karmic debt to self (which is your previous unawareness and creates that appearance and experienced for the mind).
This is livingness, lawful process. Engaging in the livingness of present, not the debt.
When there is not sufficient awareness or use of practice method, the mind cannot liberate from its unaware habituation. It is necessary to put the light of awareness into each moment. This is the true gift of what a human life gives us.
If mind remains in adherence to its current corporeal dominance pattern, (which is your captor/ reverse spiritual order), what arises is from that (trapped).
At any moment a being can tap into their deeper spiritual awareness, which transforms phenomena, (or frees the karmic weight).
This is correct View: each moment is perfect.
It is just we are not in that alignment, in seeing from the inside, (due to our attachment to corporeal self habit and distraction of mind with that).
Then in this unawareness, we persist with that mind activity, and
want to get more (with that delusion) and that doesn’t work.
It is not meant too.
What is necessary is wakey, wakey. Or awakening mind from the inside with the right awareness connection.
The mind cannot do two things at once.
If you are attached to the delusion, you cannot pick up the wealth of the true awareness of your being.
You can not “get” more without transforming the unawareness. (This is paying off the subconscious debt).
It is necessary to free up the space.
A practical example of this is as follows… it is like you are trying to get somewhere or do something and one of the tyres on your car is flat. It is necessary to fix the tyre first.
The intelligent universe is kindly showing you the flat tyre (the issue).
The question is, are we going to recognise that, and make the necessary adjustment?
Are we looking at this from the inside awareness?
This is coding in the intelligent universe, (or plumbing).
Fix the plumbing, or untie the kink in the hose, or replace the flat tyre (with the right thinking),
and you can be on your way again, because you’ve paid off the subconscious debt.
Consider for a moment, the wisdom of King Solomon in the Bible for example, who said to the people, “In all your getting, get understanding”.
That right understanding is right order awareness in your being.
The price is inner awareness recognition.
To get without giving first is reverse order. It is sowing a poverty consciousness.
It is ourselves who put us in our own self-made prison, through continued unawareness or ignorance (ignore-trance) of the right order of things, and so not paying the price of corporeal attachment release.
When this is corrected, the benefit arises from within naturally, (and releases the previous unawareness/ or pays of the previous negative action of mind or karmic debt of body, speech and mind).
A dharma process is a method tool to be habituating the mind to the correct inner awareness (vehicle) as we go in this life
and learning and using the correct conduct of mind, in all of one’s actions that way,
which is utilising the vehicle of mindfulness.
Because truly samsara (delusion) and nirvana (liberation of mind) are not separate, like too sides of a coin.
It is an inner awareness recognition problem, that the being has (and manifests) at any one moment.
Ie. if they are still looking for more.
At one moment, you will awaken.
when the previous veils of your obscuration have fallen away, (they no longer have anything to adhere too). Mind’s awareness is holding its own.
You are no longer clinging to those shrouds of unawareness.
What is sadder than a child afraid of the dark? An adult afraid of light, a well-known mentor in the personal development shared.
As a spiritual teacher Chogyam Trungpa said: “The bad news is that you are falling through the air. The good news is there is no ground”.
Meaning wake up out of your self-adherence and dissolve that attachment, into your own awareness. It is all your mind. How are you using your mind?
(Let the past go. Let the dead bury the dead!)
So the light of your inner awareness pervades everywhere, all phenomena!
You must understand you are your own captor or liberator of your mind!.
If not- in dualistic perception, you unwittingly create an “oppressed and oppressor” relationship dynamic.
And mind can not be free (is still in bondage/ suffering), whilst you continue do that.
This is because you are sowing the wrong view, and then fight with the wrong view.
(This is crazy of course, which is why it is necessary to learn to be aware, in the right View correctly).
How tragic, how unfortunate to miss your jewels, (in habitual unawareness), which are there for you to claim all of the time!
This is is what is meant in the dharma when it says: “Don’t leave the island (this life) without the jewels”. (Recognition/ realisation of your own true wealth, in the full sense of the world (spiritual in nature)).
Or, if we miss the one thing, that a precious human life affords us, which is to recognise and overcome our own delusion (not someone else’s),
and pick up the benefit of that, what a waste. When will that opportunity come again?
Instead, it is to be in earnest, (no-one knows when death of this life will happen).
Strive to be waking up and releasing the unawareness adherence, the cause of one’s own suffering, whilst you can!
In dharma (spiritual) terms, could consider this like a transmutation process, consider melting ice to water.
In unawareness (ice: self-adherence), delusion is continuing to pay into the delusion. This is why the being is still trapped.
In aware recognition, the delusion is recognised (the masks removed), paid off from awareness (transmutation) inside.
Learning to proceed this way- inside out!
So the invitation, the call to action is…
to light the fire of awareness inside, (keep that fire stoked)
engage the method tool or inner dharma practice of mind to:
see/ become aware of (with your inner discerning awareness), where your previous dodgy cooking arises
and let go of it, into good cake (right understanding/ View). This is taking responsibility for one’s own actions or conduct of body, speech and mind.
Or, put another way, learning to course correct as you go from inside.
Each person and circumstance is truly a unique and priceless gift, if we remember to look at it this way.
(Bring this presence of mind to the moment before us. In dharma terms this is referred to as bringing everything onto the path of awareness-recognition/ realisation practice).
This is how we awaken mind.
Pay into awareness (the awareness vehicle) first,
not the ferryman (here representing one’s grasping mind to unaware self-habitation, and unaware of itself whilst it is engaged that way, (doing that).
Such a mistakenness leads to perception of not enoughness.
(One’s self-adherence is blocking that limitless aware mind).
There will never be enough on that route. Even if you grasp at everything. It is like drinking salty seawater. There is a hole in the bucket, it is upside down, something in it – wrong view.
In ultimate reality there is nothing to lose or gain.
The loss is the delusion of the adherence to a self (peewee herman or hermaness)
The first of the paramitas in dharma practice for example is generosity, to release the wrong view.
Release your mind captor.
Realise mind’s true awareness nature.
(early draft for revision polishing) 🧼
As a mentor said: you are the only problem you will ever have
You are the only solution.
You are you mind’s own worst enemy or best friend. What kind of navigation do you have?
Study and practice and realise oneself.
The Buddha (awakened to the nature of reality) said I can show you the way, I cannot do it for you.
In personal development speak: You must pay that price.
Don’t pay the ferryman until he get you to the other side, because
all of delusional mind is one nature (delusion).
Realisation is one-taste awareness.
Lyrics of Don’t Pay the Ferryman written and performed by Chris De Burgh
Lyrics
It was late at night on the open road
Speeding like a man on the run
A lifetime spent preparing for the journey
He is closer now and the search is on
Reading from a map in the mind
Yes there’s the ragged hill
And there’s the boat on the river
And when the rain came down
He heard a wild dog howl
There were voices in the night, (“Don’t do it”)
Voices out of sight, (“Don’t do it”)
Too many men have failed before
“Whatever you do
Don’t pay the ferryman
Don’t even fix a price
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side”
In the rolling mist then he gets on board
Now there’ll be no turning back
Beware that hooded old man at the rudder
And then the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared
And people calling out his name
And dancing bones that jabbered and a-moaned
On the water
And then the ferryman said
“There is trouble ahead
So you must pay me now, ” (“Don’t do it”)
“You must pay me now, ” (“Don’t do it”)
And still that voice came from beyond
“Whatever you do
Don’t pay the ferryman
Don’t even fix a price
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side”
Yeah!
Don’t pay the ferryman
Don’t even fix a price
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side
Don’t pay the ferryman
Don’t even fix a price
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side
Don’t pay the ferryman
Don’t even fix a price
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side
Don’t pay the ferryman
Songwriters: Chris De Burgh