The Advaita Channel

One of the clearest speakers on nonduality

     

Listening to Francis Lucille has helped me clarify in my own awareness a number of subtleties that escaped me. One that comes to mind is the perennial statement that "I get it intellectually, but not "experientially--whatever that means---or it is not embodied, or permanent." Francis seems to answer that by saying it is simply a lack of trust of your own direct experience. I immediately resonated with this, because it's always been clear to me that the easy part of this is the direct experiencing. The hard part is bucking the powerful current of culture, society, family, schools, religious teachings, i.e. basically every institution. The plain fact is that 99.99% of people think they are separate independent agencies operating according to free will. Why do people not see the "emperor's lack of clothes? It is so easy. With just a little looking, anyone can see that feelings are not controlled and thoughts are not controlled. Without a control of thoughts there is no free will. No free will means no responsibility. If the plain fact of no responsibility were adopted by many people, the whole house of cards of cultural and societal "self-evident" truisms collapses, leaving only the force of nature, or wholeness, totality, the universe, god, or what ever you want to call it in charge. This is what Jesus (and many other teachers) was trying to get across (sins are forgiven because there is no free will, so actions are not controlled, so who can be held responsible? "Father forgive them" he said, "for they know not what they do." Simple as that. Bottom line, 99.99% of people represents a daunting ultra-majority whose very core beliefs and values are based on the deeply held and strongly, almost unanimously and fiercely held (and desperately clung-to) but false premise of free will, To buck this, one must have an unshakable and abiding trust in their direct experiencing. Few people can buck such a trend, and psychological studies have shown repeatedly the frankly embarrassing human capacity to "go along" with others in the face of obvious evidence the others are wrong. So Francis hit the nail on the head. It's not some "difficulty" or "need for experiential sinking-in" of the truth. It is the lack of trust in our own direct experiencing. Thank you Francis. I had struggled with a lot of muddled thinking about that and you, in one deftly worded statement produced simple clarity.