First this:
“What in your life is calling you?
When all the noise is silenced, the meetings adjourned, the lists laid aside,
And the wild iris blooms by itself in the dark forest…
What still pulls on your Soul?” ~ Rumi

In this sutra, Rumi implies that something is “pulling” upon our Soul and that it is more important than the noise of this world and our minds. Deep within our emotionality we come to certain conclusions about events and circumstances that we are certain are “correct” only to find that our assumptions were flawed.

The question we must all ask ourselves is: How could I have been so WRONG?
What do I mean by “wrong?”

“Wrong” here means that we have a strong emotional sense of certainty about some aspect of our life or about a particular event, only to discover that our foregone conclusion is not as accurate as we had thought or hoped.

Few of us Sapiens are willing to withdraw from the insatiability of our emotional instincts, which perpetuate our DNA. When this merging of emotion and mind occurs, it forms our mental perception, which is fearful, prejudiced and distrusting.

Alternately, the mental acuity, sharpness of thought, that occurs through meditation distances us from our emotionality and DNA. Through meditation we can self-observe and allow for the inner acumen to prevail. Here we live choicelessly and make merciful decisions that are non-dualistic, insightful (mindful) to the situations and people that we are currently facing.

Sad to say, most of us merely relegate our mind to that of the acute ineptitude of the state of our emotionality (survival of the fittest) only to find that we misinterpreted the situation, and caused useless and unnecessary resistance through conflict. I call this type of emotional thinking and the result of its assumptions the pedestrian mentality, which is the archetype of the sapient mentality.

Through the pedestrian mentality, we find our “place” in this world and society. The commonality of this mental illness is that the concept of “RIGHT” must prevail through brute force and the tainted logic of fear of survival. We allow misinterpretations to cause us to turn away from the true importance of living. We forsake what is absolutely essential for inner maturity and spiritual awakening through our efforts toward self-preservation of pride, that is the ego.

What most people who are not living in the authentic do when confronted with the Truth is just shake it off. I watch how quiet they get, like a speeding locomotive coming to a screeching stop, when a sutra such as the above is given to them for insight. This quiet is not Silence. It is merely a pause before the train wreck of self-realization that they are just too far gone due to living in the collective unconscious of this world. We, as a populace, like to believe and think that we are not as foolish as we secretly know and/or suspect ourselves to be.

This mental and emotional “prudence” becomes the rationalization that we will spend our whole life believing for the sake of being what we can intellectually think of as “right.” Every nuance of our lifetime, every second of our living, is used to portray our intellectual accomplishments in order to sustain our spiritual mischief.

Most people “think” rather than realize. The foolish and insincere place the importance of pride ahead of humility in this world. Their willful ignorance makes a lie out of the Truth. So, what is it that we find so “unacceptable” about the Truth?

The Truth is the pull of the Soul. We feel the presence of the Truth, but cannot truly respond to it because we find it “unacceptable” to our human tastes. These “tastes” have to do with the state of our emotionality and its need for constant gratification. But if we are diligent and have a sense of the importance of realizing what is “unacceptable” to the “sensibilities” of the ego, then we are in the correct inner posture for spiritual awakening.

Both Jesus and Buddha talked about what is essential. Listen to these sutras and see if you can detect the real subject of their words:

“Woe to you who allow the body to rule over you. Putting your trust in the world, the world has become your god. You are destroying your Souls with the desires that burn within you.” ~ Jesus, The Book of Thomas the Contender

“Those who realize that the body is no more substantial than the froth that floats on the waves of the sea, realize that this life is nothing more than a mirage.” ~ Buddha, The Dhammapada

Neither of these are pleasant to read according to the mental acuity of our overindulged emotionality. Are they lies? How is the mind that you live with speaking to you right now as you read these sutras? How do you interpret these Truths? Are they “unacceptable” to the mind that occupies you? Are they riddles that are meant to “fool” you or confuse you? How much time and effort in the course of your lifetime should you give to these instructions in order to fulfill their meanings or even find their significance as the Truth? When you read them, do the explanations go against what you want or how you live in this world?

These are the essential questions we need to realize, not just “think.”

To live in the state of “neti neti” means that we do not use our minds to choose or pick thoughts that coincide with our genetic heritage. It means we learn tolerance to live with our thoughts, without living AS our thoughts. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Try this: Observe your thoughts and write them down randomly as they come to you. Observe (non-critically) their tone and texture. Do this for five minutes each day and see what you come up with. This exercise will help you understand how you have defined your entire life through assumption, prejudice and genetic preference.

From here, if you are willing, you can separate from these states of mind by no longer indulging the emotionality of the body that is telling you or obsessing you to believe in certain thoughts that it deems desirable or absolutely necessary.