6th post of Todd Murphys 3rd Lecture (16:44 to 19:19)

“swimmingly”.

(16:44)
The linguistic sense of self takes an awful lot of doing to maintain. In order to have one that functions you have to learn language including grammar and syntax, all the connotations of the words, perhaps a sense of how they might be used poetically and so forth. There’s a great deal of brain process involved in maintaining the linguistic sense-of-self.

So much so that some people can actually, (spiritual practitioners) can actually get the feeling that their normal ongoing sense-of-self is an obstacle or a burden.

I’m in regular contact with a Carmelite Nun who once told me that, (and this is a contempleate-ative order, they don’t go out and help the homeless, they stay in the convent, in the hermitage, where ever they happen to be assigned by the church. They devote themselves as much as they can to keeping the “holy hours”, (???) vespers and things like that, and prayer, all day long, every hour. It’s quite an impressive thing). And she was just telling me that she had the feeling that the fact of her own individual existence was what kept her from the goal of that tradition which was called “The Union Mystica” the mystic-union or rather the Union with God.

And the single most elegant statement of this that I have ever encountered comes from the Bengali poet and the Nobel Prize in literature winner (???).

18:15

DreamViewers you can go to 18:15 minutes on the YouTube yourself and listen to this

19:11

The self, the normal ongoing sense of self is a burden.

Especially for those who are trying to find something richer within themselves.

(19:19)