Aspirant and Practitioner by Barry Long

From Bluetruth

Date and time unknown

Now, the aspirant and the practitioner. What are you? An aspirant or a practitioner? Now, an aspirant is always aspiring after something, to get something. So aspirants in the spiritual life or the divine life love to read about the truth, to read about love, to read about the divine life. They love to listen to it over and over, you know, talk about it. But there’s no reality in aspirants. They’re always seeking. And if you seek you will not find. You have to be.

Are you a practitioner? What does that mean? A practitioner of course is someone who practices, doesn’t aspire to do something. How can you aspire to have a glass of water? You’ll only think about it and make yourself thirst - or want some water. A practitioner gets up and goes and gets a glass of water, does the job. Practitioner is practise, meaning doing. Aspirants are always thinking about it, wanting to do it, wishing to do it, reading of great inspiration like reading poetry. Great inspirational stuff - never gets you to God. Never gets you to the truth. Beautiful it is. It’s like hearing sweet music. It never gets you to the truth. You have to die to get to the truth.

So the way to die is to practise. Now, if you come to me or if you go to any other master, you have to practise what the master says. Or why do you come? I don’t want any aspirants around me, thanks. So I’ll drive you away if I can. Because I’ll give you nothing. Are you a practitioner? What are you practicing now? What are you making real? Practitioner makes real. Could it be that you are practising being me - this very moment? Being me, which begins with perceiving me or feeling me. Getting no concept of me but just being me. That’s practise, isn’t it?

Will you give up your confusion given to you by Eastern masters who follow Eastern traditions? Will you be true to the truth and give it up now and be with me? I don’t follow a cult or found a cult that says me is out here. I’m talking about me in there, where I am, the love of life, the life, the being of it all. Stay with me who is faceless, featureless. And yet I am the master within and without. That’s all your master can say to you, nothing else. Be true to me. For God’s sake stop following me and be true to me.

Let’s go into me and see if we can contact the faceless, imageless, notionless thing that I have just been talking about which is me. So please close your eyes, breathe out, breathe in three or four times. Give up your self. If you have any disturbance in you then you must get under it, then you are with me. Leave your baggage at the door please, up on top of the self. Get down into me. Give up all your notions. Is it too simple for you? Do you want to complicate it? Do you want to say you’re not ready for it? And do you want me to limp in front of you? Do you really want me to say: ‘You poor little creature, you are not ready yet. You must take two or three years yet before you can be with me’ ?Do you want me to limp in front of you and say: ‘Look, I’ll limp in front of you’?

Or shall I walk upright in front of you and say: ‘This is thee. I am this. And so art thou. Walk straight. You need nothing. You do need my instruction, the master wherever I come from. But you must keep me holy, the master, for I will get up to all sorts of nonsense in my human ignorance if you allow me to. I will put other things before me. I will put even my own body before thee. That’s what it is to be in existence. Now would you please make it all very simple. For I am very simple. I am me. Do you need some preparation to be with me? But I tell you if you put your partner before me then you will suffer and be confused. I am the truth, inside of me in that body on that chair listening to this. You must give up all your notions of me all your remembrance of me. For if you look into me now you will see I have no object, I have no appearance, I have no attributes. Except to say: it is right, it is me, it is fulfilling. All those meaningless words are the only way you can describe me. And yet they are so meaningful, aren’t they, those words? But they can’t be objectified. There’s no getting in me, only being.

Do you want me to say to you that you are a sinner? Therefore you cannot come to me? Or could it be that the only sin is for me to want, to try, to wish for, to get away from me? Why can’t I just be with me? Like this, like now. You must stop seeking and stop trying. Your life is absolutely perfect for you. I want you to scan now your life. You can look out of me and you can look into your self. With your eyes closed you can look into your self, which is your imagination. For all problems come out of the imagination. And the imagination comes out of self. So I want you now, as a deliberate action, to look into your self, look into the problem and see your whole life of circumstances. The things that will occur to you will be the problem areas. For the self is still lonely, with problems. That is your life. That’s the life that you have to address. While that life, external life, has disturbance in it, then you cannot stay with me for long. Those disturbances will drag you up like a cork. And you’ll be thrown around by the sea or the ripples on the surface. Your life is perfect for you.

Such as the lady who was addressed at the opening of this session. She is facing what all of us have to face or have faced or will face in relation to partnership. That is her life. It’s going to take some time to get out if it by the evolution of things. But that’s her life. She is responsible for it. She made it. She embraced it, whatever it was. She once embraced it, as you embraced yours. And now she is extracting herself from it, by being true to me, which is inside her body. What was the truth for her yesterday is not the truth today. Ever will it be thus until there is only one truth for me, which is me. While there are many truths I will be confused. Like when there are many masters I will be confused. So your life as it is has to be faced in the external world. To get rid of the disturbance inside your self, the emotion that that life has been causing. It takes time to extricate your self. But it doesn’t take time to be with me. For me in here, you will notice, is timeless. If I don’t have any thought or wanting or wishing in me, me is timeless.

Now I’m going to say something that you might not know. But listen to it. This place in me that you are addressing now or being now, this is the place of truth. It is truth that organises the circumstances of this world. Not you. And not the world. But the more I realise or enter or be the truth of me, the more I enter the centre, the truth that runs everything. I then transform my self. The more I do this I transform my self. And as I transform my self just by sheer being here, I don’t have to do anything about it. I just have to do it and be it as often as I can, I actually transform my self. My self then translates into circumstances. For my self arises from the circumstances of my life. And as I transform my self and transform the circumstances, they start to change. They change for good, meaning: I get through. What I once embraced I indeed have to face, as circumstances that I just stay with me and allow the truth to deal with. The truth will direct it all, if you will only stay as true to it as you can in me. Everything ends, everything passes. It passes much more quickly, if it is disturbing, if you will only leave it to me.

So you are a practitioner now, aren’t you?