{"id":5814,"date":"2024-10-06T17:56:26","date_gmt":"2024-10-06T22:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/?p=5814"},"modified":"2024-10-07T19:58:01","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T00:58:01","slug":"luckily-it-only-seems-that-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/luckily-it-only-seems-that-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Luckily it only seems that way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This picture popped up in my Facebook feed.<\/p>\n<p>A good illustration, I think, of the fundamental attitude of many spiritual seekers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I want to be free &#8212; I have to escape from the prison of my mind &#8212; I need to crack this damn lock.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The room, the door, the lock &#8212; they are the mind.<\/p>\n<p>The effort to escape from the room is the effort to see, to experience, what&#8217;s outside it.<\/p>\n<p>That effort is mental activity and whatever experience it might bring would be mental activity. <\/p>\n<p>Mental activity hides the Self.<\/p>\n<p>In fact you don&#8217;t need to go anywhere. Quite the contrary.  <\/p>\n<p>You need to <i>stop<\/i> going anywhere. Focus on yourself.  You have no location but if you did, you would be <i>here.<\/i><\/p>\n<h2>Bonus suggestion<\/h2>\n<p>Read <a href=\"https:\/\/realization.org\/p\/ramana\/michael-james\/nan-yar\/nan-yar.html#ny-04\">paragraph 4 of Nan Yar<\/a> and ask yourself why Ramana included it.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This picture popped up in my Facebook feed. A good illustration, I think, of the fundamental attitude of many spiritual seekers. &#8220;I want to be free &#8212; I have to escape from the prison of my mind &#8212; I need to crack this damn lock.&#8221; The room, the door, the lock &#8212; they are the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/door-chain-maze.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-1vM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5814"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5843,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions\/5843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}