Let's take a closer look at those three little words. The ones in the title. I don't mind. If you do mind, and you say that you don't, you're lying. That's no good to anyone. You may think you're doing someone a favor, you may want to believe what you're saying, but if what you're saying isn't true, you're creating more harm than peace.
We might call that approach to those words Californian, not because there's anything wrong with California, but because a lot of great stuff is happening on that frontier and wherever great stuff happens, the artificial side of things shakes out too. I want you to remember, as you read the next paragraphs, that we're headed to the great stuff.
Using the words "I don't mind" to tell someone everything's okay, there's nothing to worry about, you're perfectly safe, go ahead and do what you're doing, is a terrific intention. We all wish to live in a world where we send and receive that message and mean it. We all can. But we never will if we say it as a mask.
When we say it as a mask, the phrase has a forced hippie quality about it. Can you imagine it that way? Try to say it that way out loud right now. "Hey, I don't mind." Pretend you're an actor for a moment to get the real feel of saying it as a lie. Imagine you do mind, but for reasons x and y and probably z too, you want to pretend you don't.
Did you try it? No? Why not? Try it. If you already did, try it again. Say it out loud at least once and preferably several times, modulating how you say it so you really find the place where you're lying and the words mean their opposite.
For instance, if you find my persistence about making you try it annoying in some way, pretend I just asked you if you mind about that. Do you mind? Now tell me you don't. Lie to me, baby! Out loud. At least once. Preferably a few times. Get the feel of it.
What is the feel of it? It feels lousy, right? Why is that? You would think what's most lousy about it is that someone gets hurt, someone else. But I'm all the way over here on the other side of this essay, which I wrote in the past. It doesn't matter one lick to me that you're lying about minding my requests while you read it. So what if you don't mind? So what if you do? What do I care if you mind or don't mind? I don't mind.
Now here's the big difference. Here's the great stuff. Here's what makes this essay spiritual in the deepest sense. When I said those words a few moments ago, when I told you I don't mind, I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to myself. I was reminding myself of something that those words really mean. So are you. Whenever you say them.
They don't mean what you think. Nothing means what you think. That's what those words are trying to say. That's why they sneak into language in the first place. That's how spirit asserts itself surreptitiously in words, which otherwise betray it. For spirit, that process of unmasking words is a great deal of fun, and inevitable.
The real meaning of "I don't mind" is not that something has happened and now you need to state your acceptance of it with equanimity, but rather that you are not dwelling in mind. Do you mind? No, dwelling in mind is not something I do. I don't mind. I don't dwell there. My dwelling place is not the mind. I do not mind.
That's the only way not to mind. Everything else is a lie. If you dwell in your mind and you say you don't mind, you're lying. If, on the other hand, you practice those words as reminders that your mind is not where you dwell, if that's what you mean whenever you say those words, that you don't dwell in your mind, you begin to tell the truth. To be the truth. It's the only way.
The truth is you aren't your mind. The truth is you don't dwell there. The truth is if you're mind can come up with something, the something can't be you, not the real you. When we dwell in our minds, we believe that all the somethings, or at least a few cherished ones among them, are actually who we are. But they aren't. They can't be. Not one of them can. Not one. No, not that one either.
When we permit this impossibility, the truth of who we are receives an invitation, and accepts it spontaneously. It grows in us and flourishes. You can't force this experience. All you can do is remember you don't mind. Whenever life puts you in a position of identifying with your mental noise, you remind yourself that no, you don't mind. Dwelling in mind and believing its content pertains to you is not what you do. You know better. You don't mind.
Truth being circular, your devoted reminders to yourself will eventually qualify you to use the words the old way. Once you stabilize in the understanding that you don't dwell in your mind, you can tell people "I don't mind" and you won't be lying anymore. Whenever you're saying it to yourself as a reminder, and only then, it transforms naturally into wider acceptance.
October 30, 2007
October 29, 2007
the resonance function
The only reason for a spiritual teacher to tell you what your true self is, to tell you who you are underneath all the surface identity, is because you might want to hear it. The surface part of you seldom does, but a resonance occurs in the layers beneath that part, and eventually the resonance asserts higher value than the things in its way.
I'd like to tell you what your true self is, to tell you who you are underneath all the surface identity. I really would. I'd like you to want to hear it too. I'd like you to open up momentarily to the real possibility of resonating with what you hear. Maybe if you do, you'll discover the things in the way are not in the way after all, but beautiful channels for more true self to shine through.
The real you, the one underneath all the surface identity, is very different than all the surface identity. It's different because it isn't a thing. Unlike everything else you might call yourself and as which you might think of yourself, the real you is not something you can capture by calling it something or conceiving of it in any way. That's why it's so difficult to grasp. Grasping it doesn't work. It can't be grasped, manually or mentally.
Your surface identity will often check out at this news. It's ridiculously easy for a surface identity accustomed to thing-ing and concept-ing to disqualify information that won't permit a thing or a concept to win the day. What else can that part of you do? Opening up to a world beyond things and concepts is threatening to it. What I'm trying to tell you is not opening up to that world is more threatening to it for creating discord and dysfunction.
The place of resonance is where your true values are. You discover the greater authority of those values precisely because you neglect them and pay the price. The price is the teacher who tells you to get the values in the right order already. The spiritual teacher is the one who reminds you that you want to, because you already know.
The part of you that wants to, the part of you that already knows, is seeking a reminder on the outside, from the teacher. The teacher is happy enough to give one. But giving one takes the form of a steadfast refusal to overly indulge the surface identity. That's something you can do on your own, and generally have to.
So without further ado, let me remind you what you are, not because it's actually possible to put it in words, but because you who are listening are ready to go where the words suggest without taking the words along with you. Are you ready to do that? Is your resonance function coming to the surface?
The real you is that function. There you go. It's not more complicated than that. The real you is the ability to be open and resonate. The rest of you is all the scrambling to get there that gets in the way of its own goal. That's the surface identity. That's where the words become an issue and you wrestle with them instead of resonating.
I'd like to tell you what your true self is, to tell you who you are underneath all the surface identity. I really would. I'd like you to want to hear it too. I'd like you to open up momentarily to the real possibility of resonating with what you hear. Maybe if you do, you'll discover the things in the way are not in the way after all, but beautiful channels for more true self to shine through.
The real you, the one underneath all the surface identity, is very different than all the surface identity. It's different because it isn't a thing. Unlike everything else you might call yourself and as which you might think of yourself, the real you is not something you can capture by calling it something or conceiving of it in any way. That's why it's so difficult to grasp. Grasping it doesn't work. It can't be grasped, manually or mentally.
Your surface identity will often check out at this news. It's ridiculously easy for a surface identity accustomed to thing-ing and concept-ing to disqualify information that won't permit a thing or a concept to win the day. What else can that part of you do? Opening up to a world beyond things and concepts is threatening to it. What I'm trying to tell you is not opening up to that world is more threatening to it for creating discord and dysfunction.
The place of resonance is where your true values are. You discover the greater authority of those values precisely because you neglect them and pay the price. The price is the teacher who tells you to get the values in the right order already. The spiritual teacher is the one who reminds you that you want to, because you already know.
The part of you that wants to, the part of you that already knows, is seeking a reminder on the outside, from the teacher. The teacher is happy enough to give one. But giving one takes the form of a steadfast refusal to overly indulge the surface identity. That's something you can do on your own, and generally have to.
So without further ado, let me remind you what you are, not because it's actually possible to put it in words, but because you who are listening are ready to go where the words suggest without taking the words along with you. Are you ready to do that? Is your resonance function coming to the surface?
The real you is that function. There you go. It's not more complicated than that. The real you is the ability to be open and resonate. The rest of you is all the scrambling to get there that gets in the way of its own goal. That's the surface identity. That's where the words become an issue and you wrestle with them instead of resonating.
October 28, 2007
claiming you know
The only time you're really honest is when you admit you don't know. Let's face it: you don't. Not about the things that matter most. I'm talking about spiritual questions now. What's the meaning of your life, of all life? What's your purpose in the grand scheme of things? These may seem like grandiose concerns, and they are. But they bear directly on a question aimed straight and simple into the heart of every human being: how to be happy. The only time you're really honest is when you admit you don't know.
Sure, you've figured a few things out. Trial and error has served you, if sometimes led you astray to do it. You know, for example, that going into the woods and communing with nature is uplifting in some way, grounding in another. You know you lapse into plenty of habits that clearly drop your joy. Everyone does. It's a starting point anyway. But what about being genuinely happy? The only time you're really honest is when you admit you don't know. It's also the only time you're genuinely happy.
How can that be? If you really want to understand how, you have to be willing to look at what it means to think you know something, to claim you know. You have to be willing to ask what you're up to underneath the claim. You have to look at the mechanics of claiming in the first place. What does it mean to claim you know how to be happy? Does it mean you're right? That's the first thing you'd like to believe. That's mechanics number one. You'd like to believe you know what it means to be happy. You'd like to. We all would. In fact, most of us think that the grand outcome of all our sleuthing on the subject is finally to know.
But what goes on when you know something? You put the flow of life into a box. Let me give you a pedestrian example. In school you learn that the unfathomable mystery we refer to as water is made up of two atoms hydrogen and one atom oxygen and together those three atoms repeat over and over and fill your glass, hopefully half full not empty. That's a fine explanation of water, I suppose, but it's also reductionist. It's purpose, in fact, is to reduce. Why? Because reduction of complex things into more basic things gives us mastery over the more complex thing. Mastery. We want mastery. We want to be able to say that now we understand water, and by understand we mean own.
Water laughs and let's us proceed with this idiot notion. Happiness doesn't. Go ahead and tell yourself that you know how to be happy and connect the dots. The second you make the claim, or not very long after, the happiness is nowhere to be found. The act of making the claim begins to scatter the happiness. The effort to sustain belief in the claim insures the prolonged disappearance of the happiness. The happiness wants you to have it, but it's not something you can have, and by have we mean own. Your claim that you know how to be happy is the same as saying you own something that doesn't permit an owner. You can get away with this clumsiness with water (well, actually you can't, but water flows with everything anyway, including nonsense), but you can't get away with it with happiness. Happiness is not something you can put in a box, and by box we mean brain.
The point is there's a profound difference between knowledge and happiness. Knowledge is a reductionist exercise to gain a sense of leverage or mastery over an aspect of the world, while happiness is not. The former has as many holes as a swiss cheese, speaking metaphysically, while the latter is the holes. When's the last time you put down the wheel of cheese and walked away with one of the holes? That's the last time you were happy! Or it might be better to say that yes, you are trying to gain mastery over an aspect of the world when you try to nail down what happiness is, but the aspect you're interested in is yourself, and that makes the effort too direct and reflexive to permit the illusion of objectivity.
Without that illusion, knowledge falls apart. The law of associative leaping (also known as high creativity) therefore reveals that self-knowledge is actually an impossibility. Once you know what yourself is, you know it's something you can't know. Knowing it isn't how you relate to it. Direct experience is its only handle. Handle is the wrong word. There's nothing to grab onto. No words will do. Only direct experience. Your true self is direct experience. Those are more words, but context momentarily suspends their word nature. I'm asking you to do the same. I'm asking you to suspend your word nature, and by word nature we mean knowledge. Take yourself out of the box, and by box we mean person.
The only time you are honest is when you admit you don't know. Are you a person? Be honest. You don't know. Are you a knower? Be honest. You don't know. Are you a wheel of swiss cheese? Be exceptionally honest. You don't know. You might be. In fact, you are. If you see you are, you'll see you aren't only a wheel of swiss cheese, but all the holes too, and the big hole all around it (known as empty space) that makes it seem to all the knowers as if a wheel of swiss cheese is an independent entity. It isn't. That's only language and knowing. Without those you have one big everything that's self to us all.
But more to the point, without language and knowing, you have happiness. You don't "have it" have it, but you experience it directly, as yourself, as the one self of us all. Divide that one self up again by knowing it, by reducing it for the sake of mastering it, and the nuttiest thing takes place. You don't master anything, but generate problems. Problems that didn't exist until you meddled with perfection and plucked out all its feathers. So what's the meaning of your life? Do you have a life? Be honest. You don't know. You're just generating problems. Here's another: what's your purpose in the grand scheme of things? Be honest. You don't know. You're just generating problems. What a purpose! It's the only one.
Sure, you've figured a few things out. Trial and error has served you, if sometimes led you astray to do it. You know, for example, that going into the woods and communing with nature is uplifting in some way, grounding in another. You know you lapse into plenty of habits that clearly drop your joy. Everyone does. It's a starting point anyway. But what about being genuinely happy? The only time you're really honest is when you admit you don't know. It's also the only time you're genuinely happy.
How can that be? If you really want to understand how, you have to be willing to look at what it means to think you know something, to claim you know. You have to be willing to ask what you're up to underneath the claim. You have to look at the mechanics of claiming in the first place. What does it mean to claim you know how to be happy? Does it mean you're right? That's the first thing you'd like to believe. That's mechanics number one. You'd like to believe you know what it means to be happy. You'd like to. We all would. In fact, most of us think that the grand outcome of all our sleuthing on the subject is finally to know.
But what goes on when you know something? You put the flow of life into a box. Let me give you a pedestrian example. In school you learn that the unfathomable mystery we refer to as water is made up of two atoms hydrogen and one atom oxygen and together those three atoms repeat over and over and fill your glass, hopefully half full not empty. That's a fine explanation of water, I suppose, but it's also reductionist. It's purpose, in fact, is to reduce. Why? Because reduction of complex things into more basic things gives us mastery over the more complex thing. Mastery. We want mastery. We want to be able to say that now we understand water, and by understand we mean own.
Water laughs and let's us proceed with this idiot notion. Happiness doesn't. Go ahead and tell yourself that you know how to be happy and connect the dots. The second you make the claim, or not very long after, the happiness is nowhere to be found. The act of making the claim begins to scatter the happiness. The effort to sustain belief in the claim insures the prolonged disappearance of the happiness. The happiness wants you to have it, but it's not something you can have, and by have we mean own. Your claim that you know how to be happy is the same as saying you own something that doesn't permit an owner. You can get away with this clumsiness with water (well, actually you can't, but water flows with everything anyway, including nonsense), but you can't get away with it with happiness. Happiness is not something you can put in a box, and by box we mean brain.
The point is there's a profound difference between knowledge and happiness. Knowledge is a reductionist exercise to gain a sense of leverage or mastery over an aspect of the world, while happiness is not. The former has as many holes as a swiss cheese, speaking metaphysically, while the latter is the holes. When's the last time you put down the wheel of cheese and walked away with one of the holes? That's the last time you were happy! Or it might be better to say that yes, you are trying to gain mastery over an aspect of the world when you try to nail down what happiness is, but the aspect you're interested in is yourself, and that makes the effort too direct and reflexive to permit the illusion of objectivity.
Without that illusion, knowledge falls apart. The law of associative leaping (also known as high creativity) therefore reveals that self-knowledge is actually an impossibility. Once you know what yourself is, you know it's something you can't know. Knowing it isn't how you relate to it. Direct experience is its only handle. Handle is the wrong word. There's nothing to grab onto. No words will do. Only direct experience. Your true self is direct experience. Those are more words, but context momentarily suspends their word nature. I'm asking you to do the same. I'm asking you to suspend your word nature, and by word nature we mean knowledge. Take yourself out of the box, and by box we mean person.
The only time you are honest is when you admit you don't know. Are you a person? Be honest. You don't know. Are you a knower? Be honest. You don't know. Are you a wheel of swiss cheese? Be exceptionally honest. You don't know. You might be. In fact, you are. If you see you are, you'll see you aren't only a wheel of swiss cheese, but all the holes too, and the big hole all around it (known as empty space) that makes it seem to all the knowers as if a wheel of swiss cheese is an independent entity. It isn't. That's only language and knowing. Without those you have one big everything that's self to us all.
But more to the point, without language and knowing, you have happiness. You don't "have it" have it, but you experience it directly, as yourself, as the one self of us all. Divide that one self up again by knowing it, by reducing it for the sake of mastering it, and the nuttiest thing takes place. You don't master anything, but generate problems. Problems that didn't exist until you meddled with perfection and plucked out all its feathers. So what's the meaning of your life? Do you have a life? Be honest. You don't know. You're just generating problems. Here's another: what's your purpose in the grand scheme of things? Be honest. You don't know. You're just generating problems. What a purpose! It's the only one.
October 27, 2007
being uninspired
Sometimes it helps to turn things upside down. How do you feel about being uninspired? Is it like you're waiting for something better to happen, for life to resume again? What if I told you it's the greatest state of all, this lack of inspiration? That's where you'll meet your true self! That's when your lesser selves are finally off their game enough for true emptiness to shine.
It's hard to see things this way. It's upside down. We're accustomed to thinking of inspiration as a time of valuable harvest in our lives, and of the periods between the harvest as a drag. Some of us mature enough to look at the in-betweens as a necessary part of the overall process, as gestation. But that outlook is only more covert worship of the mighty god Inspiration. It posits the periods away from inspiration as nothing more than the means to future inspiration. It gets away with calling those periods in-betweens!
They're so much more. They're the pith and essence. They're the shining crown on the big bloated head of inspiration, bowed at last. When the tingling rush of inspiration wanes and we settle into the doldrums and purposelessness that come afterwards, we are entering new territory in which we don't know who we are anymore. Our inspired confidence for expanding our sense of self has played out, begins to shrink, returns to its normal proportions, but won't stay put! It keeps shrinking. We collapse on the couch. We put on the TV. We can't sit still to save our lives, but we can't focus much either. Often for days. Sometimes for weeks.
This sorry state of affairs is when the journey into truth really gets going. It's when you have to deal with all your worst struggles against yourself, see all the worst things you spend lifetimes avoiding, surrender to feelings you don't want to feel. It's the purpose of inspiration that it ends, and that it drops you like a sack of rocks. The crash is the gold, the reward, the beginning. It's where you have to decide are you a hero, do you want to wear that word as a badge with a capital H, or can you drop your expiring ideas about yourself cold turkey now that it's time to be uninspired? That's when the true evolution is going to happen, spiritually speaking, right there at that moment of change, and in the period that follows.
Why? Because the letting go into lack of inspiration is a big letting go. It's generally bigger than any triumphant letting go that precedes it while you are inspired. While you are inspired, for all the risks you might take, you take them from a sense of daring and well-being. You take them in confidence. You take them with security, even if you take them into insecure places. Take is absolutely the word for it. Even when letting go is what's occurring, the inspired stretches in your life are all about taking. You take a risk. You take a chance. You take a bite out of life. You may be letting go of things to do it, but the taking is the emphasis. Take take take.
When the inspiration passes, you don't take anything. Rather, the things that you take are no longer romantic. You take a nap. You take medication. You take a beating. Taking felt so good while inspired that we try to force language to distill the feeling again by persisting in the words that go along with that state. It becomes funny, because the period after inspiration is not about taking. It's about releasing. It's about letting go. And it trumps the letting go of the inspired state because this kind of letting go happens not in the great light of wonder, but in the murky darkness of confusion. It's a terrible blow to the expanded sense of self to realize its time in the spotlight is over. So soon? Our inner life reels at the news.
But that reeling motion is what shakes out the truth. You don't have a leg to stand on anymore. You don't know who you are. You don't like not knowing. You want back that feeling of being bold and inspired, purposeful and pliant, but you can't have it. Your attempts to manufacture it artificially eventually fail also, and collapse into deeper darkness. If only, while you were in it, you could see this chain of events for what it is. If only you could see that now, after all the little warm ups (also known as the fruits of inspiration), you are finally getting what you really want, the great hammer blows of truth. Ask any inspired person, while inspired, what they are after at that time, what they most want to encounter, most demand from experience. They'll say the words: the truth! Then ask during the down times. They'll say the truth has gone away. But it can't. If it can come and go, it isn't the Truth. It's something else.
What they wanted wasn't the truth, not the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God. What they wanted was a comfortable portion of the truth, a portion of truth they could assimilate on their own terms, not on the terms dictated by the truth itself. But the truth eventually states those terms and you can't avoid them. That's the greater opportunity at the heart of feeling uninspired. You're stuck with your worst self on truth's terms. You're face to face with the hardest parts of yourself. Learn to recognize them.
That encounter is so valuable because you want what can come from it. Anyone who enjoyed inspiration in the first place, anyone who squirms when inspiration recedes, is not really looking for the standard fruits of inspiration in the first place. It's not the physical products of our work that we're looking for. That point of view is a common myopia, but not correct for all its ubiquity. What we're looking for is not the products at all, but the thing they're supposed to make happen: we're looking to be happy. And the best way to do it is to start taking stock of the things you least want to know about yourself. If you really mean it. If you really want to be happy. If so, accept that version of yourself in its entirety that you think of as uninspired. The one who is waiting for something better to happen. All that one's flaws.
That's where the real you is waiting also. The real you is everything. It already knows that nothing better can happen, because better is a game. It already knows that inspiration is a game too and leads to happiness by accident only, never directly, but rather by playing itself out repeatedly until its own silliness and futility come forward. I'm not saying you should sit around being uninspired all the time. But if you inhabit those stretches as if they are wisdom, curious to know yourself in the midst of them, you'll discover and expand who you are much more deeply than you did in the inspired stretches. You'll find out you're both, and you're much more besides.
Give it a try. The next time you're not as inspired as you wish you were, realize that wishing you were more inspired crushes the wisdom of not being that way. Wouldn't you rather get to know your deepest self instead? Then take the state you've got. Take it. Do you hear me? I'm calling it something to take. Take it!
It's hard to see things this way. It's upside down. We're accustomed to thinking of inspiration as a time of valuable harvest in our lives, and of the periods between the harvest as a drag. Some of us mature enough to look at the in-betweens as a necessary part of the overall process, as gestation. But that outlook is only more covert worship of the mighty god Inspiration. It posits the periods away from inspiration as nothing more than the means to future inspiration. It gets away with calling those periods in-betweens!
They're so much more. They're the pith and essence. They're the shining crown on the big bloated head of inspiration, bowed at last. When the tingling rush of inspiration wanes and we settle into the doldrums and purposelessness that come afterwards, we are entering new territory in which we don't know who we are anymore. Our inspired confidence for expanding our sense of self has played out, begins to shrink, returns to its normal proportions, but won't stay put! It keeps shrinking. We collapse on the couch. We put on the TV. We can't sit still to save our lives, but we can't focus much either. Often for days. Sometimes for weeks.
This sorry state of affairs is when the journey into truth really gets going. It's when you have to deal with all your worst struggles against yourself, see all the worst things you spend lifetimes avoiding, surrender to feelings you don't want to feel. It's the purpose of inspiration that it ends, and that it drops you like a sack of rocks. The crash is the gold, the reward, the beginning. It's where you have to decide are you a hero, do you want to wear that word as a badge with a capital H, or can you drop your expiring ideas about yourself cold turkey now that it's time to be uninspired? That's when the true evolution is going to happen, spiritually speaking, right there at that moment of change, and in the period that follows.
Why? Because the letting go into lack of inspiration is a big letting go. It's generally bigger than any triumphant letting go that precedes it while you are inspired. While you are inspired, for all the risks you might take, you take them from a sense of daring and well-being. You take them in confidence. You take them with security, even if you take them into insecure places. Take is absolutely the word for it. Even when letting go is what's occurring, the inspired stretches in your life are all about taking. You take a risk. You take a chance. You take a bite out of life. You may be letting go of things to do it, but the taking is the emphasis. Take take take.
When the inspiration passes, you don't take anything. Rather, the things that you take are no longer romantic. You take a nap. You take medication. You take a beating. Taking felt so good while inspired that we try to force language to distill the feeling again by persisting in the words that go along with that state. It becomes funny, because the period after inspiration is not about taking. It's about releasing. It's about letting go. And it trumps the letting go of the inspired state because this kind of letting go happens not in the great light of wonder, but in the murky darkness of confusion. It's a terrible blow to the expanded sense of self to realize its time in the spotlight is over. So soon? Our inner life reels at the news.
But that reeling motion is what shakes out the truth. You don't have a leg to stand on anymore. You don't know who you are. You don't like not knowing. You want back that feeling of being bold and inspired, purposeful and pliant, but you can't have it. Your attempts to manufacture it artificially eventually fail also, and collapse into deeper darkness. If only, while you were in it, you could see this chain of events for what it is. If only you could see that now, after all the little warm ups (also known as the fruits of inspiration), you are finally getting what you really want, the great hammer blows of truth. Ask any inspired person, while inspired, what they are after at that time, what they most want to encounter, most demand from experience. They'll say the words: the truth! Then ask during the down times. They'll say the truth has gone away. But it can't. If it can come and go, it isn't the Truth. It's something else.
What they wanted wasn't the truth, not the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God. What they wanted was a comfortable portion of the truth, a portion of truth they could assimilate on their own terms, not on the terms dictated by the truth itself. But the truth eventually states those terms and you can't avoid them. That's the greater opportunity at the heart of feeling uninspired. You're stuck with your worst self on truth's terms. You're face to face with the hardest parts of yourself. Learn to recognize them.
That encounter is so valuable because you want what can come from it. Anyone who enjoyed inspiration in the first place, anyone who squirms when inspiration recedes, is not really looking for the standard fruits of inspiration in the first place. It's not the physical products of our work that we're looking for. That point of view is a common myopia, but not correct for all its ubiquity. What we're looking for is not the products at all, but the thing they're supposed to make happen: we're looking to be happy. And the best way to do it is to start taking stock of the things you least want to know about yourself. If you really mean it. If you really want to be happy. If so, accept that version of yourself in its entirety that you think of as uninspired. The one who is waiting for something better to happen. All that one's flaws.
That's where the real you is waiting also. The real you is everything. It already knows that nothing better can happen, because better is a game. It already knows that inspiration is a game too and leads to happiness by accident only, never directly, but rather by playing itself out repeatedly until its own silliness and futility come forward. I'm not saying you should sit around being uninspired all the time. But if you inhabit those stretches as if they are wisdom, curious to know yourself in the midst of them, you'll discover and expand who you are much more deeply than you did in the inspired stretches. You'll find out you're both, and you're much more besides.
Give it a try. The next time you're not as inspired as you wish you were, realize that wishing you were more inspired crushes the wisdom of not being that way. Wouldn't you rather get to know your deepest self instead? Then take the state you've got. Take it. Do you hear me? I'm calling it something to take. Take it!
October 26, 2007
the trance state
Everything personal is a trance state. Not the savory kind of trance, but the obtuse one. You're probably in it right now. I wish you weren't. You don't. You pay lip service to wishing you weren't, but that's usually another way to stay in it.
The trance state is tenacious. It protects itself brilliantly. It summons every defense. The best ones masquerade as anti-trance so you don't even see them for what they are. That's more trance on top of trance. It's almost airtight.
The only way out of the trance is to admit the core horror covered over by the trance. What's the one thing the trance least wants to accept? You have to figure that out and accept that thing anyway, despite the horror. I know you can do it.
Are you afraid to find out you're a failure? But you are one. I'm one too, but I like that. I failed at every intention cooked up during my trance. You will too. You have to. The things we come up with in the trance oppose reality and as a result they fail, if not on the surface, then underneath, where the real motivations operate.
Are you afraid to discover you're not very important at all, that you won't change the world or make any particular difference in the grand scheme of things? Of course you won't, not if you operate from there and convince yourself otherwise. Why not pull that useless thorn from your paw already and get over yourself?
Or would you rather persist in the trance? Most people would. They do it every day. They're doing it right now and they aren't letting up. That's the surest sign of trancing. You never have time to step back from it. You claim there's no choice.
The trance state is tenacious. It protects itself brilliantly. It summons every defense. The best ones masquerade as anti-trance so you don't even see them for what they are. That's more trance on top of trance. It's almost airtight.
The only way out of the trance is to admit the core horror covered over by the trance. What's the one thing the trance least wants to accept? You have to figure that out and accept that thing anyway, despite the horror. I know you can do it.
Are you afraid to find out you're a failure? But you are one. I'm one too, but I like that. I failed at every intention cooked up during my trance. You will too. You have to. The things we come up with in the trance oppose reality and as a result they fail, if not on the surface, then underneath, where the real motivations operate.
Are you afraid to discover you're not very important at all, that you won't change the world or make any particular difference in the grand scheme of things? Of course you won't, not if you operate from there and convince yourself otherwise. Why not pull that useless thorn from your paw already and get over yourself?
Or would you rather persist in the trance? Most people would. They do it every day. They're doing it right now and they aren't letting up. That's the surest sign of trancing. You never have time to step back from it. You claim there's no choice.
October 25, 2007
learning and mastery
Learning is reiterative. What that means is, you have to revisit what you learn several times to master it. This quality of learning is not a failure on the part of the one who is learning. You aren't the worst learner who ever lived when you think you understand something and find out, in the lesson's next unexpected iteration, that no, you hadn't mastered things after all. Not yet. Try again please. This discovery is not bad news. It's how learning works.
Appreciating how learning works is especially important on the spiritual path. Nowhere will life hand you more unwanted reminders that you don't have things mastered yet than there. That's what the spiritual path is actually about, one reminder after another that you aren't a master. The road to mastery is paved with bulldozed masters. At the far end of the road, where each trampled master believed he was heading, is the bulldozer itself, coming right at you again. See your reflection in the blade? Smile! Squish.
The tricky part of mastery is there isn't a master. How do you become a master? You realize you can't. How do you remain a master? You remember there isn't a master. All the time. This may sound like a lot of hocus pocus, but it needs to be stated. I don't want you fighting that bulldozer forever, only long enough to admit defeat, and thereby gain victory. You are on a path of learning, friend spirit, and the learning never stops. The truth of your being is fathomlessly deep and mysterious. Admitting how completely outside the realm of mental comprehension it is is just the beginning, although a fine one at that.
I want you to cut yourself a break. I want you to see what you're getting into and after a moment or two of understandable rationalist vertigo about it, open up to the deeper response of appreciation and eagerness. What you're getting into (and there's no choice anymore, there's no lasting retreat to sustainable aloofness about these things) is a way of life that leads unendingly into the unknown. You will never know again. Everything you thought you knew and still think you know, whether you recognize those things yet or not, will come deeply into question, one after another in the perfect sequence for release from them all.
I can't put enough stress on the first word in the previous sentence: everything. Friend spirit, they wouldn't call it the unknown if you were allowed to keep bits and pieces of what you think you know already and go in there anyway. That would be called, well, it already has a name: bullshit. You've heard of that before, yes? We're all sooooo full of it. There's not one of us who isn't. I am too. Awfully eager to agree with me on that point, eh? If so, that's your initial burst of rationalist vertigo operating. It will pass. You'll surrender. What the hell else can you do besides surrendering that isn't more bullshit? Everything we know is plain old B.S.
Now before you write me off as a nihilist, allow me to clarify a few things. First, the word nihilist rhymes with stylist. That doesn't mean anything really, but I thought it was cool. Second, there is obviously a place for knowledge, for the known. I don't want to freak you out that nothing we know, such as scientific insight or how to tie a shoe, is without its beautiful place in the whole of existence. How could things be otherwise? All I'm trying to say is those things, the ones we call knowledge, just don't cut it on the spiritual path. They freeze life into a false conceptual stasis, from which all the real quote-unquote "life" drains away.
You are "life". Everything you think you know about who you are is the false conceptual stasis. Do you want to be yourself or your conceptual discomfort zone? As life I'm asking you. Life to life. It's an intimate conversation here, addressed at you: Life, do you want to be life and live, or is a false sense of comfort and security so important to you that you'd rather die keeping it? That's what keeping it is: it's your death, Life. Every moment. The known is perpetual suicide to you. You are cutting your magnificent throat with every stubborn concept and idea of who you are. And you know it. I know you do. Better yet, you can feel it. Feel the concepts betray you. Feel them flick their serpent tongues. They're at your heels, Life. Run!
Run to the unknown, where they don't exist. They can't. It's the definition of them not to. They can't go where definitions are impossible. But you can, and must. You thrive there. You gain freedom there. You discover that happiness is so ridiculously easy there that you don't know what took you so long to accept it on its own terms. You don't care that it took you so long because you remembered again, and that's enough. You're enough without knowing anything. You don't know anything and you're enough. You overflow. You enchant.
Lose yourself and gain the world. That's what a great teacher once said on this subject, but we have to refresh the teaching so we hear it right again. Will you do that with me? Here's how: tuck the little phrase "all your concepts of" between the words "lose" and "yourself". Go ahead and say it that way to make sure you've got it down. Then trade the word "world" for "Truth" with a capital T. But that word is up to you also. Use whatever word is transparent enough to indicate that which is so sacred to you that you'd be silent in the presence of it. Absolutely inevitably silent. Silent to the point of beholding it and forgetting you. Completely forgetting you. That silent.
Imagine that. Silent in the presence of it. Have you ever been out walking and suddenly you encountered a deer or any wild animal? Do you remember how quiet you got, not wanting to scare it away, but quieter than that really? You were quiet before your mind could even churn out a reason for being quiet? That quiet. That silent. The quiet and silence that precedes the thought process. That was the quiet you experienced then. That's the unknown. That place before your mind. That's what's sacred in this life. That's what life is. That's what you are. Lose all your concepts of yourself and gain that.
Appreciating how learning works is especially important on the spiritual path. Nowhere will life hand you more unwanted reminders that you don't have things mastered yet than there. That's what the spiritual path is actually about, one reminder after another that you aren't a master. The road to mastery is paved with bulldozed masters. At the far end of the road, where each trampled master believed he was heading, is the bulldozer itself, coming right at you again. See your reflection in the blade? Smile! Squish.
The tricky part of mastery is there isn't a master. How do you become a master? You realize you can't. How do you remain a master? You remember there isn't a master. All the time. This may sound like a lot of hocus pocus, but it needs to be stated. I don't want you fighting that bulldozer forever, only long enough to admit defeat, and thereby gain victory. You are on a path of learning, friend spirit, and the learning never stops. The truth of your being is fathomlessly deep and mysterious. Admitting how completely outside the realm of mental comprehension it is is just the beginning, although a fine one at that.
I want you to cut yourself a break. I want you to see what you're getting into and after a moment or two of understandable rationalist vertigo about it, open up to the deeper response of appreciation and eagerness. What you're getting into (and there's no choice anymore, there's no lasting retreat to sustainable aloofness about these things) is a way of life that leads unendingly into the unknown. You will never know again. Everything you thought you knew and still think you know, whether you recognize those things yet or not, will come deeply into question, one after another in the perfect sequence for release from them all.
I can't put enough stress on the first word in the previous sentence: everything. Friend spirit, they wouldn't call it the unknown if you were allowed to keep bits and pieces of what you think you know already and go in there anyway. That would be called, well, it already has a name: bullshit. You've heard of that before, yes? We're all sooooo full of it. There's not one of us who isn't. I am too. Awfully eager to agree with me on that point, eh? If so, that's your initial burst of rationalist vertigo operating. It will pass. You'll surrender. What the hell else can you do besides surrendering that isn't more bullshit? Everything we know is plain old B.S.
Now before you write me off as a nihilist, allow me to clarify a few things. First, the word nihilist rhymes with stylist. That doesn't mean anything really, but I thought it was cool. Second, there is obviously a place for knowledge, for the known. I don't want to freak you out that nothing we know, such as scientific insight or how to tie a shoe, is without its beautiful place in the whole of existence. How could things be otherwise? All I'm trying to say is those things, the ones we call knowledge, just don't cut it on the spiritual path. They freeze life into a false conceptual stasis, from which all the real quote-unquote "life" drains away.
You are "life". Everything you think you know about who you are is the false conceptual stasis. Do you want to be yourself or your conceptual discomfort zone? As life I'm asking you. Life to life. It's an intimate conversation here, addressed at you: Life, do you want to be life and live, or is a false sense of comfort and security so important to you that you'd rather die keeping it? That's what keeping it is: it's your death, Life. Every moment. The known is perpetual suicide to you. You are cutting your magnificent throat with every stubborn concept and idea of who you are. And you know it. I know you do. Better yet, you can feel it. Feel the concepts betray you. Feel them flick their serpent tongues. They're at your heels, Life. Run!
Run to the unknown, where they don't exist. They can't. It's the definition of them not to. They can't go where definitions are impossible. But you can, and must. You thrive there. You gain freedom there. You discover that happiness is so ridiculously easy there that you don't know what took you so long to accept it on its own terms. You don't care that it took you so long because you remembered again, and that's enough. You're enough without knowing anything. You don't know anything and you're enough. You overflow. You enchant.
Lose yourself and gain the world. That's what a great teacher once said on this subject, but we have to refresh the teaching so we hear it right again. Will you do that with me? Here's how: tuck the little phrase "all your concepts of" between the words "lose" and "yourself". Go ahead and say it that way to make sure you've got it down. Then trade the word "world" for "Truth" with a capital T. But that word is up to you also. Use whatever word is transparent enough to indicate that which is so sacred to you that you'd be silent in the presence of it. Absolutely inevitably silent. Silent to the point of beholding it and forgetting you. Completely forgetting you. That silent.
Imagine that. Silent in the presence of it. Have you ever been out walking and suddenly you encountered a deer or any wild animal? Do you remember how quiet you got, not wanting to scare it away, but quieter than that really? You were quiet before your mind could even churn out a reason for being quiet? That quiet. That silent. The quiet and silence that precedes the thought process. That was the quiet you experienced then. That's the unknown. That place before your mind. That's what's sacred in this life. That's what life is. That's what you are. Lose all your concepts of yourself and gain that.
October 22, 2007
your uniqueness
After life puts enough cracks in your assumed sense of identity, you start to see more clearly by the light that shines through them. The light is you, of course, the real you. But for now let's point it back onto your original notions of who you are, or who you were.
Let's give a name to all those notions as one lump sum. Let's group all those concepts into one final concept and call them the personal self. Let's say, when we use the term personal self, what we're talking about is everything you mean when you refer to yourself as someone or something that is individual and distinct from all other things. Your uniqueness.
There's nothing wrong with uniqueness. In fact, it's quite beautiful. No one is trying to take that away from you necessarily, but rather to offer you a vantage point from which it becomes that much more spectacular. We must question it to arrive there.
The crucial question is when does that sense of uniqueness occur? This will be a lot to take in, but give it a try. You put an emphasis on the importance of your individuality only when the inner phenomenon of psychological resistance is happening. I'd like to say that again. Maybe more than once. It's a biggie.
As soon as we resist the flow of life in any way our individuality occurs. As soon as we don't want something that is happening (that is, we resist it) the sense of being separate and distinct is the direct result. The personal self is a resistance pattern.
How can that be true? We prize the personal self. We invest everything in it. We chart the entire course of our lives perfecting it, listening for it. I dare say inventing it. Let me ask you this question: how can it really be you if it requires all that adjustment, refinement, devotion, and attention? The real you is much less needy than that. It is never in any danger.
But in case you're not convinced, here's another way to look at things. What happens when you refuse to feel something difficult? You become someone. You know exactly who you are suddenly, or for a while you need to pretend you do, and you go about clarifying the details to everyone else, including yourself. That's the personal self. It appears because resistance to something difficult is winning the day and expressing itself as your precious identity. Once you permit yourself to feel the difficult thing instead of resisting it, all the insistent personal selfing evaporates.
What happens when you like something you feel? You want more. You want it to go on indefinitely if it can, or recur frequently. You want it to last. But life doesn't work that way. Your attempts to arrange for sustained or maximum goodness, while shrewd planning on one hand, are also an expression of resistance to how life really proceeds. Nothing goes on indefinitely. It can't. Nor do familiar pleasures recur easily over long periods without unpredictable factors altering them. Your attempts to have it otherwise are resistance to life's nature. The personal self you set up to deny change and nail down lasting good is an expression of this resistance. It is the resistance expressing itself as you.
Are you willing to see that? Maybe not. A resistance pattern as entrenched as the personal self is not quick to cough itself up as a hairball. Instead it resists attempts to reveal it, such as this one. It calls the writer crazy. It says he writes poorly, incomprehensibly. Accuses him of being on a soap box.
Were the writer identified strongly with his own personal self, he would resist that resistance by telling you he isn't crazy, he doesn't write poorly, he isn't on a soap box. Then he'd climb onto the closest one anyway and plead for you to understand how what he's saying is in your best interest, the only road to real happiness for you, an opportunity to know who you are for a change, to drop all the false notions that you take as real by accident and at the expense of spiritual well-being.
But the author isn't going to do that because he can't. He isn't really the author any more than you are really the reader. Those are personal selves. They occur because of resistance. They aren't worth the quantity of belief that makes conflict over them possible. They are spirit having fun, pretending to be people.
That's all the personal self is. It is spirit having fun, pretending to be a person. You. You are spirit having fun, pretending to be a person. You only put it the other way around and believe you are a person and not spirit, or a person before spirit, because that's what spirit wants for the sake of having more fun.
For a limited amount of time, spirit takes increased joy in seeing how well it can fall for its own ruse, and believe in itself primarily as a person. In many cases, it takes this phase of the fun all the way to denying spirit exists at all. Then the next phase begins, wherein spirit rediscovers itself, because nothing is more fun for it than that. That's Enlightenment! That's good fun!
I promise you, from that vantage point, your uniqueness is more beautiful, natural, precious, and, believe it or not, effective than you ever dreamed possible in your wildest, most daring aspirations as a personal self. You are ever so much more. You are spirit being everything. Look at that glorious wisp you singled out as you! It can see itself everywhere.
Let's give a name to all those notions as one lump sum. Let's group all those concepts into one final concept and call them the personal self. Let's say, when we use the term personal self, what we're talking about is everything you mean when you refer to yourself as someone or something that is individual and distinct from all other things. Your uniqueness.
There's nothing wrong with uniqueness. In fact, it's quite beautiful. No one is trying to take that away from you necessarily, but rather to offer you a vantage point from which it becomes that much more spectacular. We must question it to arrive there.
The crucial question is when does that sense of uniqueness occur? This will be a lot to take in, but give it a try. You put an emphasis on the importance of your individuality only when the inner phenomenon of psychological resistance is happening. I'd like to say that again. Maybe more than once. It's a biggie.
As soon as we resist the flow of life in any way our individuality occurs. As soon as we don't want something that is happening (that is, we resist it) the sense of being separate and distinct is the direct result. The personal self is a resistance pattern.
How can that be true? We prize the personal self. We invest everything in it. We chart the entire course of our lives perfecting it, listening for it. I dare say inventing it. Let me ask you this question: how can it really be you if it requires all that adjustment, refinement, devotion, and attention? The real you is much less needy than that. It is never in any danger.
But in case you're not convinced, here's another way to look at things. What happens when you refuse to feel something difficult? You become someone. You know exactly who you are suddenly, or for a while you need to pretend you do, and you go about clarifying the details to everyone else, including yourself. That's the personal self. It appears because resistance to something difficult is winning the day and expressing itself as your precious identity. Once you permit yourself to feel the difficult thing instead of resisting it, all the insistent personal selfing evaporates.
What happens when you like something you feel? You want more. You want it to go on indefinitely if it can, or recur frequently. You want it to last. But life doesn't work that way. Your attempts to arrange for sustained or maximum goodness, while shrewd planning on one hand, are also an expression of resistance to how life really proceeds. Nothing goes on indefinitely. It can't. Nor do familiar pleasures recur easily over long periods without unpredictable factors altering them. Your attempts to have it otherwise are resistance to life's nature. The personal self you set up to deny change and nail down lasting good is an expression of this resistance. It is the resistance expressing itself as you.
Are you willing to see that? Maybe not. A resistance pattern as entrenched as the personal self is not quick to cough itself up as a hairball. Instead it resists attempts to reveal it, such as this one. It calls the writer crazy. It says he writes poorly, incomprehensibly. Accuses him of being on a soap box.
Were the writer identified strongly with his own personal self, he would resist that resistance by telling you he isn't crazy, he doesn't write poorly, he isn't on a soap box. Then he'd climb onto the closest one anyway and plead for you to understand how what he's saying is in your best interest, the only road to real happiness for you, an opportunity to know who you are for a change, to drop all the false notions that you take as real by accident and at the expense of spiritual well-being.
But the author isn't going to do that because he can't. He isn't really the author any more than you are really the reader. Those are personal selves. They occur because of resistance. They aren't worth the quantity of belief that makes conflict over them possible. They are spirit having fun, pretending to be people.
That's all the personal self is. It is spirit having fun, pretending to be a person. You. You are spirit having fun, pretending to be a person. You only put it the other way around and believe you are a person and not spirit, or a person before spirit, because that's what spirit wants for the sake of having more fun.
For a limited amount of time, spirit takes increased joy in seeing how well it can fall for its own ruse, and believe in itself primarily as a person. In many cases, it takes this phase of the fun all the way to denying spirit exists at all. Then the next phase begins, wherein spirit rediscovers itself, because nothing is more fun for it than that. That's Enlightenment! That's good fun!
I promise you, from that vantage point, your uniqueness is more beautiful, natural, precious, and, believe it or not, effective than you ever dreamed possible in your wildest, most daring aspirations as a personal self. You are ever so much more. You are spirit being everything. Look at that glorious wisp you singled out as you! It can see itself everywhere.
October 20, 2007
the fountain
Let's play sculptor. Let's imagine city planners in a spiritual utopia have asked us to design an installation for the center of town. The intended location for the piece is right in the middle of the main square, where citizens congregate for free social discourse. When we ask the city planners why they chose us, they say something artists will only hear in a true spiritual utopia and maybe nowhere else: "You have a history of being daring!"
After scouting the location several times and enjoying its energy, we decide on a piece and set to work right away. We are going to make a fountain. In the center of the fountain, we are going to put a single person, forged from bronze, surrounded by water, standing upright on a slight rise in the fountain's tile base. The rise is so slight that one of the person's feet is on the surface of the water, lapped by little waves, possibly afloat. The other foot extends forward onto the top of a large bronze hourglass with functioning chambers.
A small platform beneath the hourglass keeps its dry and also conceals the fountain's powerful pump, which periodically sends water into the topmost chamber. The water collects there in a swirling fashion and drains downward through a tiny opening in the iridescent glass. We have crafted the opening so that water going through it alternates from a thin steady stream to a trickle of individual droplets and back again unpredictably, a natural property of flowing liquids. Watching the water behave that way is pleasing and we smile as we proceed. The bottom chamber fills up, the water flushes into the base, and the pump recirculates the water.
The pump also sends water through the forward leg of the person in a secret pipe. The person stands with its hands extended forward, as if holding an invisible globe. The person's mouth is open. The person appears to be explaining something. The person is finishing a word or beginning a new one. It's hard to say which. The person's eyes are wide open and alive. An epiphany is occurring behind them and the person is trying to express it. The power and brilliance of it literally floods the person's head. We have taken special pains to assure that.
The water travels up the person's leg, through the person's chest cavity and neck, and into the person's skull. The skull is open on top like the petals of a flower. The rising water becomes visible there, emerging in thick vertical surges, ranging from two to six inches high. The lapping sound they emit is a substitute for the person's missing speech. The surges collect in a pool formed by the person's open skull and drain over the edge, running down the person's head on all sides, forming thin rivulets that intertwine on their way down the full length of the person's body before returning to the surrounding water below.
Now for the daring part: the person is us. We have molded the person in a perfect likeness of ourself, the sculptor. The dimensions are identical, as is the appearance. But owing to our enormous mastery at our trade, everyone who looks at the statue feels exactly as we do, that the person in question is none other than oneself. It doesn't matter if the onlooker is male, female, short, tall, young, old, heavy, thin. The effect is always the same. Whoever lays eyes on the statue sees oneself, and becomes momentarily mesmerized.
The unveiling of the statue is a great success, with plenty of surrounding fanfare. A large crowd gathers in the main square and watches the hydraulics commence. The hourglass loads its first chamber of liquid. The person begins bubbling over at the crown of the head. Everyone there beholds their own inspired likeness in the middle of expressing something magnificent, words forming on the lips, the fountain gurgling for the voice. In moments the shallow pool surrounding the person becomes choppy and stays that way forever. Little waves lap at the person's lower foot, possibly afloat. What exactly is the person saying? You do know. It's your epiphany too.
After scouting the location several times and enjoying its energy, we decide on a piece and set to work right away. We are going to make a fountain. In the center of the fountain, we are going to put a single person, forged from bronze, surrounded by water, standing upright on a slight rise in the fountain's tile base. The rise is so slight that one of the person's feet is on the surface of the water, lapped by little waves, possibly afloat. The other foot extends forward onto the top of a large bronze hourglass with functioning chambers.
A small platform beneath the hourglass keeps its dry and also conceals the fountain's powerful pump, which periodically sends water into the topmost chamber. The water collects there in a swirling fashion and drains downward through a tiny opening in the iridescent glass. We have crafted the opening so that water going through it alternates from a thin steady stream to a trickle of individual droplets and back again unpredictably, a natural property of flowing liquids. Watching the water behave that way is pleasing and we smile as we proceed. The bottom chamber fills up, the water flushes into the base, and the pump recirculates the water.
The pump also sends water through the forward leg of the person in a secret pipe. The person stands with its hands extended forward, as if holding an invisible globe. The person's mouth is open. The person appears to be explaining something. The person is finishing a word or beginning a new one. It's hard to say which. The person's eyes are wide open and alive. An epiphany is occurring behind them and the person is trying to express it. The power and brilliance of it literally floods the person's head. We have taken special pains to assure that.
The water travels up the person's leg, through the person's chest cavity and neck, and into the person's skull. The skull is open on top like the petals of a flower. The rising water becomes visible there, emerging in thick vertical surges, ranging from two to six inches high. The lapping sound they emit is a substitute for the person's missing speech. The surges collect in a pool formed by the person's open skull and drain over the edge, running down the person's head on all sides, forming thin rivulets that intertwine on their way down the full length of the person's body before returning to the surrounding water below.
Now for the daring part: the person is us. We have molded the person in a perfect likeness of ourself, the sculptor. The dimensions are identical, as is the appearance. But owing to our enormous mastery at our trade, everyone who looks at the statue feels exactly as we do, that the person in question is none other than oneself. It doesn't matter if the onlooker is male, female, short, tall, young, old, heavy, thin. The effect is always the same. Whoever lays eyes on the statue sees oneself, and becomes momentarily mesmerized.
The unveiling of the statue is a great success, with plenty of surrounding fanfare. A large crowd gathers in the main square and watches the hydraulics commence. The hourglass loads its first chamber of liquid. The person begins bubbling over at the crown of the head. Everyone there beholds their own inspired likeness in the middle of expressing something magnificent, words forming on the lips, the fountain gurgling for the voice. In moments the shallow pool surrounding the person becomes choppy and stays that way forever. Little waves lap at the person's lower foot, possibly afloat. What exactly is the person saying? You do know. It's your epiphany too.
October 19, 2007
unraveling hard times
You may not believe it, but all your problems, if you have any, really boil down to one. Whatever may seem to be wrong, it's always the result of the same thing, spiritually speaking. That one thing is resistance. If there's a problem, there's resistance. If there isn't resistance, there isn't a problem. This is a helpful bottom line for unraveling hard times.
If you pay attention at those times, you develop an eye, or really more of a feel, for the role of resistance. Are you suffering? You must be resisting something. It's perfectly natural. After all, who wants to feel something painful? You lapse into resistance before you know what you're doing. But as long as you persist in it, that's where the suffering comes from.
The suffering is the problem. The actual pain underneath it is not. You have to train yourself to understand this distinction. Suffering equals problem. Pain equals natural. Pain and suffering are not the same thing, although suffering is also painful. Once you understand the difference, you can leverage a new relationship to pain, and put an end to suffering.
The new relationship to pain is to cut out your the resistance to it. If you catch yourself suffering, you know you are resisting. Try not to. Try not to deny pain when it occurs in you. Remind yourself at those times that resisting pain keeps it around indefinitely, while not resisting it is the only way it will pass. Make it your new intention to feel it for the sake of moving through it and past it.
The reward for this intention, if you practice it earnestly, is a surprising discovery: pain isn't so bad. You'll have to try for yourself to believe me unless you already know. Pain is pain. It isn't worth all the heartache of suffering over it. It isn't worthy of plunging yourself into a personal hell. Not when the other alternative is simply to feel it and recover your wits, no heartache, no hell. Why add those dark dimensions if you have another choice?
You'll be amazed how much time you save if you don't add them. If you learn to cut out your resistance, the pain passes in a very short time. It lasts no longer than pleasure once you get the hang of it, and we all know quickly pleasure disappears. The pain comes, the pain goes. In between those events you permit yourself to feel it, which is why the second event happens. Then you reflect on the whole thing and marvel at how quickly things transitioned. You will probably ask yourself afterwards why you never handled your problems this way before.
If you pay attention at those times, you develop an eye, or really more of a feel, for the role of resistance. Are you suffering? You must be resisting something. It's perfectly natural. After all, who wants to feel something painful? You lapse into resistance before you know what you're doing. But as long as you persist in it, that's where the suffering comes from.
The suffering is the problem. The actual pain underneath it is not. You have to train yourself to understand this distinction. Suffering equals problem. Pain equals natural. Pain and suffering are not the same thing, although suffering is also painful. Once you understand the difference, you can leverage a new relationship to pain, and put an end to suffering.
The new relationship to pain is to cut out your the resistance to it. If you catch yourself suffering, you know you are resisting. Try not to. Try not to deny pain when it occurs in you. Remind yourself at those times that resisting pain keeps it around indefinitely, while not resisting it is the only way it will pass. Make it your new intention to feel it for the sake of moving through it and past it.
The reward for this intention, if you practice it earnestly, is a surprising discovery: pain isn't so bad. You'll have to try for yourself to believe me unless you already know. Pain is pain. It isn't worth all the heartache of suffering over it. It isn't worthy of plunging yourself into a personal hell. Not when the other alternative is simply to feel it and recover your wits, no heartache, no hell. Why add those dark dimensions if you have another choice?
You'll be amazed how much time you save if you don't add them. If you learn to cut out your resistance, the pain passes in a very short time. It lasts no longer than pleasure once you get the hang of it, and we all know quickly pleasure disappears. The pain comes, the pain goes. In between those events you permit yourself to feel it, which is why the second event happens. Then you reflect on the whole thing and marvel at how quickly things transitioned. You will probably ask yourself afterwards why you never handled your problems this way before.
no one gets it
No one gets it. When you are no one, you will get it. But you'll also be no one. It won't matter so much that you get it, not how it mattered when you thought you were someone. In order to matter, there needs to be a someone to whom getting it is important.
Whenever you are no one, you will get it again. Whenever you are someone, you will no longer get it, and eventually return to wishing you did. The wishing is your doorway back into being no one, and getting it again. You can step through any time, and you will.
The experience of being awake is moment to moment. At any moment you can be someone or you can be no one and you'll come to see the difference clearly. Then the main function of being someone will be to realize you are no one, whenever you forget.
How will know you forgot? You will think you are someone again. Thinking you are someone is a state of forgetting. Understanding you are no one is a state of remembering. But no one will be there to remember, and that means you are getting it.
When getting it becomes regular, the difference between a someone and a no one will go away, because all differences belong to a someone. To a no one there are no differences. To a no one everything is absolutely the same underneath the diversity.
It is mostly as a no one that the deepest beauty of the world becomes evident. To a someone the recognition of that beauty tends to bring out a sense of being no one. Beauty humbles the someone into a state we call awe. Do you feel it? You really awe to.
Whenever you are no one, you will get it again. Whenever you are someone, you will no longer get it, and eventually return to wishing you did. The wishing is your doorway back into being no one, and getting it again. You can step through any time, and you will.
The experience of being awake is moment to moment. At any moment you can be someone or you can be no one and you'll come to see the difference clearly. Then the main function of being someone will be to realize you are no one, whenever you forget.
How will know you forgot? You will think you are someone again. Thinking you are someone is a state of forgetting. Understanding you are no one is a state of remembering. But no one will be there to remember, and that means you are getting it.
When getting it becomes regular, the difference between a someone and a no one will go away, because all differences belong to a someone. To a no one there are no differences. To a no one everything is absolutely the same underneath the diversity.
It is mostly as a no one that the deepest beauty of the world becomes evident. To a someone the recognition of that beauty tends to bring out a sense of being no one. Beauty humbles the someone into a state we call awe. Do you feel it? You really awe to.
October 16, 2007
sustaining spiritual clarity
Spiritual clarity diminishes whenever personal self kicks in. The main concern, therefore, for anyone hoping to sustain spiritual clarity is how to minimize personal self. This objective is not only tricky, but contradicts many basic assumptions.
Another word for basic assumptions is conditioning. We are all conditioned to behave in certain ways and we attach to that behavior as if it defines us. The conditioning is so deep and so habitual that we generally defend it before letting it go.
Learning to let it go is what the spiritual life is all about. You are not your conditioning. You are not anything that turns out to be conditioning. Are you willing to find out exactly how much that is? The part of you that isn't is the first example of more conditioning.
What happens when that part takes over? The personal self appears. One moment you are free and the next you are not. One moment you are open and the next you are closed. It can happen that quickly, and usually does. No one wins races against the personal self.
Luckily, you don't have to. All you have to do is pay attention. To anything. Simply focus your attention on anything at all and you vanquish the personal self for as long as you like. The length and sincerity of the attention determines the results.
And now for the tricky part. The best results come from paying attention to the very thing you are trying to vanquish. Hold the personal self in your undivided attention and find out directly. That's how you vanquish it forever, by observing every piece.
Another word for basic assumptions is conditioning. We are all conditioned to behave in certain ways and we attach to that behavior as if it defines us. The conditioning is so deep and so habitual that we generally defend it before letting it go.
Learning to let it go is what the spiritual life is all about. You are not your conditioning. You are not anything that turns out to be conditioning. Are you willing to find out exactly how much that is? The part of you that isn't is the first example of more conditioning.
What happens when that part takes over? The personal self appears. One moment you are free and the next you are not. One moment you are open and the next you are closed. It can happen that quickly, and usually does. No one wins races against the personal self.
Luckily, you don't have to. All you have to do is pay attention. To anything. Simply focus your attention on anything at all and you vanquish the personal self for as long as you like. The length and sincerity of the attention determines the results.
And now for the tricky part. The best results come from paying attention to the very thing you are trying to vanquish. Hold the personal self in your undivided attention and find out directly. That's how you vanquish it forever, by observing every piece.
October 15, 2007
the inner "of course"
Spiritual seekers often yearn for a simple tidbit of wisdom that will bring them clarity whenever they implement it. The wish for it is the only reason it doesn't come true. But here's a pretty good one for the sake of experiment. It's called the inner "Of course".
Whatever stirs in you, say, "Of course". As soon as you notice the slightest hint of it, rather than telling yourself it's not there or reacting against it strongly, practice a different response and tell yourself, "Of course". Make it a habit and see what develops.
The inner "Of course" will never be necessary for the things you like feeling, because you already welcome those without reservation. The purpose of the inner "Of course" is primarily to address the things you don't want to feel, and tend to refuse to.
But consider them a moment. Are they not occurring anyway? Is your effort to keep them away really working? Does it serve your best interests? The unfortunate truth about denying or avoiding your feelings is they own you that way. Every single one you exclude.
Your excluded feelings create a false self out of you. You become their greatest champion by refusing to accept them. No one means to be judgmental. No one means to be unkind. These things happen in spite of us because excluded feelings are present.
The remedy is to include them. Let your hardest feelings exist. Greet them with the inner "Of course" and do nothing else about them. Remember: this is an experiment. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, admit you feel that way and repeat the magic words.
Whatever stirs in you, say, "Of course". As soon as you notice the slightest hint of it, rather than telling yourself it's not there or reacting against it strongly, practice a different response and tell yourself, "Of course". Make it a habit and see what develops.
The inner "Of course" will never be necessary for the things you like feeling, because you already welcome those without reservation. The purpose of the inner "Of course" is primarily to address the things you don't want to feel, and tend to refuse to.
But consider them a moment. Are they not occurring anyway? Is your effort to keep them away really working? Does it serve your best interests? The unfortunate truth about denying or avoiding your feelings is they own you that way. Every single one you exclude.
Your excluded feelings create a false self out of you. You become their greatest champion by refusing to accept them. No one means to be judgmental. No one means to be unkind. These things happen in spite of us because excluded feelings are present.
The remedy is to include them. Let your hardest feelings exist. Greet them with the inner "Of course" and do nothing else about them. Remember: this is an experiment. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, admit you feel that way and repeat the magic words.
October 13, 2007
bare spirit in communion
I would like to take your hand and communicate the absolute truth to you. I would like to sit with you and look each other in the eyes and be done with pretending once and for all. There is nothing more beautiful than bare spirit in communion. Nothing.
Bare spirit in communion is what these words are for. It's what everything is for. It's what my life and your life and everyone's life has ever been for. Did you think it was something else? Did you believe in a different purpose and chase after it like mad?
You can give that up now. All of it. You can give it up forever. You don't need it anymore. You've seen through it and you're all right. The pretending is over. That was not the real world. That was not the real you. Let them go. Move along.
The real you was never anything you could name or define. Whenever you tried, you fell short, and you had to keep at it. If you stopped, you disappeared. You were afraid to disappear. But the one who disappeared was not really who you are.
Is there any of that one left? Look me in the eyes and let's drop our final crumbs. We are not the ones who look. There is no one who looks. There is looking, but looking is doing it, not you and not me. You and me are fictitious, extra. The looking is enough.
You can exist that way now. You can drop all the noise and move into pure experience. It's been waiting for you from the start, enjoying your delays. It's the smile that happens when you aren't forcing one to. It's the look in your eyes when you aren't thinking "me".
Bare spirit in communion is what these words are for. It's what everything is for. It's what my life and your life and everyone's life has ever been for. Did you think it was something else? Did you believe in a different purpose and chase after it like mad?
You can give that up now. All of it. You can give it up forever. You don't need it anymore. You've seen through it and you're all right. The pretending is over. That was not the real world. That was not the real you. Let them go. Move along.
The real you was never anything you could name or define. Whenever you tried, you fell short, and you had to keep at it. If you stopped, you disappeared. You were afraid to disappear. But the one who disappeared was not really who you are.
Is there any of that one left? Look me in the eyes and let's drop our final crumbs. We are not the ones who look. There is no one who looks. There is looking, but looking is doing it, not you and not me. You and me are fictitious, extra. The looking is enough.
You can exist that way now. You can drop all the noise and move into pure experience. It's been waiting for you from the start, enjoying your delays. It's the smile that happens when you aren't forcing one to. It's the look in your eyes when you aren't thinking "me".
October 11, 2007
the most valid use of mind
On the spiritual path the most valid use of mind is to bring itself into question. A mind that brings itself into question regularly is a mind you can trust. All other functions of mind, on the spiritual path, lead into delusion and divisiveness if you aren't very careful, and often if you are.
How does a mind bring itself into question? By recognizing why it wants to. Until it sees why it wants to and resonates with what it sees, a mind will never be able to give itself up. It may comply with the recital of a thousand daily mantras and make a good show of how modest it is, but these activities are a smokescreen if the why is not clear.
The why is quite simple: to make room for spirit. Once a mind comprehends its own dominance as an impediment to spirit, it becomes much more supple in regard to moving over. This doesn't mean the mind goes away or the mind has no intrinsic value, but rather that spirit's value becomes more compelling to mind than its own. In this sense, mind is maturing. At last. It is fulfilling its highest purpose of service to the source of life.
For mind, the first phases of this transition can be disorienting. Mind is so accustomed to being in charge and commanding absolute allegiance from you about locating your identity there, that you may not know who you are as that bloated bubble bursts. You may lapse into fitful cycles of attempting to repair and re-inflate it. But all the king's horses and all the king's men. No, you can't put Humpty Dumpty together again, not without a bad conscience.
Which is when the fun starts. You are ready for honing the most valid use of mind, because you want to honor spirit. You are ready to hand your whole life to spirit and thereby discover your life, which was never other than spirit. Spirit is what you are, not mind in isolation from spirit. You are mind only insofar as mind is also a manifestation of spirit. Everything is.
So teach your beloved mind how to see through its domineering tendencies. Teach it to question everything it believes and everything it convinces you to believe. Because none of it is true. Not a single opinion or thought, not if they goad you into strong identification with them as a person named "me", which is also a thought, nothing more. It has no more substance than spirit, because spirit is what it is.
How does a mind bring itself into question? By recognizing why it wants to. Until it sees why it wants to and resonates with what it sees, a mind will never be able to give itself up. It may comply with the recital of a thousand daily mantras and make a good show of how modest it is, but these activities are a smokescreen if the why is not clear.
The why is quite simple: to make room for spirit. Once a mind comprehends its own dominance as an impediment to spirit, it becomes much more supple in regard to moving over. This doesn't mean the mind goes away or the mind has no intrinsic value, but rather that spirit's value becomes more compelling to mind than its own. In this sense, mind is maturing. At last. It is fulfilling its highest purpose of service to the source of life.
For mind, the first phases of this transition can be disorienting. Mind is so accustomed to being in charge and commanding absolute allegiance from you about locating your identity there, that you may not know who you are as that bloated bubble bursts. You may lapse into fitful cycles of attempting to repair and re-inflate it. But all the king's horses and all the king's men. No, you can't put Humpty Dumpty together again, not without a bad conscience.
Which is when the fun starts. You are ready for honing the most valid use of mind, because you want to honor spirit. You are ready to hand your whole life to spirit and thereby discover your life, which was never other than spirit. Spirit is what you are, not mind in isolation from spirit. You are mind only insofar as mind is also a manifestation of spirit. Everything is.
So teach your beloved mind how to see through its domineering tendencies. Teach it to question everything it believes and everything it convinces you to believe. Because none of it is true. Not a single opinion or thought, not if they goad you into strong identification with them as a person named "me", which is also a thought, nothing more. It has no more substance than spirit, because spirit is what it is.
October 10, 2007
striving and happiness
We spend a lot of time striving. Some of us spend our whole lives striving and never stop. What are we striving for really? We are striving to be happy. The problem is we go about it, for the most part, in a way that doesn't work. None of us is immune to this behavior. The only way you learn what does work is to exhaust yourself about what doesn't.
Happiness is not something you can arrive at later. That's not how happiness works. As long as you persist in the opinion that happiness is something you may not have now, but intend to have later, you will never be happy, not now, and not later. You may end up more comfortable, wealthier, famous, or friendlier, but you will not be happy, not in the sense of being completely at peace with yourself and your life.
Why is that? Why doesn't success in the area of striving pan out how it ought to with an end result of happiness? Mostly because of you. Once you get where you thought the happiness would be, once the striving pans out, you are still the same person who believed very deeply that you weren't happy enough yet, and that habit dies hard. It dreams up the next need before the last one is out of the box, or not long after.
Addressing that habit is the royal road to happiness. Only don't let that intention become another form of striving. There is nothing to strive for. You don't need to sort out every detail of how you have been striving previously and why it didn't serve you and what you ought to do next as a result. The fact is it did serve you, but not how you expected. It served you by teaching you it doesn't amount to happiness. If you don't know that for certain, you will do some more striving, and then you'll find out. Until you find out.
Once you do, you can let go of effort and finally be happy. You can laugh from deep inside that you made so much effort and did so much striving only to discover that effort and striving contradict what you were after. You'll laugh about this discovery because it's genuinely funny. If you find it genuinely funny now, you are well on the way to releasing yourself from striving and its perpetual disappointments. Let them go. Take a breath.
Good. Take another one. Breathe in; breathe out. That's all there is to it. Give it a try. Do it right now. Release yourself momentarily from your goals, concerns, ambitions. Put your striving aside and relax into the present experience of being where you are, as you are. There is nothing to change. You are already there. You are dwelling in perfect peace. Happiness is letting yourself.
October 9, 2007
the two kinds of spiritual teaching
Once you pare it all down, there are basically two kinds of spiritual teaching. There is spiritual teaching that speaks directly about spirit and there is spiritual teaching that speaks indirectly about spirit. The purpose of both kinds is to clarify that everything is spirit, including you. We need this clarification because we tend to forget.
We tend to forget we are spirit, even after we awaken to this awareness. The habit of being asleep about it and going back to sleep about it is very strong. There is something mysterious about sleeping that spirit seems to enjoy immensely, as if it's playing a cherished game by doing it. Unfortunately for the sleeper, the game always leads to personal pain.
Personal pain is the reason for both kinds of spiritual teaching. If we never experienced any personal pain, we would no longer need spiritual teaching of any kind. We would no longer have any. Personal pain and spiritual teaching are inseparable. By addressing the causes of personal pain, all worthwhile spiritual teaching is attempting to put itself out of business.
It goes about this charitable mission in two ways. The first is to say what we are without qualification. We are spirit. We are spirit as it manifests into specific shapes and forms. The human being is precisely such a shape and form. Everything is. But beneath the shape and form is the source from which it sprang, and that's what we are.
The second way is to point out what we're not. This angle is completely context-specific. It always occurs in the context of questioning superficial notions of self for the sake of greater spiritual awareness. A superficial notion of self is any lasting conviction that we are primarily something other than spirit. Whatever that something happens to be, this form of spiritual teaching aims to release us from it. In that sense, this form of spiritual teaching is indirect, because it spends its time on illusion in order to dispel it.
The intention in both cases is exactly the same. The intention is always and only to bring you back to what you already are, to remind you and reinforce for you that you are originally spirit, and as spirit you are temporarily taking shape as everything else. Sometimes you take shape as direct teaching, sometimes you take shape as indirect teaching. You aren't the one or the other. Speaking indirectly, you aren't the person hearing them either.
We tend to forget we are spirit, even after we awaken to this awareness. The habit of being asleep about it and going back to sleep about it is very strong. There is something mysterious about sleeping that spirit seems to enjoy immensely, as if it's playing a cherished game by doing it. Unfortunately for the sleeper, the game always leads to personal pain.
Personal pain is the reason for both kinds of spiritual teaching. If we never experienced any personal pain, we would no longer need spiritual teaching of any kind. We would no longer have any. Personal pain and spiritual teaching are inseparable. By addressing the causes of personal pain, all worthwhile spiritual teaching is attempting to put itself out of business.
It goes about this charitable mission in two ways. The first is to say what we are without qualification. We are spirit. We are spirit as it manifests into specific shapes and forms. The human being is precisely such a shape and form. Everything is. But beneath the shape and form is the source from which it sprang, and that's what we are.
The second way is to point out what we're not. This angle is completely context-specific. It always occurs in the context of questioning superficial notions of self for the sake of greater spiritual awareness. A superficial notion of self is any lasting conviction that we are primarily something other than spirit. Whatever that something happens to be, this form of spiritual teaching aims to release us from it. In that sense, this form of spiritual teaching is indirect, because it spends its time on illusion in order to dispel it.
The intention in both cases is exactly the same. The intention is always and only to bring you back to what you already are, to remind you and reinforce for you that you are originally spirit, and as spirit you are temporarily taking shape as everything else. Sometimes you take shape as direct teaching, sometimes you take shape as indirect teaching. You aren't the one or the other. Speaking indirectly, you aren't the person hearing them either.
October 8, 2007
refusing to feel
The biggest spiritual blunder, in my opinion, is refusing to feel. It's also the most popular. It's the place where spiritual life and personal psychology reach a crossroads. If you want to advance in the first, you have to get real about the second.
What would it mean to get real about your personal psychology? It would mean coming clean. You don't have to admit any deep, dark secrets, which confirm your worst fear that you are somehow less acceptable than others. Quite the contrary. What you have to admit is that all people are the same, and you're undeniably one of them.
In terms of coming clean, this approach levels the playing field. It makes room for common sense. It's amazing we have to remind ourselves of it. After all, if there's anything a human being can feel, and you are a human being, isn't it pretty obvious when you think about it that you are going to feel it too? It couldn't be otherwise.
If you think you can get through this human life without feeling any of the harder things that all human beings feel, such as anger, sadness, despair, or fear, you are wrong. No, you are wrong. You will have to feel them just like everyone else does. The enlightened sage is not immune to this bad news, but fully open to it. Fully.
You can be too. It's simply a matter of practice. It's simply a matter of reversing any present tendencies against feeling whatever comes up for you. At all times. If you generally close off to anger, you have to admit you feel angry whenever it is happening. If it's sadness, be sad. If it's anxiety, feel the anxiety. You don't need to stew in these hard areas indulgently. The point is to be aware of them whenever they set in. That's enough. That's a lot.
Over time you'll discover they aren't as hard anymore. Their difficulty drops considerably as you respond to them repeatedly with awareness and acceptance. If you're also willing to feel them, their difficulty bottoms out and may eventually go away altogether. The hard feelings come, the hard feelings go. You don't have to inflate them with drama and lose yourself in it.
It turns out that's what the difficulty was in the first place. It wasn't the feeling itself, which is perfectly normal and natural and occurs universally. It was something else that was difficult. It was something else and on its behalf you were seriously risking precious resources of energy and intelligence. Those are the price tag for sustaining the refusal to feel. You have to fool yourself ceaselessly that you aren't really fooling yourself.
What would it mean to get real about your personal psychology? It would mean coming clean. You don't have to admit any deep, dark secrets, which confirm your worst fear that you are somehow less acceptable than others. Quite the contrary. What you have to admit is that all people are the same, and you're undeniably one of them.
In terms of coming clean, this approach levels the playing field. It makes room for common sense. It's amazing we have to remind ourselves of it. After all, if there's anything a human being can feel, and you are a human being, isn't it pretty obvious when you think about it that you are going to feel it too? It couldn't be otherwise.
If you think you can get through this human life without feeling any of the harder things that all human beings feel, such as anger, sadness, despair, or fear, you are wrong. No, you are wrong. You will have to feel them just like everyone else does. The enlightened sage is not immune to this bad news, but fully open to it. Fully.
You can be too. It's simply a matter of practice. It's simply a matter of reversing any present tendencies against feeling whatever comes up for you. At all times. If you generally close off to anger, you have to admit you feel angry whenever it is happening. If it's sadness, be sad. If it's anxiety, feel the anxiety. You don't need to stew in these hard areas indulgently. The point is to be aware of them whenever they set in. That's enough. That's a lot.
Over time you'll discover they aren't as hard anymore. Their difficulty drops considerably as you respond to them repeatedly with awareness and acceptance. If you're also willing to feel them, their difficulty bottoms out and may eventually go away altogether. The hard feelings come, the hard feelings go. You don't have to inflate them with drama and lose yourself in it.
It turns out that's what the difficulty was in the first place. It wasn't the feeling itself, which is perfectly normal and natural and occurs universally. It was something else that was difficult. It was something else and on its behalf you were seriously risking precious resources of energy and intelligence. Those are the price tag for sustaining the refusal to feel. You have to fool yourself ceaselessly that you aren't really fooling yourself.
October 7, 2007
when spirit pretends
What is suffering? Why do we suffer? The answer is simple, but difficult to hear. Suffering is spirit insisting on being aware of itself. We suffer because, as spirit, we are tired of pretending we aren't spirit.
How do we pretend we aren't spirit? The question might be restated as follows: how don't we? It seems that pretending we aren't spirit is most of what we do. The whole world is a great theater in which spirit is pretending not to be itself, and generally believing the charade. This can even be true in spiritual matters. As soon as you think you are a "someone" more than you remember you are spirit, the pretending begins.
But nobody really likes the pretending. There is tremendous attachment to it, but the attachment gives rise to every sorrow, heartache, and difficult emotion in your life. And eventually you have to get sick of those. That is, notice them. They happen so you'll notice them. They are all forms of suffering and they serve to get your attention.
Your attention. Whose attention? Who are you? Are you really the person who is lost in the suffering? That's what the suffering eventually makes clear: that you aren't. That it's been a big mistake all along to consider yourself that person, any person. That prior to your "personhood" there is something more basic and essential, and that something is the real you, and has been all along. You were mistaken not to realize it.
In other words, sufficient suffering serves to disrupt you from your identification with your outer form, which is not your most essential self. Go ahead and disagree with me and observe the recurrence of suffering in your life. It won't go away. You can bury it under pills, distract yourself from it with a frantic lifestyle, and talk your mind into countless airtight dismissals of the facts, but they don't go away, not forever, not for very long at all.
Why wait? Why wait anymore? Haven't you waited enough? Once you hear the truth about your suffering, don't you want to release yourself from it? Simply admit to yourself what you've known all along. Admit you are spirit and always have been. Admit you are pretending not to be. Admit it now and repeatedly.
Or go on suffering.
How do we pretend we aren't spirit? The question might be restated as follows: how don't we? It seems that pretending we aren't spirit is most of what we do. The whole world is a great theater in which spirit is pretending not to be itself, and generally believing the charade. This can even be true in spiritual matters. As soon as you think you are a "someone" more than you remember you are spirit, the pretending begins.
But nobody really likes the pretending. There is tremendous attachment to it, but the attachment gives rise to every sorrow, heartache, and difficult emotion in your life. And eventually you have to get sick of those. That is, notice them. They happen so you'll notice them. They are all forms of suffering and they serve to get your attention.
Your attention. Whose attention? Who are you? Are you really the person who is lost in the suffering? That's what the suffering eventually makes clear: that you aren't. That it's been a big mistake all along to consider yourself that person, any person. That prior to your "personhood" there is something more basic and essential, and that something is the real you, and has been all along. You were mistaken not to realize it.
In other words, sufficient suffering serves to disrupt you from your identification with your outer form, which is not your most essential self. Go ahead and disagree with me and observe the recurrence of suffering in your life. It won't go away. You can bury it under pills, distract yourself from it with a frantic lifestyle, and talk your mind into countless airtight dismissals of the facts, but they don't go away, not forever, not for very long at all.
Why wait? Why wait anymore? Haven't you waited enough? Once you hear the truth about your suffering, don't you want to release yourself from it? Simply admit to yourself what you've known all along. Admit you are spirit and always have been. Admit you are pretending not to be. Admit it now and repeatedly.
Or go on suffering.
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