The problem with all spiritual seeking is that the mind wants answers but given that spiritual living is freedom from the dictate of our mind, we are left with a chicken and egg problem that do not be solved.
When teachers say, “love your neighbor as yourself”, it is the mind that asks how to. Maybe we decide to bring her some flowers even though we don’t like her that much. Mind and heart probably act in tandem.
Likewise, when we say, “mind the part of the self that edges God out (ego)”, it’s probably our spiritual ego that signs up for the job. Fact is that our ego mind gets excited when we sign up for the next teaching lesson.
When we say, “let’s be mindful of our thoughts”, we can have in the best-case scenario the attitude that we use a thorn (thought) to remove a thorn (thought). In the worst-case scenario, we made the thief the police chief.
Mindfulness is the answer to the chicken and egg problem. The seeker will probably learn something from the seminar but has to look for the inner interference that makes him seek. The teacher has to ask why he teaches.
Let’s be still for a moment. How do you feel? What thoughts are running through your head. What messages is the environment that you are in sending you? Let’s sit on our behind until we have found answers to the questions.
“The purpose of our lives is to cross the shore from confusion to freedom.” (Shunryu Suzuki) Everyone does, materialistic mind encounters spirituality, while spiritual mind is faced with materialistic issues to sort through.
There is a wisdom that life holds for all of us. Solving the problem lifts us out of depression, just as seeing the vanity of of riding high encourages us to slow down. The higher energies at work can be perceived every moment.
Anyone who embarks on a spiritual quest finds what they are looking for in the end, because what we look for is looking for us. Still, the final chapter of this quest is to find what we looked for externally within.
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