Aspire, Manifest, Reflect and Renounce

We are eating from the Tree of Knowledge again. We were little children when we took our first bite many thousand years ago and were afraid of the responsibility to choose between good and evil. In the meantime we have grown up and the next step in our evolution is to move beyond good and evil. Express yourself and play your part in the divine play.

There is a tao of life that shines before you. Right or wrong very much depends on your personal path. As Lord Krishna told Arjun that it was his duty to kill people he cared for in the battlefield, who knows what is in store for you - only you can be the judge. The brother you may meet today may have a sign around his neck -  of course invisible to himself - "brother, please teach me a precious lesson".

The question of course is how to separate the egotistic I demands from the longings of your soul. That's what Jnana Yoga is all about, i.e. the path of wisdom. No authority, no guru or holy book can help you with these decisions. You only have your intuition, and the little signs life throws at you. Aspire to realize your dreams, manifest them as best as you can, but be prepared to drop them if life tells you to. Aspire, manifest, reflect and renounce - that's what Jnana Yoga is all about. Yes this, but not that!

Eckhart Tolle writes that women are ahead of men on the spiritual journey. This resonated with me. Women are more closely connected with their hearts and "feel" themselves from decision to decision. For somebody like me who has a stronger intellectual connection, all I can do is to look out for the signs that life has to offer as I make my choices. No matter what you do, there is always a quite voice in the background that begs to be heard.

Take the fairy tale of the fisher and his wife as an example. The fisher finds a golden fish one day and declines his offer for a boon as he feels he already has everything his heart desires. His wife thought differently  and makes the fisher go back and ask the fish first for a bigger house, then a castle, a kingdom and eventually to become God. One wish after the other gets fulfilled, but progressively the sea gets darker, the weather worse and the fisher has to wait longer and longer before the golden fish shows up. Eventually, when the wife wants to become God, the golden fish tells the fisher that his wife has lost everything and is back in their old filthy shack.

So what exactly is the moral of the story? It is not that we shouldn't aspire to express ourselves. It is knowing what desires to manifest and what desires to renounce. The fisher's wife could never see the signs of discouragement to go further as her submissive husband was unable to communicate them to her. I don't know what her dharma (destiny) was, but she certainly aimed for stars that were out of her reach. Know your dharma and  fulfill it and you don't have to worry about good and evil any longer.

And then a Miracle Happens ...

When we were at graduate school, my wife used to have a t-shirt that showed two professors in front of a huge blackboard with convoluted formulas on it and a text somewhere in the middle that stated 'and then a miracle happens'; the reviewing professor said to the other 'I guess you have to be a bit more explicit in this step'.

I feel our spiritual community is in a similar position when it comes to the stage of samadhi or the process of enlightenment. Take Mr. Tolle who described falling in a state of deep depression when he suddenly saw a vortex that sucked him in and the next day the sun was shining, the birds were singing and a huge load had been lifted off his chest. While the vortex experience will probably always stay mystic to us, I think we can zoom in on the depression state a bit closer.

Being enlightened seems to mean that you have successfully dismantled your personality and left behind like an old skin. You die without physically dying. I have a hunch that this demolition course can be experienced in front of your open eyes, even though I have no idea how long it will take. A couple of books suggested it may take years between the time when you realize that you are on a demolition course and the time when the job is complete. Well, let's start chipping away.

I Need Pressure

A friend said this to my wife many years ago. Somehow this expression still sticks to my mind. Saruyi, then a fairly ambitious graduate student, apparently needed the pressure to keep her going in her career. When I heard this statement, I just couldn't relate to it. I have always been a 'middle of the road' kind of guy. Not too much excitement, not too much spotlight, just the steady walking along my merry path. But something has changed in me recently. I now appreciate more the feeling of being out there, of pushing the boundaries a little. Not because I enjoy that feeling per se, but rather, I have realized that my personality, the I, or ego, is more exposed at the extremes. I enjoy the new-found feeling of being aware of the I in action.

What happens when you are not doing well in your career? You are envious of other people's success; you have the desire to attack people. Whenever that feeling comes up in me, an inner voice always comes to the surface, "No, this is not you". I enjoy that perspective very much. In contrast, when I am successful, I feel arrogance creeping up in me when I talk to people. The exact same voice pops up, "No, you aren't that either". I now enjoy living a little (emphasis on little) bit closer to the edge, stepping a little bit out of my comfort zone, just to feel the presence my True Self.

Eckhart Tolle remarked in his recent book, A New Earth, The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times? Well, it appears that for now, at least at work, a little extra pressure appears to do the trick for me. Try it!