Awakening—know your blind spots and keep going

 Whether you like it or not,

whether you know it or not,

secretly, all nature seeks God

and works towards Truth.

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

 

I have been writing since 2008. First it was a monthly blog entry. Then the writings happened weekly and eventually I wrote every day. Every writer will tell you that there is a creative process that is beyond the self. Sure, we hopefully help others in their Awakening quest but writing also generates our own aha moments and enables a psychological letting go process.

 

This year I got depressed though. I realized that the urge to write was also an attempt of the psychological I to maintain itself, but then something interesting happened, I also realized that the I that got depressed was the same I that earlier spurned me on to go for name and fame. It is funny how we play these games with ourselves.

 

This morning I felt an incredible peace descending. I even needed to force myself a little to put this note to paper. That’s how it works. We push ourselves to overcome conflicts, and even if there is a catch 22 involved, the drive to be free from the bondage of self is rewarded. There are two requirements in the push for freedom, know your blind spots and keep going.

 

Is the Current running “you”?

 My mother in law used to say, “the plants are weeping,” when she felt I didn’t water them in time. It was a strange expression. Can we sense and feel when something needs to get done? Do the dishes call out to us when the kitchen needs to be cleaned. There is a flow in life that dissolves the individual doing things. At that moment, there is only doing!

 

Everyone wants to become enlightened, but no one likes to do the dishes. That sums up the problem with the spiritual quest in a nutshell, why is there an individual pushing for an outcome when the aim of the quest is dissolving that personhood? The solution of this catch-22 is connecting with that inner S (tillness), E (nergy), L (ove) that enables the F (low).

 

“You” only have one thing to do. Ask yourself, is the identification with the person at play or is the Current running through you. The inner silence, the inner energy and love that just makes things happen. If not, ask who is present at the moment and go within. The Current feels like inner passion and compassion for the outside world but it is “life as is” applied because it’s obvious.

 

 

Just show up and observe!

 The surprise has been that I can only do “spiritual work” for a few hours. That would be reading, writing and talking to people about spiritual matters. Those would be the morning hours and the afternoon I pretty much take off. Sometimes I call myself only half-joking a part-time spiritualist. After all, I am used to a lifestyle of working all the time, and there are clearly books to write, videos to shoot and a community to build.

 

The other day I had a satori experience that for the first time didn’t feel like one. It felt normal instead. I was looking at the world and life as is through a windowpane. There was no me around forming an opinion on what was going on. There were no thoughts—other than perhaps, “oh wow, who would have thought this is so simple!” I wasn’t working on anything then. I believe I was on my way to my favorite bread store.

 

You know what the conclusion of this satori experience is? The only problem with the “part-time spiritualist” judgement is the expectation that spirituality is something one can work towards. Living is spiritual as long as the self perception with all its shoulds, musts and can’t is kept out of it. Life as is happens the way it does anyhow, no matter what our opinion on it happens to be. How can we be the silent witness? Just show up and observe!

The Current

 Question: What is awareness and how can one obtain and cultivate it?

 

BHAGAVAN: You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it.

 

This was obviously a bit too much for the questioner and he was wondering how it was an answer to his question, but Bhagavan came to his help by adding: "All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self."

 

 Am I awareness when I fall in love? Am I awareness when I walk away from a toxic environment? The questions come too late. Awareness is before thought, feeling and experience. It’s a current and along it, relationships build and break. The Tao Te Ching postulates in Verse 5: the Way shows no mercy. It moves people like straw-dogs. It is as it is, but we can be self-aware. We can inquire into the “body-mind-world matrix” that always stands ready to encapsulate us. When we perceive that we can always fall back into the Current.

Sticky fingers

 Just be happy. Have fun, enjoy life and don’t get caught. When I say, “don’t get caught,” I am not talking about someone else catching you. I am talking about your own mind. Choose the kind of fun that won’t bind you.

Swami Satchidananda

 

I sometimes picture God watching a Bruce Willis movie and laughing heartedly. Obviously, not at the dead “bad guys” who fall by the wayside by the dozens since all lives matter in God’s Kingdom, but rather at the romantic naivety that the good guys always win in the end and all the clever one-liners the scriptwriters come up with.

 

How is it that some activities stick for some people but not for others, and vice versa. Nisargadatta Maharaj was a chain smoker. It seemed that this didn’t prevent him from living and expressing “That,” though smoking may have contributed to his cancer death in the end. I figure that we all have that space where we can have a little fun, whereas other areas where we have to tread carefully not to get bound. Our demon might be a person, an activity, an entertainment, an object—whatever it is where we were primed earlier and where the neural network can get triggered in resorting into old trodden pathways.

 

The 11th century sage Machig Labron put our spiritual homework beautiful when she warned:

 

Son, listen. These are the characteristics of devils. That which is called ‘devil’ is not some actual great big black thing that scares and petrifies whoever sees it. A devil is anything that obstructs the achievement of freedom. Therefore, even loving and affectionate friends become devils with regard to freedom. Most of all, there is no greater devil than this fixation to a self. So, until this ego-fixation is cut off, all the devils wait with open mouths. For that reason, you need to exert yourself at a skillful method to sever the devil of ego-fixation.

 

We always know what it is that binds us. We can feel it and taste it even. As the Bhagavad Gita put it, that which tastes like honey in the beginning but is poison in the end. Have fun with the puzzle. Put all your efforts in disentangling where you are stuck but otherwise simply enjoy the ride!

 

 

The Presence

 I once had a satori vision where I sat next to the river of knowledge. I instinctively knew that I could have asked God any question, but I just sat there, full of peace, contentment, and a feeling of abundance. If you already have everything, why to ask for more, right? So, I sat there enjoying the moment at hand.

 

That moment of completeness is always at our disposal. There is a current waiting to connect and all that is required of us is to drop the mistaken longings that are empty in comparison. It’s a looking through the workings of body, mind and world and zooming into the emptiness behind it that runs everything.

 

The Presence runs the wheels of life, and sometimes it is our turn to keep them spinning. With nothing to long for in the future, with nothing to regret about the past, we feel the completeness of the present moment. Don’t drop everything, but tune into the Presence instead while doing what needs to be done.

 

Follow the signs of the Way

 Early in my awakening I remember a conversation with my admin who asked me to join a farewell party of another admin who was really nice and who I had also had a connection with. I didn’t want to go because she was working for a senior colleague who I had a love-hate relationship with. I was really shy in those days so I told her that I wouldn’t go. She insisted with such a force that I simply knew I had to go. Still, I didn’t go and I know today that in an alternative universe my professional life would have taken a different turn had I gone.

 

I am telling you this story to indicate that “life as is” has an energy that we can sense. The experienced Dao traveler does not make these rookie mistakes I made then. We may not like what we see. We may shake in our boots, or we may drag our feet, but we do show up in the end because there is simply no alternative. The energy of the Way is too strong to oppose. I don’t mind today having dropped the ball in earlier years, as the 13th century monk Meister Eckhart put it so well:

 

“Don’t worry if God works through your nature

or above your nature because

both are God’s, nature and Grace.”

 

Maybe everything worked out for the best in the end, but it is a lot more fun when we follow the signs of the Way. We can become a seasoned Dao traveler. The energy of “life as is” speaks for itself. Don’t project your spiritual longings; don’t let the ego let you cave in just because it feels uncomfortable. Follow the signs of the Way and when for one interference or the other you feel confused by the outer signs, go within and connect with the Presence that has all the answers.