Spiritual practice, its beauty, its traps and strategies and its true place.
We asked Rani to write something for innernet about what she shares.. It is not a sweet story of bliss or emptiness. Rather a realistic view of reality as it presents itself to most seekers, pre- and post- awakening.
Everything happens by itself.
There is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Don’t do anything! Just BE.
Who does not know these slogans?
And who truly understands the meaning of these very profound words?
Most people cannot hear them without the mind’s interpretation.
It is no wonder than that some new spiritual traditions speak so heavily against meditation, enquiry or any other kind of practice, because to the mind practice means : improving, getting somewhere or doing something.
Yet it is precisely practice that supports most of us who are on a path of wholeness, to “not do”.
We asked Rani to write something for innernet about what she shares.. It is not a sweet story of bliss or emptiness. Rather a realistic view of reality as it presents itself to most seekers, pre- and post- awakening.
Everything happens by itself.
There is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Don’t do anything! Just BE.
Who does not know these slogans?
And who truly understands the meaning of these very profound words?
Most people cannot hear them without the mind’s interpretation.
It is no wonder than that some new spiritual traditions speak so heavily against meditation, enquiry or any other kind of practice, because to the mind practice means : improving, getting somewhere or doing something.
Yet it is precisely practice that supports most of us who are on a path of wholeness, to “not do”.
Practice as escape
We human beings are continually doing. We follow consciously or unconsciously our mental drive.
We don’t know what it means not to do and let God live through this body of ours without resistance.
We do not have much experience as a spiritual seeker of not having any friction between the mundane and the spiritual. Between what we “do” and what we think we should do.
In most cases the very ground of our spiritual life is a doing. A moving away from life as it is. An escape from the pains of the past.
There is nowhere to go , and yet we are trying to go away from this moment to find a better one!
We want to move away from personality to find emptiness, creating rejection and separation in the name of oneness.
Denial
So the truth is that we are not very capable of non doing.
As long as we get caught in our automatic thinking, we are doing.
Unfortunately I know too many so called enlightened friends and teachers today, who are following their neurotic mind and calling it something like:
It is all happening naturally, there is no “I” who is thinking. One person even told me after she had a sleepless night because of worrying about some material issues: “Ah but I am enlightened, I was of course not thinking, it was all spontaneous mind activity”
The denial is deep.
What a pity that the truth cannot be told. What a new separation. So many misunderstandings about what enlightenment is.
Of course I understand the terror to admit that you find yourself again lost in thinking after your very deep and profound awakening.
I have been there myself.
Still the price of having to keep up that façade is much more painful than to be in reality. To be who you are.
More over it keeps the lie alive that once you are awakened to your true nature, you are in a permanent state of bliss.
You do not encounter deep unconsciousness anymore.
For most of us, nothing could be further from the truth. On top of it, this denial and hiding keeps the projections going from the students onto the teachers.
More and more teachers and friends have the courage to admit the truth of their reality, which is that a lot of freedom has been found and that at the same time still a lot of unconscious material presents itself.
Self realization does not mean that we have to deny our human pains and fears and needs that still appear. We can embrace them with our consciousness and meet them with understanding.
Jack Kornfield interviewed an amazing amount of spiritual teachers on this subject in his book “After the ecstasy, the laundry”
Practice without motive
When we want to wholly and fully return to our very natural state, to flow in the naturalness of love and light and EMBODY this, we see that the practice we follow (meditation, enquiry, prayer, worship) is not a means to reach to higher goals but a support , a remembrance of that which is BEFORE doing. That which is and has always been.
In fact, we use the “doing” of the practice, to UNDO our doings and ourselves. Our beliefs, our habitual thinking and our personality.
This is quite a subtle art.
Have you ever meditated without a motive? Just for the sake of sitting? Of being here? Have you been able to find the perseverance needed when there was no motive?
Have you ever prayed without wanting God/Existence to give you something?
Have you ever enquired into a belief just for the love of truth?? Truly without the desire that the painful situation you are enquiring into would go away? Again this is very subtle.
The risk of every device is that it will be twisted by the mind into some sort of strategy to move away from pain.
We see that ego cannot live without motivation or strategy. It always wants to get something for its “efforts” in fact it always wants. That is just how it is.
Ego’s don’t give, they want.
The right perspective
So to come to the right perspective from where to start the practice we need to become aware of all the layers of greed, spiritual materialism, control, manipulation and escape.
As we practice Being Here, the first step is to see how much we do not want to be here.
How much we don’t want to be in this world, in this society , in this body, in this life with all its pains and difficulties.
Acknowledging this makes us immediately more real ,less separatist from the so called non spiritual people.
Now we can see the underlying beliefs that create so much fear and pain.
Like :” I don’t want to have anything to do with this world because.......”
It is too painful
It is too hard
People only abuse you
I will never make it etc
Self Enquiry in every form ( but particularly as in the Work of Byron Katie), is such a powerful torch of truth. You shine the light of truth and … you see! Asking some simple questions:
Is it true? Is it really true? How do you react when you belief that thought to be true? Who would you be without that thought? Turn it around (so that we at least get the entire spectrum of that belief in duality)
Again more real, more human and above all more whole, do we emerge from such practice.
We get to experience directly that all is as it is, that all is good, perfect.
We know directly that we do not have to get rid of any thing in order to reach somewhere better. It is already perfect just where we are.
We are in other words, deeply rooted into a deeper dimension than the mind.
We are multidimensional beings; reality is multidimensional. Unity truly means UNITY. All is ONE both in the horizontal and vertical sense.
Personality is embraced as well as the most radiant blissful experience of ourselves is welcomed.
One dimension is not better than another one. If you prefer a spiritual inner state above your physical state, you are still creating separation and thus pain for yourself.
As Almaas says to point to that deeper dimension of knowing and seeing: “Practice should be instead of wanting to achieve certain states be geared towards freedom from WANTING any state.”
The art of meditationNow how do we apply this understanding of wholeness and unity to our meditation? When we sit down to focus in a particular area for example, don’t we want to reach a particular inner state??
What do we do when physical or emotional pain appears instead of the desired inner state? Can we embrace it as truly the best thing possible?
The art of meditation is a very subtle one. (there are of course many different ways and traditions of meditation)
We stay with what is happening and allow it to unfold as well as follow our particular practice.
This means that when pain appears than pain is here. We embrace it totally, without any reserve. We welcome it as the divine, knowing that God wants it this way right now, OTHERWISE IT WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING.
And whenever we can, we return to the practice to be present in the head or belly or heart, whatever our practice is at that time.
All inclusiveness is the key. Nothing is here what should not be there. It is simply not possible for God to make mistakes in this way.
And what I call God we can also call Existence, or whatever we want to call it. When I say God , I point to that which is omnipresent, omniscient, loving, good and whole. That which gives life to all things. That which I experience directly at the core of everything.
In the heart of truth.
Alongside of meditation, we keep inquiring into our spiritual greed that keeps sticking its head out each time we think we have finally “got it”.
How do I manipulate reality both inward and outward ? What do I do when I don’t get what I want?
When we answer these questions they will reveal to us some underlying deeper belief that we can “undo”, enquire into.
The desire for freedom as obstacle
The greatest pitfall is of course our deepest desire for freedom.
Questions like :”What do I really want?” “What do I want more than life?” have been asked by every teacher to every student.
We need to answer them at first to focus our mind, but when that has happened we need to surrender all our wantings back to God.
And how can we surrender the desire for our liberation?
By seeing , by looking reality straight in the eye and see that there are no mistakes, nowhere, that all is as it should be. That even surrender is illusion. Everything is and was always in the hands of God.
At the same time we surrender the mind and let go energetically into the stillness of Now. The process is very complex.
We want freedom and if we are not experiencing liberation in the way that we think it should look like, than that is perfect as well.
This is a deeper liberation and the concept can easily turn into a mental understanding and trap.
This seeing is a seeing from the depth of the heart and can only happen when the mind sinks into the heart. When awareness melts into the divine heart.
We want freedom from pain, from war. We want liberation. Isn’t it ironical than, that while we want to leave violence behind, our striving for freedom often turns out to be a battle with God? A battle with what is.
God brings us this human reality and we want OUT. We want something else than what is given.
We pit ourselves against that what IS, we argue with God, all in the name of spirituality. We want peace but our fears and anger plague us and we try to get rid of them in order to get peace. We are at war with life and ourselves all the time.
What can we do? Do we have a choice here?
Free will and ChoiceThere are a lot of people today who received a direct transmission in a moment of Grace, from their teacher that :There is no free will and there is no choice. So truly saw that there is nothing to do.
However after the satsang is over more often than not, the realization is gone and is replaced by a mental concept. The realization has now become a BELIEVE that tells them to leave any kind of practice behind. And without anyone noticing, the mind is back in place, pulling the person straight back into unconsciousness.
Other people, often the meditators, BELIEVE that there is free will and that only through their efforts can they REACH somewhere better.
This leads to rigidity and deeper ignorance.
To deeply REALIZE the reality that there is no free will and no free choice and to LIVE THAT REALIZATION we need to be deeply rooted in a deeper dimension than the mind. When this is seen we know that of course we use our free will knowing that we are acting as if.
For most of us that is not the case (many people who have declared themselves enlightened would have to admit this too)
We to come back to our true selves , pulling back, returning to the natural state again and again to have the direct experience of that truth.
We have to STOP for a moment and realize again and again that everything in this life and universe flows and moves on its own. Everything moves according to a divine plan that is absolutely spontaneous, natural and free.
The perfection is beyond words. The mystery is awesomely vast and incomprehensible.
But we can directly experience it. Again and again, we know that all is as it is. That simple.
That all is as it should be, including our struggles, fears or bliss experiences.
Asking and begging are replaced by gratitude
Practice becomes free of mental strategies.
Life can be lived and embraced instead of being rejected.
Meditation, Enquiry and Prayer all have a very profound place in my life in fact I should say; “Practice is my way of life”
For years practice has been a substitute for living, then I threw it all out of the window in the name of “Non Doing”
Now finally they serve as the ground for the greatest practice of all:
LIFE. Opening to daily life in all its variations, with its pains and joys, its ups and downs, to truly see that all is ONE.
If practice becomes a surrogate for living, an escape from our human existence , the nectar will sooner or later turn into poison and bliss will make place for bitterness and love for self centeredness and separation.
If we don’t see divinity in doing the dishes , or in getting a job, or in our fears and pains when they appear ,or in the fight with our partner when that happens , our homework is not done.
We are human beings, HERE on planet earth. And it is exactly HERE that liberation and wholeness is to be found.
Right Here.
In love Rani
We human beings are continually doing. We follow consciously or unconsciously our mental drive.
We don’t know what it means not to do and let God live through this body of ours without resistance.
We do not have much experience as a spiritual seeker of not having any friction between the mundane and the spiritual. Between what we “do” and what we think we should do.
In most cases the very ground of our spiritual life is a doing. A moving away from life as it is. An escape from the pains of the past.
There is nowhere to go , and yet we are trying to go away from this moment to find a better one!
We want to move away from personality to find emptiness, creating rejection and separation in the name of oneness.
Denial
So the truth is that we are not very capable of non doing.
As long as we get caught in our automatic thinking, we are doing.
Unfortunately I know too many so called enlightened friends and teachers today, who are following their neurotic mind and calling it something like:
It is all happening naturally, there is no “I” who is thinking. One person even told me after she had a sleepless night because of worrying about some material issues: “Ah but I am enlightened, I was of course not thinking, it was all spontaneous mind activity”
The denial is deep.
What a pity that the truth cannot be told. What a new separation. So many misunderstandings about what enlightenment is.
Of course I understand the terror to admit that you find yourself again lost in thinking after your very deep and profound awakening.
I have been there myself.
Still the price of having to keep up that façade is much more painful than to be in reality. To be who you are.
More over it keeps the lie alive that once you are awakened to your true nature, you are in a permanent state of bliss.
You do not encounter deep unconsciousness anymore.
For most of us, nothing could be further from the truth. On top of it, this denial and hiding keeps the projections going from the students onto the teachers.
More and more teachers and friends have the courage to admit the truth of their reality, which is that a lot of freedom has been found and that at the same time still a lot of unconscious material presents itself.
Self realization does not mean that we have to deny our human pains and fears and needs that still appear. We can embrace them with our consciousness and meet them with understanding.
Jack Kornfield interviewed an amazing amount of spiritual teachers on this subject in his book “After the ecstasy, the laundry”
Practice without motive
When we want to wholly and fully return to our very natural state, to flow in the naturalness of love and light and EMBODY this, we see that the practice we follow (meditation, enquiry, prayer, worship) is not a means to reach to higher goals but a support , a remembrance of that which is BEFORE doing. That which is and has always been.
In fact, we use the “doing” of the practice, to UNDO our doings and ourselves. Our beliefs, our habitual thinking and our personality.
This is quite a subtle art.
Have you ever meditated without a motive? Just for the sake of sitting? Of being here? Have you been able to find the perseverance needed when there was no motive?
Have you ever prayed without wanting God/Existence to give you something?
Have you ever enquired into a belief just for the love of truth?? Truly without the desire that the painful situation you are enquiring into would go away? Again this is very subtle.
The risk of every device is that it will be twisted by the mind into some sort of strategy to move away from pain.
We see that ego cannot live without motivation or strategy. It always wants to get something for its “efforts” in fact it always wants. That is just how it is.
Ego’s don’t give, they want.
The right perspective
So to come to the right perspective from where to start the practice we need to become aware of all the layers of greed, spiritual materialism, control, manipulation and escape.
As we practice Being Here, the first step is to see how much we do not want to be here.
How much we don’t want to be in this world, in this society , in this body, in this life with all its pains and difficulties.
Acknowledging this makes us immediately more real ,less separatist from the so called non spiritual people.
Now we can see the underlying beliefs that create so much fear and pain.
Like :” I don’t want to have anything to do with this world because.......”
It is too painful
It is too hard
People only abuse you
I will never make it etc
Self Enquiry in every form ( but particularly as in the Work of Byron Katie), is such a powerful torch of truth. You shine the light of truth and … you see! Asking some simple questions:
Is it true? Is it really true? How do you react when you belief that thought to be true? Who would you be without that thought? Turn it around (so that we at least get the entire spectrum of that belief in duality)
Again more real, more human and above all more whole, do we emerge from such practice.
We get to experience directly that all is as it is, that all is good, perfect.
We know directly that we do not have to get rid of any thing in order to reach somewhere better. It is already perfect just where we are.
We are in other words, deeply rooted into a deeper dimension than the mind.
We are multidimensional beings; reality is multidimensional. Unity truly means UNITY. All is ONE both in the horizontal and vertical sense.
Personality is embraced as well as the most radiant blissful experience of ourselves is welcomed.
One dimension is not better than another one. If you prefer a spiritual inner state above your physical state, you are still creating separation and thus pain for yourself.
As Almaas says to point to that deeper dimension of knowing and seeing: “Practice should be instead of wanting to achieve certain states be geared towards freedom from WANTING any state.”
The art of meditationNow how do we apply this understanding of wholeness and unity to our meditation? When we sit down to focus in a particular area for example, don’t we want to reach a particular inner state??
What do we do when physical or emotional pain appears instead of the desired inner state? Can we embrace it as truly the best thing possible?
The art of meditation is a very subtle one. (there are of course many different ways and traditions of meditation)
We stay with what is happening and allow it to unfold as well as follow our particular practice.
This means that when pain appears than pain is here. We embrace it totally, without any reserve. We welcome it as the divine, knowing that God wants it this way right now, OTHERWISE IT WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING.
And whenever we can, we return to the practice to be present in the head or belly or heart, whatever our practice is at that time.
All inclusiveness is the key. Nothing is here what should not be there. It is simply not possible for God to make mistakes in this way.
And what I call God we can also call Existence, or whatever we want to call it. When I say God , I point to that which is omnipresent, omniscient, loving, good and whole. That which gives life to all things. That which I experience directly at the core of everything.
In the heart of truth.
Alongside of meditation, we keep inquiring into our spiritual greed that keeps sticking its head out each time we think we have finally “got it”.
How do I manipulate reality both inward and outward ? What do I do when I don’t get what I want?
When we answer these questions they will reveal to us some underlying deeper belief that we can “undo”, enquire into.
The desire for freedom as obstacle
The greatest pitfall is of course our deepest desire for freedom.
Questions like :”What do I really want?” “What do I want more than life?” have been asked by every teacher to every student.
We need to answer them at first to focus our mind, but when that has happened we need to surrender all our wantings back to God.
And how can we surrender the desire for our liberation?
By seeing , by looking reality straight in the eye and see that there are no mistakes, nowhere, that all is as it should be. That even surrender is illusion. Everything is and was always in the hands of God.
At the same time we surrender the mind and let go energetically into the stillness of Now. The process is very complex.
We want freedom and if we are not experiencing liberation in the way that we think it should look like, than that is perfect as well.
This is a deeper liberation and the concept can easily turn into a mental understanding and trap.
This seeing is a seeing from the depth of the heart and can only happen when the mind sinks into the heart. When awareness melts into the divine heart.
We want freedom from pain, from war. We want liberation. Isn’t it ironical than, that while we want to leave violence behind, our striving for freedom often turns out to be a battle with God? A battle with what is.
God brings us this human reality and we want OUT. We want something else than what is given.
We pit ourselves against that what IS, we argue with God, all in the name of spirituality. We want peace but our fears and anger plague us and we try to get rid of them in order to get peace. We are at war with life and ourselves all the time.
What can we do? Do we have a choice here?
Free will and ChoiceThere are a lot of people today who received a direct transmission in a moment of Grace, from their teacher that :There is no free will and there is no choice. So truly saw that there is nothing to do.
However after the satsang is over more often than not, the realization is gone and is replaced by a mental concept. The realization has now become a BELIEVE that tells them to leave any kind of practice behind. And without anyone noticing, the mind is back in place, pulling the person straight back into unconsciousness.
Other people, often the meditators, BELIEVE that there is free will and that only through their efforts can they REACH somewhere better.
This leads to rigidity and deeper ignorance.
To deeply REALIZE the reality that there is no free will and no free choice and to LIVE THAT REALIZATION we need to be deeply rooted in a deeper dimension than the mind. When this is seen we know that of course we use our free will knowing that we are acting as if.
For most of us that is not the case (many people who have declared themselves enlightened would have to admit this too)
We to come back to our true selves , pulling back, returning to the natural state again and again to have the direct experience of that truth.
We have to STOP for a moment and realize again and again that everything in this life and universe flows and moves on its own. Everything moves according to a divine plan that is absolutely spontaneous, natural and free.
The perfection is beyond words. The mystery is awesomely vast and incomprehensible.
But we can directly experience it. Again and again, we know that all is as it is. That simple.
That all is as it should be, including our struggles, fears or bliss experiences.
Asking and begging are replaced by gratitude
Practice becomes free of mental strategies.
Life can be lived and embraced instead of being rejected.
Meditation, Enquiry and Prayer all have a very profound place in my life in fact I should say; “Practice is my way of life”
For years practice has been a substitute for living, then I threw it all out of the window in the name of “Non Doing”
Now finally they serve as the ground for the greatest practice of all:
LIFE. Opening to daily life in all its variations, with its pains and joys, its ups and downs, to truly see that all is ONE.
If practice becomes a surrogate for living, an escape from our human existence , the nectar will sooner or later turn into poison and bliss will make place for bitterness and love for self centeredness and separation.
If we don’t see divinity in doing the dishes , or in getting a job, or in our fears and pains when they appear ,or in the fight with our partner when that happens , our homework is not done.
We are human beings, HERE on planet earth. And it is exactly HERE that liberation and wholeness is to be found.
Right Here.
In love Rani
