Silent Musings

Sitting on the train this morning on the way to work, it occurred to me that there comes a time in the human journey where most or all of the traditional means of relating to oneself in the world begin to dissolve away. And it’s an especially strange feeling when that realization leads one to discover that the loosening of the grip of culture has a rather disorienting effect on the psyche. It dawned on me with extreme experiential force in that moment today that I had never known the true meaning of freedom. I had only ever seen it through the lenses and filters of cultural discourse.

It’s not easy or perhaps not even possible to make this distinction clear without dropping right back into that very same cultural discourse that had been momentarily transcended. The best way I can think of to describe the experience is that there was no orientation left at all, and there was a realization that the habitual thinking pattern recognized the lack of an anchor point as a problem. But then suddenly, an alternative view emerged in which orientation or observation itself had no inherent value, other than as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, as Shakespeare once mused.

It also occurred to me that to truly let this realization soak in would be to give up the world as I know it and want it, and any feelings of security that arise from that knowledge and desire. It would be to live without reference to a future or past, except in the simplest of matters. And yet, that very same lack of direction would also be a source of liberation. No energy needed to hold on to a single notion of being anything.

Indeed, such a life would require a complete reorientation of the human relationship to existence herself. Or perhaps disorientation would be the more appropriate term.

Don’t tell me you cannot control your nature. You need not control it. Throw it overboard. Have no nature to fight, or to submit to. No experience will hurt you, provided you don’t make it into a habit. Of the entire universe you are the subtle cause. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realize this as absolutely true, is liberation.
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That

Photo source: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/movie_natters/archive/2007/12/golden_compass.shtml

There may come a time in one’s life when the wisdom offered up by the available modes of cultural exchange lose their apparent usefulness. Books, magazines, television, videos, seminars, conversations with family,  friends and sages, it doesn’t matter the source. Eventually their answers all lose their appeal. I can’t say exactly when this metamorphosis happened to me, it seemed to come in phases, but one thing is certain. It left me in a strange new world. And the strangeness of that world has yet to depart, even though the world itself is in a constant state of change.

I used to look to the “outside” for the answers to my deepest questions. For a while many of the offerings seemed to make a lot of sense, and some even contributed significantly to the quality of my life. But somewhere along the line, they no longer quite fit. Then eventually, any answers I could find made about as much sense to me as, “Zombie Prom, Happy 30th Year, Cheez-Its.” It’s possible that phrase has meaning for someone, but I’m at a loss.

Turning “inside” didn’t help either. The answers there made even less sense. Have you ever really examined the contents of your thoughts? If so, then you can probably get a sense of what I’m saying  here. Even beyond thoughts, in those vast moments of complete clarity, there remains a fleeting quality of certainty. Can’t hold on to anything.

So what’s left then? Honestly, I don’t know. But there is one fortunate consequence of all this. Life has such an incredible quality of lightness and beauty to it. There isn’t any particular place to find, or result to produce. And there is no loss in starting over from ground zero, dying and being born again each moment. So go ahead, delete this essay, and see for yourself. Or not. Who knows?

People say I’m crazy doing what I’m doing
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin
When I say that I’m o.k. well they look at me kind of strange
Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game

People say I’m lazy dreaming my life away
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me
When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall
Don’t you miss the big time boy you’re no longer on the ball

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

Ah, people asking questions lost in confusion
Well I tell them there’s no problem, only solutions
Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I’ve lost my mind
I tell them there’s no hurry
I’m just sitting here doing time

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go
I just had to let it go
I just had to let it go

-John Lennon

For those of us who have enrolled ourselves in the process of spiritual cultivation there is an inevitable result that few ever imagined at the beginning of the quest. Failure. Boldfaced, with a capital F. After all, when we think of cultivating our authentic selves, we are inclined to see spirits growing and blossoming into beautifully enlightened beings, wonderful sights for the sore eyes of our humanity. We certainly don’t envision a painstaking process of withering and dying, of burning up the vestiges of our forsaken selves.

Life can be a cruel teacher. She entices us with grand visions, and occasional flashes of luminous brilliance. In those flashes we imagine that there is some sustainable state of pure knowing and loving being. We imagine ourselves as that being. Conceptually, we may even believe that this is true, and yet somehow this vision remains tantalizingly out of reach. So we seek the correct path toward a permanent merger into our birthright. We may even find at times that we think we’re there. But then it’s snatched away again ever so torturously. What are we to do? Many of us wander this landscape for years and years.

Failure is not easy to take, especially not for the precocious such as we are. It is a total devastation of the constructs of our collective mind. It may not sound like much, but in fact, it’s everything. Our entire world collapses into death, moment after moment, ad infinitum. We must learn to let go of everything. Over and over again, until we are no longer capable of holding on. Completely adrift, we may find ourselves washed upon the shore of a strange new land. It is only here that we find real freedom. Not the concept of liberation that we’ve been pursuing all these years, but rather the complete willingness to die over and over again. To embrace the fullness of our failure, not identifying with it or anything else. Knowing nothing.

Worry not about the path that you are taking. The Beloved will destroy you eventually.

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they’re given wings.

-Rumi

When I observe the world and its characters, it seems everyone is after something. Even those who seem to have moved beyond the superficial goals of the common culture are still in pursuit. Contributing, creating, expressing, manifesting … becoming. Seeking. Call it by any name you want, it ultimately begins and ends with the same conclusion. This isn’t it.

Eventually, we may come to realize the bankruptcy of our ways and begin to question the need for seeking altogether. We conclude that seeking would best be dropped, and thus we make silent vows to ourselves to let go, and may even fool ourselves into thinking we’ve succeeded. But sooner or later we realize our folly. We notice ourselves grasping at our goal, seeking non-seeking. What a cosmic joke this movement becomes!

All the while, a curious thing happens beneath the surface. Some kind of mysterious physical manifestation takes root, and begins to burn the seeker away through a process of internal combustion. This slow death is paradoxically painful, agonizing, and frustrating, as well as blissful and beautiful. Right down the the last cell of the body. Many have tried putting the experience into words, but it cannot possibly be explained. Each surrender seems so final, and yet the barely detectable remnants of the seeker remain, maintaining some identification of the me in all of this, the continuity holding it all together.

More and more, the fatigue of failure and holding on begin to wear us down, to erode us ever so slowly, like a rock at the bottom of a flowing river. One day, finally we give up, realizing that we are helplessly and hopelessly lost.

Now what?!?

This is where the real mystery begins …

I’ve looked under chairs
I’ve looked under tables
I’ve tried to find the key
To fifty million fables

They call me The Seeker
I’ve been searching low and high
I won’t get to get what I’m after
Till the day I die

-Pete Townshend

There are thousands if not millions of books, businesses, internet sites, television ads, blogs, magazines, and people on the street who will inform you, sometimes for free but usually for a price, about ways that will allow you to acquire whatever you desire. Sometimes the lure toward acquisition is straightforward, such as “how to get rich by buying and selling real estate,” or “you can lose 5 pounds a week on the Atkins diet,” but often the pitch is more subtle. If you don’t believe so, then consider the millions if not billions of man-hours that have been invested in the development of effective marketing techniques. Do you really think that investment has gone into figuring out how to give you exactly what you want or need, including more freedom of choice? Are you foolish enough to think that those techniques don’t work?

A similar phenomenon occurs when the desire is not to acquire, but rather to let go and lighten our load, getting rid of much or all of what we have that burdens us. Although it may seem to serve a “higher purpose” to simplify our lives and leave more room for “spiritual” activities, the process of letting go is as influenced by the forces of manipulation as the compulsion to acquire things. In fact, it’s really no different. Now we are “acquiring freedom from our possessions” …

Manipulation of the human mind takes place on many levels. It is as present in everyday cultural values as it is in the latest offerings from Madison Avenue. Television news used to be more subtle in its manipulative ways, but today it is just outright blatant. The first mistake we make in dealing effectively with all the manipulation that surrounds us is to believe that we are above it. Sorry, but it just ain’t so. You and I, we’re tools, to quote the vernacular.

Even though it might seem simple, losing everything is more elusive than it sounds. Sure you can declare your intentions to renounce all of your possessions and desires, even going so far as donating all your money to charity and dropping off all of your personal belongings at the Salvation Army. But letting go of the compulsion to reacquire all that has been lost is not nearly as easy as the romantic mind would like to believe.

Maybe losing everything is no better an idea than trying to acquire what we perceive as lacking. It’s exactly the same thing when you get right down to it.

Where do we turn then? I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you.

What I can offer, though, is a radical notion for most. Get to know and love the strategist within you. Yes, that one, the one who causes all your pain and suffering. The one to whom you may deny acknowledgment or acceptance. The one who compels you to do (or at least consider doing) all kinds of crazy shit, even though you can’t seem to find any good reason. Most of us work hard every day trying to get rid of this devil, or barring that possibility, trying to hide its existence from ourselves and others.

Sorry, but it will never work. There is no strategy that can defeat the strategist. Learn to live with it, to love it, and most especially, to love the strategist in others as well. When such harmonious coexistence is finally achieved, then … well … there you Are. As Lovely as a human devil can be.

The personality is but a product of imagination. The self is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is the self that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it. Beyond the self lies the unmanifested, the causeless cause of everything. Even to talk of re-uniting the person with the self is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite. - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That