What the Spiritual Path is Meant to Do

I just needed to put this here, because it's a great reminder of what the spiritual path effectively shapes up to be. From an interview with Adyashanti, here :

The role of the spiritual practice is basically to exhaust the seeker. If the practice does what it’s supposed to do, it exhausts our energy for seeking, and then reality has a chance to present itself. In that sense, spiritual practices can help lead to awakening. But that’s different from saying that the practice produces the awakening.

The spiritual practitioner is like someone who’s running and is really tired and wants to rest. You could say, “Well, just stop, then.” But they have this idea that they have to cross a finish line before they can stop. If you can convince them that they can just stop, they’ll be amazed. They’ll say, “I didn’t know I could stop and rest.” Or maybe they won’t hear what you’re telling them, and they’ll have to go all the way to their finish line. And after they cross it, then they’ll stop and say, “Wow! It feels really good to rest.” So awakening can come after you cross the finish line in the future, but it’s also possible to find it at any point along the way if you stop for just a moment.

As I see it, reality is always looking for that moment of vulnerability, when we let our guard down. It’s not looking for good people or bad people. Clearly some real scoundrels have had amazing experiences of reality, right? Some are transformed by them, and some aren’t. Reality is not operating on any moral principle. It’s looking for a moment when the seeker is exhausted. It can be prompted by some tragic event: an illness, or the death of a loved one, or a divorce. Reality rushes into the crack and presents itself.

Razor's Edge Zen Society: Notes for discussion of Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now Audiobook CD1

1) Dread, unease vs. joy

Eckhart's account of enlightenment: Preceded by longing for annihilation

"I cannot live with my self any longer" - Eckhart's discovery: Are there two of me? A me that cannot live with another me?

This is an example of the apprehension of a greater perspective that transcends two opposites.

What do you think of the idea that "what we think of joy" is merely the absence of unease and disturbance?

Leading to state of bliss - feeling of newness? Parallels in our previous “chemognosis” experiments (the morning after)?

2) Mind stops - “entering the void”

Pressure of Suffering leading to withdrawal of identification with self

Self as fiction of the mind

Self collapses - what do we think that means? What use is our definition for our spiritual search?

Ever present "I AM" - what have we already read or experienced re: "I AM"?

3) Spiritual crisis - is this a prerequisite to spiritual discovery? Otherwise, what is the relationship of crisis/pain to self-realization?

Can we make this crisis happen? What are other ways of referring to effecting a crisis, if possible? e.g., making ourselves somehow prone to crisis, etc.

What is the source of our resistance to this idea (i.e., of deliberately trying to effect crisis)?

4) Levels of realization

Initial discovery, followed by deepening experiences of entering into the void (ecstasy, etc.)

Effects of realization experience on "out there" life: ex. Eckhart "dropping out", sleeping on park benches

Ephemeral nature of even most defining, life-changing, ecstatic experience....Eckhart: sometimes it comes strong, sometimes it's there in the background  (undercurrent of peace)

"I want what you have"....Is this what we want? Eckhart: we all have it already. We ARE it.

5) What is enlightenment, self-realization, etc.?

Do we expect to experience Truth (To experience: to apprehend an object, thought or emotion through the senses or the mind).

6) What do we think of Eckhart's declaration that "You Are Not Your Mind"?

Eckhart: The disease is that, the mind uses you, because you believe you are the mind (or its content). Proof: We can't just stop. Like the alcoholic or addict's delusion: I can stop whenever I want.

If we can't grasp the truth of our true nature with the mind, then how "do we get there"? 

Eckhart: You will know it when the mind stops. Again, can we effect that? If so, how?

7) Terms: God, Self, Truth. cf. Eckhart's discussion of the misuse of the word "God". cf. Eckhart's discussion of Being as a term and Being as a living reality. And how should we refer to the moment after which our suffering ends? Should we even bother trying to put a name on this end point we look forward to?

Eckhart: Feeling the Unity of Existence as an obvious, self-evident reality.

Two comments made to me in the past:

Comment 1: You'll wonder at how you missed it.

Comment 2: It's so obvious.

What is obvious to us right now?

8) Identification with the mind leads to incessant thinking. Can meditation help?

Watching the thinker. Cat at the mousehole. Do NOT judge, condemn, suppress, get caught up in it.

Watching the watcher.  Awareness watching awareness.

Do not have grandiose expectations about meditations and meditation sessions.

9) Thus, we can discern a two-pronged approach to self-understanding. Observational and Confrontational. Watching, as well as accepting the implications of what is seen.

Which game am I playing?

I was going through the table in deRopp's Master Game that listed the possible games.

Which game am I playing? I've teamed up with a lovely lady to maintain a home and raise kids. So am I a Householder? Or am I just showing up? What difference does it make if I were (especially since I claim to be playing the Master Game)? It certainly seems that I've been lulled into a sense that I am doing things that make me "more prone to understanding", but right now it seems that it's just wishful thinking combined with collecting brownie points and banking on some future event to happen. I'm just tired of it right now. And I won't be tired of it later. So I am asked, why the negativity. Because of the recurring sense that I'm yanking my own chain.


Then, I take a step back and see how the negativity is just another preservation strategy. And we wonder why the rate of success in this thing we're in is like, what, 0.00001% or something.

Poems by Dr. Nurbakhsh

Three poems from that old bard...
...who saw that viewer and view, pain and cure, moth and flame, drop and ocean, Majnun and Leila, were One.
May your secret be our flame.



Nimatullahi Sufi Order

Computer Virus for the Soul

A while back, I had a little chat with Paul Constant. Recalling the moment his search ended, he related the following: "You'll wonder how you missed it". And that was like a computer virus, messing with the carefully constructed house of cards I've built -- which is to say, my beliefs about life and the search for truth. That familiar sense of unease and doubt came out of hiding. But that time there was a little bit of curiosity or even excitement.

So things came and went, and I come across this bit from Bart Marshall's talk at the April 2007 TAT Conference:

In August 2004 something happened that corrected a basic mistake in perception I'd lived with all my life. Prior to this occurrence I thought I was an individual consciousness experiencing an infinitely large, infinitely old, external universe of real objects. What I discovered, however, is that the consciousness I mistakenly perceived as belonging to an individual (Me), is in actuality God consciousness, the One consciousness, and that Me, the universe and everything in it are vague, ephemeral thought-forms appearing in and out of emptiness in a timeless, spaceless Now.

It was a shattering revelation, but at the same time so obvious and self-evident I realized I'd known all along. I became un-fooled. A case of mistaken identity -- very close to home -- was resolved. There is only God consciousness. Here, where I am, there is consciousness. Therefore, I am That.

 Upon reading the phrases I bolded above, there was that same "Huh?" kind of thing. Like the computer is warning of a possible floating point computation error but something else is egging the whole doubt thing on.

It seems that, if we try to force the doubt, the resulting impressions can never amount to anything more than a strained, sloppy, disappointing jerk-off, like looking in the mirror and talking to the face we see, out of sheer boredom. On the other hand, when doubt is a result of a well-timed yet subtle challenge, this "?" can be the engine for deeper searching.

Right here, right now. Everywhere, Eternity.

Returning to the present moment. There's an intellectual understanding of it, of sorts. Maybe as a way to keep the status quo, a way to maintain the very falseness we swear that we, as spiritual seekers, try to transcend. There's even a conscious action to do so, when the phrase is remembered. But, can we "do" such a return? What is the relation of a thought that says, "Oh yeah, I must return to the present moment." and the actual return to the present moment. What does it mean anyway?

First we recognize that the mind is by nature, by default, chained to past and future. If we therefore remain as the observer of the discursive mind as well as to the emotional reverberation of the mind, we are effectively shifting to the perspective of now, without otherwise needing the prompt of "OK, time to return to now". The mind also cannot help but focus on "out there", the view. In the same way, sinking backwards into the observer, there emerges a two-way seeing wherein attention is simultaneously directed to the view and to the viewing.

Right here where sensing and thinking emerges. Right now, because there is nothing else.

What is everywhere? Is it far out there, 100 thousand parsecs in outer space? Outer space?  What about subatomic realms -- are they part of everywhere? How do we draw the line, to say, "this is right here and that's over there"? Aren't both intergalactic realms and subatomic nano-spaces contained in the view that occurs, right here?
What is eternity? An innumerable amount of time? A gazillion years? We, who have been trained by schedules, clocks, school periods, seasons, histories and so on, might think that eternity is an interval, albeit infinitely long in duration. What is eternity without these concepts? Without thoughts of recollection or anticipation, isn't eternity contained in right now?

  

The Headless Way