A Poem on Separateness

"You know, this friend called mind,
it's in a role.
It was given to us
to create identification out of nothing.
It's such an ancient divine servant.
The Self took the form of thought
to help itself play the game.
So could you bow down to thought
as an ancient retainer?
It's the Self in disguise."
-- Pamela Wilson

I hope Pamela doesn't mind my borrowing this moving poem from her website (Pamelasatsang.com). I love it because when we bow down to the separateness, when we stop calling it names but rather honor it, we see that it really isn't separate. 

Trying gets in the way

After Toni Packer died a few months ago, I checked several of her books out of the library.  I was intending to write something about her legacy but never did (except the brief post on this blog).  Now, I'm just getting around to the books.  It's a re-visit for me because I also read a couple of them before I went to visit the meditation center she founded, Springwater, in 2007.

I like best the book The Light of Discovery (Charles E Tuttle, 1995).  Here is a dialogue between Toni and Joan Tollifson.  Joan was a student of Toni's and is an author and teacher in her own right.

"Joan: Suppose I see the same patterns coming up year after year, habits I feel stuck in. . . . I see it over and over, but it keeps happening, and I can't get out of it.

"Toni:  When you say, 'I see it, but I can't get out of it,' what is the quality of that seeing?  Here is where you really need to look and examine carefully.  Is it thinking about your habit-patterns -- how long they have persisted, how this is never going to end, wanting to know how to fix it?  This is not seeing.  This is thinking.  It's not an on-the-spot discovery of thought arising.  To see the thought of wanting freedom as it arises is different from thinking,, 'I've had this thought pattern all my life, and nothing has happened about it, and what can I do about it?'" (pp. 11-12)

Reading this, I'm reminded of an incident in my own life.  I was in turmoil over a relationship with someone that wasn't happening -- at least not the way I thought it should.  It had been literally years, and one day I was in a particularly bad place, crying on my bed, when one of my teachers returned my call to her.  And I told her what I was going through, adding, "I've tried everything but I can't find a solution!"  She said, "It's not about solving problems."

I don't know how she knew that was exactly what I needed to hear, but something magical happened.  I suppose, looking back on it now, I could say that her words gave me permission to STOP, just stop trying for a moment.  We think we won't find a solution if we don't try, and practical problems are like that, but psychological/spiritual problems are just the opposite:  the trying only gets in the way.  So, then, at that moment when trying ceased, something opened in me, a space to view it all from I suppose, and all of that emotion I'd been trying so hard to get rid of was suddenly just fine!  Not only fine but even blissful.  How could it be that what I'd condemned and tried so hard to rid myself of could turn blissful?  Because the feelings weren't the problem -- it was the identification with them that caused the suffering. The feelings, I'd always assumed, said something about me, about what kind of person I was.  Not so.

And so, reading Toni's words in the above passage, I recognized what she was pointing to.

Two Kinds of Unity

Lately, I've been thinking about two different psychological processes.  One is the process of identification with others.  For example, children identify with their parents.  As young adults, we often identify with someone we admire, or even worship.  But although the admiration is conscious, the identification is less so.  Thus, we may find ourselves adopting ideas and attitudes of this people even when those ideas and attitudes have nothing to do with the reason we originally admired them.  It is as though we unconsciously imagine that if we become like them, we will also acquire the wisdom or beauty they have.  And once the psyche really does believe that these attitudes are its own, it is virtually impossible to un-do the process, even when it becomes clear that those ideas or attitudes don't serve us. 

The second kind of unity is when we realize that we in fact are one with someone (or everyone) already, that it is our basic nature.  In this kind of unity, the self doesn't take in something from the outside; rather, it sees itself in a new, expanded way.  Oh, I'm so much larger than I ever imagined!  It's as though the self, instead of taking attitudes or characteristics in from the outside to make itself bigger, realizes that it already is infinitely large and doesn't need any additions.

And, I suppose that the motive for the former process could be said to be the desire for the latter.  That is, we want to be larger than we experience ourselves, and if the only way we can imagine to do that is to identify with others, then that is the way we will do it.  But it never satisfies; only the second kind of unity satisfies.