Once you start on the path, it's forever

I read the above in a novel last night -- or words to that effect.  I have that sense as well.  But I think there's even more to it than that.  When one is meant to be on the path -- when it's what one was born for -- when one finds a way to follow it, it's like finding home. But even if one doesn't start, if it's what one was meant to do, one cannot be happy until that destiny is fulfilled.  I can't prove this is true -- it's just my sense.  And I wish I had come to it sooner.  In the past, when I lost my first teacher, there seemed to be no way forward, and so I just tried to live the way everyone else did.  If someone had said to me, "You can't.  Your destiny is different," maybe it would have made a difference.  Not that there is something wrong with what others are doing, but it was wrong for me.  All's well that ends well, of course, but it would have been wonderful to know sooner that there was no choice in the matter..

Ego and Kensho

Last night I was reading an interview with an author who had lived in several Zen temples in Japan. At the first temple, the Zen Master told this American student that he had experienced kensho, or a glimpse of enlightenment. This author did not believe the Zen master was correct. He felt nothing different, he reported. He left that temple and went to a temple of a different branch of Zen, where the priest told him that kensho was just sort of a game, confirming in this student's mind that he had, in fact, not experienced anything significant.

Well, there is that aspect of that type of Zen (Rinzai) that does seem like a game: all of the students vying to see who will get enlightened first as they go from koan to koan. And the fact that this author did not believe his teacher probably means that it was just as well he went somewhere else. But – this is why we have teachers – to tell us what we may not ourselves realize, to reflect back the deeper truth that our egos cover over. My guess – and not having been there, it is only a guess, of course – is that in fact this author did experience kensho but that discursive thought quickly came back in and said he'd experienced nothing at all. And, of course, this is true, too – and is exactly why ego misses it. When we experience nothingness, how can we tell about it? We were, after all, absent that moment.

It's quite a paradox that the ego so wants, on the one hand, to take credit for an insight it has nothing whatsoever to do with, and on the other, to pretend that it never happened. Often, after an initial awakening, both of these delusions alternate with each other. I know that for me, when my first teacher told me, upon my initial awakening, that I had “entered nirvana,” I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. It is only in retrospect that I see that he had the larger picture.

Joseph Campbell: an enlightened soul

I caught tidbits of the Bill Moyers interviews with Joseph Campbell that have been on PBS the past week or two.  Moved to tears.  When I watched these videos when they were originally broadcast in the 1980s, I didn't realized how enlightened Campbell was .  And poor Moyers shows by his responses that he hasn't a clue!  But what an opportunity and gift he got.  I wonder how he looks at the experience now, in his 70s. 

Of course, the phrase from JC (oh, same initials as that other bloke) that everyone knows is "follow your bliss."  In his case, he followed the "myth" path and it led him to Truth.  Not bad advice and hard to do.  I am always, ALWAYS moved to tears when I come across someone who has done it.  Jane Goodall would be another example.  It doesn't have to end up in enlightenment -- but there IS something illuminated about someone who has lived this way. 

For me, what has been in the way my whole life is wanting to be like other people.  When I was a child, I wanted to be like the other kids -- and I never was.  Being different always meant being LESS.  And it is just now occurring to me that it doesn't mean that at all -- that one only truly comes into one's power and does what one is meant to do on this planet when one finds the gift of the uniqueness of one's being. 

I don't know if there are, literally, such things as "old souls" but if there are, I'm sure I am one.  And it is only now that I realize I could never find satisfaction in all of the things others found it in because I simply was not meant to.  My calling has been this Truth which is finding voice in me now.  And I realize that one doesn't have to be "completely enlightened," whatever that is, to speak that Truth.  In a sense, one HAS to speak it -- not to do so is to betray oneself and that Truth. 

Coming Back for It

To people who had had awakenings but were suffering over something, Adya used to say, "You came back for it."  I never hear him say that anymore -- maybe too many people didn't get what he meant.  This last satsang, he said something with, I think, the same intent, though:  temporarily abdicate the deeper knowing in order to get into the mind's not-knowing.  I've heard him say this before also, but I think it has to be said at just the right time.  Something in me heard it, and though I had no idea how to do this, something in me seems to have.

For years I've been struggling with my feelings about a temple I lived in when I was young.  I just kept up an internal monologue with them about what they did to me -- "me" as the victim -- even though in other circumstances, I would have said clearly enough that there is no one here!  And now this is shifting.  I am starting to see how I sought their energy, hoping to make it mine, hoping to win them over somehow.  And all of the time, my own energy was calling to me to be released and celebrated.  We seem to get all confused in love -- whether it's love of a temple or of another human being -- and think, implicitly or explicitly, that the other has something we need.  And it's simply not true.

Seeing through morality

I went to a satsang today, someone I heard about and so was curious.  It felt very abstract to me, and very conversational, not worshipful.  It surprised me that I crave that worshipful aspect of satsang.  But the thing that surprised me most was that the teacher never once mentioned that we don't actually exist. Oh, he mentioned that trees and chairs and stuff like that don't exist, but isn't the bottom line really that there is no "me" here?  It is only through experiencing the emptiness of the "me" that we can know that other things also have no independent existence.  And the path, for me, to find out that the "me" does not really exist was to see how judgment maintains it, how there is a constant commentary in the mind about what is the "right" way to be, and, especially for spiritual people, the "right" way to wake up.  It was in my first glimpse into the absolute that I understood that morality does not really exist -- it is created IN ORDER TO maintain the ego.

Gratitude toward Adya

Sometimes I am just so overwhelmed by gratitude for my meeting with my teacher, Adyashanti.  For so many years, I looked for someone who would understand where I was coming from when it was still so impossible to express it that one almost had to be a mind-reader.  And he was.  When I met him, I knew implicitly that, however deep my realization was to go, he would be able to follow and assist me.  I was not disappointed.  We are so blessed when we meet the right teacher.  I am moved to tears whenever I think about it.

Emotion and Awakening

Q:  What is the relationship between emotion and awakening?

I once thought that emotion somehow went away when one woke up, and was replaced by constant bliss, or something like that.  Pretty silly, now that I think of it.  But I think that belief was encouraged by some teachers who seem to look upon emotional states as illusory.  My experience is that I definitely still experience emotion -- both positive and negative.  What seems to have changed is my judgments about emotion.  There seems to be an allowance for all kinds of feelings.  So-called "negative feelings," such as sadness, don't have to be gotten rid of.  In a way, I can just enjoy them as part of existence, in the same say that we experience the sad emotions in a work of art as enjoyable.