How would you define a spiritual path?

Defining ‘spiritual’ as a way of seeing, being and becoming, all paths are spiritual paths, and everything encountered a reflection of the divine. ‘Treat all you meet like G_d’ 🙂

Avoiding the tendency to mistake the word God (our rules, ideas and measurements) for God, (lead us not into such temptation.) I use the word G_d, and the word divine, to point to the Transcendent. The idea being to become transparent to the Transcendent.

The light in me sees the light in you… Transparent, the light within illuminates  all, the light within all illuminates me…

As above so below – on earth as it is in heaven, as below so above – forgiven as we forgive… Smaller then small bigger then big,  Co-creators, how we see and are matters.

Thanks for sharing you thoughts Anita!

Hi Helcat

I’m not sure I have any advice about acceptance. I’m a head guy and for the longest time I have approached the acceptance by trying to think my way through. If I could just identify all the variables, get them sorted, then maybe I would understand and understanding accept. (I was going to say that didn’t work, but realizing that was a dead end and the frustration that lead to was something I needed to experience)

I struggled between the notions of acceptance and resignation. Acceptance more often then not felt like resignation, giving up, leading to a slide into indifference, and indifference to depression.

“Our minds are trained to accept and conform, shaping our thought according to….. We need a great deal of energy to bring about a change within ourselves, but we waste our energy through conflict, through resistance, through conformity, through acceptance, through obedience… ” – Krishnamurti

First time I read that I was taken aback. In what ways are we trained in acceptance? Is acceptance a something the mind requires to be comfortable? Is it a waist of energy seeking acceptance? By acceptance are we really looking for belonging?  To many questions, my head self is elated. 🙂
I concede that acceptance and the desire to be accepted are entangled and influenced by others more so then my own experience… Avoiding what I sense is a trap I move on.

I’ve mentioned before the idea that the question behind the hero’s journey is ‘How to respond to Life as it is’  which concerns the notion of acceptance. The Hero that completes the task comes when he can answer with a YES. A Yes  that is acceptance of Life as it is, its wonder and horror while remaining fully engaged. Put another way a ‘detachment’ that remains fully engaged. Acting because its it authentic to ones truth regardless of results.   (This is the interplay of the temporal and eternal. The engagement is in the temporal, the Yes in the eternal experience. )

In practice ( I guess this is advice)…. through out the day I will ask myself ‘how am I responding to Life in this moment’. The answer is surprising easy to discern. When I’m feeling anxious, angry, worried, frustrated the answer is pointing to a No. In other words I do not want to accept the moment as it is. The No usually coming from the ego wanting to be in charge and change things ….

To be honest I spend most of my day in a No frame of experience  but I don’t beat myself up over it (or pat myself on the back in those moments when the answer is Yes).   Its weird but the asking of the question is often enough to create the space for stillness. ‘Oh I’m playing that game again, trying to change the present by changing the past’ 🙂 no wonder I’m anxious. 🙂

The challenge is that a No seems easier to engage with. You get all that energy by resisting and that can be fun if were being honest with ourselves. A Yes on the other hand is more subtle – fully engaged in the moment while being ‘detached’ from the results.  If I can’t measure a ‘win’ what fun is that?

As you said “learning to accept and be on board with my choices” The Yes and acceptance is about the engagement not the measurement of the results. Does that make sense?

Its a change of perspective, a experience of the eternal perspective – the sun neither rises or sets, it is, you are. YES?

Anita

That’s good to hear as it matches my experience and intention. Instead of a frantic seeking of meaning and purpose as a life line to hope

As I open to experience of the eternal within the temporal my breath slows and I experience a calm where the desire to label, measure and judge fades. Its not so much ‘movement VS stillness’ as it is ‘movement AND stillness’.  To experience the ‘stillness’ in ones often frantic ‘movements’. I’ve taken up yoga and its wonderful to experience the moment when in a difficult flow you find yourself still.

Something I discovered during the contemplation of the problem of opposites (duality). That the go to metaphor for nonduality is that of the coin. Only its not a great metaphor as we can’t help ourselves from picking the coin up, flipping it in the air and calling heads Or tails which immediacy pulls us out of the eternal nonduality (garden) and back into the temporal playground of duality, measurement, judgment… language… ego consciousness.

In nonduality its not OR but AND, the coin has no sides! No matter how small a piece you cut off from the coin the piece will contain both, right down to the smallest particles. Here we see the problem of language as language exists in the temporal experience and not in the eternal.  We have no words for that which is both up and down, in and out, good and bad, happy and sad, left and right, fast and slow….

Note how so many of the problems in our connected/disconnected digital social media experience arise because between the 1 and the 0 its always 1 Or 0 when our experience is analog, that of the AND.
In the digital world its Like OR dislike, agree OR not agree, with me Or against me… in the linear digital algorithm its the OR that rises to the top of our feeds,  which is not great for connection or the experience of stillness in motion.

I digress from he topic 🙂

Playing devils advocate I’m going to disagree and argue that the search for meaning and purpose is a skill we are really bad at and so the source of much suffering. The key word in that statement was search. My argument being that we don’t need to seek out meaning or purpose to be happy or have hope. We can though open the door, and leave it open, to the experiences.

Seeking implies something we don’t yet have thus the search starts and often remains stuck in the feeling of loss and less then. Begging the question when does a seeker become a finder and get to be content? (Not easily in this consumerist digital world of 1 or 0)

I suspect like joy and happiness meaning and purposes are experiences that happen and not something one ‘finds’. In such a state of awareness every breath is full of meaning and purpose.

I think it comes down to perspective and a cessation of measurement.

From one perspective the sun rises and sets once a day. By the rising and setting we measure out time and the various dualities  of life like meaning and purpose.

Yet from another perspective, the sun is always rising and setting in every moment. (right this moment the sun is being experienced as rising and setting.) Setting in this perspective notice how time, measurement, language and duality begin to fade, and with that fading notions of meaning and purpose.

Then from yet another perspective the sun neither rises or sets, it is. Sitting in such awareness all returns to the eternal and everything is connected. The present moment no longer a measurement of time but the eternal absolute. Eternity not a measurement of time but the source from which time arises and returns.

The experience of movement creates time and space, the play ground of the experience of life and duality. The experience of stillness is eternity, and non-duality (non-measurement).
Each breath each moment contains both the temporal and the eternal experience.

All movement arises from and returns to stillness, all time arises from and returns to eternity, all life arises from and returns to Love. Nothing is Lost nothing Gain, It is, you are… the purpose and meaning you have been looking for.  The task of living  is to be awake to the experience of both

The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal—not moment, but forever—is the sense of life. Realizing how this moment in your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience—this is the ‘knowing’ experience.- Campbell

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.

We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. – Alan Watts

Stillness is what creates love, Movement is what creates life, To be still, Yet still moving – That is everything!
Do Hyun Choe

The Sphinx spoke only once, and the Sphinx said, “A grain of sand is a desert, and a desert is a grain of sand; and now let us all be silent again.” I heard the Sphinx, but I did not understand. – Sand and Foam by Kahlil Gibran

I guess I just wanted my yoga to stay calm, without any interference. And she asked me a few questions…

Like the monkey mind that tests us in the practice of meditation, we will be ‘tested’ in yoga.

The interesting question in my opinion isn’t if this person who’s focus seems to be on the physical aspects of yoga should or should not have challenged you on the physical aspects of yoga  but why the questioning impacted your intention of a ‘calm’ practice?

Have you noticed how many different understandings of Plato’s Allegory of the cave there are? How the explanations almost always reinforce the argument the person is presenting and in that way, proving Plato’s point.

And Here I am about to do the same. 🙂

It seems to me that one of the points Plato was making is that ‘we see the world as we are not as it is’… (That how we see the world is constructed, most of it though language where the common error is to mistake the map (our constructs our words) for the territory.) Thus, the task to “know thy self”, if only to see the world more clearly as It is.

Anyone engaged in the task soon discovers that Plato’s Cave is a nesting doll of caves within caves within caves.  In my opinion such a quest of self-discovery, when honestly perused, can only lead towards humility and compassion.

What then of Karma, Is Karma the same as justice, reward and punishment, the cosmic Santa Clause? Everything I’ve read on the subject says No. That is its great misunderstanding. Karma is impersonal… Karma is as it is, a reality of life as it is.  Action, cause and effect. The something, if we take up the task, we can influence and so change how we experience/see Life as It is.

If I kick a large rock and break my toe is that, Karma? Yes, but not because kicking a rock is morally wrong and so I must be punished for my actions but because breaking my toe is a natural result of kicking a rock.  Should I blame the rock? Is rock karma to be punished for breaking my toe? Is  my desire for the rock to be punished bad karma?

In the task to “know myself” I might, after kicking the rock and limping away, better ask myself why I kicked the rock and to focus on my own karma (actions) and avoid projections. (Note in the allegory of the cave it’s the projections (our shadows) that are the illusions.)

Karma has nothing to do with our notion of Justice. (Our notion of Justice is a construct, too much of which has come about based on our projections.)

In Christianity it is acknowledged (though forgotten even as we say the words) that as we forgive, we will be forgiven. In other words, karma, who we are, how we are and our actions as we engage with Life matters. Like karma, the focus is not on or about the other but on our own being and it it this that will define our experience. (I might argue that it is this truth that makes each of us co-creators, bigger then big…which is both terrifying and wondrous.)

Sadhgure book ‘Karma’ is worth a read.

Hi Eva

I don’t normally comment in the Relationship topic threads, but it broke my heart to read: ‘Even though I was cautious in the beginning, allowed myself to go in and trust him’ as being number 1 on your negative self talk list.

Even when things don’t go as we hoped, the courage to open yourself up and engage in life was and is amazing. Please don’t close yourself off and lose that. That might seem like the safe option but in my opinion ends in becoming numb to life and numbing oneself many not feel like it hurts as much as engaging with life but I’m not so sure.

Hi Benedikt

I tend to get in my head about most things which makes the experience of joy and happiness that much tougher. Imagine trying to think and measure your way into joy, contentment, happiness. I tend to forget that words such as joy and happiness are experiences and not ‘things’ created.  Such things are happenings. (language and ego consciousness are dualistic by necessity so difficult to express – thus a happening happens regardless of if you let it happen or try to control it. However, an attempt to control a happening, though still a happening, most likely won’t be experienced that way.)

Taoism has the concept Wu Wei  ‘non-doing,’ (all wisdom traditions have similar notion if not always understood) Wu Wei is not so much about ‘doing nothing’ as it is about aligning our movement with the greater flow of life. Often referred to as ‘natural action,’ Wu Wei does not involve excessive effort or struggle, but a kind of ‘going with the flow’ where we are able to move with the energy of the moment and respond freely to whatever situation that arises. From a western perspective; perhaps a act of will that is the letting go of will.

Doing and Being… two of the great dualisms everyone struggles with… what if I suggested that they aren’t opposites? That there not even two sides of the same coin as in heads OR tails. As a metaphor perhaps heads AND tails, but then where is the fun in flipping it in the air. Here’s a riddle for you what is the word for something that is both doing and being, in and out, up and down… happy and sad? 

You used the word ‘manifest’. Manifest a kind of doing, setting intention, direction, pulling the draw string with the arrow back AND Being, letting the arrow fly. Doing tends to focus and measurement and control (ego) while Being is All about the whole experience, no measurements, no language, required. (The bliss of not having to name something to experience it! Not even the words like joy or happiness! I wonder if the ‘emptiness’ Zen points to isn’t partly the emptiness of a space of no words?)

The archer pulling back the draw strings of the bow, aiming at a target. Doing is ‘happy’ when intention and result align. Nothing wrong with that only notice any expectation of happy if I hit the target OR sad when I don’t. But Being, Being is alive in the whole process most especially the release and of the arrow, the excitement and terror of not knowing, feeling and experiencing all the things.

Doing tends to view the arrow as separate, but for Being there is no separation. Being is the archer, the bow the arrow, the air and target. Feel the energy in the archer and bow as the arrow is held ready pointed in a direction, and then release, whoosh, feel the arrow slicing through the air, flying, the terror, wonder… ‘thunk’…  Hit, miss, new, exhilarated! If just those moments… we don’t forget

Again! the child cries out! Again!

Perhaps the art of manifesting is getting out of the way?