The world is full of paths. Methods, means, teachings. They are all offered by people who have themselves experienced some aspect of what they feel was true for them. They pass it on and sometimes it turns into a movement of some kind, perhaps a religion or a philosophical path. Some, like Krishnamurti, seek a pathless path.
More and more I have grown to recognize that our spirituality is colored by our belief, our own experiences and our own attachments to what we feel is somehow important. We are loaded down with these things, which as I go along look more like baggage than any kind of real truth. For me, its as though I was looking at a glass full of water that had all kinds of eddies and sparks and cubes of ice. It was important for those things to be there. More and more, though, my glass of water is becoming much more simple. There is less flash, less mental jewelry that catches the eye. It becomes simpler, stripped of what I thought was important, and as all the flash goes, I am left with what is real, and in that moment, with what is, I am free to see the true abiding qualities in that glass of water. Simpler looking, perhaps humble, but bearing something so magnificent that it never needed all the flash and add-ons. Behind all the stuff is the thing. Behind what we project onto the world as being important is life. And the truth, which is less a thing as an infinite string that makes up a vast realm of everything. The deity is here, now, in even the baggage you create, in all the stuff of the universe. What we took as clay and dressed up to be ten thousand forms, is still just clay but with all the things we feel is true imprinted upon it. What does the clay have to say? What is its deeper truth and essence? This, in its own limited way of describing it, is what this authentic path is about. I hesitate to even call it the one true path because in the evolutionary spiral of our souls, the road or path constantly changes because it is we who change. The projector is projecting different images and at some point stops even projecting because it has somehow learned that the projection, the screen, all are one. This "truth" does not strike me as anything that can be given isms or shalts or rules. It is what it is, simple as that, and on the day you learn of it and feel it coursing through your veins, a world of truths will go into the wastebasket. That, or you will refuse to believe what it is you are seeing and feeling.
Increasingly I see that all religions, all philosophies are built around something that is entirely immaterial, transcendent, and reaches into a "realm" of human experience that touches upon what feels like a new world. How then can it ever hope to create something that shows one how to go? By creating rules? Laws? What about learning to feel ones own true being so that you can tap where this "rule" (ha!) emerges? Its in us to know this truth intimately. It flows from us. Or can. Instead of things, I feel myself resolving back to a simpler root of being. The thing about this is that things most often cause suffering because they are built around unrealistic expectations. religious leaders, so lofty and wise wind up being egoistic or greedy in the end. Full of agendas because they are full of karma still, the fruits can only be as good as the tree growing them. There are many who speak the words that sound so good, but its in living and being them that seem to matter most, for if that is not there, they are just words.
Beyond all the thou shalts, beyond all the rules and modes of behavior is what every being in the universe knows deeper down. As we strip away the jewelry, we find a beauty that is simple but all encompassing; this is the motive force behind all things. It exists in a state of eternal potential. It is the creative potency of the universe. It is the cross roads of potential and realization. This is a powerful place to be, for in being there, you feed directly from a place where there are no teachers, no thou shalts. There is only the pure light, the truth indwelling, and its not to be found at a church or other body outside of your own. It is indwelling. It goes beyond all ideas or notions about what purity is or what love is. You have to experience it for yourself. For me, it has left me without a need for any philosophy or religion. I do, like many teachers, clothe it in form in order to describe it most often through metaphors. Still, if I say a teaching is like a boat or raft, we know its not really a boat. We talk around this when the real action is simply feeling it. I think that its so fundamental to our being that its meant not to be describable but experienced. Its like what I told a student not long ago who was standing before an art project she had started and was suddenly scared about being able to pull it off. She kept asking what to do. I said there was nothing else to do but to jump in. I described how she was standing by the edge of the water and all her friends had already jump in. That water was a bit scary, made her feel unsure of herself, but it was the uncertainty that was causing all of this. Be bold I said; jump in. Once you do, it will be much easier. the water wont be as cold as you feared, and you will find yourself feeling much happier and sure of yourself. What's more, it will be FUN. She took my advice, jumped in, and wound up making one of the most amazing pieces of art she had probably ever done up until that point. It raised her confidence level, and was very rewarding. She broke through a fear barrier, an uncertainty. By being able to do this, we all are able to face what seemed a great mystery. It may have been scary at first. When we make the leap, we do so into the pure light of our truer nature. Maybe we are making something, creating, or writing a paper, or book, and wonder if the next curve in the road will bring us what it is we hope for. I say leap. Leap and then feel into the rush that you experience. This, I say, is your soul rushing forward to meet you. This exhilaration is what we all seek and need to break beyond old forms into new ones. Eventually, forms seem to fall away as this feeling takes over. It is the core of who and what we are.
Once you reach this place of feeling, of awakening, you are guided. Slowly, bit by bit, the old walls come down. Belief systems are seen as systems. All the forms are just that. they point to what cannot be pointed to but experienced. The ecstasy of the saints comes alive in you and you may try to explain it a hundred ways to Sunday, but in the end, it all resolves back onto itself. The sages describe this as the peace we find because it does not require anything of us except a surrender to it. It does not involve acts of contrition to a church, community service, or self flagellation. It does not involve paying alms or tithing. It requires nothing but your being your essential self absent the trappings of this world. This does not mean that you do not work through a church or temple. Perhaps you need some structure of help you to have the time to sit quietly at a pew. Perhaps. Most often, for me, going out into nature is the most perfect church one could ever imagine. Certainly how I see it and respond to it has changed over time. It becomes a thrilling realm of life jumping over itself to become. Here I see what happens as the potential transits with the material; creation blooms. I see it all as a wonderful production that fills me with the energy that flows through it and that I am a part of.
This place is where my divine parentage emerges. Here, the father and mother reside in harmony. These polarities exist all through nature and the cosmos, I realize. I say they are parents, but they are in truth far broader, but there is certainly something that is larger than me that I am a part of that fills me and rejuvenates me and shows me that I am tapping the energy of the divine. I know that if I imagine raising my hand and allowing my imagined hand to be filled with the spirit of the father, the masculine, that I can fill anyone with its wonder. I know, too, that the feminine force resides in perfect harmony with the father, the masculine. it is she that softens and allows for great mystery to be known. Hers is more formless, mutable, and changing like storm clouds that are never the same, but constantly in a state of flux and change, bringing forth form as the dance of the masculine and feminine continues. My very thoughts, I know, rest astride their wave of awareness. As I feel more deeply into myself, there is a place where I can sense them clearly. There is not a place where they suddenly are there and not there. They are seeded all through my being. Its all interconnected. I cannot even begin to draw distinctions very well since while I can feel their currents as different, I know they are merged into a unity and it is that unity that they are that I am myself emulating. This is why I will explain what most will not....
The concept of kundalini, which is merely awakening, is the result of the merging of two polarities within. These polarities underlie all of creation. That's a pretty big deal in a sense, yet its very simple, too. Its a thrilling feeling, like I have a great secret. But when you feel kundalini, you are feeling what union IS. They do not move up your energy field in the HOPE of reaching union. No. The moment you feel it is the moment you become aware of that union which has always been. The first spark of kundalini is itself the union of the opposites creating bliss in your awareness. What this presence does for you, to you, is to begin to loosen the material in your earthly self, your psyche, so that you can begin to model or emulate that same action within. This is your divine parentage coming in to show you how its done. All of the troubles you have in awakening are merely your finding the way to mirror this in your earthly self. This action strips you of all the things that did not serve you here. You naturally become more simple. Miracles happen in your life. The path is made clear. You heal. Feeling their union within, you fall into their divine alignment. As you do this, you literally resonate with the cosmos. In a never ending spiral upwards, your consciousness goes into ever higher forms of union with the universe. the more you let go of this material, the clearer the way becomes. Fear and anxieties fall away. You may have no answer to how to fix yourself, but it no longer matters; their union solves all problems and heals all wounds. So like a hitch hiker, you cling to their celestial bodies for the ride of your life. And while this may all sound amazing, what is so amazing is how simple it is.
This disquiets ego. its used to lots of sounds and lights and amazing things that move and sparkle. This is all jewelry and the ego will most often feel let down, unhappy, or simply unamazed. When you feel the bliss deeper down beyond all the lights and action, things naturally become simpler. Life can be so incredibly spare, empty even, with this great beauty dwelling within.
Eventually, all things return to something entirely elemental and simple. Her is the most religious feeling, the greatest graces and miracles. Here, saints dance. Here, your soul has found home. This world is beyond all form, yet also gives rise to it. It is an endless supply of the stuff of which we are all made and that animates the universe. This is the energy that has caused all to come into being, to move, to evolve. Once you have tasted it, you will perhaps understand how it does indeed move through everything....constituting it from the inside out. It is silent, though, silent until the day that you awaken. There will be no gods coming down to set you straight. That is not how it works, even though we have old stories of the gods doing just that. Its just that we wished they would. When we become silent within and know what we are is the moment that we do. Its beyond all religion. Form. Belief. It gives you the courage to strike out on your own. You aren't seeking it anymore; you now know it. You have found it. Searching ends and being begins as the power of awakening shows you the way to the bliss and fulfillment that is its own reward.
