Standing Outside one's 'I-ness'

The word ecstatic in its original sense means to stand outside of oneself. We work so hard to make a personal self, an “I” or ego, with clarity and continuity. This is extremely valuable, but one pays a price for this “I” -- we become small, personal and limited; we are a highly circumscribed entity in our “I-ness.”

The ecstatic experience involves escaping from the “I-ness.” This requires that we break the boundaries of our separateness to experience a greater realm, a realm that taxes our finest poets and artists to convey. It is the most valuable experience any person can ever have. The beauty of the Golden World is that one sees a vastness, something so much greater than oneself that one is left speechless with awe, admiration, delight and rapture.

Once we have built a strong ego, we must then link it back to the matrix from which it has grown. But to say, “I want an experience of God is a total oxymoron; if there is an “I” seeking an experience, that is precisely the problem and the reason for the suffering in one’s life. There’s a Christian proverb that says he who searches for God insults God; this is because a search implies that God is separate.

Zen Buddhism also is very articulate about this, stating that the very motivation for satori or enlightenment is suspect. You find the Kingdom, not by seeking, but only by grace. Seeking after the splendor of God is a highly egocentric and insulating thing to do. I now understand that the most profound religious life is found by being in the world yet in each moment doing our best to align ourselves with the slender threads.

The path to wholeness is not about becoming cured or enlightened so much as managing different experiences and responding with resilience and creativity to life’s ongoing changes. As you tune in to its different aspects, life in all its manifestations becomes more interesting.

To Stop Fighting 'What Is'

As Buddhism teaches so eloquently, anything you do to escape the fundamental duality of ego consciousness just kicks more energy into it. Your only choice is to stop. That unsplit, unifying place is found at the fulcrum. This is the holy place, the whole place. The demand for human consciousness to have the “right” thing at the exclusion of something else just sets the wheel in motion again.

There is a kind of consciousness that assists slowing down. If you can honestly assess what is true in your life, looking at it with objectivity and intelligence, this is getting closer.

Practically speaking, if we would spend as much time being alert and aware as we do worrying, we would be out of any mess fairly soon. When you stop fighting your situation, you just have the situation but no longer the struggle to cope with. Generally one can endure that. This is to cease wounding yourself on the jailhouse bars of reality — to stop complaining about what is.

down they forgot as up they grew

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.

women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew

e.e. cummings

An Understanding Heart

An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is an important concept for anyone interested in leading a religious life, but most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.

Learning the value of meaningful sacrifice is not the same as denying pleasure or practicing asceticism. There is a wonderful saying from the Judaic tradition suggesting that every legitimate joy you deny yourself on earth will be denied you in heaven. This speaks to the false spirituality of asceticism. Trading in one thing to get something better is not a spiritual act at all; in fact, it is highly egocentric. You shouldn’t make a sacrifice in hopes of getting something back from God. I see many people who pray so that God will make things go the way they would like, or go to a church to achieve social standing or some other worldly goal. This is not sacrifice at all. Properly, a sacrifice should be suffered simply because it is necessary for the transformation of consciousness -- to get beyond the wishes of your ego, not to satisfy those wishes in some backhanded way.