• Unimpeded

    June 17, 2016

    I sense that at every step my life is impeded. Nothing happens easily. Everything I do seems to be a struggle involving effort and conflict. Sometimes I’m not moved to do anything at all.

    In part it is like weather. There are periods of wind and rain and there are times when the sun shines. The conditions of the environment are changeable and influenced by many factors. Sensing these conditions, just as one senses the weather, can you tell when it is more possible to act and when to hold back. It isn’t necessary to know the exact nature of the forces at work. You can never really know them in full and you can lose a lot of time trying to analyze them. Worse, you can imagine that you do know something based on astrology or whatever, rather than relying on your own sensing.

    Mastery of self is knowing how to read, and be advised by, one’s sensations. In a world that is full of contradictory forces, where it is nonetheless necessary to act, you must be able to follow the path of slightly less resistance.

    But there is much more to this. Is it possible to cultivate an unimpeded state? In Vajrayana it is said that the essence of reality is emptiness, its nature is luminous and its expression is unimpeded. What is meant by unimpeded? To gain insight into this question, it is necessary to begin at the beginning, which is emptiness.

    So much of what we do seems to come from thinking. And much of our thinking is compulsively centered on what we should do, or what we always do out of habit. Clearly, these actions do not come from emptiness. We think that nothing can come from emptiness. We are very uncomfortable with the whole notion. If I don’t make efforts based on what I think I would do if I could do what I should do, what’s going to happen? Nothing, right? Wrong.

    Observe yourself. Mostly, you are a bundle of habitual reactions. Stimulus from outside followed by habitual reaction. But there are other rarer events. Sometimes an impulse arises that has no observable external cause. Where do these impulses arise from? This is truly a mystery if you follow this inquiry. Do they arise from the emptiness? Can you see that they begin as luminous expressions of love, of joy, that precede thought?

    To remain unimpeded, the impulse must pass cleanly through the self—body and mind—without diversion. This is where we are most impeded. Our inner contradictions and habitual editing prevent unimpeded expression even more than the conditions of the external world. There are antidotes for this confusion…repeated exposure to voluntary presence and attention and especially impartial observation. Conditioning breaks down over time. This is a path of inner surrender which goes hand-in-hand with growing indifference to yourself and your conditioning. Indifference has a great power to change.

    You can learn to find emptiness, embrace it and trust it to move you, slowly passing the power to act from outside to inside. Of course, as long as you live in this world you will have a list of shoulds and you should probably honour them if you can, as long as they remain shoulds. You have to be mindful of consequences. But unimpeded expression comes from the emptiness within.

    “Like a long-legged fly upon the stream. His mind moves upon silence.” W.B.Yeats

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  • Disappointment

    November 21, 2015

    I am committed to do the work but the difficulties of my life continually take me out of it, leaving me feeling disappointed. Clearly I need to change my situation so I can do the work.

    For most of us, ordinary life is very hard. There are many setbacks and difficulties. Our attention is continually being pulled involuntarily in different directions. But let’s be clear. If we did not have these problems, we would have no interest in the work and no opportunity to work.

    I remember Baba Ram Das saying: “No appointment, no disappointment.”  This is true from one point of view and it’s a valuable insight, but not one for all occasions. The first step towards the work is taken when you come to understand that the world cannot satisfy you, that for all its beauty, everything it has to offer you is insufficient. This is a great disappointment but a necessary one.

    And it must be noted that successful people, in the conventional sense, are rarely attracted to the fourth way for long. They may think that this work will help them be more successful, that it will give them additional powers for personal attainment, but it is not so.

    The difficulties of life are necessary for work. The greater difficulty is when we are no longer disappointed for ourselves because then a huge source of work energy is lost. Equanimity is much more dangerous to one’s work than struggle, although equanimity also has its place in the later stages, when it is no longer a cover for complacency or defeatism. But we have the ongoing heartbreak of disappointment on behalf of others, especially our children and young friends.

    For me, the disappointment leads to negative thoughts and moods which make it impossible to work.

    Dealing with one’s negativity about oneself is absolutely critical. Continual self-criticism is enormously destructive. In the process of learning meditation, control of these states can be developed. Essentially,  in meditation you learn to separate from thinking, to know in real time that you are perception and attention, not the thinker. This separation is dis-identification, a disengagement from the thinker and a re-engagement with voluntary attention. It is not stopping thoughts. It is a shift of identity.

    This does not come easily for me.

    There are other things you can do. Vajrayana teaches hundreds of possible antidotes. Strictly speaking, meditation is not an antidote. Placing attention on sensation can be effective. Negative thoughts need a certain amount of attention to flourish. Shifting attention elsewhere is like cutting the power cord on negative thinking. Move to an activity that diverts your attention.

    Voluntarizing negative states and self-talk can also generate surprisingly positive results; rather than compound the negativity by criticizing yourself for it, agree to go into it. Intentionally make yourself emphatically negative and see what it looks like (probably best in private). You may even laugh at yourself, which is a most wonderful antidote.

    Ultimately, the only real refuge is to be present in the present. That is where real help can be found. The past and the future have almost all the negativity in our lives. Of course, there may be exceptions such as those who experience high levels of physical pain.

    One general rule. When in a negative space, do not let yourself think about or act upon anything important, until the mood has passed. Protect what is precious to you.

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  • Invocation

    June 10, 2015

    I wish to inquire into the meaning of invocation and why it is so emphasized in this work.

    Spiritual evolution ultimately requires help from higher forces. The opponent of progress is self. I am the barrier to my own evolution. If evolution depends on me alone, I am lost. My efforts to change are a reflection of my limited understanding and my motivations which prevent real change. Can the one who seeks change be simultaneously the agent of change that is by its very nature unknown to me?

    Furthermore, if spiritual evolution is real, would it not suggest that I am not the first and that others who have gone before me may have been able to find help? Perhaps they are able and willing to help me?

    The idea of help suggests teachers and schools. Let us be sceptical and assume that they know nothing more than you do and that they have personal motives. Not a bad assumption, in my experience. Is there another kind of help?

    A good place to start is to take an inventory. What tools for your possible evolution do you have available to you now? Can you access capacities that are not tainted by self? This is a serious question each of you should work with diligently. Today, I will skip to the answers I have found but you need to go through the same process and not rely on my work.

    In my experience, the first and most important tool you have access to is attention. Attention is the perfect catalyst…it initiates various processes but it is itself not changed by them. We have discussed attention many times in our group and it is not the subject of this inquiry. A second immensely valuable tool is invocation.

    What is invocation? To invoke is to call. It is a very specific use of the human capacity for speech.

    Vajrayana says that humans consist of body, speech and mind; speech connects body to mind, it is the subtle bridge between form and essence, a midpoint of transformation and a doorway to invisible worlds.

    A word may be used to create an initial vibration. Certain words are invocational; they have a shape, sound and texture which together suggest the inner nature of what they name, even when pronounced inwardly as fikr. The word creates a vibration in body and mind. The machine being quiet and passive, the word in the mind finds its counterpart, its echo, in sensation. Word and sensation held gently by attention resonate and invite feeling. All other content is ignored.

    And so the presence of that which is named is brought into the present. This is invocation.

    Invocation is deepened by inviting the invoked to shape thinking, sensing and feeling. Attention is a key…it does not wander but continues to connect to, and accommodate, the sensations and feelings of the invoked, and amplify them. A rose is easily thought and sensed but its essence is a feeling, a vibration of exact frequency which is expressed in every rose.

    Submission is the other key. Are you willing to become the invoked and know it from the inside…knowledge by presence as the sufis say?  Anything of your self is hindrance. Submission begins even before the invocation, in a relaxation of the body/mind, a releasing of self.

    On Monday night, we invoked XX. The experience was not what might have been imagined or pre-figured in thought. Knowing through invocation is not anything like thinking. In this form of engagement, you may experience a reciprocated love.

    Invocation is a talent. Are you an invocant? The invisible world is looking for invocants who can help its ‘residents’ enter and assist this continuum of sense and form. Who or what are these residents? They are qualities of essence, of being, most often experienced as feeling, perhaps embodied by an historical personage or an angel, perhaps having no form at all. Not all of them make good guests. You must be discerning, trustworthy and reliable. You cannot always call the one you wish; you must work with those whose presence, for various reasons, are nearest your present, those most in sympathy with where you are, inwardly and outwardly. This is not work for proud or precious people.

    I have heard you say that invocation and contemplation are closely related.

    You could say that contemplation is an invocation that is held. Contemplation is not mere thinking. The word contemplation is derived from templum, a proto-indo-european root word meaning to stretch or to string…a string that connects us to the worlds within and above?

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