Before enlightenment go to work, pay mortgage; after enlightenment go to work, pay mortgage. (An old Zen saying i just made up.)
I love it! A great re-working of a classic Zen saying. I got to thinking how to apply it specifically to my life right now, with regard to my daily activities. Here is one I thought of just now:
Before enlightenment, fix breakfast, take kid to school; after enlightenment, fix breakfast, take kid to school.
So, what I would like for you all to do is make up your own versions, using things from your life, and leave them in the comments. It would be fun to see how we can apply a wonderful Zen saying to each of our lives.
Summer is a great season. A time away from school for kids, a time of travel for families, and a time for enjoying the outdoors. Here in Missouri, it does get a bit hot in the summer, but this summer is a very strange exception. Only one week of hot weather. School begins tomorrow for my kiddo, and he just might wear long pants.
And what does this have to do with the spiritual journey? Not a thing. Well, at least not overtly. The spiritual journey has seasons, too, some hot and sweltering like summer, others cold and dreary like winter. Summer is a time of growth for crops and everything that grows. If there is plenty of rain, corn grows tall in the summer heat. Much like people do. They often learn to grow tall in the heat of their spiritual fire.
All the heat, though, does require a bit of rest at times. After a period of strong spiritual growth, it is sometimes necessary to take a little vacation. I’ve been doing that off and on the past few weeks. Very helpful. I recommend you give it a try. Give yourself a few days or weeks away from any formal practice or procedure. Be a little loose and more spontaneous. See what happens. You will probably find that growth still continues, even without your efforts. Spirit grows us, so how could growth stop? Just like a well watered plant, you will continue to grow.
I’ve never been a big fan of affirmations. Many spiritual people are, and I respect that, but I’m just not certain they work. The first time I ever tried doing affirmations, probably 15 or more years ago, I felt, well, incredibly fake telling myself something that just didn’t seem true. As they say around here, you can dress a pig in a bonnet, but you still got a pig (you just gotta love rural America). So, I rarely if ever used them. And I never use them now.
Of course, affirmations are probably the most ridiculed aspect of the entire self-help movement. Remember Stuart Smalley? I loved Al Franken standing in front of the mirror on Saturday Night Live and saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog gone it, people like me!” There seems to be a almost cultural bias against affirmations. So, maybe it isn’t just me.
So what isn’t quite right about affirmations? It seems to me that affirmations are fundamentally flawed. They always have an underlying assumption that says “something is wrong with me.” For instance, lets say that you are Stuart Smalley and you think you aren’t very smart. Every time you look in the mirror you say to yourself, consciously or otherwise, “God, I’m stupid.” You have come to believe this statement, deep down, with all the attached emotions and feelings associated with it.
Affirmations would have you start repeating to yourself, “I’m smart enough.” The idea is to counter the negative statement with a positive one. But does it work? Not for most people. Let me give you an illustration to show you why I say that affirmations don’t work. (Thanks to Hale Dwoskin for the following illustration which he often uses at Sedona Method retreats.)
Affirmations start with the negative statement, “God, I’m stupid.” Let’s represent this negative statement with a frowny face:
When you say an affirmation, you are attempting to change the negative to the positive belief, “I’m smart enough.”
Everything should be good now, right? Well, no. While you may repeat the affirmation, the negative belief hasn’t gone anywhere. It is still firmly planted in your mind. So what you get, in fact, is this:
And if you keep repeating the affirmation, day after day, it will get more and more in conflict with the old belief until you end up with a mess:
Is this what will always happen with affirmations? No, of course not. Sometimes they are successful. But millions of people have attempted to make changes in their lives with affirmations and, unfortunately, they quite often do not work. You simply end up with a subconscious mess. So, what can you do?
It seems almost obvious to me now that the better approach is to root out the negative belief instead, to let it go. If you look in the mirror and say, for instance, “God, I’m fat and ugly,” you are making a whole series of judgments about yourself that may, in fact, not be true.
Have you ever questioned these basic assumptions? Have you looked at the feelings that hold these judgments in place? Have you asked yourself what you might be gaining from believing that you are fat and ugly? Have you looked at your fears about being overweight, or your fears of being thin? What messages did you hear as a kid about being thin or good looking? You could ask a dozen more questions about yourself and thereby call into question your mantra, “God, I’m fat and ugly.”
In fact, you may discover that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Nothing. You aren’t skinny. So what? I mean really, right at this moment, are you any worse for wear? Are not all the negatives you’ve heard about being overweight somewhere off in the future? Are any of them here right now? Are you going to die right now if you don’t lose 50 pounds?
Whenever I get firmly rooted in right now and out of the fearful future, I quite often find that I’m far more capable of acting, far more motivated to make changes. I’m more open and more willing to try, to risk, to dare. And you probably are, too. Losing weight, exercising, whatever your personal challenge may be, suddenly becomes less daunting and more doable.
In a recent article, I wrote about the Sedona Method, a great program for helping to undo the negativity and judgments that we carry. Another program that I’m a fan of is Byron Katie’s “The Work”. Both of these techniques can be useful tools in letting go of the judgments and negative beliefs that keep us stuck. And they are, in a certain sense, valuable tools to have on the spiritual journey. They help us to uncover a much truer perspective about ourselves that helps us to see the fundamental truth about who we are.
And one last thought for you: I have a hunch that every time affirmations seem to work for someone, it is because at some level the person actually let go of the original negative belief. The success stems from the letting go, not the affirmation. That’s just a hunch, so I could be wrong. You never know!
I’ll leave you with a funny video that I watched this morning that got me thinking about affirmations. If affirmations work for you, then by all means, use them. But if not, I think you will get a kick out this video. Enjoy!
I heard a story a few years ago that perfectly illustrates most people’s experience with the spiritual journey and personal growth.
It seems a well known Tibetan Buddhist was speaking to a rather large gathering. He asked the audience at the beginning of his talk,
“Who among you feel strongly that you are on a spiritual path?
About half the crowd raised their hands. Rinpoche then said,
“Those of you who didn’t raise your hands should probably leave and not listen to my talk. If you are not on a spiritual path, don’t start now. It is way too hard and demanding, and you will often hate it.”
The audience was stunned. They came to hear a spiritual talk, something nice and warm and fuzzy to make them feel good. And here they were being told that many of them needed to leave. Then Rinpoche said,
“And those of you who raised your hands, you need to get a move on. If you have already started walking the path, you might as well finish.”
I love this story. Have not most, if not all, of us on the so-called spiritual path had our moments when we really hated this journey we started? If you remember the movie The Matrix, we at times have our moments like Cypher, when we wish we had told our personal Morpheus to “stick that red pill up his ass.” We have our moments when we wish that we were still stuck in the human muck of unconsciousness.
“If you’ve already started walking the path, you might as well finish.”
But once we start, well, “You might as well finish.” At times, it almost seems as if the universe is calling us to move forward, relentless urging us not to stop until we realize the truth of our being. Is not this the real essence of the spiritual journey? Is not this what it is all about? Fortunately, as we progress, we find that we simply cannot stop, nor do we want to stop. We find that our moments of anger at the path fades, until finally they are gone. Something shifts, and while we may at times be completely unconscious of who and what we are, the call that is ever present brings us back. We must continue and know the truth.
While we feel this drive to continue the journey, we eventually learn that, ultimately, the ego, the mind, the persona called “me,” whatever we wish to call this sense of separate identity, can do nothing to finally realize the truth. Realization comes from “the other side” as it were, it is revealed to us in its own way and its own time. However, it definitely seems to be the case that for the most part, a little bit of effort is often required. While sudden awakenings can and do occur, we usually must spend some time in preparation, in other words sitting, meditating, doing our practice, each and every day, for realization of the truth to occur.
So, my friends, let’s get moving. Let’s do what we know in our hearts we are called to do: spend a little time each day with the divine.
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The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what’s true, then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?
A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.
So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.
Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
Same is true of mind, "I", self, consciousness, etc. :-) || RT @Kalieezchild RT @Jyakunen: you will never find an "ego" -- absurd concept. 2 weeks ago
RT @Takuin If someone is hateful to you, or if you have been insulted, you may feel some kind of pain. But who, exactly, is being hurt? 2010-08-05
Spirituality: 6.7 billion caterpillars insisting they know what it's like to be a butterfly. Why not just become a butterfly and find out? 2010-07-27
If everything you thought was true turns out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, what then? 2010-07-25
RT @Takuin What if you woke up tomorrow and the search was gone? If nothing were left, what would you do? || Eat ice cream. Duh. :-) 2010-07-25
RT @AkebonoJishi Objective fact is just a notion -- like "Emptiness." || Beautiful, isn't it? 2010-07-23
RT @Takuin packing it in @ 3250 meters. || Very cool! I can't wait to see it next summer. Definitely coming to Japan. No climbing, tho. :-) 2010-07-16
Why is everyone so intent on silencing the mind? Just leave the damn thing alone and it shuts up all by itself! Make some tea, sit, and rest 2010-07-16
RT @noah8423 Either Truth is awake in you, or not. ... the thinking must stop to make room for that light. || Why MUST thinking stop? 2010-07-16
So many people know. Yet how many know that they don't know? ☺ 2010-07-14
. Both of these techniques can be useful tools in letting go of the judgments and negative beliefs that keep us stuck. And they are, in a certain sense, valuable tools to have on the spiritual journey. They help us to uncover a much truer perspective about ourselves that helps us to see the fundamental truth about who we are.
