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.
Looking forward to what you create. Namaste.
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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.
Enjoy the rest of your summer.
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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!
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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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Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are.
In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.
Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?
We always want someone else to change so that we will feel good. But has it ever struck you that even if your wife changes or your husband changes, what does that do to you? You’re just as vulnerable as before; you’re just as idiotic as before; you’re just as asleep as before. You are the one who needs to change, who needs to take medicine. You keep insisting, “I feel good because the world is right.” Wrong! The world is right because I feel good. That’s what all the mystics are saying.
. 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.
