Riding the Leading Edge

Written on June 13, 2008 by Tom Stine / 22 Comments »



Creative Commons License credit: david.nikonvscanon

When I ride on a roller coaster, I love to ride in the front seat. Everything seems to happen right now when you sit in the front. I put my arms up, of course, no holding on, no matter what the coaster does. Upside down, slammed to the side, you name it. It’s just more fun to be on the leading edge of the experience, arms up, come what may.

I realized recently that this same attitude is very important to take with life in general. Especially with thoughts and feelings. We usually “ride” our thoughts and feelings, especially our unpleasant feelings, in the back seat, as far from the leading edge as possible. We hope that the unpleasant ones will simply go away, and if we sit far enough away from them, maybe they will. But they never do. All feelings will keep returning until they are experienced fully.

More and more I’ve had the experience of moving to the front seat and experiencing most of my feelings and thoughts head on. While I can feel everything more powerfully, and some things seem a little more frightening, the whole experience feels more alive and interesting. It feels almost invigorating. I feel like I’m on the leading edge of my life, and it feels good.

In many senses, being on the leading edge is what awakening is all about. We wake-up from riding on a roller coaster with our eyes closed, holding on for dear life, sure we are going to die a horrible death. And we awaken to the realization that the sun is out, the coaster is flying 90 miles per hour, we are strapped in and loving the ride, moment to moment, in the front seat.


Creative Commons License credit: alex quintana

The leading edge. That sums it up. We are like surfers, riding the leading edge of the wave, hanging out on the front side. We may always be in the Now as Eckhart Tolle would say, but we can either live it hanging off the back end or riding the leading edge, wind in our faces, hair blowing, shouting, “Yeah baby!”

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Guru Quotes

All of our thoughts are conditioned. We all are thinking exactly along the lines we are conditioned to think. Programmed like a computer. Anybody who thinks they are actually choosing of their own free will the line of thinking that they have is completely deluded by their thinking.

—Adyashanti


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.

—Suzanne Segal

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.

—Jack Kornfield

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?

—Siddhārtha Gautama, The Dhammapada

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.

—Anthony de Mello