Continuously Unfolding

Any path of any teacher can rapidly become a dead end for followers and does not lead to freedom for most.

But is that what spirituality is supposed to be about: freedom?

That was never my motivation. For me, I sought the final truth because I was lost in my mind. I was confused by so many concepts from Western Philosophy, Eastern Philosophy, science, politics, economics, etc., and all I found were myriads upon myriads of concepts, most of which contradicted other sets of concepts that I also felt had a degree of truth.

But even from an early age knew there were alternatives to scientific, religious, and spiritual knowing, and that was “searching” for a bedrock of faith, a fundamental state, or that elusive final truth by looking within.

But searching within can be at least as confusing as searching outside for truth, especially given all the neo-Advaitin teachers who guide people with direct pointing to the simple-minded and superficial discoveries they have made concerning the emptiness of concepts including the concept of a personal self. Yet these superficial discoveries seem to satisfy the spiritual hungers of a vast number of people, at least for a time, just as other spiritual concepts found in fundamentalist Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths, satisfy an even larger number of people the world around.

And in the area of spirituality and religion there are so many experts who gain followers through eloquence, or simplicity of their teaching, or clarity of concepts, or promise of spiritual powers, or promises of finding peacefulness and silence within, or finding bliss, joy, aliveness, or Self. People who follow these teachers can gain the ends those teachers teach and be satisfied for a while with Emptiness, silence, bliss, unity consciousness, Self-Realizations of one sort or another, only to—years later—find these ends wanting, initiating a new round of internal discomfort and abandonment of those earlier hard-won concepts or spiritual states. You see, they did not find their own truth, but found someone else’sand made it their own.

I am not saying that because you discover in yourself something your teacher found in him or herself, that the experience for you was not real.  No indeed.  The places found within are definitely real and may offer salvation and joy.  But it was not the culmination of your own ultimate path.  Yes, maybe you stayed in Robert’s Arhat  Nirvana for a few years, or stabilized in Sahaj Samadhi, or discovered the light of Consciousness.  But only that? Is that all?

Is there a final truth, an ultimate teaching? Or, like Buddha after seven years of seeking, turn within and say to himself, I will kill myself unless I find my truth. Thereafter he finds the truth of Nirvana, or attaining a no-desire state of purity which later becomes teachings of emptiness and no-self, by relying only on himself and deep meditation under a Bo tree. He found his own ultimate truth which may have matured over the rest of his 47 years of teaching, but apparently the peace of the Arhat is what he settled on.

Me? I know that for myself I am pursuing a path of endless openings and growth having followed many paths with many awakenings, and many truths. It is a path of life-long adventure, of unfolding one’s own truth by being a light onto oneself yet being completely open to listening to the truth of others to find if there is something worthwhile to explore. (I know many of you will not believe I am open to listening to the truth of others.  But I am if they are offering something different from the paths I have already traveled and left behind, such as Neo-Advaita, Buddhism, Zen, Advaita, and even Kashmir Shaivism and depth psychology.)

But, while I have found many truths, many states of being, many kinds of emptiness, bliss, and energy levels, that which I most prize is my ability to love others as myself.

I have one cat, Buddy, who I love so deeply that we have become fast friends. I know his ways as well as my own. I feel his sentience, his life-force and his openness to me in my heart area—literally, I feel his tenderness and consciousness existence as my own, and delight in his happiness. But this delight is always undermined by the fact he is not well and the vets don’t know what is wrong with him. His death will affect me deeply when it comes to pass, but that is the price you pay when you love someone or something deeply.

Buddha blew out that flame of love in himself and it transformed into a generic compassion to teach people how to go beyond love, attachments, desires to the Nirvanic peace of no desires, no self and no suffering—to kill the ego so to speak. And some day perhaps even this ability to love so deeply and with such attached concern on my part may die in me, for I realize nothing in life stays still.

There is no final state, no ultimate teachings, Sahaja Samadhi is just another dead end path for me no matter how happy it makes some others, or provides some with a captivating goal. Ditto attaining the Void, or attaining constant bliss, or stillness or Christ Consciousness. All of these I have experienced and they are all transcient, even as is life.

What I am transcends all of these teachings and experiences. I am beyond all teachings, all experiences, all truths because I contain them all. Still, for me, the most important thing in life is having somebody or something to love. It keeps the ever-present Void from getting too cold, too remote, too dispassionate.

Buddy likes spending time here with his deceased brothers and sisters