Awake in This Life

Communicating either with those not familiar with the Path or with those who reject it outright can be challenging. Unconsciousness is just about the most contagious ailment that humans carry, but Awakening doesn’t depend on another’s ability to share each step with us along the Path. Rather, Awakening can only ever depend on our ability to relate to our own experiences, regardless of who is involved or in what state they might be. Sometimes, the challenge of another’s unconsciousness is exactly what our practice needs in order to keep us on our toes. Meeting up with another’s contracted self is a great opportunity for us to actively practice openness. We do this like we would with any circumstance: we meet and communicate without greed or aversion from a place of total relaxation. This meeting and communication offers whomever or whatever we encounter both our full presence and the spontaneous compassion that comes with it. But as this encounter is going on, we need to be aware of the intention behind our communication. Are we really trying to hear the other person, or are we trying to manipulate him into changing something about himself? Are we really trying to see the other person as he is, or are we trying to get something from him? If there is any move on our part to achieve a particular outcome from our meeting, our words and actions become reflections of resistance, and we miss the opportunity to Awaken with the other person.

Whenever our intention comes from a place that is resisting or wanting to change something about what is, we can immediately run into trouble. Our intention greatly influences the way we use language with each other, so being mindful as we use our words can be amazingly helpful in communicating from a truthful place. Our words are the sharpened edge of the sword, so to speak, that can either cause great harm or can cut through the veils of delusion, thereby unleashing great beauty upon everything. It all depends on whether or not our intention is informed by our small selves or our Big Selves.

Take a discussion with your favorite teenager, for example. If your communication with them can come consciously from your deepest, most generous intention, and your words are chosen skillfully, there is a much better chance, though no guarantee, that they will be able to hear not only what you are saying but also the care that infuses your connection to them. This type of situation can yield outcomes that benefit both sides. On the other hand, if your communication with your favorite teenager is fueled by a desire for some kind of personal gain or control, there is much less of a chance for a win-win situation, let alone Enlightenment. This is partly due to the fact that teens, in my experience, are at the high tide of egoic greed and aversion. Their unconsciousness is worn as obviously as their stylistic choices. In fact, much of their unconsciousness seems to be consciously part of their style. Regardless, like all other beings, teens are looking for some way out of their unique mixture of arrogance and fear. When our intention is clear and we are speaking to them from our Big Self, we can make connections that authentically bridge the gap between self and other. Even if we are disappointing our favorite teenagers, their anger, fear, and grief is infused with a reflection of our care, thereby keeping in short supply the ingredients for all-out war.

No matter the situation, it’s helpful to remember that our words are powerful. Our spoken language is the functional push and pull of any activity of our minds. Generous thoughts yield opportunities for caring words, while selfish thoughts yield opportunities for word-induced suffering. In spiritual work, we often find that regardless of their meaning or orientation, words get in the way of our ability to articulate any truly transformational event or activity. Still, these experiences beyond our articulation can have profound impacts on us. When our minds generate a series of thoughts around our experience and then systematically assign words and meaning to these thoughts, we usually fall short of adequately conveying the mystery of our experience.

This clumsiness happens because our words are the way we articulate mind, and the most profound spiritual experiences transcend the mind’s boundaries. This gap leaves the mind groping for signs and signifiers with which to communicate meaning. Words are what our minds create in order to participate in the arena of circumstance; in contrast, profound spiritual experiences can take us to the source of this arena. So our language can leave us feeling like we’ve been asked to repair a watch with a truck mechanic’s tool set. Some rare individuals have a gift for being able to point practitioners verbally into the eye of Spirit. But, those who are best at it merely point us in the right direction. They are careful never to allow us to confuse their words with what their words are pointing out. This is part of what makes these teachers so great. Great teachers, in whatever their form, recognize that words often amplify our spiritual clumsiness, and so they stay silent, rightly believing that their presence and silent intention can communicate more generosity than their words. This silent presence is very difficult for egos to accept, which explains why most spiritual seeking can be so short-lived. Egos are not interested in anything revolutionary unless they can control the experience. When we learn to communicate in a way that isn’t bound by ego’s selfishness, our ego is forced to get out of the way of a white hot clarity of intentional generosity. Exposure to this flame of magnanimity has the potential to change ego’s relationship to everything, since everything starts to reveal itself as an expression of exactly what is beyond the scope of anything ego can grasp. This kind of communication may or may not involve words or sound. But for those ready to communicate from and as Spirit, a deep, silent connectivity awaits them.

This kind of silent, selfless communication is something the ego will do its best to avoid since it is being invited to do nothing less than purposefully lose everything that it deems necessary for its survival. Because of the ego’s oversensitivity and defensiveness, we need to be careful about the way we speak and connect with both ourselves and others as we progress down the Path leading us beyond its constraints. More often than not, we want to be gentle as we support others’ expansion. Once in a while, it helps not to be so gentle, but even in our not-so-gentleness, our intention needs to come from a place that inspires communication filled with compassion and care. Careless expressions only serve to bolster egoic dominance in our circumstances.

In careless expression, we can watch all sorts of problems arise, especially in our intimate relationships. Individuals, for example, wanting to convince their partners of the rightness of their position are simply allowing the ego to get back into a managerial position for both individuals in the partnership. This process is tricky, because once we start questioning our lives at the deepest level and expanding into an ever-broadening sense of self, we can’t really fit back into our old skin. We have begun to face our moments courageously as they arise, and we find it unnecessary and undesirable to go back to participating in life from a contracted place of fear. Because of this courage and commitment, we tend to resist others’ pushes and pulls back into our old ways, and this new way of living threatens everyone around us who isn’t on this Path—especially those who are most significant to us.

In my experience, I’ve seen two things happen to intimate partnerships faced with situations like this: either the presence of Awareness brings the couple closer together and the relationship becomes a sacred spiritual practice, or Awareness becomes unbalanced, leaving one participant on the Path while the other gets lost, thus driving the partnership apart. Either way, things won’t stay the same as long as there is an intentional commitment to Awaken by one of the partners. Staying together in this capacity is difficult unless absolute attention is paid to an authentic generosity directed towards the relationship itself. This generosity doesn’t guarantee that the relationship will survive in the traditional sense, but it does mean that both parties will be more conscious no matter what happens. If a couple can continue to dance together spiritually, the relationship will be oriented around a more expansive, intentional, generous, and enriching consciousness. If the couple splits up, both people still have an opportunity to orient their lives around a more expansive, selfless consciousness either alone or with a partner who may be a better match. Whatever the case, the big message to all of us is that it is unnecessary to wait for someone to join us in our intentional journey along the Path. Ultimately, we as individuals are the only ones who can take the steps anyway. Waiting for another to walk with us distorts the whole experience by generating even more attachments to various imagined outcomes of the journey. Engaging fully in the process whether alone or with a partner is the work.

In taking on this challenge, we have a chance to provide an amazing service to our most intimate partnerships (and everybody else) when we Know that people are not their unconsciousness. It can be so helpful to take the time to notice how our partners, like everyone else, are always so much more than what is small in them. Continually recognizing their essential greatness helps nourish our compassionate communication. This doesn’t mean that we should stay with our partner no matter what they do. Leaving one’s partner, in fact, might be the best choice, since it might give him or her a better opportunity to Awaken. Whatever the decision, it helps us to recognize that no one can embody compassionate Awareness and simultaneously remain completely caught by the ego. Partners will ultimately need to choose for themselves whether to remain unconscious or to allow an unattached Knowing support the expression of their own liberation. We can encourage and help our partners make this latter choice by being as aware as possible in all aspects of our relationship and then participating fully from this presence. Again, no matter what the outcome, the world will be more conscious because of our fearless and intentional commitment to clarity and love.

There will be more grace and ease for all of us in our day-to-day lives if we remember that the work of a committed practitioner is threatening for any ego. We can expect friends, family members, and life partners to act out unconsciously at times since they can feel challenged by our practice and its expression. The important thing is to witness their resistance without letting our own egos get caught by their unconsciousness.

One of my teachers told me that I should always be thankful whenever an opportunity for Freedom shows itself. She went on to say that whenever those closest to me generated any resistance either in me or in themselves, I should “be present for it with [my] whole body and mind… especially when things get really difficult.” If we are totally alert when tension arises, every personal challenge becomes an opportunity for us to open beyond the boundaries imposed by our attachments to our histories and expectations. When we are truly alert, we can learn to welcome all challenges, all resistance, and all negativity that might come our way since it shows us yet more stuff that we get to release in order to continue walking the Path. With increasingly less baggage to carry, we have a chance to learn not to let ego corrupt any offering in any moment by pointing fingers, getting defensive, acting judgmental, or blaming anyone in any way. From this open perspective, we see that we do not need to react to anyone’s sense of lack, since we see that we are all actually beautiful expressions of fullness.

A tall order? Perhaps. But the only way not to succeed in this work is, as the Buddha says, not to start and not to continue. As long as even one person follows the intention for a compassionate evolution, the whole Universe changes. As usual, humanity will always experience difficulties, but just as the Universe itself is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, so too more and more people across the globe have the chance to recognize that our very survival is interconnected with all other aspects of the planet. Amidst all of the cries of desperation, compassionate people will begin listening in an unattached way to what is at the center of all the pain experienced by themselves and others. Their listening is the key, since hearing and witnessing the cries of the world is always the unattached recognition and acceptance of things as they are, and it is this recognition and acceptance that allows all beings to be generous with each other.

Evil

In our meditation group, the study of compassion invariably brings up discussions that explore evil. How is it that we can be compassionate for people who wish to do us harm? How does one, from the enlightened perspective, make sense of the tragedies that keep happening in the world? How can we possibly be compassionate to those who are polluting, abusing the poor, or invading other countries?

These are all great questions, but among the first things we should be careful of as practitioners is to not fall into the trap of trying to understand everything in terms of right and wrong. This dualistic arena lets the ego become a self-righteous gladiator. Looking past our personal sense of right and wrong enables us to experience the impersonal and profound love of God. We let this experience come through us by simply letting go and then acting from this place of release. This letting go of surety goes against a very deep, habitual momentum, but releasing the desire to make sense of anything gives us the opportunity to experience a deep intimacy with all events. This intimacy reveals the profound stillness that compassionately embraces all beings. Regardless of our preferred wisdom tradition, we can embody compassion with practice.

As much as the ego would like us to make sense of the cries and horrors of the world, making sense of them misses the point. Making sense of anything puts us right back in the personal experience of mind, as opposed to the impersonal depth of peace. Making sense of things sets up mental views that beget clinging, and clinging is precisely what leads to tragedy. Getting intimate with tragedy, on the other hand, as well as the intense unconsciousness that we call evil, merely allows us the chance to experience a nourishing stillness in our relationship to whatever the tragedy or evil might be. We see that tragedy leads to evil, and vice versa. This view takes us away from the pain embedded in the move toward attaching to any form of rage, sadness, meaning or understanding. An open, undivided wisdom develops in us as we begin to respond in compassionate ways to whatever type of horror might present itself.

As difficult as it might be for ego to process any of this, God, or Spirit, has never been separate from history’s ugliness. The ovens at Auschwitz, the killing fields in Cambodia, the machetes in Rwanda, the camps in Darfur, and the attacks on 9/11 all had an equal presence of the Infinite. On 9/11, Spirit manifested as each of the rescue workers, the secretaries, the cops, the firefighters, as well as the hijackers. Everyone involved gave gifts that day to each other. Even the perpetrators of deep unconsciousness gave millions of people the opportunity to uncover Spirit in all its chaotic, unsettling, profoundly ungraspable glory. The same applies for any event that ego labels as evil. This isn’t to offer an excuse for all the harm that has been caused by deeply attached egos. But any tragedy can remind each of us that an opening to God is always available.

From the Awakened context, God is not separate from anything, ever. In fact, ego shows its folly any time we think that God is outside of our experience or that we are in any way separate from Him. For us to think that God is “out there,” and that we are somehow separate from His presence is precisely what generates the egotistical attachments that perpetuate fear. Fear is what leads us directly into the fires of hatred. This deeply held delusion of our separation from Spirit is what has created all the pain that humanity has ever experienced. Attachment to a felt sense of separation from others is exactly what lit the ovens, stacked the skulls, tortured the innocent, maimed the children, and flew the planes into the towers. This attachment is also what elicits the passionate reactions to all of it, and it is what allows us to harm each other in every case.

Our compassion is unleashed on the world when we realize that God, or Spirit, or Infinity, or whatever name we might give to the Absolute is never separate from anything. Ever. As much as ego will resist Spirit’s conscious expression in this life, letting it happen is key to unlocking our freedom from all of our suffering. In the middle of all the horror, Spirit shines its compassionate light equally through all of it, offering us each a chance to surrender to what is happening and a chance to act from an unattached and compassionate place. At the same time, ego, both singularly and collectively, can refuse Spirit’s offering, preferring, as it always will, attachment instead of surrender.

It is important to note that when egos become collective in their contraction, consciousness evaporates. The greatest of human tragedies manifest that perfectly respectable people have done unconscious things when their minds and bodies become attached to particular perspectives. Evil, then, is a label that we can give this behavior as long as we see it as an extreme version of attachment born out of a profound contraction of ego around any opinion. Spirit, or God, can be recognized as precisely what is beyond all of this: an expansive Presence of Infinite Knowing of whatever this moment offers. As such, Spirit is absolutely and totally beyond any mind-identified concept of right or wrong, good or bad. This recognition reveals a truth that we rarely consider: in each moment we all have the potential to embody this infinite and compassionate grace of Spirit or to embody an horrific evil generated by the small self’s contraction.

So in the middle of any of our horrors, when attachment manifests in unspeakably destructive ways, we also can witness unbelievable acts of compassionate presence and selflessness. We watch breathlessly as the selfless enter hell so that others can live. We see strangers in positions of incredible personal risk reach out to help those in harm’s way. We see ourselves hold each other, simply because the Infinite within us manifests as a beautiful and divine expression of deep connectivity. Our spiritual cores are exposed to each other, and we effortlessly offer the beauty of touch that lets each of us know that we are all part of one deep singularity, now experienced as the summit of the Mountain of Spirit. There is no part of God that is not here on the summit. Everything is simply Spirit. When we become intimate with life in this way and consistently engage in nonattached witnessing of our experience, all of us become better listeners and can help all beings realize the divinity of simple and mindful compassion as well as the freedom brought on by the all-encompassing and unattached love that is God. When we can do this consciously, we effortlessly offer a wise presence that embodies the compassionate answer to prayer.