Tag: enlightenment

Does spiritual growth require hard work?

 

A recurring theme in pretty well every spiritual tradition is the arduous nature of the practices needing to be undertaken in order to achieve spiritual growth. Indeed, this tendency is so pervasive that it is even often to be encountered in the ranks of those whose fundamental philosophy would seem incompatible with such a hypothesis. On the face of it, it seems, however, a very self-limiting belief. If I believe that only after long and arduous effort will I achieve my goals, then I am blind to grace in the here and now and necessarily consider myself unworthy of what the universe is gifting me. Perhaps I even downright refuse it.

The path of suffering is conceived of as redemptive in many traditions, even when it is inimical to the basic economy of salvation which that tradition puts forward. For those of us familiar with biblical Christianity, it is pretty clear in both the original Jesus tradition (i.e. Q) and in the later layers of the New Testament that salvation is an unmerited grace. This has nevertheless remained as shocking a view in the course of church history as it doubtless was when first expounded; and very many moralists and theologians have shied away from it or reinterpreted it to fit their moral a priori. How can it be that I belong to the community of the elect if there is no lower limit on the infamity of my behavior here on earth?

I do not wish to expound scripture here (not something I am given to doing), or solve the problem of evil, but I should of course point out that the notion that there is, after all, something to be done in order to secure salvation is a very convenient one for ecclesiastical hierarchies, without which their whole raison d’être would at the very least need to be radically reconsidered. The cui bono then is clear, especially when it fundamentally contradicts the supposed sacred texts.

It seems to me that the whole notion that salvation or enlightenment can be earned is patent ontological nonsense and should be mercilessly put to rest. Enlightenment is, or can be, as easy as breathing. But is our reluctance to give up the idea of spiritual practice as necessary to, or at least somehow facilitating, spiritual growth solely due to the fact that we have been brainwashed into following orders? Very largely, but not I think entirely. Spiritual growth does not require work, but it requires choice; and choice is hard. Not because it encounters resistance – true choice does not – but because we are not free to choose. We have limited our ability to choose in so many ways that we need to unlearn, and surely there are spiritual practices that can help us in this unlearning. This, however, does not turn them into prerequisites or even make them efficacious. The contrary belief, it seems to me, is more of an obstacle than anything these practices may be designed to overcome.

I think spiritual growth is super-easy, and the easier we make it the easier it will be. At the same time, that easiness itself may, for many of us, be very difficult. But spiritual growth is a process, it is not an end point. What you need to learn now is easy for you to learn now. Stop repeating the mantra of difficulty and it will stop being difficult.

It is very fortunate for the human race that spiritual growth is easy because, if it were not, few would venture onto the path and fewer still be successful. That tiny elite would never suffice to heal the massive wounds of the planet and cataclysm would be the only possible outcome.

You may object that this very state of the world we now live in gives the lie to what I am saying. But I think the fact of its easiness has to be revealed and has to be accepted. This has to date too rarely been the case. As I said, even spiritual authors whose work I value are often guilty of giving at least passive sustenance to the myth of difficulty. It seems almost inevitable: what else would they write about and how would they earn a living? But I do not criticize them: it may well be that many people need difficulty before they can discover that they do not need it. I do, though, want to emphasize that we need to be alert to this bias in spiritual literature and practices because it is one we are also very attached to in our hearts. Spiritual teacher X may not really be saying that you need to follow the Y-fold path of whatever in order to attain enlightenment, but even if (s)he isn’t, we are very likely to interpret their words in that sense. That is because in fact we do not want enlightenment or at least not too much of it; all we want is comfort. And a true guru knows this. I have absolutely no problem with that if it is your choice; really, it is totally legitimate, there is no blame attached. No-one is saying that you have to release your entire karmic burden in this lifetime. This may not be possible for you. All I am saying is that you can. It is no more difficult than you make it.

If you have a practice, let it be something that gives you joy.

Love and blessings,

Sacred sexuality

Amongst those interested in tantra, there is often a tendency to view sacred union in an abstract, metaphysical way which rarely corresponds to people’s experience. This is particularly so when tantra is repackaged as feel-good practices for couples. The striving after cosmic orgasm in union becomes, I have no doubt, a complete illusion for many, which entirely masks the essential radicalism which tantra embodies.

I suggest that, in so doing, we reify an abstraction, while allowing ourselves to maintain an ambiguous relationship towards that which concretely points towards it – its sociobiological context.

A sacred approach to sexuality has to begin at the roots and must be absolutely free of any social discourse which attempts to frame its expression. Transcendence in union, I suggest, is the end result of a process that begins in our bodies. We often try to judge and direct this process, either suppressing sexual instincts or, on the contrary, obsessively stimulating our sexual imagination in order to obtain a response which is not organically present. However, like everything else in life, we cannot productively force sexual feeling either into being or into non-being; we must let it come to us, bestow its gifts, and lead where it will.

We fear the destination of a liberated sexuality only because we bring to it too little awareness or we emancipate ourselves only from a part of the oppressive framing discourse. So many voices in society tell us that if we feel something then it “must mean” X, or if we do not feel it then it “must mean” Y. But feeling a sexual response preordains absolutely nothing, and presents a useless degree of risk only if you are not ready to be free. Otherwise it shows only that you are alive, and offers a bliss beyond analysis, just as does any other transcendent experience such as a sunset, a butterfly, or the laughter of a child. We are always free to choose how we respond to any stimulus, and to my mind this response, whilst not unimportant, is secondary. We may often be lying to ourselves if we claim to admit the feeling but manage the response, but still it is fundamentally true that no feeling requires a certain response. It merely opens our eyes to something that our biological nature wants, to a certain beauty which is already present within.

We cannot claim to consider the sexual act as sacred unless we begin by honoring the drive and allowing it to lead us into plenitude. It may well be a hard teacher, but if we are serious about living in alignment with our nature then we must embrace all of its wisdom and teachings. I see the sexual drive as an inner guru attempting to lead us into the light, but one which is so often suppressed that its distorted, violent manifestations are frequently catastrophic – a fault which is roundly to be ascribed to the distorting discourse and not to the drive itself.

To allow this energy to guide us, it is clear to me, though, that we have to abandon mononormativity.  We need also, though, to maintain an incredible openness of heart and hence vulnerability; this is the only way that we will learn lessons and not simply get hurt. Paradoxically it is only by opening ourselves to feeling pain in the short run that we can avoid it predominating over the long run.

This process of opening up has of course to take place in stages. I am not advocating a great leap forwards, and it is fine for me that all sorts of things exist which allow people to take things at their own pace, and even take time out or place limits which they never deconstruct. However, I do not think that it is ethically justified, as some do, to market something in a form which does not make sense just because it allows people indefinitely to maintain a comfortable illusion.

In my opinion, mononormative tantra is simply an oxymoron. Either you remain behind in your nest, or you abandon yourself to the winds.

Better food, worse sex?

I have just completed Jared Diamond’s at times fascinating account of how the economic geography of today’s world came into play. Predictably, the major culprit (or hero if you will)  is the same agricultural revolution which Ryan and Jethá in Sex at Dawn blame for the human race’s unnatural fate of sexless monogamy, in turn both blamed by Reich for giving rise to endemic neurosis and feted by Freud as a precondition of civilization. This inevitably raises the question of whether it is actually possible for the human race to buck this secular trend and live a natural existence of any sort under by now fundamentally transformed social conditions.

Mystics often float the idea that our species is engaged in a spiritual evolution. It is quite hard for me to buy into this notion. Evolution in any case is not a one-way street: organisms also get simpler to adapt to their environment, not only more complicated. Indeed, both Diamond and Ryan document instances of this happening in our own species. We tend to assume we in the West are smarter than hunter-gatherers, but it turns out that the opposite applies. Intelligence is much more predictive of the chances of passing on ones genes in primitive societies than it is in post-industrial ones, and in keeping with this, the average native of Papua New Guinea is more intelligent than the average Englishman. He also has a larger penis and significantly higher sperm count.

It seems to me that we basically live in a state of alienation which we have some idea now how we got into, but no idea how to get out of. Not only is the Enlightenment myth of constant progress dead, but we perhaps have to get used to the idea that we have regressed instead. And even if we do believe that human societies are getting fairer, less violent and generally less neurotic, then clearly there has at least been a period, presumably until fairly recently, when the contrary was the case. Moreover, Freud’s Faustian bargain might even have been acceptable if it was only about sex. But if the cost of adapting to modern civilization is in fact a large loss of enjoyment in life and atrophy of both body and spirit, then might we not really be better off abandoning much of what we have built and starting over?

I do not have an answer to this question other than to observe it is not an obvious or even well-defined option. The myth of the Golden Age is omnipresent in our collective memory and wildly opposing views on the quality of prehistoric life pitted philosophers in the iconoclastic, naturalist tradition of Rousseau and later Nietzsche against the likes of Burke, Hobbes and Voltaire. The so called “paleolithic diet” is a controversial attempt to restore an analogous nutritional environment to the one that existed in hunter-gatherer times, and the barefoot movement shares similar aims. But primitivism, it seems, whilst it can be a source of inspiration in trying to uncover some of the ways in which modern life does not serve our health and happiness, can hardly be an agenda.

Ennui

On his excellent blog, my friend (teacher?) Dirk Liesenfeld recently posted an article discussing (in German of course) a question that we probably all have asked ourselves – what happens once you reach enlightenment?

As a child I asked myself a similar question – doesn’t heaven sound really boring? Of course that’s actually a bit of a different question since here we are talking not about individual life perpetuated after death, but about continued life before death when all striving is nonetheless over. Still these questions have in common that they both cast doubt on how hard one should try to attain salvation and, in particular, is there any great rush?

Dirk describes us two scenarios. One leads to physical death and/or insanity (that one is particularly unappealing), the other to living in an almost unnoticed state of bliss, as pure love. Statistically the former case seems to predominate – though that may of course just be because the latter cases make a lot less noise. You get crazy, he says, in particular when the whirlwind of enlightenment tears up the roots of your humanity. There is nothing wrong with that craziness, per se, but it must seem unattractive to a potential disciple and certainly it seems a bit of a waste that someone who could share so much with the world doesn’t end up doing so. Though whether the world has the slightest interest in listening is, of course, another question.

The problem I have is that to feel estranged from daily life really doesn’t require one to be enlightened. It doesn’t even require one ever to have experienced tantra or any other authentic spiritual experience. It requires no more than a certain sensitivity to the complete madness and cruelty that surrounds us and its shocking juxtaposition to what is truly of value and beautiful. One of the main obstacles to spiritual growth must be, surely, the unbearableness of that shocking realization of human suffering, Weltschmerz. How much of it, indeed, can one person bear without going crazy?

In the world I know, the one I know in my heart I mean, all things are sacred. The joy that we experience in contact with others and with the world around us is beyond words. People love each other. No one would hurt a child. And this is not some idle utopia, nor even confined to tantra workshops, it is a part of my daily reality.

A much greater part, though, is spent being painfully reminded of how much the few positive things I can bring into the world are massively outweighed by the brutality of the established order. That’s both depressing and a major weight around my shoulders. It seems likely that this great mass of deadly inertia affects me negatively much more than I affect it positively.

Although I do not think my views are exceptionally odd or unnatural, I do find it very difficult to make any connection with the way most people think. It tires and bores me to have to listen to their stereotypes, prejudices and hatefulness. It tires and bores me to have to explain that, no, I don’t think like that and, yes, life is quite fine without such ludicrous baggage around my neck (or is it, in fact? for it is also rather lonely).

My partner and I organized, once, a party in lingerie. Half of our friends were so shocked by the very idea of this that they haven’t spoken to us since (and that’s the ones we dared to invite – of course there were plenty who never even got onto the guest list). Of those who did come, some were convinced we intended an orgy. Others, a few, came and had fun. But not one has tried anything similar, and most have not even invited us back to anything at all.

Personally, I simply didn’t and still don’t get what the issue could be. Isn’t that just fun? And as for any sex occurring – isn’t that both very unlikely and not a big deal? So what exactly is going on? Why do the most varied people suddenly gang up against me whenever I want to be just, well, normal, honest, natural? And why is it so hard to find anyone else on the same wavelength?

I have frankly no answer to this question. The only thing I can say is that if even the slightest authenticity is so difficult for the world around me to bear, there seems little point in settling for half measures.

Thoughts from the subway

25 March 2007

Tou lógou d’eóntos xunoû, zóousin hoi polloí hos idían éhontes frónisin

This fragment from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus introduces T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece poem Four Seasons, which I have lived with for more than 20 years and am always rediscovering. Heraclitus says that, since the Logos has become dry, the masses live as if they themselves had reason. However, the masses, without enlightenment or awakening, do not have reason, they are only, as Gurdjieff said, machines.

The Logos, or Word, acquired a multitude of metaphysical meanings and connotations in the spiritual world of the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean, a tradition to which the author of John’s gospel attaches himself and which he appropriates in describing the Messiah, the Son of God, as the Word. Hellenistic commentaries on the Hebrew creation myth identified the Word as the creative power of God in saying “let there be light”.

I don’t know – and I guess no-one does – how much of this later set of meanings can be read back into Heraclitus. But he may have had something like the Stoic concept of the Logos in mind, which is at once the ordering principle of the universe and the divine “spark” which gives humankind its potential for greatness.

The Logos in this sense corresponds to what the Chinese call Qi, the creative, sexual energy that pervades the universe and animates our human bodies, a concept with numerous parallels in many cultures. Between the play of the masculine and feminine principles, Yin and Yang, is the Qi which in fact unifies them.

For John, the Word was made flesh in the body of Jesus, son of Joseph; and for Paul, the coming of the Holy Spirit on the believers made them a part of an immanent new creation, “reborn”. But this metaphysics of division, like all metaphysics, distorts. To be reborn, you must first be born; and birth and rebirth cannot be different, they can only be the same. The Logos is present in all human beings, it is the reason of their birth and the energy which sustains them. But it has become dry. So it is replaced by a variety of heuristic existence strategies which we call reason, but which are inauthentic and not reasonable at all. This is the human condition.

This process of drying out starts very early and proceeds at different paces, but it is usually rapid and definitive. Like a plant denied water for too long, Gurdjieff argues that many people have already died, they are living dead. His message is austere and unpalatable, and it deeply shocks our humanist values. But I fear he is right.

Look around. The world is full of life, in every corner, in myriad ways, and on every level from the cellular to the cosmic. All creatures, all plants, even inanimate things live and rejoice in life. Only in the heart of man is death.

I have long been fascinated, riding the subway to work, by trying to glimpse others’ lives and reality. Even when we know someone very well, their inner reality is shrouded by an epistemological veil which we cannot look under. Of course we do not ask this question of an animal or a plant – somehow their essence is not in question, and we may look past it or ignore it, but, if we try, we can also delve deeply into it and understand it. We can be the plant or the animal, it is not very difficult. But to be someone else is almost impossible.

In the subway, we may wonder how the child becomes the adult and the adult descends into senility and despair. We know this is so, but still it is almost impossible to make a mental map of it. Eye contact is permitted only with children; we do not like others to penetrate our emptiness, nor can we bear to observe the emptiness of others, which mirrors our own. We shroud our faces with newspapers, or, if we can, avoid close proximity with others entirely. Thus we choose, whenever we can, modes of transport and modes of living and being which keep us away from confronting this terrifying social desert at the heart of metropolitan life.

To observe is to be engaged and to be engaged is to change; but observation is impossible without self-observation.

Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotus rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird : human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

T.S. Eliot observes that the pool is dry, so dry that it seems like it has not seen water for years or decades. Nonetheless, simple sunlight is ready to fill it. This brings about a rising of the Qi, of Kundalini, almost imperceptibly as it floats on the surface of the essential nature of life. The image of the lotus is not accidental: Eliot well knows the Sanskrit scriptures in which enlightenment is metaphorically compared to the opening of a thousand-petalled lotus. Enlightenment brings radiance to the complexion of the Buddha.

The pool is quickly filled, but as quickly emptied; the mere passing of a cloud before the sun is sufficient to dispel the moment of enlightenment, no longer to return. This moment of authenticity is as much as the human spirit is able to bear. We must immediately discard it. The bird has led us there, and now he bids us leave. He is the fickle voice of our conscience:

Du holdes Vöglein! Dich hört’ ich noch nie: bist du im Wald hier daheim? Verstünd’ ich sein süsses Stammeln! Gewiss sagt’ es mir was, vielleicht von der lieben Mutter?

For the first time in the forest, Siegfried hears the voice of the bird and sets about mimicking it on his horn. In doing so, he awakens the dragon which he must slay. This ancient, deathly dragon whose sole raison d’être is to guard a treasure of no use to him. And this dragon is, of course, Siegfried himself, he is of his own making. But the raw power of life, strength and youth, must overpower these monsters who keep us in thrall.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchantment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Eliot seeks the dance at the still point of the turning world. The dance which, through freedom from “practical desire”, from “action and suffering” and from “the inner and the outer compulsion”, leads us to enlightenment and allows us to fill the pool and to keep it full. The “enchantment” of past and future which we relate to our linear experience of life prevents us from living in the infinity of the present moment. But we are not to flee life, to reject its linearity, its seasons, its rise and fall, its contingency. Instead, Eliot says, we must embrace life because it is only by so doing that we can reach those sublime moments which bring us to infinity. Those moments we all have and remember, when we were really alive : those fleeting memories engraved on our psyches for ever in those rare moments when the clouds dissipated and the sun shone. And those moments, seemingly in time, are in fact eternal, as present now as then. This we also know – those moments are the rare glimpses of reality in the sea of our slumbering existence.

These, dear readers (if I have any), are just random starting points; I could have chosen any. All human experience is consistent and it all points in one direction. It does not matter where you start or what you do, what matters is only that you live your life consciously, what matters is only that you recognize what you know. Do not flee it. Do not be afraid of it. Listen to the bird and follow.

In light and love,
Sean