LEANING, LEARNING AND LIVING
There are three important areas of action in our spiritual life: leaning, learning and living.
“Leaning” means relying on the Divine through our meditations, our frequent prayerful contacts. In this chapter, we’ll look at a couple of practices related to the course of a day.
“Learning” involves filling up with what our soul has recognized as true, reading, listening to recordings, attending gatherings and classes, etc. (We’ll talk about groups later.) To me the Infinite Way books and tapes of Joel S. Goldsmith and Lorraine Sinkler have been priceless, as well as the Bible and other holy books of our various traditions. These bring us to the Teacher within, our own eternal path.
In loving God we learn to love ourselves and to love our neighbors as ourselves, an interactive cycle. “Living” the contemplative life means living out from this inner work.
We explore spiritual living here, while elsewhere in this book we find that: We replace our reaction to the powerless fears and desires constantly presented to us with recognition of their deeper worth, and spread compassion upon them. We act as a source of givingness and blessings to all within our purview, also offering the “cup of cold water,” tangible help. By impersonalizing and recognition, we turn hatred and condemnation into love and forgiveness. We silently and unobtrusively transform our surroundings by uncovering their Reality, as we also express our love outwardly. We lay down material and mental weapons in surrender to the saving Grace.
Leaning, learning and living are three interweaving ways to know God exists. In learning, our understanding leads to this revelation. In living, we encounter our fulfilled divine expression, by practicing the principles and beholding the miracles. Learning and living are a circuit of receiving the spirit and giving from it, both branches grounded in our contemplative prayer. In this leaning, we know our Self face-to-face, heart-to-heart.
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Leaning: A Day Is The Life
Like Mullah Nasruddin, are we dressing so fast we forget our clothes?
The Kotski Rebbe taught: The hardworking people prepare themselves, and therefore have a lot less work to do.
A printer friend of mine learned this: The machines that he worked with every day would always start right up.
Today is important, a microcosm of our entire life: First we wake in the morning, forgetting the vision we just came from and sometimes not knowing where we are. Early, we are nurtured with a warm breakfast. Then we spend the daytime working with incredible productivity. In the evening we retire home, relax and enjoy. Finally, we join the chorale of sleep.
This day is all we have to operate in. And we are more likely to stub our toe on a pebble than on a mountain. Today’s a precious gift. So “look well unto this day.”
Morning meditation, on awakening or at least before work, sets the tone for the day. We give our firstfruits to God. We might contemplate the principle we’ve been working with, or: “This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Or “I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight.” If contact primes our awareness, then we see how each day of Holiness expresses Itself as us all; another inquiry: In my work, friends and family, I’ll meet only the one Presence appearing as the very people and situations, hidden even in my problems, needed for all my ongoing this day.
Grace Before Meals
The good is not just in the apple, it’s in the apple source
. Unobtrusively, silently, or simply saying “Hardy appetite” or such, we have a nice chance to briefly allow another meditative contact of recognition and gratitude.
A wonder of food: It saves our life and tastes delicious at the same time! God is giving Itself to us as this food, communing with us at every level of our envisioning, totally humbly, in self-sacrifice that knows that it can disappear and reappear and never die.
We may simultaneously be aware of the great chain of beings that has brought us this meal, all the plants and animals, all the farmers and transporters and processors and grocers and cooks, the ages of unknown breakthroughs leading up to this repast.
And we honor our hunger to receive all this.
Eating connects form to Thinglessness as we each eat something less complex, lower on the food chain of being. Just so, in our meditation we traverse this bridge between our delimited, delineated world and the Limitless. Then our food tastes much better.
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Learning
In the contemplative phase of a meditation, we usually delve into a single truth. And when we study exalted writings, we might only read a sentence at a sitting. These are jewelled knots in the net of Indra, each reflecting the entire book. Better to absorb a tiny bit than to skate over many pages....
Sometimes a quiet and peace wafts from the pages of a spiritual message, like that of Ramana Maharshi. (I just can’t continue on a book that doesn’t feed me, even if I want to; lots of bookmarks in my library.)
Sometimes graffiti scrawled on a wall will teach us. There are personal messages
for us everywhere.
Learning is yearning and returning Home. The basic principles are simple enough for anyone to grasp, to recall; a microbe, a grain of sand incorporates them. Our “learning” goes way beyond the intellect of course. The understanding is gained in living out our mission, by grace, from these principles---we are grown, transfigured endlessly.
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Living, from the Inside Out
To live the mystical way means we make surrender in prayer the warp and weave of our daily life. The remembrance of these principles becomes illuminated, our Substance and Reality. Devotion to our work is required, until spiritual awareness permeates us and pervades the whole day. (Yet Beloved, the arid phases remain just as essential, have compassion for yourself.)
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his charity; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Tsadaka, in the Hebrew that Jesus spoke, was translated as “righteousness,” but the meaning “charity” better conveys his loving intent.) This way of prayer is not meant to be ascetic. We heartily appreciate what comes our way: the fulfilled Invisible appearing as a world of relations, myriad blessings in constant flux. We enjoy the good things of life. We set our heart on the kingdom, our aim is to enter the Presence, and outer expressions must follow in the waking. Such desireless satisfaction walks the razor’s edge.
We behave in our friendly manner, even as we’re trying not to react to the picture. On the other hand, we’re not making ourselves more effusive than we are, in order to feel “loving.” Instead, we’re natural and normal, and let God love through us.
In the World But Not of It
Where is the most challenging and deepening place to learn to live, and move, and have our being in holy awareness? In the midst of the hectic, tempting, stressful everyday.
Our family matches us, a gift for our odyssey. If married, we don’t abandon them to fly off to distant mountains, enter a monastery or live more purely in a hermit’s cave.
Our job is presently a worthy enterprise for us. As we continue to progress in surrender to the Sacred, our situation changes to suit. Our entire workplace may be transformed, or we may be moved to another situation.
We are in the right place for us, until we are lifted out of it by divine activity. Sometimes one door closes on us, only so another door may open. (Dream: At a ball game, leave before the ninth inning. We don’t follow pro forma rules, are not forced to finish. We’re led by the spirit, not by material concepts.) Omniscience knows what is needful for us, Omnipotence makes it happen.
We let God precede us. We may get a tremendous inner answer and know what steps to take. Or if we’re unsure about acting in a certain situation, we may get a concrete sign to do so. If there is no answer, then that is a big answer; don’t cut ahead of God, patiently and faithfully dig deeper for the richest treasure.
Supposing we wanted to lessen our workload or obligations to devote more time to our spiritual activity. If we meditated in surrender, were led to put out feelers and tested the waters, we might see God waiting to rearrange everything handily to Its purposes, which could differ totally from our preconceptions. So we’d meet the transition easily. Otherwise the opportunity prepared by hidden motions might come out of the blue dressed as a crisis, a swooshing ride suddenly dislodging us (yet precisely tailored to our present learning).
“It’s hard to kick against the pricks.” Watch for the divine signs and dance along with them. This may mean staying in a situation, it may mean being taken out of it.
The life of prayer is the most practical life. Our field of practice is the whole world. Just as we engage our spiritual life through experience, just as we live by actual miracles, just so do we live with all our fellow voyagers in daily life here in the one world.
Interwavings
Social interaction: a very rapid barrage of assorted humanness, with the ever-present opportunity to witness the light shining through.
Unobtrusiveness: In conversation, it’s so instructive to listen with our receptive Ear, and then a joy to return service and talk. We can reveal ourselves emotionally and be unguarded and intimate, though we don’t speak of our new knowledge. Guided silently, we reveal to others no more than is asked for.
We need to be as honest as we can, honesty in personal and material exchanges without manipulation, as well as brutal self-honesty so we can be led forth. Yet when we’re under merciless scrutiny, God covers for us.
At times, we get mad at someone until we share a risky insight. Instead of using the sword of the spirit on them, use the butterknife.
Walking on the Water
Sometimes we find an open door, sometimes we want a bed to lie down on. Eventually, if we persist, our life moves beyond our wildest aspirations; sometimes on the way, we seem to box up our work and shelve it.
If we rely on the seemingly material at times, we are able to take a rest, and so material belief serves another purpose. We eventually reach a place where we rely and rest on the unseen, but we don’t willfully force ourselves there.
Once, as a new student, a wart grew on my finger. Despite meditation, it remained there for months. Then I read that warts were incurable because they grow back if removed; the wart vanished overnight.
Spirit often offers Its fruitage in such images; we are given the drift, and are then left to fathom their depths. This meant something like: I had been wondering, was it egotistical to reject some trivial cure? (A beginner’s lesson: With more years of study we’re more effaced.) But when there is no medicine or method, prayer is clearly the path, and the tough problems we face usually outmaneuver our smarts or strengths.
We’re not talking about higher guidance as an adjunct to therapy, or God needing to move the surgeon’s hand. We only believe that things operate that way; outer deeds grant us assurance, as when Mother kisses our bruise. We may meditate for somebody, then turn on a TV which announces that a cure has been discovered for their disease: We advance purely spiritually but it may appear draped in such veils.
A razor’s edge: On one hand, fearfully denying where we’re at, adopting a whitewashing optimism, skirting physical acts that make us look weak to ourselves. On the other hand, using God as a bolster for some material or psychic technique, while thinking we firmly believe. Beloved, let’s be honest, and not worry about our wavering on these narrow places. God doesn’t mind.
When a claim comes to us, such as a sick child in our care, we pray in secret and free ourselves, and we help them at the level of awareness they themselves have. If they feel disease is material, if spiritual healing doesn’t outpicture (immediately, if in a crisis), we don’t make the child suffer, we bring them to the doctor.
We caught some mice in a live trap. Then we heard this loud rustling in the ceiling, threatening as a stormtrooper. I said, let’s call an exterminator, thinking I’m unready to walk on water, but now my spiritual life will really go down the tubes. The rustling never repeated, due it seems to the surrender of pride.
On the other hand, we don’t tempt our one Support by purposely doing simply reckless things, not buckling up.
So one time, the lesson may be, do not sue or pursue. Another time, we may be taught, resist not entering the normal channels, just perhaps filing an insurance report after being hit by another car. If we act without attachment, following inner instruction, then
miraculous intervention may appear, transmuting things to the spiritual plane.
These are two conflicting sides of human awareness, complementary and equally essential, one unsteadily and perhaps prematurely trying to walk on the water like Peter, while the other expresses caution, shoring up all of our tested advances.
Our water-walking half may try alternative medicine, our careful half use the conventional. The water-walker may join the peace party, the doubter the war party.
Principle: Relying on God: We don’t have to go walking on the water before we’re brought to it.
If we are seeking prayerful help, and at the same time feel so worried that we want to rely on the material sense of power as well, then we should do so. That sense of a physical security might come from an aspirin, a doctor, a fly swatter, a policeman, locks, whatever it may take. Sometimes we may hug these things to us. At other times we go deeper in our awareness and cannot resolve a crisis unless we utterly forsake all the forms we have depended on and wholly drop the outer picture. There are always razor’s edges we traverse and nothing’s so thick and clumsy as a written rule that can surely steer us. Rather, through our meditations we are led to choose the correct way out of the maze. Grace pilots us aright.
If we are afraid, that is all right, be afraid. Our fear is not a power, but may be the very thing to get us to pray. We place our reliance on God, we ask our teacher, or fellow student with inspired Consciousness, for meditative help. “Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” God’s Grace helps us right where we are, now, in our deficiencies. Eventually we’ll attain greater truth, we’ll feel in our heart and know, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me,” and then,“It is I; be not afraid.”
The Razor’s Edge
We can’t prudently adjust or carefully balance between conflicting demands, such as study vs. deeds, work vs. leisure, fighting a humane war, etc. Rather, we reconcile opposites through the synthesis of the Middle Path, at the wholly different level of divine embrace. Keeping on the beam, we rise through our meditation to a new awareness, which puts us in the right spot in the Center.
Legions of issues are constantly being settled by effortless Wisdom. The more we consciously sense the cosmic activity, the “hosts of angels” wrestling, the more we flesh out the experience of our Being.
Wise as Serpents, and Harmless as Doves
The expression of Who we are is encoded in every mode of acting. At every level of our shared awareness, God appears As the things we relate to, pearls strung on a multistrand necklace.
Waterwalking on the razor’s edge: To be wise as serpents entails making sensible ordinary choices in the human scene. To be gentle as doves means not to be using human methods as weapons to overcome some perceived threat.
Examples: Since we eat, we eat foods that we’ve found are suited to us (which could include vitamins), and are prepared with a caring attitude. But we don’t think of this as medicine fighting disease. Since we’re embodied, we get to play sports, exercise, keep fit and adventurous, explore a bit further. We do this in vibrant enjoyment, not for military prowess, or in fear of illness, or in worship of a material sense of body. If we’re making a business agreement, it can be clarifying to have a lawyer prepare contracts. This isn’t an act of contention or struggle. In cleansing the temple, we may have a dental hygienist polish our teeth. Maintaining this purity isn’t a battle against germs (we’re meant to harbor germs in our bodies). Giving a wonderful massage: there doesn’t have to be something “wrong,” to do it. We have our car serviced according to schedule, because it work that way, not out of fear of a breakdown. We might go to the polls and vote, in our role as citizens, but only if we can do so while loving our neighbor, without condemnation or judgment (indeed, for a number of years I ceased voting, until confident in approaching it this way).
Our business is a field of service, each client and co-worker brought to us for our seen and unseen help, so we do our jobs with care, using the advanced common sense of the humanly best methods. And if we clear our desks, we clear our minds and stay present and expectant. Meanwhile we secretly depend solely on the Source within that supplies us all and actually performeth all of the works. We meditatively recognize the divine nature of everyone connected with the business, which is revealed to be a unique niche of spiritual Omni-activity, guided by Omniscience.
We’re not talking exact rules, but a flexible approach for now, grounded by a few directing principles such as “Resist not evil” and “Love thy neighbor.”
Outward actions, including those based on material belief, are metaphors for every species of spiritual activity. And miraculous serenity, resting in the Tao of Heaven, isn’t complacent passivity, but acts absolutely. Our superlative Self continuously moves from glory to glory, creating our journeying beauty.
Our deepest, freest, strongest days may look the most like our regular life.
