HUMAN BEING / REALLY BEING
In this first section, we’ll be learning to live a meditative life. We’ll learn building blocks, then meditation, more building blocks, then healing and spiritual living.
Ramana Maharshi gave us this for a contemplative meditation: “Who am I?” So let’s start to peel away the outer layers, as we acquaint ourselves so familiarly with the deepest reaches of who we are.
An Old Joke
The minister stood in the pulpit rehearsing, and cried out, “Oh Lord, I am nothing.” The choirmaster next to him chimed in, “Oh Lord, I am nothing.” Then the janitor, cleaning in the back, called out, “Oh Lord, I am nothing.”
The choirmaster looked over to the minister and said, “Now look who’s nothing.”
La Rochefoucauld teaches us that our egotism, as a subterfuge, can even disguise itself and lead the enemy army to seemingly perpetrate its own destruction.
One April afternoon in a parking lot, a wandering musician playing a song to a few people: When you help the least of these my brothers, you do it unto Me. After a hesitation, I start walking towards the group to invite him home for dinner, but he’s already striding away---the Prophet Elijah disguised in his traditional rags. That hesitation of my ego and its great possessions. My heart is broken open.
“Better the devil you know than the God you don’t,” says my selfhood.
We sadly dwell in preoccupations which sever us from God, where we forget to spot the unity. Our uneasiness about the validity of our theories is cast out, and labeled as the enemy. Yet only as we try out our many convincing idols do we learn to see more, and free ourselves to each pursue our exquisite unique course.
So our idealism leads to gradual glimpses of truth, but only in a dance with our doubts. Our unknown Self slowly wears away our ego’s survival tactics. Resolution awaits, not in outer battles, but within our own awareness.
Our ego-defenses keep compromising, letting in the collective unconscious and divine Consciousness more and more. Our poor put-upon ego is trying to do what it oughta, given the
amnesiac dream data that it’s fed.
This human level of awareness, the abode of our usual self, isn’t the ultimate reality; we shouldn’t fear it or desire it; it has no power; springing from the Invisible, it has leeway yet no independent agency. Still and All, it serves the grandest purpose (which we’ll explore further along), and yes we can learn to love it both compassionately and whole-heartedly, as we meet the Holy One in this very place.
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Healing results from our deepening Self-realization, and our giving springs from the unbounded Invisible. Our mass mind translates this ease and generosity of Reality into hard objects, assignable products. Even when this looks clunky and overdone (like forests made into books to hold a thought), we’re just handing out the hidden love of our activity.
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As the peasant struggled along the road, a splendid carriage stopped beside him. The nobleman offered him a ride, so he climbed aboard, but kept his heavy sack upon his shoulder.
“Why don’t you lay your burden on the floor?”
“It’s enough you should give me a ride, you don’t have to carry my load too!”
` (Tale of the Great Storyteller of Dubnow, Poland)
When I was too tired to continue, miracles issued forth. It can’t be me; existing Truth does the work. It isn’t our smaller self that carries the treasure.
Try rescuing a family locked out of their car, by use of a coat hanger. After a long struggle with a smoothed nub of a lock, mentally give up, and thinking of farewell words, not wanting to abandon these strangers, but seeing no divine accomplishment of an impossible task. Only then is it suddenly done. Not only do I not do it, but even my faith is unneeded, none of it comes from the human me.
Not at all crediting ourself, but only saying “Thank You, thank You,” so this total receptiveness meltingly matches God’s givingness.
We already have all manner of supply, so we need no admiration. The Beloved and I know my inner self.
No accusation, no adulation. Egotism evaporates: We give credit, where credit is dew.
Amazing Grace
All day long at work, a man ran through the halls and anxiously helped different people. All the time he really felt these problems were the failings of the folks he tried to help. Then an insoluble difficulty came up, and he tore at his hair saying: “I cannot do this, it cannot be done!”
Finally he gave up trying, and only then remembered God. In the quiet vacuum of his surrender he heard the background music that had been playing all the time within him.
Entering that moment, he realized that in all the past distraction, there had been no guilt, even in himself. He felt God dissolving the picture of problems, of separateness, and holding everyone dear, very dear.
I can’t do it, and don’t do it. The Source within me doeth the works.
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Nothing Personal
Buddha mind, Christ consciousness, and other aspects of enlightened Consciousness, are continuously revealing themselves, sometimes in many people, eventually in all.
Every one of us has terrible faults and is a fragile vessel for the Presence we adore. When certain of us Sufis chant, “Muhammad is the messenger of God,” we understand “Muhammad” in this case according to the word’s meaning, “The praised one.” So we are saying, “The praised one is the messenger of God.” Similarly, Christian Science proclaims, “Have the mind that was in Christ Jesus.” Not worship of the form, the human. Nothing personal.
Koan
Zen koan: A master sees a picture of the bearded Bodhidarma and cries, “Why doesn’t that man have a beard?” (That is: students, look afresh.) After reading that, I took the car somewhere, stopped at a light, and the driver next to bearded me leaned over, calling out, “Hi! I didn’t recognize you all clean shaven!”
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Our personal shells try to mark and define the spiritual universe, fraying its edges, our grievous fault lines.
Lilies of the field, we behold what Is, performing the works. We bow down our self to the ground before It. We thrill to the wonders more and more.
“It is the sacrament of yourselves at our Lord’s table. Be what you receive and receive what you are: we are one Christ loving Himself....‘I am the food of the adult; grow, and you shall eat me; but not I into you, but you shall be changed into Me.’” (St. Augustine)
When we sit down to meditate, faith in the faithful Eternal, surrender to the Surrounder, abdication of the throne, comes first. Then we feel the touch of the Lover, which fulfills us.
More joy, less me. More relaxing and relying, more expectancy, welcoming divine good that completes age old pictures, more easy enjoyment and opening to the One expressing.
Throwing off a coat when the weather turns nice; we never miss it.
When ego defenses go, our head can get sloughed off or feel no longer there, we can melt entirely. The persona is transmuted and unmissed, incorporated in the greater, no more little “me.” I and my Source are one, though the Source is greater than I. The great I Am enters gentle, a breath, Al Aaah.
Our divine I always perceives and lives, disguised as our ego. Our outer trappings drop away without notice. Our human identity isn’t expunged, but rather our shimmering glass doors are all opened up to the outside, and undistorted our great I stands revealed.