Please advise me.
Serge
I sympathise very much with your dilemma. And I think you have touched on something very important. At one time in my life, I studied with a teacher who advocated both approaches. To some of his students he would say ‘Put more effort in’, to others he would suggest they give up trying so hard. Initially, I found this confusing, until eventually I got to see that different kinds of inner work seem to be required of us at different times, depending on a) what kind of person we are, b) what kind of path we are on (is our journey more ‘outer’- more about ‘ action in the world’ - or more ‘inner’ and mystical), and c) where we are on it at any time.
Do you remember Nina Simone ‘s song about everything having its season? Well, that is very pertinent to the spiritual life. I think the whole art is about our knowing what is most appropriate for us at any particular time. Put simply, sometimes we really need to try very hard and make a big effort. (For example: studying sacred texts so we understand them, disciplining ourselves to meditate when we’d prefer to watch T.V., really working at being more objective, really making sure we relate kindly to others when we don’t feel like it, etc). All this takes conscious effort and intention and I think is very necessary.
Sometimes, however, our spiritual work needs to be about stopping this kind of effort and simply allowing ourselves to ‘Be’ more, letting ourselves be more receptive . This is in order that we may take in or absorb what our earlier efforts may have evoked for us.
Basically, I think that if we are first starting out on our spiritual journey, a lot of doing and ‘efforting’ on our part is necessary, no matter what path we are on or whether we are more mystically or more pragmatically inclined. The same holds true, I think, for anything new that we are trying to get off the ground. Without a powerful initiating force, nothing happens. From a spiritual perspective, making an effort shows we are sincere in our intention.
What it does is it invokes or calls the spiritual forces closer to us to help and support us. As one teacher put it: if we only take two steps forward, spirit can only take one step towards us and we will not meet. If we take three steps forward, spirit will take four towards us and there is more chance of an encounter. But if we take four or even five steps towards God, God will take six or seven towards us and there will be a joyful encounter.
However, if we only effort, at some stage along the way, we will encounter limitation because certain important transformations simply cannot happen this way, not least because we are less open to receiving the fruits of what our efforts are essentially directed towards. We can see how this is so, for example, in a relationship. For example, if I just effort all the time, then I don’t really allow myself to enjoy my partner properly and savour the space that both of us create together.
I won’t allow the more receptive or feminine side of me, to come alive. In other words, if all I do is give, give , give, then I don’t allow my partner a space to give to me, I don’t allow a space of mutual sharing and blending; As such, I may be an insufficient ‘space’ for a deeper love to come alive between us.
I discovered the virtue of ‘letting be’ many years ago when I went out to India, to spend time with a Master who was very much of the school of ‘Let go, let God. Give up the search’. I, at the time, was overly imbalanced on the side of doing, in part, I think, because I didn’t trust life enough to believe that anything could happen unless I was always trying to make it happen. Anyhow, being with this wonderful man gave me a great lesson in the virtue of not doing. I had arrived at the ashram laden with books intending to make every minute count as I was taking so much time off my teaching and psychotherapy work. ’I’ll get some good thinking and writing done while I’m here, I’ll make this time off worthwhile, ’ I thought to myself.
What I didn’t reckon for was the power of this man’s energy field or presence to shatter my ‘good intentions’. In my first encounter with him, I was told that I was much too active and never gave myself space or time for my depths to surface.’ The you that thinks so much is the you that doesn’t allow you to transform. You know nothing about surrender and so you are shallow’, was the gist of what he said to me. It was painful to hear this but I knew it was true.
The next few months were a revelation of that truth. My active mind, or the mind that Buddhists call our ‘monkey’ mind and see as standing in the way of our deeper mind that is linked with our heart, became absolutely ‘zapped.’ Despite my ego fighting against what was happening, I was unable to ‘do’ anything. I couldn’t even think coherently! I certainly couldn’t meditate. So I just ‘hung out’. All my books that had cost me a fortune in overweight luggage, remained unopened. I went through a process that I subsequently realised is central to all deep spiritual work, and that was one of emptying or purifying myself, something that can actually only happen when a certain kind of effort is absent.
It wasn’t as if there was no struggle involved, for there was. But it was of a different nature; it was the struggle of trying to stay awake to all the crazy thoughts and burning up that I was going through, as I tried to get more and more out of my own way in order to allow myself to be opened up by spirit
In terms of inner progress, this was probably the most purposeful few months I have ever spent. I saw clearly how all my old-style efforting needed to change, how it was really a kind of diversion to prevent me really having to look deeply into myself. I saw how, after all these years, I was at last becoming a little naked and starting to be a tiny bit more human!
But, and this is an important point, I don’t think I would have been ready to have done this ‘surrendering work’ had I not first done my share of initial efforting in the way I did it. For example, if, on first embarking on my path, which I did in my early twenties, I had gone straight to this ashram, I think it would have been counter-productive, for there would not have been enough structure in me to give up. I would simply have surrendered to my own unconscious chaos and emotional turmoil. It was because I had worked through the worst of my fears and neuroses, with the result that I now had a much more solid sense of self, that I was now more ready to surrender it.
Paradoxically, we need a well- enough functioning ego structure first, before it is safe to begin dismantling our identification with it. Being spiritual, we must understand, is not just about becoming ‘egoless’. The gradual diminishing of ego must happen at the right time. When we are ready. (Many serial killers and paedophiles, for example, are people who don’t yet have enough ego – they have insufficient structure; That’s their problem.) It was also interesting to observe that everyone in this Master’s ashram had been on the path for some time and were not beginners.
As I understand it, then, spiritual work includes effort, and it needs surrender of it as in ‘Thy will, O Lord, be done.’ This surrender is important if we are to align ourselves to a deeper spiritual power or a deeper spiritual love. And it needs to be intentional. The distortions come if we only always embrace one polarity and not the other, or if we choose to focus more on one end of the spectrum when it is necessary that we be embracing the other.
I think, if we wish to live a balanced life - and for me this is essential if we are to be more fully human - that we are challenged to embrace both polarities until eventually they begin increasingly to converge inside us as we learn to ‘Do our Being’ and ‘Be our Doing’ together.
No comments:
Post a Comment