|
 |
|
TO DO OR NOT TO
BE
That is the
Question |
Question:
Dear Serge, I am on my spiritual journey and one of the things
that mystifies me is why some teachers advocate the need for us to
make a lot of effort if we want to get anywhere, while others tell
us to give up all our ‘efforting’, saying it comes from our ego, and
will get us nowhere. So what do I do? How can I get anywhere
spiritually if I don’t put any effort in? I am confused. 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. What I am discovering now with many of
my students and with myself that as we very gradually mature, both
polarities become increasingly integrated within each other. At present,
for example, I am writing a book and for this I need the discipline to
sit down and write when I’d prefer to loaf around . However, once having
‘got into it’, I need to be able to surrender to spirit so the deeper
part of me can also be ‘invited into’ the creative equation. Less and
less now do I distinguish between doing and being.
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.
Question: ‘Hello Serge. I am just starting out on my spiritual journey
but |I haven’t yet found something that works for me, that honours what
is true for me as a human being. Perhaps, to do so, I need to give up
the work I am currently doing. I am not sure. Can you advise me?
Serge: I think that very few of us find our true ‘soul path’ or a path
that honours our heart ( I see both as the same thing) to start off
with. It may take time and often it emerges as a result of our
discovering what does or does not work for us or what is true or not
true for us. What can be important at the start is that we find
something that gives us some kind of initial entrée into the world of
soul. It may not be our true path but it can act as a starter and get us
going.
For example, in my case, after I left university and felt a spiritual
calling, I had a friend who was a student of yoga and who brought me
into her world. I practiced Kriya Yoga. This subsequently turned out not
to be my way, but doing this yoga brought about certain temporary
openings, which in turn gave me a wider panorama into the spiritual
world as a whole, and from that I gradually discovered what worked for
me.
It may be that your path will be very specific, that is, that you
alight, say, upon Buddhism or Sufism early on, or you meet a particular
Shaman, whom you feel drawn to, and, hey presto, the rest of your
spiritual life is mapped out for you. Or it may be, as is the case with
more and more people today, that your way is to be more eclectic and
that you feel attracted by many different paths or approaches to the
sacred. That has certainly been my way, and it has both its advantages
and disadvantages.
The advantages of being eclectic is that it makes for a certain freedom
of spirit - you are not tied down by a particular tradition which can
sometimes be limiting ( a lot of traditions. I think, look back too much
into the past and not sufficiently forward into the future) . Also, you
can ‘find something’ that corresponds to what you feel you need in your
life at any time. You can do ‘your thing’ in ‘your own time’. The
disadvantages of this is that you risk delving superficially into a lot
of things and not deeply into any one thing, mistaking, say, quantity of
gurus visited for quality of wisdom derived from them. The eclectic way,
therefore, requires a lot of discernment and inner discipline. Sometimes
it can be tough. One can feel lonely. Where do I go now? What do I need?
Here, we are challenged to be both our own teacher and student ; we need
to evaluate our requirements and also try to assess our progress!
So if the latter is your way, and I suspect, from what you say, that it
might be, then your key guide will be your heart, for it is only in our
hearts that we can access the wisdom to tell us what we need at any
time. This is why so many teachers tell us to follow our hearts. They
really are our best friend as inside them lie many awesome capacities
such as tenderness, kindness, love, compassion, courage, the ability to
be peaceful, feel awe, see beauty and experience joy, in short, to
honour and respect all of life. The more we learn to live with heart,
the more quality we have in our lives, the less we feel separate from
ourselves and our world. With heart, we can let others in more deeply
and reach out towards them more tenderly. Our capacity to heal
ourselves, for example, or to transform indifference into love, or
anxiety into compassionate concern, lies in our hearts. It is only in
their transforming fire that our conflicts can be reconciled and we can
learn to metabolise our pain and gobble up our shadow side. Through
attuning to the essence contained within them, we come more and more
into the presence of our true nature.And this for me is what ‘being
spiritual’ is all about.
However, just because heart contains all these riches, is no indication
that we know how to open to them and so embody them at any depth. That
may take time and is essentially ‘the work’. Thus your task is to find a
way that works for you to support you opening your heart to yourself and
to life, learning not to judge yourself or others, for it is so much
through kindness and self-acceptance that we grow and evolve. As such,
the more you allow you to be you, the more you tread a path of heart.
Put another way, finding that mysterious ‘path of heart’ is not ‘out
there’ but within you right now. Anything and everything that you come
across, be it painful or joyful, constricting or expanding, and that you
learn to relate to with your heart , will take your deeper into your
spirituality. This in turn will bring you closer to yourself. As David
Spangler, who used to be the mouthpiece for the Findhorn community, once
put it: ‘ We must learn to sprout where we are planted.’ It may be that
there is no need for you to go to the Himalayas or give up your job as a
Bank manager (or whatever you do) to find your calling. .
If you wish for further guidance on these matters, I have three CDs that
may be helpful:
Awakening the Heart, Opening to the Global Heart
and Exploring the Sacred Path of the Spiritual Warrior. |
|