Question of the Week : On Losing the Self
Please please tell me is there a way to lose the way you lost. I am desperate almost…
…I know the theoretical answers. I am not looking for answers. I am looking for peace…
…I have heard answers like no one can help get what you already have, or be what you truly already are… I know those answers. please help.
If you are looking for peace, and you have not found it in the answers, walk away from the answers. Walk away from what you’ve been taught.
This does not mean you will no longer be serious about what is going on within you. And it does not mean you will have ‘given up.’ The problem does not reside within you, but within the answers you’ve been given.
I have heard the answers you’ve mentioned many times before. The All Is One, You Can Only Be What You Are, Sleeper Awakes From The Dream, or whatever it might be. But these phrases will do nothing to placate you, as you’ve probably thoroughly investigated them to the best of your ability.
Imagine a painter. She has all of the right tools and equipment, and lacks nothing for the physical exertion necessary to paint. She moves a brush covered in the brightest crimson paint toward blank canvas and leaves a tight, vibrant slash of red. She does not necessarily know where she is going. She may have a vague notion or image, but it is incomplete in her mind.
She understands the act of painting itself is all the teaching she will ever need. If she were ever to ask How? her answer would always be incomplete, because something other than painting would be teaching her how to paint.
That is not to say there is anything wrong with technique; learning how to manage and use materials, how to properly handle oil paint or maintain brushes, or whatever it is; but technique alone can never teach you how to express yourself fully as a human being.
In searching out the answers, you are asking someone else to hand it over to you. And this is wonderful from the perspective of technique, as it is necessary in the physical world. But what you seek is so beyond the physical, it defies description.
It is a land beyond the shores of technique.
I am not sure if these words will be helpful to you, but regardless, I hope you uncover peace for yourself; the peace that resides within us all.
Good luck to you…
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, it is not the technique that gets you there. It may help you get close enough to see it, but not arrive. One always has to move beyond any method to create art or transcendence.
I guess the way I would put it is that if you are called to walk, walk. If you are called to rest, rest. If you are called to meditate, meditate. Don’t use a technique because you should or must. Don’t use it to feel righteous and pious. But if you feel life moving you through technique, let life have it’s way. That’s the only true way.
Technique was an important part of my process, one I was completing from a prior journey. But there are no rules. Just the flow of life, taking us where it needs to go.
Davidya,
Yes, that is a great way to say it. Don’t do it because it is something you are supposed to do. And don’t do it to feel superior over others that might need the help.
It is strange because technique was never important to me. (Maybe it is better to say, cultivation – as a means to an end – was never really present here, at least in the ‘spiritual’ sense.) But now I find the various expressions of technique quite fascinating. Not as something to do, but it is just fascinating to witness as time marches on.
Yes, it is very interesting to see the various ways people come to this. There are many techniques I would never have looked twice at. Adyashanti jokes that he needed Zen to settle his very active body and mind but he wouldn’t recommend it for most people. (laughs) So many are too much work. Or have the complications like special posture.
Peace is easy so getting there should be too. The old KISS principle.
Well, I was never a ‘sit still‘ kind of child. I was more of a ‘wait till mom leaves the room then put a fork into the electrical outlet‘ kind of child. I never did well with specific physical limits when I was growing up, as far as I can remember.
I wonder how I would do if, at the age of 36, I were a spiritual seeker? Probably just a bigger version of the child with a fork, I suspect. Haha…
(laughs) Neither me, though I was more the take it apart and see how it works kinda kid. Some things I discovered, to my mothers dismay, didn’t go back together so well. I balked mostly against conceptual limitations.
There are those ‘in the socket’ techniques out there. But my teacher always recommended going to the source. It contained everything else.
Hey
Where I am, the urge to give up on all this mad reading on techniques and definitions and descriptions of the ‘awake’ way are very strong. Just stop the reading, the seeking, and sit and watch. I wonder if I will be able to do that though….
Thank you, Uzma…great to see you again!
You’ll never know if you’re able, while you are in the throes of it all. It is only when you sit back and remember that you can judge what you have or have not done. But by that time, it is too late, because you have already begun to build an image of how wonderful it was.
Let us all know what happens in your journey…
Hi Uzma
Reading about techniques can be like watching a TV show about exercise.
I’ve found the journey goes in stages. We have times when mind needs to be satisfied and times when that seems pointless. When we have to step out of the idea of it and into the direct experience of it. Time to live life, be in it, noticing what is happening. That’s the juicy part.
I love the expression of the question. It represents all of seeking.
We get tired, exhausted, frustrated. It’s good, because then we can sit and watch.