Georgi Y. Johnson's Blog: I AM HERE - Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty, page 43

Passing Through the Eye of the Here & Now

Often, we read about awakening, enlightenment and self realization as if it is an instant “happening”. Our shared craving for this “end-point” is part of the momentum which drives us forward in our lives, and which is giving us the impression of being in control of our personal and collective evolution.

Yet in this constant drive towards the end-point, the true magic is lost – a magic that can never be created, attained or held by hand, mind or heart. That reality is the simplicity and immensity of who we are.

“Live in the Here and Now.”

It is easy to say. Yet even masters such as Eckhart Tolle do not claim to be perpetually (and exclusively) in the here and now – instead they point towards an ongoing process.

In this, in honesty and authenticity, the teaching of awakening (realizing that the past and future are mental constructs), evolves into the teaching of enlightenment (letting ourselves rest in the infinite space in which we shine like a sun from our own being). Yet this too, is not an end-point.

Those who really listen and follow the teachings of those such as Tolle, will notice a vital sub-clause to his moment of awakening. This is: “Do not resist anything”.

It is not surprising that Tolle’s teachings evolved into A New Earth, as enlightenment in itself cannot believe it can be private – excluding the “other” – or the vast web of consciousness in multitudinous forms presently here as part of the planet. The language changes from individual salvation, to collective evolution, and quite rightly.

Resistance is a brother of rejection, of denial – above all of the denial of the full experience of being human, here and now. It is through this opening to the here and now, that the transience even of the here and now can be realized. This is self-realization, the process of shedding the layers of private and collective fears that are glued blindly to perception itself, and that continue to hold us hostage in our freedom to be deeply, beautifully human. Ironically, the core of most of these fears is the illusion of rejection.

“Ultimately, creation can be ignorant in only one way. This is the ignoring of its own source. In allowing its own source, it must also allow the duality of destruction.” ~ Georgi

Yet in the subtle switch from the present moment to the beauty of being, there is still not one who will honestly claim that this is the final home. Yes. we will hear it preached, pointed to, by those who are not in “being” at the bank, with the accountant, or at the local drug-store. Again, it is position, or perspective, which is pointed to.

What these broad schools of spirituality are doing is bringing forward perspectives of tremendous value in the art of living. To take a second in a moment of mental warfare, drop all identification with form and outcome, and to come into the Now, does have enormous power. It gives a reset which opens our possibilities of choice.

To move beyond the emotion, pain or grief of the heart, and to rest in our own unconditional being, likewise brings a highly beneficial inner soup kitchen where we can re-tank in a safe space unrestricted by fear, before moving outwards again to negotiate or heal that same grief, trauma, or pain in the area of feeling.

When these teachers put themselves to service, they position themselves in the Now, or in pure Being, or in a combination of both, in order to open those channels to others. Then, as Eckhart Tolle said at one recent show, they go home, and still squabble about who has to take the garbage out.

Where are we not yet free?

Many of these teachings have a repeating theme – perhaps adopted from their Eastern origins, or perhaps because it was so much part of the awakening of these same teachings. The theme is “You are not your body.”

As such, there is a rejection inherent to their teachings, together with a subtle duality between consciousness and body, or between Being and body, or between consciousness and mind. Again and again, a choice is presented as a precondition to wholeness. To find yourself, you must reject the body. To find yourselves (and in the blurry language many call this enlightenment) you must reject the mind.

I would be convinced if there was any example of a fellow human functioning without mind and without any body. But this is not the case. And I have a thing with rejection, and with subtle forms of deceit.

“Emptiness is the window of perception through which something and nothing become one. The ‘Thing’ melts.”

~I AM HERE – Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty

It is entirely true that it is a form of insanity to identify with the body, as if the body was an absolute definition of who we are. Cosmetic surgery, sex changes, the ageing process and inevitable death kind of put a dampener on this belief. Perhaps we sometimes need the reminder that we could lose a leg or two, and that we would still be here. Yet it seems entirely clear that we ARE the body right now, and that it would be more precise to say that we are not ONLY the body – it is one emanation of all we are from one moment to the next.

In the same way, it is a form of insanity to identify with individual being. This also is changing, although often through processes of gentle cause and effect. Being can refine, and can even vanish into non-being. It can also be obscured by more vulgar emanations of itself. Mixtures with different energies bring out different qualities of being. Some qualities leave us, while new ones arrive. Yet we are our being, it is just more correct to say we are NOT ONLY our being.

The only area we are not free is in our need to identify. To exchange the identification with thought processes with an identification with pure consciousness is productive, but just a step on the way for a karmic moment of unconsciousness. To exchange identification with the body with the identification of being (as being ALL we are), is again bringing forward an entirely needless limitation of identification which is based on nothing short of control and fear.

Yes, I have met those who will hammer on about pure awareness as an absolute end point of who we are. These ones, tend to be frustrated, superior and quite shockingly wed to a doctrine which was never created even out of their own experience. The evident clutching for an end point can only be a creation of the same thinking mind they claim to be free of. It is as if these new age evangelists are talking about a distant home, that they visited ONCE and can hardly remember, holding onto the memory of a shadow of an experience of something that never could be held, still lest defined as absolute.

The ID Dance.

It is also OK to identify with a state, position, or experience, as long as we leave ourselves the freedom to release the identification. In the realm of self-realization and living unity, there is no longer a compulsion to divide, judge, and claim status. The compulsion is gone because the very movement is senseless. Yet pure curiosity remains – in such a way that where we lose our curiosity, we begin to build ego.

This pure, feeling curiosity can be guided through an allegiance to passing through the eye of the here and now to the truth which is always here – in every particle of human experience, including unconscious, unaware, physical, mental and emotional.

In this space – through the eye of the here and now – even the concepts of here and now, boundlessness and timelessness, infinity and eternity, lose reference.

But who has words for that?

Be Curious, that Rifts will not Tend us.

Be Curious, my friend,

that rifts will not tend us,

letting absence pattern this blend,

as light flickers through details

of space and change,

so that borders between us

be intricate curtains, waving in beauty

with soft winds of time.

My enemy, be curious

that I might give you all of me

to be sacrificed in the fire of love

from which this hatred comes.

Be Curious, my child,

not to be fooled by endings.

That the distant moon

will stay a miracle,

that each thought and feeling,

each celebration of pain

and wasteland of joy

will keep the doors ajar

to who you truly are.

Curiosity, she is a fire of love

and the end of ignoring.

She is the conscious one,

the source of every sight,

that lets us remember

that holy care

in being aware.

She is the one

that burns out fear.

She is awakened.

She is here.

Georgi Y. Johnson.

The Sun that Burns For You – a Georgi Poem

You don’t know it yet, love, in a snow storm of despair

You don’t feel it yet, peace, as sensation of care

is cutting too deep for this one to bare.

You don’t realize it yet, universe so needing,

how passion is burning from your own sun,

burning through chaos out of nowhere,

burning for you.

Some say run, but in running you will stay,

some say hide, but in hiding you’re revealed,

some say seek where you cannot feel this way –

but here, on that chilling cliff,

the “other” is found,

and you’re melting into love’s sweet ocean of it all.

So suffer, my lovely, when suffering storms.

Welcome her to infinity with healing arms.

Now, you are holding her,

and leading her into the warm glow

of the home you never left,

By Georgi

Suffering that she might Return – a Georgi Poem

You don’t know it yet, love, in a snow storm of despair

You don’t feel it yet, peace, as sensation of care

is cutting too deep for this one to bare.

You don’t realize it yet, universe so needing,

how passion is burning from your own sun,

burning through chaos out of nowhere,

burning for you.

Some say run, but in running you will stay,

some say hide, but in hiding you’re revealed,

some say seek where you cannot feel this way –

but here, on that chilling cliff,

the “other” is found,

and you’re melting into love’s sweet ocean of it all.

So suffer, my lovely, when suffering storms.

Welcome her to infinity with healing arms.

Now, you are holding her,

and leading her into the warm glow

of the home you never left,

By Georgi

Passion, Ecstasy, Bliss. 3 Dimensions of Energy Healing & Perception.

“Our passion is the unconditional release from all condemnation.

Our ecstasy is the dread set free.

Our bliss is our fear unmasked.” – Georgi

A major application of the trilogy of perception revealed in I AM HERE – Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty is in the area of spiritual healing. Out of this, Georgi and Bart are now working together on a second book: The Passion – Finding Form in a Paradoxical World.

In this article, Georgi gives an overview and description of the recognizable frequencies of Bliss, Ecstasy and Passion, showing how they can be channelled within the healing of ourselves and others. Within this healing modality, it is important to emphasize, however, that we cannot control or mentally prescribe what is needed in any given moment. Our task as healers is to have all the possibilities unentangled in the energy tool box, in such a way that when we attune to the needs of the “other” (or an aspect of ourselves), the frequency can come forward precisely as needed. In this, however, there is a wisdom in liberating some restrictive belief systems.

An important reminder:

This article opens ways to work with intense layers of experience, with which we are highly subject to identification and entanglement. The experiences of the energy of fear, bliss, dread, ecstasy, condemnation and passion should be allowed with equanimity and non-judgement from the space which is beyond all experience. In this way. agenda is purified and we are more able to remain unentangled, so that healing and transformation can occur organically and of itself. This can be fast or it can take months or years. There is no short-cut to sentient time.

If we find we are becoming entangled, or identifying with experience for better or worse, it is wise to create space – by distancing oneself from the client for some moments, or in the case of self-healing, by returning to a ritual involving physical movement, which allows experience to become relative through the switching of perspective.

Bliss

Bliss is a natural aspect of our existential connection with the contours of form. Form is all that which is shaped in time and space – arising out of eternity and infinity, dependently existing within eternity and infinity, and ultimately returning to where eternity and infinity are one.

Bliss is an effect of the opening of the perceptive window of consciousness. Let’s take an example from the dimension of the physical. Habitually, our consciousness invests in areas of pain – such as the pain in the feet. It ‘ignores’ the pleasure which is available at any given moment throughout the rest of the physical entity of form.

Take a moment now, and allow yourself to sense – really allowing the sense – of the air on the skin. The air on your face. The weight of the tiny muscles of the face. The sensing is of itself, unconditionally blissful, if we only allow it. Perhaps there is a discomfort or pain somewhere in the body. Let your attention expand around both. Allow the bliss to exist unconditionally to the coexistence of any pain.

Fear & Bliss

In its broader energetic context, bliss has a direct connection with the sensation of fear.

Something perceived as ‘other’ (even our own attention)  is touching the surface of form – whether it is our physical body, or an energetic block. There is an awakening. When this awakening is disallowed by the mind, the sensation is rapidly experienced as fear. Responding to fear, the mind starts buzzing with a million possible solutions, distractions or both – all customized to distract consciousness from the physical affliction.

Yet pure fear  – the apprehension of the unknown, of moving beyond the normal containers of our sensory existence – can also be often named bliss. It all depends on the context.

Our bliss is our fear unmasked

When bliss itself is allowed in its refined and subtle vibration, a transformation and refinement begins which through rhythms of sensation, can accentuate the existential backdrop to consciousness and the mind – universal peace. This peace is itself a first emanation of the unlimited potentiality of our source which will give rise to a movement of love.

This is a healing cycle.

When there is a lot of fear, especially mental fear, the wisdom of the and-and becomes a key healing element. When working with physical pain, around which there is a natural, instinctive fear, it is extremely helpful to alternate with our consciousness between the pure experience of the sensation of the pain, and the pure experience of the sensation in another part of the body through which we are able to access bliss. This alternation signals to the area of pain the next step in transformation and healing – a step in which the pain loses its absolute nature and refines to vibration of bliss.

Ecstasy

Ecstasy  is a natural aspect of our existential connection with the energetic substance of form.

Ecstasy can be an effect of the opening of the perceptive window of awareness. Let’s take an example from the dimension of feelings and emotions. Habitually, our awareness is attracted to the dense forms where we suffer emotional pain. This can be the pain of rejection, grief or loss, loneliness, depression, sorrow or simple a pervasive resentment or negativity. This habitual energetic pattern is to fully allow the pain to be, while ruling out the felt sense of happiness. This is based on a conditioned training that happiness cannot co-exist with sadness: that is either-or. This means that often, in the feeling experience of individuals, we can find a constant sacrificing of happiness – and in the end – an added resentment at the happiness of others.

Ecstasy is the experience of freedom within form – out of the very substance of all forms. It arises unconditionally through sentient perception through awareness in the liberation of perspectives. This sorrow is here – but also this joy is within it. In fact, the joy is totally at cause in the pit of the sorrow – how else could the sorrow exist?

Dread & Ecstasy

In its broader energetic context, ecstasy has a direct healing connection with the feeling of dread or horror. Something feels eternally trapped within the boundaries of a form – as if these feelings will never be free again. But this dread is moving – outwardly towards others who could perceive the pain or sorrow. It moves with a threat to “keep away”. Dread (experienced as a mist of horror or threat emanating from the solarplexus, lower chest) is all about forbidding the light of revelation.

The healing agent here is the recognition and experience that happiness can co-exist with sorrow. The presence of both signifies to the blockage its own healing direction – the movement towards energetic liberation experienced as ecstasy. The presence of happiness in the field of feeling perception signifies the happiness which is locked within the suffering.

Ecstasy – the unconditional happiness at happiness – transforms dread, and accelerates the healing of the sorrow the dread was trying to protect.

Ecstasy – an effect of the liberation of form – will of itself move into the unconditional love of pure awareness – which will reunite the separated elements into the backdrop of peace.

Passion

Passion is closely connected with our life’s purpose. We can find our passion in all those existential moments in which we feel at the right place at the right time, with a surge of energy to be of unconditional service to the whole. Passion is at the core of our creative impulse and our individual place in creation. It is quite free of fear and dread. Driven by need, its reward is a moment by moment experience of incredible gratification.

Sometimes it is worthwhile to merge with a pool of collective passion, in order to liberate this energy. Yet ultimately, the passion is always expressed as intensely unique from the core of the individual in unity with the whole.

Condemnation & Passion

The afflictions associated with a disconnection from passion includes senselessness, cynicism, obsessive negativity, self destruction and bitterness. The system is starved from its own energy source and as such this starvation is justified by prohibiting others in moving with passion. As such, passion has a direct connection with a sense of condemnation – of being eternally condemned or of being infinitely wrong. This wrongness manifests in a feeling of rejection: “I don’t want to be here now”.

Working with passion is working through the perceptive window of emptiness. This involves debunking the various false absolutes in belief structures, in feeling and in form. One key belief structure is the idea that there is a direct either-or competition between the individual and the whole. More can be read about this tragic illusion and about the illusion of rejection in other posts on this site.

Reconnecting an individual with their own sense of unconditional passion or unique purpose is a cumulative part of any process of healing. In the first stages, staying loyal to the only true loyalty – the authenticity of our consciousness and awareness in any given space and time.

A comprehensive, grounded and beautiful education in these and other key techniques is available through the Healing Principle 7 year Education certified through the International School of Spiritual Psychology (ISSP)

 I AM HERE – Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty can now be ordered on Amazon and other online book retailers.

Where is the difference between us?

You say we are different, that you are not the same as I. But where is this difference, can you find it?

Perhaps it is in our spiritual development. Who could measure such a thing? Who would dare build a hierarchy where one is ahead of the other and life in its glory and the infinity of cause and effect, ups and downs, challenges and successes is ironed out into a two dimensional tree along which one has move further than the other? Is a flowering twig more advanced than a muddy, ancient root?

Who could predict the value of one who makes a sudden leap into freedom while the other is still deep-freezing a traumatic  anguish long sustained not only by himself but by his forefathers for generations? Cherishing the lesser state out of loyalty and love?

Isn’t the great witness of consciousness learning as much from this as from every other moment of living?

Who could measure the infinite and eternal? Who could say that the butterfly is more alive than the seagull?

Perhaps you differ from me because you suffer more. Can suffering be measured? Can we compare the agony felt in a rising sun with the trauma of divorce? Would we be so senseless as to think that a broken leg far outruns a life of loneliness? Can suffering ever be measured?

Perhaps you differ from me because you are are very old. Yet I am old too. Ancient. Just as I am a newborn child. And as I am, so are you.

Perhaps we differ in our minds. Yet we never differ in the purity of our silence, out of which all these casual, temporary thoughts are born, to be formed by a history we share in anticipation of a future we are also sharing, regardless.

Perhaps we differ because we have separate bodies. Yet these bodies are vibrating in unison through every cosmic sound. These bodies are made of the same molecules and particles, composing and decomposing in a moment.

These bodies will become one in the dust of the planet and the space of the cosmos, in the water of the oceans and in the fire that lights the night in distant regions where neither of us have ever been.

And maybe, maybe we are eternally different because you are a man and I am a woman. Maybe in this, we could be eternally apart? Yet, look at our children, my love, look at our children, see how they smile.

Stepping out of the movie hall and into the street.

בראשית היה תוהו ובוהו

In the beginning there was chaos – an infinite wonder and eternal wandering. Then a reverberation arises in the vast, formless emptiness in the first form – the permissive command “Let there be light.”

For light-workers and light lovers, the light is the first identification. The very identity of existence is formed in Genesis with the emergence of this light – “I am the light.” This is a primal act of identification – moment by moment – and identification implies division. The ‘separate self’ is born.

There is a multitudinous dimension of difference between the miraculous revelation that “I am the light,” and the closure inherent in the belief “I am only the light” – the reflex of identification.

If ‘I’ am only the light, then the light must be defended from the darkness – that chaos out of which it arose. It must be used like a weapon within the primordial darkness in order to maintain its form. This light becomes a sword of consciousness used to create, structure, survive, illuminate, reject and affirm. This light is espoused as if it is in direct antidote to darkness – the “other”.

Inherent to the belief of perception as an absolute end-point is the human narcissism. This is the bottom less pit of craving to “see” and “be seen”. This pit is bottomless because the source of seeing can never ultimately see itself.

Perception is all about light. Experience is all about light. Revelation is all about light. Without light, none of this would “be” – or so we believe when we remain addicted to the illusions of reflection – which is so close to the illusion of rejection.

Take the classical non-dual metaphor of the movie theatre – the empty screen – the projected images of all this life. Many stop with the electro magnetic energy of light generated by the projector. This is absolute, this is what I AM. Not the images that are facilitated by the light, but the light itself – pure, open, empty luminosity.

In this, the failure of the energy source of light (the bulb popped) is an amphitheatre of fear. No light. No source of illusion. Nothing except the walls, the broken projector, perhaps the flickering green WAY OUT sign to the street – where other dimensions are also alive in yet other frequencies of luminosity allowed by the same imperceptible source.

From Luminous to Numinous – Passing through Dimensions

With many metaphors, we are now pointing at the shifts between the perceptive windows of consciousness (the creative, awakened perceptive backdrop to cognition), awareness (the allowing, receptive, infinite backdrop to sentience) and perception through emptiness (that through which polarity collapses in unity beyond time and space). These three windows of perception are explored in greater detail in the book I AM HERE – Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty.

We pass from the suffering of identification with the luminous (which is a form of process and happening, illumination) to the unconditional space of the numinous, when we agree to release the creative clinging which states that perception defines who we are, that light is an end-point to existence, or that light is an absolute source of the whole.

In this clinging to the light, “BE the luminous awareness”, polarity is not avoided but actively created. The judgement is born against non-light – the un-illumined, the “chaos” or the “other” with which we refuse communion. Judgement between good and evil is conceived. Personal agenda is born,  and all the suffering that comes with that. Bliss becomes fear, Ecstasy becomes dread, and Passion becomes condemnation.

Let’s return again to Genesis – so appropriate in these days in which the Jewish people initiate the cycle of reading the bible again from the very beginning.

In the beginning there was chaos. There was chaos – and this was ‘God’ – the one that gave permission for the light, the first form,  to “be” of itself.

Applying it for Real

What does this mean, as we start up our morning, reach for the coffee, assess the stress of the coming day, and search for the joy, happiness, peace and homecoming that we would like to be part of it?

This is the shift from the luminous to the numinous – a quantum shift in opening the windows to life and beauty. When we acknowledge the “chaos” of multiple perspectives, the purity of the unconditional – the numinous source of all light and all forms, the source of our very “seeing” or “feeling” ourselves to be here and now, then there is a kind of alchemy.

We don’t go for the ‘now’ of consciousness or the experience of ‘being’ – this is good, but it is still form, perceivable, experienced. We go for those perceptive blinks, where perception is not. We hunt our non-perception with a wisdom which says that out of these blank spaces, perception itself is born, and out of that, all forms arise. In allowing these billiard perceptive blinks, in which we tune in constantly to our own source – the emptiness of the imperceptible – perception itself comes to life – as with Genesis, so with the kitchen sink.

In this, the windows of life and beauty truly begin to refine. As with all forms of addiction, all it takes is a little humility and a living acknowledgement of a greater power – one beyond any ego we could ever conceive or perceive into being. A greater power which is who we are – not only beyond any thing but behind, before, between, within, without, after, and ubiquitous to every space and every moment – the source where nothing and everything disappear in unity.

Sun storm and the passion – a Georgi poem

Take these words and burn them now

they can only reflect

this burning, creative rage

and a wild world of shadows.

The sun in every cell in body densely

burning with fuel of love, intensely

furnacing the old to allow the new,

vanquishing vanity and pretence.

 

Let it burn, in Eros flares of passion,

Let it melt down,

to the crater of creators,

Let the letting dissipate

within and without That

of which these lovers speak.

 

That holy, sacred firing of it all.

 

And now, a house to clean,

a dog seeking warmth,

a smile happening of itself

and a lightness in still being here.

A Despot called Nobody – Absorbing the Inner Narcissist in Nonduality and Inner Growth

Between the annihilation of the “somebody”, and the rejection of form in processes of enlightenment, is the valley of the shadow of death. Although death can be understood as transformation by the mind, the agony of transience casts a shadow. In walking this valley, humility towards a source greater than anything we could feel or believe ourselves to be is critical. This source is not money, not success, not adoration, and not an etching in the annals of global history. This source – at the heart of all we are – is that which out of a burning passion, is able to let every form be – in all its manifestations and process.

The “Here and the Now” is not an escape shoot from human responsibility, it is the means through which we can become authentically, compassionately and miraculously human.

When I was a student, the great existentialist Paul De Man, was a seen as the guru of literary theory. Humming around Prof. Terry Eagleton, the Oxford crowd was immersed in the inquiry into the disconnection between a word and its apparent meaning – the sign and the signified. The trend was to apply “deconstruction” to show that meaning is inherently empty. “The death of the author” was announced with great intellectual bravado, and anyone who believed that a text of Shakespeare actually had an independent, objective existence was a moron.

It came as quite a shock to the Wadham College crowd when someone uncovered something of Paul De Man’s biography. A European intellectual, he (unlike his many of his peers) had collaborated deeply with the Nazi occupation of his country, even publishing overtly antisemetic articles in the Belgian Newspaper Le Soir. Revelations of his domestic and financial life-style further added fire to the flame, opening the question:

“Is the existential movement fueled by an agenda to evade responsibility and accountability?”

Today, in nonduality circles, it seems that history is repeating. The death of the author has become the death of the “somebody”, and the same dynamic of rejecting fundamental human goodness is often being played out.

In the avenues of online spirituality and nonduality, shadows can be encountered – shadows that fall between enlightenment and narcissism, or between claims of self liberation, and subtle agendas to escape the responsibility of living. There is a simple reason for this – the enslavement of the human in the agenda to avoid pain and to go for pleasure – even if it is at the expense of the whole.

Within this, the classic question would be, “After the Power of the Now, what Now?”

Luckily, Eckhart Tolle is reflected in his teachings as pure, humble, kind and committed to the interpersonal benefit of the whole. Yet many take the liberating message of the escape door called the Now, and abuse this in order to bypass individual and interpersonal responsibility for feelings and emotions. This is a phenomena that extends far beyond the worlds of Eckhart, Deepak and the thinly-masked “Nobodies” of non-duality, and deep into the history of spirituality and human striving.

When the “self” is realized as fallible and  illusory, there is the possibility to move with rejection (perhaps one of the greatest cruelties of nature), espousing a mandate to trash self-hood, the mind, and all dimensions of human – especially as perceived in ‘others’. This in effect, is a closing of the human heart. When the heart closes, awareness will also shut down, making the whole so-called liberation conceptual, aggressive, ego-driven and vastly superior to the masses.

There is a thin line between a living teaching and the illusion of teaching, just as there is a thin line between a guru and psychopath. The damage done to the world of inner growth, nonduality and spirituality by teachers such as Andrew Cohen – leader of EnlightenmentNEXT - for whom egoic grandiosity and contempt for weakness opened the way to self destruction and the collapse of a commercial enterprise – cannot be underestimated. In a way, it breeds more cynicism towards spiritual teachers, more contempt, more superiority, and less togetherness in compassion. There is always a way back. But it is a way of humility, hard-work, emotional responsibility and unconditional service to the whole.

Inner growth is a spiralling process through creation between the aspects of existence and dimensions of form. To dictate an end point to a process is to espouse an agenda – an agenda based on the needs of ego under fire.

There is never an arrival point – although there are many landmark shifts, such as awakening and enlightenment. There is no such thing as private liberation or private happiness. The very idea of this betrays its own lie of separation and the great hook of narcissism embedded in the belief that disunity is absolute.

When spiritual teachers begin to receive money for their services, the literal investment in “being right” and in offering an “end-point” is further inflated. Can they literally afford to be humble? To make a mistake? To be in process? Are they allowed to change their minds?(!)  Can they risk being equally human? How does a spiritual teacher navigate between the physical needs (financial, sexual, etc) and his own elated position as one free of all form?

In a fast food culture of quick fixes and instant gratification, the temptations of egoic whiplash can be huge, almost taking on the mythical proportions of Satan with his horns and tail. Key words are humility, trust, responsibility and above all, humanity.

The opposite of humility is grandiosity. Equality has no opposite. Equality is always here.

 

“Stay without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual.”

–Nisargadatta Maharaj

 I AM HERE – Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty can now be ordered on Amazon and other online book retailers.

A Despot called Nobody – Facing the Inner Narcissist in Nonduality and Inner Growth

Between the annihilation of the “somebody”, and the rejection of form in processes of enlightenment, is the valley of the shadow of death. Although death can be understood as transformation by the mind, the agony of transience casts a shadow. In walking this valley, humility towards a source greater than anything we could feel or believe ourselves to be is critical. This source is not money, not success, not adoration, and not an etching in the annals of global history. This source – at the heart of all we are – is that which out of a burning passion, is able to let every form be – in all its manifestations and process.

The “Here and the Now” is not an escape shoot from human responsibility, it is the means through which we can become authentically, compassionately and miraculously human.

When I was a student, the great existentialist Paul De Man, was a seen as the guru of literary theory. Humming around Prof. Terry Eagleton, the Oxford crowd was immersed in the inquiry into the disconnection between a word and its apparent meaning – the sign and the signified. The trend was to apply “deconstruction” to show that meaning is inherently empty. “The death of the author” was announced with great intellectual bravado, and anyone who believed that a text of Shakespeare actually had an independent, objective existence was a moron.

It came as quite a shock to the Wadham College crowd when someone uncovered something of Paul De Man’s biography. A European intellectual, he (unlike his many of his peers) had collaborated deeply with the Nazi occupation of his country, even publishing overtly antisemetic articles in the Belgian Newspaper Le Soir. Revelations of his domestic and financial life-style further added fire to the flame, opening the question:

“Is the existential movement fueled by an agenda to evade responsibility and accountability?”

Today, in nonduality circles, it seems that history is repeating. The death of the author has become the death of the “somebody”, and the same dynamic of rejecting fundamental human goodness is often being played out.

In the avenues of online spirituality and nonduality, shadows can be encountered – shadows that fall between enlightenment and narcissism, or between claims of self liberation, and subtle agendas to escape the responsibility of living. There is a simple reason for this – the enslavement of the human in the agenda to avoid pain and to go for pleasure – even if it is at the expense of the whole.

Within this, the classic question would be, “After the Power of the Now, what Now?”

Luckily, Eckhart Tolle is reflected in his teachings as pure, humble, kind and committed to the interpersonal benefit of the whole. Yet many take the liberating message of the escape door called the Now, and abuse this in order to bypass individual and interpersonal responsibility for feelings and emotions. This is a phenomena that extends far beyond the worlds of Eckhart, Deepak and the thinly-masked “Nobodies” of non-duality, and deep into the history of spirituality and human striving.

When the “self” is realized as fallible and  illusory, there is the possibility to move with rejection (perhaps one of the greatest cruelties of nature), espousing a mandate to trash self-hood, the mind, and all dimensions of human – especially as perceived in ‘others’. This in effect, is a closing of the human heart. When the heart closes, awareness will also shut down, making the whole so-called liberation conceptual, aggressive, ego-driven and vastly superior to the masses.

There is a thin line between a living teaching and the illusion of teaching, just as there is a thin line between a guru and psychopath. The damage done to the world of inner growth, nonduality and spirituality by teachers such as Andrew Cohen – leader of EnlightenmentNEXT - for whom egoic grandiosity and contempt for weakness opened the way to self destruction and the collapse of a commercial enterprise – cannot be underestimated. In a way, it breeds more cynicism towards spiritual teachers, more contempt, more superiority, and less togetherness in compassion. There is always a way back. But it is a way of humility, hard-work, emotional responsibility and unconditional service to the whole.

Inner growth is a spiralling process through creation between the aspects of existence and dimensions of form. To dictate an end point to a process is to espouse an agenda – an agenda based on the needs of ego under fire.

There is never an arrival point – although there are many landmark shifts, such as awakening and enlightenment. There is no such thing as private liberation or private happiness. The very idea of this betrays its own lie of separation and the great hook of narcissism embedded in the belief that disunity is absolute.

When spiritual teachers begin to receive money for their services, the literal investment in “being right” and in offering an “end-point” is further inflated. Can they literally afford to be humble? To make a mistake? To be in process? Are they allowed to change their minds?(!)  Can they risk being equally human? How does a spiritual teacher navigate between the physical needs (financial, sexual, etc) and his own elated position as one free of all form?

In a fast food culture of quick fixes and instant gratification, the temptations of egoic whiplash can be huge, almost taking on the mythical proportions of Satan with his horns and tail. Key words are humility, trust, responsibility and above all, humanity.

The opposite of humility is grandiosity. Equality has no opposite. Equality is always here.

 

“Stay without the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone, completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual.”

–Nisargadatta Maharaj