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To understand the sometimes gradual nature of the path, I find it helpful to conceive of a spiritual journey that goes beyond this lifetime. In that view the time factor for souls is an infinity of multiple incarnations, though paradoxically reality lies in being fully present in each moment.
There is no form that in and of itself is closer to God. All forms are just forms . . . not better to stay single than to marry, not better to marry than stay single. Each individual has his or her unique karmic predicament; each individual must therefore listen very carefully to hear her or his dharma or way or path. For one person it will be as a mother, or for another it will
Do we judge someone because he or she’s not as conscious as we are? Do we judge a prepubescent because they’re not sexually aware? We understand. We have compassion. Compassion, sometimes, is simply leaving other people alone. We don’t lay trips. We exist as a statement of our own level of evolution. We are available to any human being, to provide what they need, to the extent that they ask. But we see that it is a fallacy to think that we can impose a trip on another person.
more we enter a meditative space, the clearer we hear our dharma, our flow, our way home, our route back to the source.
On and on and in the middle of the main course, we’re already thinking about what we’ll have for dessert. The way we deal with this game is by constantly keeping the things going by fast, like a sleight-of-hand trick. Knowing that none of them will last, we figure that enough of them with small enough spaces in between will keep the rush going.
A poetic way to talk about how we fill our time or minds with entertainment to fill the spaces, or how rare it is to simply sit with ourselves in emptiness.
when somebody gets us furious, we know that the only reason we got angry was because we had a secret hidden model of how we think it ought to be that we were holding on to. We realize that the person who got us angry is a teaching, and in our minds we thank him.
...whenever someone breaks one of our covert contracts...or how we expect the world to be. Holding tightly is our own issue, the looser we hold expectations the more present we can become in thanking the teachings that come through frustration or suffering.
So here I am in this old decaying body. It’s the package in which I am functioning. I honor it. I take pretty good care of it. Yet, whatever the catalyst, whether it was Maharaj-ji, or psychedelics, or my studies, or meditative experiences, the importance of my body and personality, of the Ram Dass melodrama, have been appreciably lessening.
I wonder as I age if the melodrama of my own ego will become less and less prominant. So far that seems to be the case, but I suppose that is the case with anybody and why wisdom is associated with experience and age.
We get to the point where our acts are not done out of attachment but instead are just done as they’re done, and no new stuff is being created. There is just old stuff running off, but nobody being affected by it because there is nothing in us that clings to a model of who we are or aren’t. It all becomes just passing show. There is no investment in its representing us as “individuals.” It is just the outcome of previous input, just old conditioning clicking along, just more grist for the mill.
The process of purification is preparing ourselves as containers to handle more and more energy, more and more love—and for that we need quieter and quieter minds, and stronger bodies, and more open hearts.
The emptier we are the more we can contian.
