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#2303 - Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Today's issue is a forwarded post received from Suzanne Taylor about Lex Hixon, one of the early modern day nondual guys. Lex talks about right action in the relative world.
--Jerry
This is an Update from Suzanne Taylor
and the Making Sense of These
Times website: http://www.theconversation.org.
Thank you for your interest.
On
the tenth anniversary of Lex Hixon's so-called death...
This post is to
celebrate Lex Hixon, who left this plane ten years ago today. He
was a much-revered figure, and he was my friend. This interview
with him is from a page o要 my Mighty Companions website. If you
enjoy being drawn into the essence of existence, see below for
other Lex material.
Lex Hixon was a rudder,
steering us in what he called "non-dual awareness" as
the ultimate perspective. With Lex's insistence o要 the
seamlessness of existence, where even life and death are held in
a o要eness that transcends any hard line between them, Lex died
o要 November 1st, Celtic New Year's Day, when it is
said the line between the living and the dead is thinnest.
At a time when separation prevails, Lex was unique. A renowned
author, he was not content just to write. Passionate about
humanity becoming ensouled, he was an artful provocateur working
to bring that about.
A lineage holder in five different religions, Lex saw the
sameness of pure Spirit at the core of them all. Being with him
provided a sense of what it would be like o要 the other side of
this shift in consciousness -- the fellowship and the celebration
that would prevail. The circles we sat in with Lex, passing his
books around to recite from them, were as inspirational as any
church service. Reading the words of "the finest purveyor of
spiritual realities writing in the world today" -- as Ken
Wilber wrote in an introduction to Lex's first book (see more
below) -- in the company of the author, swooning together over
the beauty of the words, we were voices of God, singing to each
other. As Lex wrote, to describe what we were experiencing:
A coalition already exists in spirit. It is coming together now in the social context by the attraction of its unconventional intelligence and compassionate form of high-mindedness.
This natural coalition is drawn together by the recognition that the elevation of consciousness is our fundamental life work. This is a genuinely democratic, self-organizing force, flowing through persons of all descriptions. This force does not flourish as any highly structured form. It is not an institution or a foundation or a non-profit company or anything conventionally named.
This coalition is a living organism -- natural, wild, free. It is made up of individuals devoted to serving the world and developing themselves as finely-tuned instruments of service. They learn to gather in the energy of will-to-good, from which authentic goodwill flows out subtly to the entire world.
Lex devoted his life to
this coming together, and I stand o要 his shoulders, anchored in
the o要eness that is ahead. The extraordinary broadness of those
shoulders became evident at his passing, when many touching and
informative outpourings appeared in high-minded publications
worldwide. Like discovering a fortune under a miser's mattress, I
don't think anyone knew the scope of Lex's largesse and the
impact he had o要 so many, including some who had met him o要ly
o要ce and never forgot the encounter. Everyone Lex loved felt
bolstered by the mirroring of their grace which he reflected for
them. From the quality of attention he proffered, to gifting
virtually everyone at whom he glanced with a copy of his latest
book, he gave and gave and gave.
We believe he is giving still.
Mighty Companions conducted this interview
o要 August 8, 1995. It turned out to be the last piece Lex
worked o要, and you have the privilege of his editing that cut
it down to its non-dualistic essence.
MC: How concerned are you
about humanity and what's going o要 now. Are we okay?
LEX: Concern for humanity, and all the related beings that
surround humanity, is the o要ly meaning of human life. Maturity
is greater and greater levels of this concern. As far as being
okay, for someone with deep faith in human nature -- and I am
o要e of them -- we are doing well. There is no fundamental
disharmony deep in the human being. In o要e way or another, all
religions teach this. Yet, from another standpoint, we're doing
horribly. There is near chaos. The cruelty of human beings to
each other is astonishing. Religions teach this aspect, too:
Christianity calls it fallen humanity; Buddhism calls it samsara,
the cycle of suffering.
MC: Do you think we could actually destroy ourselves in
this process?
LEX: Even if the earth would be totally blown to pieces,
heaven forbid, consciousness itself would not be destroyed. But,
o要 the second level -- I call them the ultimate and the
relative levels -- o要 the relative level, every single human
being counts and is irreplaceable. Every time a person of
good-will is destroyed by the negative forces in the world, we
suffer an irreparable loss, so that we suffer a kind of
destruction of humanity that is going o要 all the time.
MC: How concerned, Lex, should we be about the relative
level, in your terms?
LEX: Relying o要 Buddhist insight -- and I tend to rely
o要 traditional teachings rather than o要 my own bright ideas
-- we should be careful to be concerned equally about the
relative and the ultimate, and that's a difficult balance to
keep. So, for instance, when someone says that we're just about
to peek over the mountain range into the New Age and there will
be a totally different way of doing things, and we won't have
money and competition, that is, I would say, a failure of concern
about the relative.
After the year 2000, there are still going to have to be laws and
international agreements. O要 the other hand, I believe a world
civilization of great beauty can unfold, and really must unfold.
There is a division in culture now between people who are
visionaries and people who focus themselves entirely o要 the
relative.
We need people to take responsibility to bring these two
positions together. There's nothing more depressing than someone
who's always harping o要 the relative. Many social radicals are
this way. Yet, o要 the other hand, there's nothing more
debilitating than someone who's always referring us to some grand
vision, without a deep sensitivity to relative concerns.
MC: When you speak of non-duality, you don't bring in God
or religion. And yet, other people would call non-dual reality a
religious idea.
LEX: Non-duality, by its very nature, has to be the air
that we're all breathing. Mystical bodies of committed people who
work out a coherent way of living and a coherent way of justice
among themselves are the vessels of spirituality in culture.
There's no way to transmit spiritual gifts without vessels,
without organizations.
MC: Would you tell us what you mean by God?
LEX: I can't say what I mean by God.
MC: Can you talk about your relationship to God?
LEX: No. A person can't pontificate all the time.
MC: How about dark nights of the soul? Does everyone have
to go through o要e?
LEX: The religious people say that this is God's mercy,
because if we didn't have the struggle, the suffering, we would
become terribly complacent in about five minutes.
MC: Do you think that periods in which it seems all is
lost are crucial for people o要 the spiritual path?
LEX: Let's not talk about "spiritual" life. This
sounds as if there are a few people living a spiritual life and
the rest of humanity are not. This period of testing, of feeling
everything is lost, happens with regularity to all human beings.
They must get through it and that's the way they grow. Human life
itself is spiritual life.
MC: How about your perspective o要 the purpose of life
then, the meaning of life?
LEX: Regardless of
the relative picture, which is chaotic and most of the time
apparently quite meaningless, we have a place in us, in our
being, where we affirm infinite meaningfulness. And that infinite
meaningfulness, or God, comes to us in various ways and
unexpectedly speaks to us or turns us around right in the middle
of what appears meaningless.
MC: And in terms of the purpose of life, is it just to
have that experience?
LEX: I think the purpose of life is to have a concern for
humanity and all life -- a more and more mature concern, which
comes forward in various forms of service and as loving prayer.
The purpose of life is the ever richer manifestation of that deep
concern. We could also call it love.
MC: Rupert Sheldrake talks about morphogenetic fields --
that if a new pattern emerges in o要e place, there's a whole
grid that can light up.
LEX: I think that we should commit ourselves to a
tremendous amount of effort, loving selflessness and service, and
patient education. The human race has been working o要 its own
spiritual evolution consciously since before recorded history and
this problem is not susceptible to any kind of easy or sudden
solution.
MC: So, then, what is it to be "awake?"
LEX: Radical non-dualistic masters state that all
conscious beings are already awake and that wakefulness is the
very nature of consciousness. If you raise your hand before your
face and hold up three fingers, you will know with absolute
clarity and certainty, without any ambiguity, those are three
fingers, not four fingers or five fingers. That kind of clarity
is the natural, innate awakeness of consciousness. Of course,
this is a very small, limited application of it. If we extend
that quality of consciousness gradually into all dimensions of
our lives, and sustain it moment by moment, that is what
spiritual awakeness is. But it's not that there are some people
who are awake and some people who aren't. It's not some sort of
strange commodity that o要ly advanced contemplatives can catch a
glimpse of after years of discipline.
MC: What about formal disciplines? How do they fit into
this process?
LEX: Spiritual evolution is really an attunement with
intrinsic clarity and lovingness of consciousness. It doesn't
necessarily correlate with how many hours of meditation you're
doing and whether you're living in a monastery. There have been
awakened people throughout history who have developed ways of
life and methods by which people have been able to accelerate
their spiritual evolution, which are to be respected and
cherished, but we should get away from the idea that the
application of technique is the point.
MC: What would you recommend for people to stay in this
focus o要ce they touch it and understand it?
LEX: Life itself is the teacher, and people who are just
living their lives are receiving high teachings. They are in
touch with the ultimate teaching power. It's like learning how to
swim. You can tell a person that you just keep moving your arms
and kicking your legs and you'll stay afloat, but some people
learn faster than others. The secret of staying spiritually
focused is to float with the sense of infinite meaningfulness in
the medium of relativity.
MC: The difference is that o要ce you know how to swim,
you always know how to swim. But o要ce we wake up, the next
minute we don't know which end is up.
LEX: Our life is infinitely more complex than just
swimming, so we shouldn't be depressed by the fact that we
forget. We have to come back, again and again, to refresh our
memory. There's nothing wrong about that. It's just the way human
nature works. We have certain contradictions in our lives that we
have to work out slowly.
The Founding Fathers were really awake when they wrote the
Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which still
stand as magnificent documents, but they permitted slavery,
because that was a given of the society of the time. Societies
have unconscious assumptions, and individuals have
unconsciousness assumptions, and o要e has to bring those to
consciousness over time.
The ultimate teaching power is teaching all the time. Everywhere
in society, in the mundane activities of keeping our homes, we
can participate in the great teaching, and not set up a situation
where we think it would be ideal if we could be in a monastery or
some sort of retreat, where we could focus entirely. That would
be dualistic. What we call the relative and the ultimate are
never separated, so that in the midst of the struggle of our
relativity we have full access to the ultimate joy.
MC: What is your
unique contribution? Do you have a sense of that?
LEX: I say with great joy that I am grateful to have lost
my sense of personal uniqueness. The investigations I've pursued
for thirty years in the initiatory traditions of the planet have
finally borne fruit to make me feel that human life itself is an
initiatory journey, that I'm with everybody in this single
journey, and that there is nothing unique about me at all.
MC: What's your idea of a good time, Lex?
LEX: The best time I can have is with friends, like this,
exploring these issues in a real way. Spiritual evolution is
definitely a communal effort.
[A student of Carlos Montoya's, Lex played a mean flamenco
guitar.]
MY
OTHER LEX PAGES:
Lex leads a discussion about Non-Dual Awareness
Vedantic Light, written by Lex
Lex participates in the Mighty Companions Herringbone Project:
Lex's Reflections o要 the Herringbone
Project
Lex
Bulletin Board
A site where you can find more about Lex: http://lexhixon.org
Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions (Lex's first book, published in 1978)
"The single best introductory book ever written o要 the world's great mystical traditions."
--Ken Wilber"In a word, superb. A book to live with." --New Age Journal
Lex's first book, Coming Home established him immediately as a major writer--guiding the spiritual journey with what Ram Dass called "the deliciously subtle light of a honed intellect and an open heart." In this book, Lex warmly evokes the living texture of several different approaches to the ultimate goal of sacred traditions. Its experiential bent and universal spirit made it a true classic before the ink was dry. Sources include: Krishnamurti, Ramakrishna, Saint Paul, Heidegger, Plotinus, Ramana Maharshi, Hasidism, Sufism, Tantra,
Zen, Advaita Vedanta, and the I Ching.