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#2231-
Hello. Here are
two articles bearing on the challenge of living in the
world, from Mark McCloskey and Roy
Whenary.
--Jerry
Mark McCloskey
http://www.puresilence.org/
Before it is too Late
These are the
facts: you can disregard them, you can ignore them, you can
pretend they are not true, you can curl up in a false sense of
"I am the pure silence or I am enlightened and there is
nothing I need to do (The Advaita Disease*)." The
reality is that the earth is in great pain. It has been abused
for many, many years by greed, exploitation and power seeking mad
men! These conditions still exist and seem to be getting ever
worse. Beliefs in a personal self are the root, and the
consequences are fatal to all of us. If the human race does not
wake up to the reality of this moment: of this moment as it is -
then my faithful friend: I fear we are doomed to extinction
either by the sum years of our poisoning and raping the earth or
by the pitting of one belief against another and the subsequent
defense mechanisms of war, weaponry, mass destruction and violent
upheaval.
You have never
heard me write like this before. Something compels me - perhaps
my own face in the mirror - or perhaps the bitterness, false
sense of security, egoism and confusion I see in the faces of
others still trying to possess, to have more wealth and their
manipulative and selfish beliefs in something called a
"me" which needs to be defended!
Listen to me
now, my dear, dear friend - if you have awakened, have
discovered pure awareness, if you have been given the treasure,
the gift of knowing the gentle space within of pure silence which
you are: with that gift, that awakening, that discovery comes a
price. The price of knowing that you are the space that is the
universe itself, that you are all that you see, hear and taste,
that you really are the "other" and that there is no
little "you" walking around in that thing called a body
and mind, then you must come to terms with the very reason you
are here.
You are simply
to live your life with deep compassion for all others (which are
really "you" anyway): for the people, the animals, the
plants, the rivers, the oceans, the soil, the air and all that
which is this beautiful heavenly abode called planet Earth. The
command is to love all as you love your self! If you cannot be
open to that fact that this is who you are and to share this
simple fact with all others, then the sad news is that there may
not be a future abode for awareness to evolve. And how terribly
sad that would be for us all.
Awakening is
not personal-it is for all!
* Advaita Disease: The belief that
there is nothing a human being can do to change a present
event-nor can we nor should we. Rather, the teaching of
non-duality indicates that we are all the whole and that what one
does indeed deeply effects the whole. The result is compassion
for all beings as one, which simply flows out of the pure silence
itself.
http://www.lotusharmony.com/index.htm
Living in the World
In the past, if you were called to
explore the spiritual, it may have been necessary to have joined
a monastery, convent or the priesthood of whichever religion you
belonged to. Of course, that is also an option today. We must all
find the way of living that is right for us, given our own
individual circumstances and inclinations. But we probably have
more options today.
Do we want to live in the world,
earn a living, raise a family, have relationships and so on, or
do we wish to live a more reclusive existence, have few
responsibilities and be cut off from society at large? Our answer
may be different at different stages of our life. We may also
prefer to live in the world and take occasional retreats. But,
whatever we do, it is important to understand our real needs at a
deep level.
Whilst at the deepest level we all
share an essential Oneness, nevertheless, we do also live
temporarily in the world of duality and do have different skills,
talents and creative abilities to express and share. However, the
task before us is how to live and function physically in the
world of duality whilst also residing psychologically and at a
feeling-level in the non-dual.
Living in the world, it is not
always easy to stay consciously in our true nature without
getting caught up in all the activity, the emotional pulls, the
ties and responsibilities. Sometimes we may feel like just
getting out and escaping to the middle of nowhere. At other
times, we may get completely involved in what is going on.
Whatever happens, living in the world, our senses are
continuously battered by all the activity, all the business of
modern life.
Television, radio, newspapers and
the internet are all bombarding us every day with news,
information, advertising, lifestyle programming and the like. Our
senses are filled to the brim with this constant flow of
information and influence on our lives. If we have children, it
is hard to know how to protect their innocence in a world of mass
education and mass conditioning. Then the so called experts tell
us we should be living like this or living like that, eating this
and not eating that, believing this and complaining about that.
All of this is taking us further
and further away from our true nature, further and further away
from feeling life at a deep level, and more and more into trivial
thoughts and emotions. This is the consumerist society, where we
consume all that is offered to us, where society consumes us and
then spits us out at the end of our useful life. As long as we
throw ourselves into this way of living we will never find
happiness, we will never be at peace within ourselves.
We need to stand back from all
that is going on in the world, enter that timeless part of
ourselves and learn to feel what it is to be alive. Then we can
live in the world if we wish, but not be a product of it.
Whatever society is today, it will change. All cultures and
civilizations have a limited life span and what is fashionable at
one time is unfashionable at another. But underlying all that
goes on in the world, our true nature is always there, underlying
our sense of who we are.
We are never apart from our true
nature, except psychologically, whilst we believe in the play
that is being enacted in the world, whilst we identify with it
and immerse ourselves in it. But we always have, if we are aware
of it, the option of standing back and going into the silent
emptiness of our true nature. If we don’t take this option,
then we get swallowed up by the world and all the meaningless
activity, and thus miss the plot entirely.
It is a real challenge to live in
the world, especially today. Modern communication and information
resources mean that we can very easily and quickly gain access to
vast amounts of information and knowledge about absolutely
everything, including spiritual teachings. The information
available to us is so vast that we could easily become confused
by what is on offer. But are we information machines? What is the
sense of having all this information if we do not know ourselves,
if we are not deeply in touch with the core of our being?
The positive side of living in the
world is that, if we have at all been awakened spiritually, we
are constantly challenged by daily living, by the attitudes of
those around us who are completely oblivious to the spiritual
dimension. We are continuously challenged to re-think and
re-explore our own attitudes - our anger, fear, desire,
self-pity, resentment, greed and so on. We are bombarded with so
much information and so many emotionally charged situations,
which come at us at such a fast rate, that we make mistakes more
frequently and more quickly than would be the case were we living
in isolation from the world. But we also have more opportunity to
observe these mistakes and move on more quickly - if we are
fortunate enough to not be completely pulled in by the world and
all the activity.
There are many obstacles to
spiritual unfoldment in the modern world, but there is also an
intensification of any awakening that begins to take place,
because the chasm between what is going on in the world and the
spiritual perspective is so vast that everything becomes clear
and obvious.
When we live from the silent
emptiness of our true nature, all the activity in the world
cannot dislodge us from that reality. All the armies of Mara
cannot force us from under the Bodhi Tree, when we live in the
light of our true nature. We may sometimes face the anger and
aggression of people we work with, or even members of our own
family, but we stay in the feeling, not resisting - listening,
receiving, but not discarding, not pushing away, not fearing. We
stay in the silent emptiness of our true nature.
Everything that happens, that
confronts us in the world, is a part of the great cosmic play of
life. Resting in the silent emptiness of our true nature, we
watch it flow, neither pushing it away nor pulling it near.
People may say that we lack feeling, that we give no response,
but what they are really saying is that we do not get emotionally
involved, which is what they want us to become.
People use emotion in order to
avoid really going deeply into the feeling. It is much easier and
safer for the ego to play around with emotion, manipulating other
people through emotional blackmail, but never really going to the
root of the problem, never seeing beneath the surface of life.
But this is what living in the world is all about - facing the
challenges, exploring the relationship between the real and the
unreal, standing back and diving deep into the bliss of one’s
true nature and laughing in the face of the world.