It has not deserted its creation for a place apart; it is always present to those with strength to touch it.
—Plotinus
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.
—Shunryu Suzuki
Although living a life sourced from a sense of separation consistently leads to suffering, separation itself is not bad. In fact, feeling separate from everything is pretty natural. But our attachment to both our sense of separation and to the activities that perpetuate it results in what many traditions call “delusion.” While, here again, there is nothing inherently wrong with delusion, or what we could just as easily refer to as unconsciousness, it usually gets us into trouble. And in a spiritual sense, it is the major impediment to an opening to the enlightened perspective. Put another way, unconsciousness is what keeps us from ascending the Path up the Mountain. Our journey is thwarted since the ego sees itself as separate from everything else, and it survives by building a fortress around all that could potentially support its ability to manage everything about our lives. It does this by clinging to the things that it sees as useful for maintaining its sense of control and by avoiding the things that challenge its authority. A common example of this is our tendency to look for certitude in everything. People so often feel uncomfortable in the chaotic uncertainty of life that they grasp at certainties such as religion, political dogmas, clubs and communal organizations in order to make them feel safe, cared for, and understood. The delusion that our grasping will defend us from the Universe is exactly what inhibits an awakened expression of life.
Put another way, the natural perception of separation on the relative level—for example, the perception that the dog and the cat are separate creatures, or that the chocolate ice cream I’m eating is separate from the vanilla ice cream that my wife is enjoying—doesn’t cause suffering. Instead, the problem arises when we cling to the erroneous view that the dog and the cat, as well as the chocolate and vanilla ice cream, are essentially separate and not also profoundly interconnected. This interconnectedness shows up the minute we start to look carefully at anything. In our examples, we can see that chocolate and vanilla, as well as the dog and cat, are all subject to the laws of nature. They share the need for air and water if they are to exist. What’s more, they depend on our labeling in order to occupy any type of categorization. We’ll explore this in greater detail as our climb continues, but we would do well to consider how this very same logic applies to the human experience. The ego begins to fortify its position when it perceives that it is fundamentally apart from others as well as the rest of the Universe, to the exclusion of a deep and unavoidable connection to everything. As a consequence of this delusion, we constantly either go after or avoid the circumstances that show up in our lives, and this unrelenting, psychological push-and-pull eventually leads to suffering.
It’s important to remember, at this point of our climb, that attachment and avoidance are fundamentally the same psychological movement, since both try to dodge the circumstances that present themselves to us. Studying these circumstances as well as our corresponding leanings into or away from these mental mechanisms is a critical step in unlocking the enlightened perspective. The simple awareness of each experience, regardless of how the ego judges it, comes from a spaciousness that is unattached and beyond clinging and aversion. This spacious awareness is the place where wisdom meets compassion. It’s where we begin meeting whatever arises in our conscious experience, without trying to do anything other than observe it. It is from this highest form of intelligence that we are offered a chance to see how we might live lives of deep balance.
If any of this sounds confusing, know that you are not alone. I had a horrible time with all of it when I began my practice. As Buddhist teachings, known as Dharma, came my way, my ego kept me moving constantly. I couldn’t stop. Even when I was physically still while sitting on my meditation cushion, my mind raced. I spent so much time trying to “get” what the books and teachers described, so much effort trying to discover shortcuts to living a life of conscious balance, that I missed what all the books and teachers were saying. I finally got so frustrated with all of my movement toward this idea and away from that practice that I just stopped. Literally. I sat in the meditation hall, tears rolling down my cheeks, wondering what I was doing wrong, and then I just stopped doing anything. I just sat still. At that moment of surrendered stillness, my mind truly quieted down. Then glimpses of what everybody kept pointing out started to arise. This is why, as I lead groups of people interested in this kind of work, I make so much out of the practice of simply sitting still, shutting up, and watching our experience. Whether or not we find ourselves confused by all of the words and concepts doesn’t matter. All one needs in order to begin his or her climb is to practice watching experiences as they come up—without grabbing or avoiding them, either mentally or physically.
Along these lines, one of my students approached me after a Dharma talk and said, “I’ve been able to observe and witness my experience like you keep telling us, and it’s really useful.” She then asked, why we don’t “teach this to our kids in school?”
It’s a great question, since this kind of open awareness changes lives by creating a welcome space for the kind of internal expansiveness necessary for transformation. I think teaching it to children in school is a great idea, but barring some miraculous revamp in school curriculum, we can still do our part in making sure that all of our kids get the chance to develop a keen sense of their internal lives. One way to help this along is for us to ask any person of any age how they are feeling. This can help facilitate a growth in this expanse beyond the chattering mind that always wants to “get it.” On the other hand, asking someone what they are thinking merely energizes the chattering mind whose noise we’re trying to get beyond. Of course the mind is not a bad thing, but it is exactly what keeps us feeling separate from all things. Checking in with our bodily experience, on the other hand, will always assist us as we climb since we cannot answer questions about how we are truly feeling without openly observing what is going on in our bodies, and it is the open observation of our experience, rather than the mind’s evaluation of it, that gets us to the summit of the Mountain of Spirit.
So for those of us interested in getting to the summit and then returning home, we must be willing to free ourselves from our identification with our ego and all the attachments associated with its activity. When we drop our identification with what feels separate, we are walking a path that leads us toward Enlightenment. When we drop our need to judge and evaluate, we begin to uncover and support a realization of what has always been at the core of who we are. When we simply stop trying to “get it” and we become still, we are primed for a realization that allows us to lead what we might call an “Ultimate Life” that goes far beyond the normal, conventional circumstances we typically experience. This Ultimate Life is a life that is consciously connected with, rather than separate from, all things—a life lived from, with, and as Spirit, Being, Essence, or whatever else we might call it.
By contrast, life’s “conventional circumstances” are the normal, everyday experiences we so often call the “real world.” We could just as easily call this realm our “day-to-day reality” or our “normal life.” Regardless of the name, it’s the solid and substantial world we experience and sense from our individual perspective. While conventional circumstances are most certainly real, they are also the place where our mind begins to help us always feel separate, and this place of separation is always incomplete in its attempts at offering us peace.
The view from the summit gives each of us the chance to recognize and access the part of us that is aware, alert, connected, and therefore stable and at rest in every situation. Once we’ve climbed high enough to uncover this perspective, we’re offered an opportunity to act from an infinite spaciousness rather than from our habitually contracted state. As we open into greater awareness and spaciousness, our activity begins to express itself as compassion and caring. In this space, we begin to embody the radiance of the enlightened perspective in our everyday world. We literally become a continual, undivided expression of wisdom and compassion.
Some of you may have been lucky enough to meet someone who lives from this place. Seeing this embodied radiance can be breathtaking. Many of us who have been fortunate enough to meet authentic masters walk away from the experience mysteriously moved. This is exactly what happened to me when I first met the most influential of my teachers as I began to climb the Mountain. I couldn’t put it into words at the time, but just being in his presence changed something in me. Whatever defenses I had built up to prevent the circumstances of life from tearing me apart, this guy took from me. In his presence, I felt suddenly alone, exposed, and unable to function the way I’d always functioned. Initially this was incredibly unsettling since I was rarely at a loss for words. But I saw this as a good quality for a spiritual teacher to have, since it would keep me from leaning on my old habits. Over time, I found many more people along my path who were able to meet the world, and all of us that are in it, from this deeply conscious place. These people are the ones who know Spirit radiates through all of us equally, and their recognition of this and their intimacy with what this recognition means is what allows them to teach with integrity. Finding someone who can live in the world but not be confined by his or her circumstance helps us immeasurably along our journey since they offer us a divine invitation to join them in shedding our sense of separation.
