A complete path is composed of three distinct levels of “path-walkers”: those who are newly walking it, those who are nearing its culmination, and those who are currently dwelling in the mastery of the discipline, reinforcing the possibility of its achievement.
For practitioners such as ourselves, our path of practice – our medicine – cures our inability to understand ourselves and our experience. Our medicines first purify our motives for engaging with others. Later, our medicines remove any lingering obstacles that are preventing us from being completely clear, competent, and authentic. Our medicines are leading us, step by step, toward the visceral discovery-immersion-experience of our fundamental and inseparable togetherness – from which emerges spontaneously and organically our reflexive dedication to steward, inspire, and protect all others – what we sometimes refer to as “infinite responsibility”. If any of us are uncertain as to the point of the path, that’s where all of this is going.
There is a gift in each of our hearts that is called “the inevitability of enlightenment”. We can’t fight it, actually. It’s what we’re becoming, whether we like it or not. The inconceivable magic of enlightened beings is that, even though it’s unrecognizable to us, they are constantly exposing us to opportunities that challenge us to evolve into more competent and compassionate beings. Enlightened beings exercise extreme patience with us, and equipped with direct insight into our erroneous ways of thinking, influence the appropriate types of collisions that are required for our growth.
It’s vital to understand that enlightened beings are not dragging us kicking and screaming against our will. Actually, the collisions and opportunities to play that they “inspire” or “influence” are the direct result of our own fascination and admiration of others. We fall in love, make friends, build careers, travel the globe, and so on, all because we are attracted to and inspired by others. Because of these interactions, we find ourselves in all sorts of situations. The deeper the attraction, the more intimate and powerful the encounter.
With intimacy comes the ability to identify with others – to recognize that we share the same wish to understand who we are and what our purpose is in life. This ability to relate authentically to others is the prerequisite for growth. Thus, in a final and strange twist of fate, it is attraction to “physical displays” that is the actual catalyst for “spiritual maturity”.
At a certain stage of our development as practitioners, we become solely and utterly attracted to the physical displays of enlightened beings – physical displays such as wisdom, eloquence, kindness, genius, capacity to innovate, fearlessness, and so on. These qualities are not merely mental intangibles, but they manifest in the form of consistent behavior. They manifest as excellence, and it is this excellence to which we practitioners aspire, to which we are attracted. Our teachers offer us a simple, straightforward teaching: become excellent, so you will inspire others to become excellent.
As we begin to blossom, we too set off a chain of attraction, and our subsequent collisions “give rise” to countless opportunities to collaborate with and inspire others. With each new pulse of effort generated, there follow even more opportunities for strangers to collide, and over time, to become intimate with one another – to begin caring for and about one another. Our sincere efforts inevitably inspire others. This chain reaction of striving for excellence manifests as a result of our admiration for our mentors.
Excellence is a quality that is only visible through contrast. That is, without others to play with, it’s impossible to determine what actually is beneficial and inspiring and what is not. In order for excellence to exist, sensitivity to our environment is necessary. Such sensitivity is akin to a bat’s echolocation, or a dolphin’s sonar. Both sonar and echolocation are ongoing, mapping the environment and its inhabitants, moment by moment. In this way, the “game” is always on, always active, always alive.
Because we are sentient beings, that is, beings with senses (and sometimes common sense), the game is always on for us too, and we are free to decide how sensitive we’d like to be to the needs of our environment, the needs of others, and our own needs. This is a very big deal, and whether we like it or not, each of us is currently starring in the game of our lives. Our relationships, our businesses, our hobbies, our aspirations – our entire culture – all of it is a game that we are playing with others, more or less skillfully, with more or less awareness of the quality of the performance of our team, and with more or less awareness of how much of an impact we have on our team. How well we play depends on how well we collaborate.
We can clearly recognize that some collaborations – some “synchronistic collisions” – are profound and inspiring, while others are destabilizing and chaotic. It’s clear to see that, with effort, we can improve ourselves, and in so doing, improve our skill as collaborators. Like a baseball player or a doctor, we don’t go from zero to the major leagues or zero to a PhD overnight. In our case as practitioners, we don’t go from zero to enlightenment overnight either. All movement toward maturity is broken up into stages. We grow step by step.
Stages of the path are like medications that we take to cure specific ailments or illnesses relevant to our development, relevant to our movement toward enlightenment, relevant to where we currently reside on the path. Stages are like directions that pop up on our GPS once we’ve entered our destination and starting point. In this analogy and for example, even though we can see that in 39 miles we will need to take exit 22N, right now, we need to turn left at the light. Then, we will need to travel 13 miles south on Route 77. If we would like to get to our destination, then it makes sense to follow the directions that correspond to exactly where we are positioned on the map.
While we are traveling toward our destination, by definition, we are not also residing there at the same time. It’s common sense that, if we are traveling to some place, there is distance between that place and ourselves. It’s also obvious that the distance between where we are and where we want to go cannot be traversed all at once, nor will that distance close itself. It is our effort that closes the distance between here and there, and no matter the size of the gap between here and there, if we can proceed even just a millimeter at a time, even though that may take us three incalculable eons, it is certain that we will arrive at our intended location.
Wherever we are right now, any confusion about our experience indicates the presence of distance between our current understanding of ourselves and what is possible to understand about ourselves. The stages of the path are steps that erase the distance between what we think we are and what we really are. Just as GPS directions are broken into a list that connects one place to another, the path is also organized into stages – each with a distinct lesson that provides precise instructions about how to get to the next checkpoint.
Unlike a vacation destination, or any other destination we enter into our GPS, such as Whole Foods or Dick’s Sporting Goods, our enlightenment-excellence destination is not a static place. It is a living potential – a way of being, a way of engaging, and an ongoing capacity to initiate a certain type of collaboration with others. This way of being is what we all want, and deep down, it’s what we’re most attracted to. This way of being is the fruit of the path.
When we want to go on vacation, we spend months, sometimes years, looking at pictures, reading about our destination, talking excitedly about it to friends, and so on. As practitioners, it’s important that we don’t do the same thing with our relationship to the path – all talk and no walk. Unlike vacation, which requires planning, we can begin walking the path right here, right now. There is no other place to “get on the path” and get to work other than this moment.
Therefore, while it is of high importance to familiarize ourselves with where the path is leading and to learn to identify key landmarks that will inform us that we are about to stray from the path, it’s always of higher importance to remind ourselves of what it looks and feels like to enter the path. Without directions, it’s impossible to arrive at our destination. Similarly, without being able to clearly identify what designates our entrance to the path, no matter how much we may want to believe we are practitioners, we would simply be fantasizing about it.
For all of us, the path begins with the acknowledgment that something is wrong, the acknowledgment that we are confused – a little or a lot! It’s clear to all of us that none of us would try to create solutions without first acknowledging a problem. Creativity – problem solving – requires a specific type of admission. Without admitting that things can be improved, no effort to improve anything would be made by any of us. We each arrive at the path acknowledging suffering in some way – lacking something, overwhelmed by too much of something else, identifying some problem. In fact, the more courageous we are in our admission of confusion, the more clarity and insight can flow into our minds.
Even if the words “suffering” or “confusion” aren’t on the tip of our tongues, we can admit that we often feel “discontent” or “out of place”. We don’t really feel like we belong anywhere – often times, not even in our homes. And if we can’t feel at home in our own spaces, it’s an impossible task to think that we might feel at home at a job or in the world at large.
All of us have tried to find “the right place”, “the right job”, “the right spouse”, “the right tribe”, the right this or that. Notice that our efforts to find “the right one” are based on our view that most things are “the wrong ones” – that is, not good enough for us, not comfortable, seductive, important, or impressive enough for us. This means that way deep down, we are qualifying the majority of the events and people we experience as less than worthy of us. Based on this projection, we experience an extreme sense of isolation from the world. This sense of isolation is the “suffering” referred to by our mentors.
Bottom line, if we don’t feel at home, it’s because we are experiencing distance between who we think we are and the inherent magic of who and what we really are. This magic is not like a mantra or affirmation that needs to be repeated in order to psych ourselves up into a temporarily induced positive attitude. When we discover the magic, it’s impossible to unknow it, in the same way that it’s impossible to unknow or unlearn that 2+2=4.
Becoming aware of our fundamental sense of isolation and judgment of the majority of our experiences as “not good enough” is the first step – all of our growth and maturity arises out of this acknowledgment. For this problem, the path is the creative solution. And fortunately, it is a path. It is a trail that has been tread and cleared by others before us. These excellent, formidable, precious ones leave behind records of their methods, and there is always a specific type of exercise, practice, or medicine that is relevant to wherever we are. Our task is to learn to identify where we are, so we can take the appropriate course of action.
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