The Point Is to Walk the Earth
El punto es caminar por la tierra
A question about how to know whether one's practice is guided by something beyond the mind, and how spiritual work relates to living a more loving life.
The Point Is to Walk the Earth
A question about how to know whether one's practice is guided by something beyond the mind, and how spiritual work relates to living a more loving life.
What I hear is: as long as it's not the mind telling me what to do. But how do I know that? I don't know that ultimately, but if my intent is to go beyond mind, maybe that's a guiding light. I'm not sure, but that's what I hear. You're saying: anything beyond concept, beyond… something like that.
The value of a living teacher
In that case, I could say: anything you know from direct experience, you know what is true and what is not. And that is why being able to speak to a teacher who is not just a book or a dead teacher is so invaluable. They will, with all of their errors and mistakes, more likely than not be able to attune to where you are and guide you toward seeing what is mind and what is not.
Good.
Relationship as practice
Another thing, which might be surprising, is relationship. To have a romantic relationship, for example, with somebody who is also committed to this work and committed to mirroring each other, with all of the frictions and conflicts: that is a great meditation practice.
Because that's usually where we have the most resistance to truth. "I want to be right," or "It's your fault," those kinds of things.
Yes. And it's really where any maturity that comes from a spiritual or meditation practice can develop, manifest, and become real. Because in the end it is really all about being more loving. My teacher used to say that to be a good person is the highest. And he would always add: it's not as easy as it sounds. If you asked him the meaning of life, he would say something like "to breathe" or "to have fun," and then he would say, "It's not as easy as it sounds, because if you go out and party every night, after a while you're not having much fun."
Meditation is the workout, not the walk
But this points to the other side of the work. Here in meditation, I really point to what is often missing, which is the work toward presence. But if that is only experienced and known in an isolated part of our life, the confined time when we sit to meditate, then it needs to be developed further. Meditation is one of the places for that, but it is not the ultimate answer. Metaphorically, if life is to walk the earth, then to sit and meditate is to do all the workouts so that walking the earth becomes more possible. But the point is to walk the earth.
So the point is to live with more well-being and in a more loving way. All of this spiritual work is the how. How do we develop in order to have more well-being and be more loving?
Why religions have been so powerful
The problem is that so many of the "hows" have become limited and they fail. Psychology, self-help, all of the pointers to the "how": if they exclude true spiritual work, they will fail. That is why religions have been so powerful. They have become deeply toxic for reasons having to do with how they've been appropriated, but the origin of them was so powerful because they point to something that is possible and real, and also to how to live.
If you look at the sayings of Jesus, he is pointing to "the kingdom of heaven is here now." That is the presence. He would have been transmitting that, and people were completely taken by it. And then he would point to how to live. He represented a radical change, which is why we speak of the shift from Judaism to Christianity. It was a radical change in the philosophy of life, and it had to do with ethics, with how to live. To turn the other cheek, for example, was a pointer, whereas before, everything was an eye for an eye.