The Work That Never Finishes and the Realization That Doesn't Depend on It
El trabajo que nunca termina y la realización que no depende de él
A student describes a powerful experience of emotional release in therapy and the simplicity of awareness that followed, leading to a wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between psychological work and spiritual realization.
The Work That Never Finishes and the Realization That Doesn't Depend on It
A student describes a powerful experience of emotional release in therapy and the simplicity of awareness that followed, leading to a wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between psychological work and spiritual realization.
I had a pretty intense therapy session yesterday. There was a lot of crying, a lot of what felt like touching on a core wound. It felt like vibrating, like exercising the emotion there. There's a place in my body where I feel like I store tension a lot, where I get agitated. Afterward, I went and sat for forty-five minutes, and it felt like I could feel that spot, as well as the rest of my body, in a much more simple way. I was very tired, actually, and the usual surface chatter was almost like I didn't have energy for it. I was just feeling my body really directly. The spot that was agitated, I could feel it actually moving. It felt somehow unblocked.
Then at night I went to a gathering and I just felt simple and easy and open. I gave a few people hugs and they felt very easy, simple, generous. I'm really feeling motivated to tap into that simplicity.
I wanted to talk about this because I've spent other meditation sessions focusing on that spot of tension, thinking, "Why is that there? What is that about?" It reminds me of a conversation I had recently where we talked about how focusing on the pain or the block can actually add energy to the problem, whereas if you focus on the aliveness, the river of energy in your body, whatever is unblocked, you're feeding energy to that instead. I'm interested in that duality.
You want me to say some words about that contrast?
Yes.
Growing up versus waking up
This is quite central to this work, because what you're tapping into is a pretty deep paradox. It sits at the intersection of spirituality and psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is just one example; there are many other approaches that operate in this domain. For me, it's simpler to describe it as "growing up." There are all sorts of ways, techniques, and practices for growing up, and it's an infinite process. It never gets anywhere, but it's valuable. There's a paradox in that: it's always moving in a direction that is valuable, but it will never be ultimately satisfying.
The more of that work is done, the more straightforward the spiritual process can be. So they're very related, but they're fundamentally different. They are paradoxically almost opposite, yet deeply connected.
For example, you can work on all of your emotional stuff, all the mental and psychological material, and make it smoother, simpler, calmer. But that's like polishing something that, because of the nature of life, will always have dirt thrown at it. You're polishing something that will never be ultimately clean or remain permanently clean. I'm talking about what we might call the body-mind.
The trap of the promise
It helps to do that work, but there's a trap in the promise or the belief that it's going to get you somewhere ultimately, that you will arrive at a place where that which we are intuitively longing for, that we actually know is real and exists, will be reached through this mental, emotional, psychological, physical process. That's an illusion. That will absolutely never happen.
I'm struck by the absolute and relative distinction. The relative is this body. My body is going to continue aging and hurting. I'll have difficult relationships, moments of challenge. That's the relative condition of being me, living here in this body.
That's a good map: the absolute and the relative. And in that map, which is a map, not reality itself, the relative we can work on. But we intuitively know and intuit the ultimate. We know that. Then there arises a sense that if I operate on the relative, I will approximate the ultimate and finally get there. "I just need to do this more, do that more. I will get closer and closer to the ultimate, and at least even if I'm not there all the time, I will be able to touch it more."
In a deep sense, that is an illusion. At the same time, it's not a bad process, because it does help to make that intuition more clear. But there is something that does not depend on that process.
Realization before or after the work
My teacher used to say, and I'm paraphrasing in my own words: you can have the realization of the ultimate before any of this work on the relative happens. In a sense, you could have a full, total realization of your true nature without any of the mental, emotional, physical work. Before any of it. But you will have to do it after. It has to be done, but they're completely separate things.
"Chop wood, carry water."
Yes. And another expression is: you make yourself more accident-prone, if the accident is the recognition of your true nature.
You make yourself more accident-prone?
The realization of your true nature is called an "accident" because it's not dependent on anything. You could say it's grace, which is one somewhat appropriate way to refer to it. But by doing this work, both kinds (the mental, emotional, psychological work and the meditation and self-inquiry work), you become more accident-prone. It makes that realization more likely to happen, but it's not a requirement and it's not a guarantee.
Self-inquiry versus mindfulness
In the spiritual domain, there is the practice of meditation, more commonly known as vipassana or mindfulness meditation, where it's about observing the mind, distancing from the mind, calming the mind. That is similar to psychotherapy in the sense that it never addresses the ultimate. It will elude the ultimate. It's an infinite process without an end and without a final satisfaction.
Self-inquiry, on the other hand, directly addresses the ultimate. It addresses the distinction between the ultimate and the relative. Now, we're working within a map (the common language of ultimate and relative), and ultimately there is no difference; it's the same thing. But that can only be seen after the ultimate within this map is realized.
So the mindfulness of the relative, cultivating samadhi, stability of mind, clarity, doing what is essentially psychotherapy work: it sets you up for an increased chance of insight into the ultimate?
Yes. But what I'm adding is that self-inquiry, which is a very specific practice, is different. It addresses that which does not progress, that which does not develop, that which does not grow or approximate or get closer to anything. Self-inquiry intends to reveal your true nature, whereas psychotherapy and mindfulness meditation do not. Those are polishing the mirror, but what we want to see is the reality itself, not its reflection. In mindfulness, there's a finger pointing to the moon. In self-inquiry, there's no finger and there's no moon.
A moment of recognition
I wanted to also talk about an experience I had in this group a while ago. I can't remember what question I asked, but it felt like I was getting a strong impression of the answer. I remember you looking at me in a way that was like knowing, as you realized I was getting it. It felt like a look of love. I remember noting that feeling and sensing something like a mixture of awkwardness and joy. I'm not sure I would say fear, but some hesitation, some sense of "I don't know if this is okay." I also had something, and I don't know if it was an idea or a feeling or just a flash, but it was like: "Is this me looking at myself?" Something verging on that. I think it was during a discussion about how we land ourselves in certain situations because we are that, and what we see in others and connect to is actually us in a way. The previous question reminded me of that moment, and it felt like an opportunity to talk about it.
What you shared is very beautiful, and it resonates with my experience. I find you very lovable.
There's a vulnerability in that connection, and it gets even more soft and tender when it's personal. There's something happening that's impersonal, that I have nothing to do with. Even just speaking about it now, I have to frame this in terms of an "I" that's separate from the personal and the impersonal. But there is a really deep human tenderness and affection that I feel with you. You might be feeling that because it's very real. At the same time, there might be something else, something more impersonal, that is also heightened in this context: sitting in a group, talking together, going there together. It has a kind of trippiness where it becomes more and more you. It is the self-recognizing nature of self: awareness aware of itself.
From self-love to the absolute
At first, awareness is aware of the human self. It's like loving yourself as a man, as a woman, as what you are, in all of those places that were difficult to love in the past. Then something can surrender and make room for something even vaster, because the frictions with our human nature are no longer obstacles obscuring that view. This is the work you were talking about earlier: if you remove the barriers to love, it has a personal aspect, but the removal of the barriers also opens the door to the absolute. Both are required.
My teacher would say that the recognition of the absolute, the self-realization, could happen at any point: before the work on yourself, or after you've done a lot of it. But then the work on the self needs to catch up. That is sometimes spoken of as integration. You can totally know that what you are is absolute love and peace, but in your daily life you still have a ton of friction with yourself and reality. Something deeply knows that the friction isn't ultimately real. Then the body-mind, your daily experience, needs to adapt and adjust, to integrate and live more according to that understanding.
Integration as a reciprocal process
The crowning jewel is that realization. The rest is about how to oil the process so that it's smoother. It's a reciprocal process: the more you integrate and organize your life around living from a place informed by that realization, the more realized that realization becomes, and the more it can feed back. You become more and more a walking, living emanation of truth.
First, that truth needs to be realized fully. It can be realized partially, but once it's realized fully, there is, in a sense, a joyful work, because it's not a burden. It's a joyful work of becoming in service to just being an emanation of that. And it is always imperfect. It will never stop being imperfect.
That's good to keep in mind for anyone seeking a guru.
Yes. And any guru who expresses that this work is done and perfected, well. The realization can be total and complete, but the living, moving presence and emanation of it is always imperfect. Some teachers have integrated it more fully than others. There's a certain maturity in that, and it does depend on many things. Therapy, for example, or anything similar that has the same effect. In modern psychological terms, you can talk about the integration of the shadow. Before psychology, it was the journey through hell and purgatory, very well mapped by Dante in the Comedy.
Ethics versus morality
We talked another time about integrity, and integrity is the outcome of this, because it requires full responsibility. So it's ethics. To me, there is no mature spiritual realization without ethical practice and being. And that's always imperfect, because ethics isn't a fixed thing. If it's fixed, it's morality, it's scripture, it's dogma. Morality can be useful: in a land where killing is somehow considered acceptable, "thou shall not kill" is a very valuable moral rule. But ultimately, morality is limited, because sometimes circumstances demand what a fixed rule cannot accommodate.
That's a controversial statement, but I think I understand the spirit of it.
Yes. It's intentionally provocative, but the point is to challenge the distinction between morality and ethics. Morality is something you can write in a book: a correct behavior applicable generally in any circumstance. Ethics depends on the current moment and the current circumstance, which can never be repeated. You cannot write ethics in a book. You can have a process, guidelines, values, and general morals, but ethics is a lot harder than that. In morality, you can be perfect, and that's the temptation of scripture, and that's the problem of scripture. In ethics, you can never know in the moment what is right and wrong. It's unknown, and that's why it's harder.