The Direct Path and the Progressive Path
El camino directo y el camino progresivo
A question about the difference between the direct path and the progressive path in spiritual practice, and how a spontaneous experience of love relates to both.
The Direct Path and the Progressive Path
A question about the difference between the direct path and the progressive path in spiritual practice, and how a spontaneous experience of love relates to both.
Through this conversation and your description of pain and suffering, I realize that in my experience I can see it as a process, as walking the path. But at the same time, my question is: is there truly a direct path, and what is the direct path? Because it seems like either way it's a progression we live through. In my experience, I know there is a set of questions that go very directly to it. That's the only thing I could say. But I became curious as you started explaining about this, and at the same time we talk about the direct path. What is such a thing?
The direct path is a method. All spirituality is just a method. Once the effect happens, you throw the method out; it's not relevant. Spirituality is just a tool. The direct path is a more specific tool.
What the direct path says
What it does is say: you already are what you're looking for. It's useful if it works. And sometimes you need a progressive path. I'm of the opinion that both are useful, depending on the moment and the challenge each of us faces.
You were saying it all seems like a progression to you. So you should probably focus on the direct path.
At the same time, it is and it isn't, because I can see that this relationship with sensation and suffering and fear feels like a progression. It has evolved. But at the same time it's very black and white for me. Entering into self-inquiry is very direct, more direct towards...
The inquiry is not the direct path.
Then that was my question. What is the direct path?
Self-inquiry versus the direct path
It's a series of pointers that say, in some form, you already are what you're looking for. This is already it. Nothing is to change. That's not self-inquiry. Self-inquiry is: who are you?
But it departs from that tenet. Everything is already here. And this is my experience: it departed from there. It departs from that recognition.
Because you work with a teacher of a direct path. But self-inquiry isn't inherently a direct path. Radical non-duality is one form, a flavor of direct path. I think it's somewhat useful but can also be problematic.
Ultimately, I feel this is, as I said, academic. I realize maybe I have been confusing these terms, but it doesn't really matter if it works, right?
Somebody who teaches the direct path and denies the progressive is problematic. There are teachers like that, and I don't recommend them. I recommend them only with the caveat that they are ignoring something. One thing is to say, "I'm focusing on the direct, but there is the progressive," acknowledging it. Another is completely invalidating anything progressive. That is not merely unskillful; it is dangerous.
Then maybe the opposite question could help clarify this for me. What do we mean by the progressive path? If the direct path is the recognition that the reality of what we are is already here, and there's nothing to find, nothing to seek, then what is the progressive path?
What the progressive path requires
The progressive path is that you need time and a process to slowly, to some degree, realize that and integrate it. Something needs to develop.
The second part resonates, because the first one I feel always applies.
No, it doesn't. Not on a direct path. There is something direct that doesn't need time, so that doesn't apply. Ultimately, the direct seeing of your true nature does not need time nor a process. It has no conditions, no merits, no gains.
It's only direct in timelessness. Otherwise it's always progressive, because we experience it through the human experience of living.
What are you talking about when you say timelessness?
I mean I can realize my true nature right now, and in that sense it is spontaneous and direct. There's no progression required. But as I live my life, I've been going to a teacher for five years, I've been doing this and that. In that sense, it is progressive.
If you have a sense that you're getting somewhere, I would offer the antidote of more direct-path words.
Actually, that vanished a little bit. It happened earlier, this sense of "I'm getting somewhere."
The antidote for each side
It has to be, because there's a negative to that, which is "I'm not getting anywhere," and there's a nihilism or a depressive sense of "this isn't working."
"It's useless." No, not that.
The antidote for that is progressive: keep at it. Also, once this is really seen, it becomes clear what is progressive and what is not, what needs time and what does not. The best answer I've heard to this, in the simplest way, was from Eckhart Tolle, who was asked how much time is needed. The answer was: as much time as it takes for you to realize it takes no time.
Beautiful. Exactly.
It often takes more time than we think.
You're giving me warnings.
I look confused, but you're there.
Probably. It's working. I think I always had that question but it never became verbal.
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So this morning I had an experience. I have some chronic pain, a stiffness or numbness in my neck, my upper back. I feel it also where I imagine my pineal gland might be. Other people who are sensitive to energy have said they see a stiffness there. There are times when I actually experience that area keenly, in an almost illuminated sense.
That happened this morning, just before I got on the call. I had this spontaneous experience of love. I could feel the rigidity softening. I think it had something to do with waking up and not having so much going on in my thoughts, and also dancing a lot last night and really moving and exercising my body.
A spontaneous opening
I had glimpses of this feeling of love in that region. That area also comes with a sense of contraction, lack, smallness, stuckness. And I had this experience of: what if I'm already loved?
Loved, you said?
Yes. It felt like what your meditation pointed to, actually. What I'm seeking in terms of love just felt like it was already there. It was really beautiful, and I had a little more awareness around it such that I could continue it. It faded the more I woke up. The more my thoughts came online, the more I felt like I was losing it. But I was able to breathe into it, feel it, visualize that love. Then I lost it.
I have the feeling it's a progression of sorts. I'm getting a better sense of how to bring awareness to these parts of my body where I feel pain, and I know there's a lot of emotional pain associated with that as well. My hope is that I can continue that. I wonder if that could be a sort of direct path, or if it's a progression.
That's a progression. But you said, "What if I'm already loved?" That starts to open up to that which isn't progressive, which weaves together with the progressive. It's not pushing against it. It's not denying the progressive. It's not depending on the progressive or attached to the progressive.
Attachment and resistance within the progressive
Those are the two ways in which we struggle with the progressive: we're attached to something, or we're pushing away from something.
Are you saying that if we're following the progressive path, that's an inherent quality of it? There's a push-pull?
I'm generalizing about what is progressive, because it could be the pursuit of a better career. But if you're talking about a spiritual practice, an energetic practice, the body, that's inherently progressive, because it depends on change of experience, including physiological change. And it's very important. Sometimes we have sessions where all I'm talking about is the progressive and the body. It can be extremely important.
What if I'm already loved?
But the key is to see that what we're looking for, in some sense, is love, and then to have the question: what if I'm already loved? That is a huge shift, a huge question, because it can completely uproot everything. So much energy could be going for so many years into being loved. That question is like a bomb right at the core of that pursuit. It could be very liberating, but it could also be very challenging, because you see that everything you've done has been for something that doesn't quite make sense.
If you see that what you're really looking for, you cannot get in the way you've been trying to get it, and you're just asking the question because there's been an intuition, a glimpse, then I'd say: yes, that's the door.