What If You're Already Loved
¿Y Si Ya Eres Amado?
A question about the difference between the direct and progressive spiritual paths, and how a spontaneous experience of love points toward something that is always already present.
What If You're Already Loved
A question about the difference between the direct and progressive spiritual paths, and how a spontaneous experience of love points toward something that is always already present.
Through this conversation and your description of pain and suffering, I realize that in my experience I can see such a thing 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? 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 all 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. 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 feels very direct, more direct toward the thing itself.
The inquiry is not the direct path.
Then that was my question. What is 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 needs to change. That's not self-inquiry. Self-inquiry is: who are you?
But it departs from that same tenet, that everything is already here. And in 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.
What about radical non-duality?
That's one form, a flavor of direct path. I think it's somewhat useful, but it can also be problematic.
Ultimately, I feel this is, as I said, academic. I realize maybe I've been confusing these terms, but it doesn't really matter if it works, right?
The danger of denying the progressive
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 to completely invalidate anything progressive. That is not merely unskillful; it is dangerous.
Then maybe the opposite question could help clarify this. If the direct path is the recognition that the reality of what we are is already here, that there's nothing to find and nothing to seek, then what is the progressive path?
The progressive path is that you need time and a process to slowly realize that and integrate it. Something needs to develop to some degree.
The second part resonates, because the first part, the need for time and process, 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.
The taste of love
So this morning, I had an experience. I have some chronic pain, a kind of stiffness or numbness in my neck and upper back. I also feel it where I imagine my pineal gland might be. I've had other people who are sensitive to energy say, "Oh yeah, I see a stiffness there." There are times when I actually experience that area really 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 having danced a lot last night and really moved and exercised my body.
I had glimpses of this feeling, this love. That region usually comes with a sense of contraction and lack, of smallness and stuckness. And I had this experience of: what if I'm already loved?
Loved, you said?
Yes. It felt like what you described in the meditation. What I'm seeking in terms of love just felt like it was there. It was really beautiful. I think I had a little more awareness around it, such that I could continue it. It faded the more I woke up and the more my thoughts came online. I felt like I was losing it. But I was able to breathe into it, feel it, and visualize that love. Then I lost it.
I have the feeling that it's a progression of sorts. I'm getting a better sense of how to bring awareness to the parts of my body where I feel pain. I know there's a lot of emotional pain associated with that as well. My hope is that I can continue deepening this. I wonder if that could be a kind of direct path, or if it's a progression.
That's a progression. But you said, "What if I'm already loved?" That begins to open up to something that isn't progressive, something that weaves together with the progressive without pushing against it, without denying it, and without depending on it or being attached to it.
Attachment and resistance in the progressive
Those are the two ways 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 push-pull is an inherent quality of it?
I'm generalizing about what is progressive. 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.
The question that uproots everything
But the key is to see that what we're looking for, in some sense, is love, and then to ask 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 it. 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 cannot be obtained in the way you've been trying to get it, and you're asking the question because there's been an intuition, perhaps a glimpse, then yes: that's the door.
And then we can go further. You're not actually loved; you are love. Then we can talk about the nature of that, where it's no longer needed as something to be experienced. You don't need to taste it to reconfirm it. It just becomes so natural that it disappears, in a sense.
I think that path of becoming is my line of inquiry, because I've had enough tastes that I'm starting to see the form, like a jigsaw puzzle coming together.
Knowing, not remembering
Let's go into that. That which you're looking for, which you have: I think you have an intuition that's more than an intuition. It's a knowing.
Sometimes.
No, even now. I think you know it. You might know it and think it's a memory. You might know it and think it depends on something, on a certain condition or a certain type of experience. But just the knowing of that means that right now, even if you say, "Okay, I remember it," the essence of it is here for you to be able to talk about it.
It may seem like a little thread connecting through a memory to an experience, something that comes and goes, something dependent on conditions. But actually, if you start getting closer and closer, and more quiet with it, you'll start to see it's here now.
The quieting of the mind as you approach that is what makes it more transparently known. You start to see just how close it is. It's so intimately close. It could seem like a bird sings, and the beauty and the love is in the birdsong, and it came and went. But was it really? Isn't it in every sound and every sensation? And is it really in the sound or the sensation, or is it in the knowing of it?
In this way, you can get more and more intimately close, to a point where there is no distinction between that and you, or between that and anything you're knowing. But it gets quieter and softer. It's the love of everything. It's not something that comes and goes or depends on anything. It's simply the choice to see true nature. The alternative is the choice to pretend it is lost and to entertain yourself figuring out how to find it.
As you're talking, I can see it, and it was really nice to hear you say that it's beyond a momentary experience, that it's a permanent realization. That maybe I know more than I think I know. And you said the stillness of the mind is what allows that to deepen.
Yes, at first. Then it doesn't matter how loud the mind gets; it cannot be obscured. The mind obscures only up to a point. When something is so obvious, so known, there's nothing the mind can do to obscure it.
Starting with a thread
So how do I reliably get to that place where it's so obvious?
Start with a thread. Know that what you're looking for is here. If that's not yet known to you, start with a "what if." If curiosity is needed, if contemplation is needed, then go directly to this current experience and look with your whole being. Ask: what if it's not true that I need to find it? What if it's already here? How is it possible for it to be here when I'm not seeing it?
The thread you were describing, where you have an experience of tasting this love, is useful. Even if it's an imagination or a memory, it has at its essence the real thing, because you can't recognize it in a memory or in the imagination without it being tasted now.
So it turns around: for me to imagine what I'm looking for, I must have an intuitive, essential knowing of it, which means it's now. There is something essentially here now.
The love was in me
This happened to me when my teacher passed away. I had felt loved in a way only in his presence, only through that relationship. After he died, I was dancing in a kind of celebration of his life, and I suddenly felt exactly the same love. Just exactly the same. And I realized: it wasn't in him. It was in me.
The mind will do its habitual thing: "It's not here, it's there. It's not here, it's there." The mind is going to create some problem or lack, something that needs to be solved so that in the future, in some other context or situation, you will finally get what you're looking for.