The Tree and the Forest
El árbol y el bosque
A student shares feelings of envy about another participant's apparent speed of realization, and the teacher responds with a reflection on the nature of comparison, the process of awakening, and how to relate to glimpses of insight.
The Tree and the Forest
A student shares feelings of envy about another participant's apparent speed of realization, and the teacher responds with a reflection on the nature of comparison, the process of awakening, and how to relate to glimpses of insight.
I'm feeling envious of another student here. I'm a bit shocked at myself, but it's my interpretation of how fast she seems to be grasping concepts and having realizations. I've been on a path for about twenty years, and the things she's talking about are things I feel I only started to see a year ago. There's a judgment toward myself: "Why is my process so slow?" I know it's pure conjecture and interpretation, but it does seem slow in a way. I just wanted to share that. I'm also happy, because I think I'm perceiving a lot of realization happening for her. And then, with the internet, you see much more widely what's going on: these "realized" twenty-year-olds popping up on YouTube sharing their videos. It brings up envy in me.
I remember feeling like that a lot as well.
The tree and the forest
In a sense, we are like a tree in a forest, and at the same time we are all of nature itself. The tree could be young, with one next to it already blossoming with flowers, but the tree doesn't really want to blossom before its time. If the tree believes it is separate from the other one, it will want to rush. But if you know your double nature, the tree nature and the forest nature, then you look with one eye and celebrate every tree that blossoms, and with the other eye you enjoy the process of coming to the point of blossoming.
Because we're not trees, we have the capacity to imagine, first of all, that there is such a thing as blossoming that is better than the moment prior to blossoming. We can imagine that we could do something different or be something different, but it requires imagination, and then believing that what we're imagining is real. To imagine that you really are something different from another person, and that what you're imagining she's going through is better and further ahead. But nature, the universe experiencing you as you, is actually rejoicing to be you. Even if somebody is, in this sense, more realized, more awake: to whatever degree we're not, it's a good thing.
It's hard for me to see that, I guess. I think I'm struggling a bit. I'm having glimpses more often, like the one I shared the other day, and then another different one. The feeling in those moments is such a sense of freedom. But maybe I'm struggling more in between. There's a greater sense of not-okayness, because I'm in a way trying to reproduce whatever took me to the last realization.
What the realization showed you is true now
Look for what the realization showed you that is true now. Even if it was an insight, what did it show you? If it's a true realization, what it showed you is outside of time, and therefore it's true now. But there's something that conceptualizes it and tries to reproduce it.