The Point Where Effort Falls Away
El punto donde el esfuerzo se desvanece
A longtime practitioner describes the bewildering experience of knowing what he is but continuing to identify with what he is not, and the teacher responds by pointing toward the possibility that this disenchantment may itself be a sign of ripening.
The Point Where Effort Falls Away
A longtime practitioner describes the bewildering experience of knowing what he is but continuing to identify with what he is not, and the teacher responds by pointing toward the possibility that this disenchantment may itself be a sign of ripening.
This conversation is blowing my mind. Last time I was here, I don't remember what my question was, but what you said to me stuck with me: the reason you don't release a hold on what you aren't to expand into what you are is because you're not ready to, and you don't really want to.
I've been doing this for probably more decades than anybody here, and I find my diligence about the whole project fluctuates. It ranges from absolutely as wholehearted as I can imagine to really just parking my car in some non-dual mall and saying, "Well, I'm here." My seriousness fluctuates, and it causes confusion. On the one hand, I really want to be complete, or I know I am complete. And then, as you said, I've seen at least a glimpse of what I am, and it sets everything right for as long as the effects of that stay. But my moment-to-moment existence as a person is largely uncomfortable, simply because I continue to identify with what I'm not.
It becomes bewildering. How can I be living this bifurcated life of knowing what matters but still not having the way I identify get in line with that? It's hard to imagine that I still want to be in pain, but apparently I do.
I don't even have a question. I don't live in this place at all times. There are times when there's a lot of joy and a lot of ease. But the dominant functioning paradigm seems to be self-torture. And really, it doesn't matter, because that's not a reason to think that none of this is working out.
There's a lot there. If a question comes more clear for you as I speak, please feel free to bring it. But let me start with what you've said.
Effort that has been put in
I have a question first. You've done this work for a long time. For a significant period of that time, you've worked really hard on it, diligently. Is that right?
I would say in bursts. I've been very serious in bursts, and then I back off and the whole idea of the search becomes more of an ornament on my life. I know it.
It matters that you have done that effort, because one of the signs that things can be premature is if we haven't put in that effort. It's not always required, but if you start to feel unmotivated and you haven't put in the work, then most likely the effort is needed first.
However, it is natural for the energy of that effort to start to dwindle, and that can actually be a progression. Something starts to lose its momentum, the energy of seeking in a sense. When the fruit is ripe and ready to fall, it does start to feel like nothing worked, nothing is working, all this work isn't changing anything.
Now, that feeling can be a sign that it's early and we need to work harder. But in your case, I sense the opposite, and that's why I checked whether you've taken it seriously. My intuition before you answered was that you have. You've probably taken it really seriously at times. We need to do that until, in a sense, it's easier to push than not to push. Then the hard thing becomes letting go of the seeking, of the efforting. Something starts to feel like failure: "This isn't working. Nothing's getting me what I wanted."
Disenchantment with everything
But by that point, you've already been disenchanted from what life was going to give you: all the promises of experience in the world, relationships, money, jobs, all of that. When there is a disenchantment with those things, and you start to really feel that they aren't satisfying you deeply anymore, and then the spiritual work starts to fall into the same category ("it's not working, it's not satisfying, it's not totally getting me what I want"), that's where I'm sensing you might be. Let me know if not.
It's where the center of my life experience is, the average of my life experience. There are also times when things are much, much brighter.
Of course.
But this is where I live. Where I live is generally like, "Oh, God, you've got to get through this day."
Exactly. Obviously we can have really good days and good things happen, but when the core of the experience is this kind of disenchantment with everything, and now it includes the spiritual work, it's like, "Now what?"
I was saying earlier that the tools come to a place where they no longer work, and then it's good to have another tool, another pointing or teaching that's appropriate to that place. But at some point we arrive where no tool, no teaching, no pointing works. It's coming to a point of surrender, because there is nothing you can do and everything you try to do will fail.
This applies only at a very specific place. For somebody earlier on, what's needed is the encouragement to practice, to inquire, to put in the will. And there always has to be a deep enjoyment and curiosity and love for the work. But at some point there's a disenchantment.
A personal account of loss
I was there for many years. Ten years, I don't know. It just started to feel more and more disenchanted. My partner would ask me pretty much every day for several years, "How are you?" And I would have one answer for several years: just this sense of loss. Unfulfillment. Loss, sadness, and loss. It wasn't the loss of grief. It was just, "There's nothing here." And I was not having a good time.
I was in a sense at peace with it, but it wasn't the peace that I discovered later. I was at peace in that I had listened to a teaching from another teacher who told me: if something is hard to relate to, relate to it with the attitude of, "If this is going to be like this for the rest of my life, guaranteed, with no chance of changing it, can I just be okay with it? Can I make peace with it?" Instead of the strategy of "what can I do to change this," you reverse that and assume, "What if this is like this for the rest of my life? There's no energy to change it. Can I be with it?"
That's what I practiced. I practiced with this sense of loss and sadness: the work didn't work, life was okay but not very fulfilling, great things were happening, but at that deep level it was just more of life. And then my teacher died, which made it even worse.
I still kept a curiosity, but it wasn't a deep will and efforting. It was a curiosity, but mostly it was just practicing being with what is. And what was, was this unsatisfying sense of loss and sadness. That is my personal experience, and it could be very different for others.
The need for surrender
I'm saying this to you because I can't know for certain, but I have a sense that you might be close to just a need for surrender. A deep surrender. And that's not something you can do. You can't do it. The word "surrender" gets thrown around a lot: you should surrender, you must surrender, you need to surrender.
It can become a perilous word, because it can really trigger the desire to do something you cannot do.
Exactly.