The Boat, the Helicopter, and the Listening That Never Ends
El bote, el helicóptero y la escucha que nunca termina
A student navigating a major career change asks how to trust that life will support her, and the teacher explores the middle path between passive waiting and frantic doing, proposing a practice of creative, open-ended listening.
The Boat, the Helicopter, and the Listening That Never Ends
A student navigating a major career change asks how to trust that life will support her, and the teacher explores the middle path between passive waiting and frantic doing, proposing a practice of creative, open-ended listening.
What I'm hearing is that any choices, actions, or meditations I undertake are not really the point of this path of awakening. It's not about the activity; it's about seeing the space that holds the activity. So you don't get too concerned about the activity, because you can do both at the same time.
I can clarify that further, because I often separate this approach into two dimensions: waking up and growing up. They are related, inseparable. You can't fully grow up without waking up, and it's very rare to wake up without some growing up.
Ultimately, though, it's all about the growing up. In a sense, it is about all the decisions that are happening. It is about life. That's all it's really about. But if we focus only on that, then the very thing that makes freedom possible, the capacity for living in the most expansive way, gets overlooked.
Waking up is already here
That's why I often focus so much on the core of waking up: it's already here. It can be realized, it can be recognized, and it's something so obvious once that happens. But because of its nature, it will be overlooked over and over again. Then it will be looked for in the life, in the choosing, in the experiencing, in the tomorrow, in the world of the mind.
But if all I talk about is that, it's also misleading, because it really is about life. It is about living in the most beautiful, loving, expansive way. The questions that mix life, choices, and this work are where the richest aspect lies, but it's also the trickiest to work through.
Yeah, because our experiences are somehow leading us to more love and lessons and hopefully back to ourselves. So we can't negate the human journey and everything that's arising in it.
The middle way
The middle way between waking up and growing up, when neither is denied, when neither is put above the other, that is where we arrive. And that's where I run out of words. I can't qualify it. That's the way. That's where freedom and love is.
Otherwise, we either do a spiritual bypass, which is avoiding life, avoiding the experience of life to try to stay in the spiritual realm (which in that case is very imaginary). Or vice versa, we do what I would call a psychological bypass, where we overlook what can be called the open secret, the waking up, trying to get to it in the future. Trying to get to it through: "If I do these meditations, if I do these practices, if I do these things, then I will arrive at this thing people are talking about, which is waking up, enlightenment." No.
From a place of non-grasping, non-attachment, and keeping in mind the truths of life and what I actually am, there's no conflict there. There's no clash.
What does life want as me?
The best way I have to point to how to approach life is this question: what do I most deeply want? Or, what does life want as me? What does the universe want as me?
The trick is that I could think something is a deep desire, and it's not. In fact, one should assume that when a desire feels like a deep, real thing, it's possibly not so. There is a sense of not going into belief about it.
For example, I could feel like what the universe wants as me, what I most want, is to go on a trip to India. It feels like this really big, compelling thing. And it might actually be a massive avoidance of some responsibility that I have. It could feel like the biggest, most important thing, the thing I want the most. That's why this is the work of life: how we live, how we navigate the mind, the psychology, and the conditioning that makes these appearances so real. "I really want this thing," and it turns out to be an attachment or an egoic need. But maybe going to India actually is the thing. So how do you know?
The only way we know is through experience, trial and error. Going for what we want and then realizing we've hit a wall. We look back, and in hindsight we see that it wasn't the best choice, that it wasn't the deepest thing. And then we can learn from that.
In my particular situation, I feel like it's pretty clear that this is something I'm meant to do, because everything I was doing before was draining me. It was an environment that wasn't healthy. I felt like I wanted more and had more to share. I've had some wins here and there. I'm not questioning if this is the right path. But I guess there's a part of me that is not fully trusting that I will be taken care of. I know that, and I don't feel much fear. I still feel really grateful, and that feeling has been lasting in me. There's not a lot of intense or even moderate fear coming up, but I am thinking: okay, something has to change, something has to get moving. How can I help support that?
So there's a sense of urgency.
Yeah, because I need money. I have a two-bedroom apartment and I'm using the larger room for my work. It's expensive here. I've gone all in on this. I guess there is a natural urgency just from a practical, responsibility standpoint. I mean, I still have time. Maybe something could change.
Urgency as a calling
That sense of urgency is a calling. It's the kind of thing that could often be overlooked, denied, or smoothed over through an approach of "accepting what's happening." But real acceptance is always already happening; it can't be manufactured. Real surrender, you can't do it.
What maybe needs to be accepted at the more personal level is: I need to activate. I need to do something about the situation. Obviously you're doing something; you're making a change. But then, what can you do that brings up the activation in the world to address the situation? What can you do to, so to speak, overkill? Put all your energy there, because that is not in opposition to spiritual work. It's not in opposition to awakening. They're completely the same thing.
I feel like I am doing as much as I can. I'm doing social media, networking, volunteering, talking to people, putting up posters. Then I thought maybe I could support this with abundance practices: feeling the abundance, feeling gratitude, receiving, creating that emotional vibration in my body along with visualization and thought to help support the business.
That could have some effect. But hearing you, what I would recommend is to try to use your imagination, your creative aspects of thought. What could you do that you're not doing?
Maybe there are things you have an automatic "no" to: "I wouldn't do this thing or that thing." So the solution has to go through this way and not that way. What I'm asking is: what could you do that would alleviate or address this urgency in the actual world? I'm not saying anything against what abundance teachers are teaching, because that can obviously have a real effect. But if the energy is put there more than into acting in the world, and the acting in the world comes from a somewhat limited imagination (not because you have a limited imagination, but because you haven't yet put the energy into imagining more possibilities), then you miss things.
That's how the conditioned mind works. When I consider what I could do, the mind presents four options. But actually there are infinite options. I need to put some time into contemplating: okay, there are four options here, what's the fifth one? What's the sixth one? And then I'm going to encounter: "Oh no, that's not realistic. I wouldn't do that. That isn't what I want. That's not going to work." You start meeting the resistances in the emotional and mental space of "not this, not this, not this; it has to be through this other path."
I'm saying this just as an approach, not that this is necessarily what will be the way for you. I'm generalizing from what you're saying. That's how I would approach that situation. Are there ways you could do something for money quite quickly and immediately to address the urgency, but you're just not considering them?
Okay, I'll have to think about that. I definitely am doing as much as I'm aware of, but I guess I could get more creative. The thing is, I feel like I don't want to get another job. I don't want to do anything else. I want to really just focus on this. But maybe I could do something part-time. I don't want to be idealistic about it, but I also want to trust that the universe is going to support me, because I feel like I'm doing everything with the highest integrity. I guess I need to be patient, too.
Learning to listen, trust, and obey
What I'm going to say is really subtle and specific, and it's not about you doing anything wrong. It has to do with learning. All of us learn and have an opportunity to learn in life. The learning never ends; it's infinite. Being supported is also a learning. It's a learning how to listen and, in a sense, obey. I use the word "obey" a little provocatively, but it's also where trust is developed.
Do you recognize what I mean? When you felt this calling to make this professional change and you went for it, there was an obedience to that calling. To whatever degree, there was a listening and an obeying and a trusting. But that was on a very large scale: "Okay, I'm going this way now. I'm going to listen to this big change." Then we need to get more refined in how to listen, trust, and obey. Listen, trust, and obey. Listen, trust, and obey. Until at a point it's no longer the universe or life supporting me as something separate. There is no difference. The obedience and the listening and the trusting is life through me, as me.
But at first it's: I have a calling, I try that. I think that's where you're at, and I think that's great. But then there's a risk where we have an idea about how life should support us.
The boat and the helicopter
There's a teaching that has become a bit of a joke, but it's actually very old. A man is in a town and there's a flood. He goes up to his attic and starts praying for God to help him. A man comes by on a boat and tells him to get on. He says, "No, no, God is going to support me. I'm waiting for God to support me." The man leaves. Then someone comes in a helicopter to rescue him. Again he refuses, waiting for God to support him. He ends up drowning, goes up to heaven, and says, "What happened? God, you were supposed to support me!" And God says, "I sent you a helicopter, I sent you a boat, I sent you all of these things, and you didn't listen."
It's a story that gets used to poke fun at this attitude, but it's actually really profound. If you take it to a much more subtle level, that's the risk of not really listening and obeying. The man didn't want to get on the boat. The boat wasn't the right solution. There was an idea that support was going to come in a different form.
That's why I'm talking about open-mindedness and creativity. What other possibilities might emerge if you open your mind through co-creativity with life? "Oh, that actually is a path here. These are more options I haven't considered."
So, what are the boat and the helicopter in your case right now? What are the possibilities? It's never as obvious and clear as in the story (that's the funny part). In reality, it's more hidden, more subtle, and it requires more of a co-creative process where you engage, explore, listen, risk, and trust. And always there's a learning.
I mean, I guess the only thing I can think of is to take out a loan and hire a business coach.
What I'm proposing is for you to take some time. Not to come up with an answer right now. Take time, even as a practice: a few times every day, sit with this question. Right now you had one thought, one possibility. Okay, note that. But there's more. Your creativity is way beyond that.
That's one good idea. Note it, but don't wrap up the process and the exploration as though that's the only idea. It's a valid one, but give it time for a process of much more potential, because I think you have it. Maybe that will end up being the answer, but I think it's too soon to say, "I've done the process of exploring my options." It's too quick.
Listening as a lifelong practice
What I'm describing is also a constant listening, every day, for the rest of your life. This is an active functioning in me every day. It's not a one-time exercise where the challenge is done and I don't need it anymore. It's listening and responding, listening and responding. The creative process and the mental openness are, in a sense, a muscle to keep exercising. The more you explore options, the more options appear, the more you explore. It becomes a virtuous cycle.
Could it even be an issue of something I'm not doing, and I just need to be more patient, more open to receive? Like I just need to wait and trust, if I can't think of anything else? I'm naturally more comfortable in the masculine energy of doing, and I know there's more room to develop in me around the waiting and trusting.
Co-creativity: neither passive nor active
What I'm describing is creativity, and I wouldn't qualify it as masculine. If anything, it's the marriage of both the masculine and the feminine. The creativity I'm talking about is pure imagination. It's like daydreaming, but daydreaming with an intention of exploring. It really is creativity with life.
The word that resonates for me is co-creativity, because there is a kind of dance of two energies that are one. They manifest like two energies intertwined, like the yin-yang: masculine and feminine, but also the human body-mind and the universe. It's one energy, inseparable, but it operates as an intertwined system with two aspects. That's where it's co-creative: this dance between what the universe wants and what I want. The more that dance becomes connected and smooth, the more it becomes one desire, one wanting. That's where synchronicities start to happen, where things become serendipitous and good. We all experience this; it's always there.
So what I'm talking about is neither just sitting and being patient nor doing, doing, doing. It's what's in the middle. Not just doing from an automatic pattern of how you've done things in the past (which got you this far, but maybe there's more), and not just sitting and waiting. I'm not saying you're doing either of those. I'm saying the mind will tend to try to resolve things into "it's this or it's this." But what's in the middle? For me, that's where creativity lives: imagining options, possibilities. It's not just "well, I could do this thing and take these actions." It's asking: what is it that can be manifested in the world? It's not passive. It's a creative, both-passive-and-active process.
Okay. That resonates. Thank you.