The Spiritual Life and the Worldly Life
La vida espiritual y la vida mundana
A student asks how to remain present while engaging in intellectual learning, leading to a broader exploration of whether spiritual practice can become an avoidance of life itself.
The Spiritual Life and the Worldly Life
A student asks how to remain present while engaging in intellectual learning, leading to a broader exploration of whether spiritual practice can become an avoidance of life itself.
I noticed that when I'm learning something new, it takes me out of my presence and awareness. Of course other things do as well, but it feels like when I choose to put on a YouTube video or a podcast, I'm choosing the world in a way, or choosing the separate self. As much as I try to stay present while my mind is being stimulated, it does pull me in. How do I manage that? How do I rectify it?
I would say be very careful with your judgment of presence: your ideas about when you are more or less present, about what that looks like, and about being in the world learning about things that aren't spiritual.
The interpretation that creates the problem
Look at the judgment. By judgment I don't just mean a negative thought or belief about it, though it is also that. Look at the judgment as in the interpretation of something, the assumption. For example, the assumption that being in a state of learning something intellectual means being non-present, or that going into something that isn't spiritual is problematic or tricky.
That belief, that interpretation, is what will make you not present. The interpretation that you are now into something more of the world of thought, listening to a YouTube video, learning something, and that this is less spiritual or not present: that interpretation is what then makes it not present. The same applies to going into the world. The interpretation that the world is not spiritual is what makes it not spiritual. It is actually the interpretation that creates the thing.
If you relate to the YouTube video as you are listening to it, and you see it as what it is, which is this magical mystery of colors, shapes, forms, sensations, thoughts, and aliveness, all one field of beingness now taking the shape of the experience of listening to a YouTube video, then you will be in a YouTube video in presence, because it will be sacred. Because you are there, and all of that is sacred.
If you go into something of the world, you see you are not going anywhere. You are not going into the world. There is no world. There is only this experience of mysterious, magical creation that is this moment, where even the world is just as sacred as anything.
Foundations first, then a different approach
It does happen, though. There are different levels. When we begin this process, it is important to have foundations of practice: observing the breath, looking at thought, vipassana. All these kinds of practices are very important, because otherwise we would not even have the chance of noticing when we are completely immersed in thought.
But at some point a different kind of approach is needed, where we can go into the experience of being in the world of thought and it no longer being the thing we need to see and push away from. Everything that is the world or the thinking space can also start to be seen as Buddha nature, Christ nature. But it cannot be interpreted like that too soon, because until we know the taste of what beingness or Buddha nature actually is, we are not ready.
At no point, even when we are lost in identification, is anything not Buddha nature. The only difference is that someone who is a Buddha recognizes that everything is Buddha nature all the time, no matter what. Whereas another person interprets Buddha nature to be elsewhere: not here, somewhere else, coming and going, in the temple, in the teacher, in the moment of deep spiritual glimpsing, and at every other moment concludes that Buddha nature is not here.
I have been getting this feeling lately that everything around me is celebrating life, like a celebration of the fact that it exists. Maybe it does not even know how or why, but it is like, "What other thing is there to do but just celebrate?"
And not just around you. Within you. Everything. Everything that you are knowing. All of this mystery of perception, sensation, the skin, the air, thoughts, imagination, memory, past, future, all of it. It is all this celebration of this mystery.
And then we forget that, but it does not go away. We just forget it and misinterpret it. And then we remember again: "Oh no, it is a celebration." At first it seems like that recognition is coming and going, that we lose it and find it. But then we realize we are just misinterpreting and then seeing clearly.
I realized I was listening to your story of awakening or liberation. I have heard it a few times, and I noticed I am angry at myself. I have wanted that, in a sense. But to begin with, I have no idea what it is you are talking about. And actually, the way you describe it now, I think I do not want it. But I do not know, because how could I know if I do not know what it is?
It is like being angry at the one who can want that: the separate self, the ego. I feel like I have been wasting my time wanting that. How ridiculous. And now I am in this huge crisis with my partner, and all these patterns and fears I was not facing are springing up, most of which I was not even realizing. Wasting my time wanting or pursuing illusions. I am not saying what you described is an illusion, but for me it is, because I have no way of knowing what it is. So it is like, "Come on, stop wasting your time in illusions and face whatever is real, whatever real emotions and feelings there are to face." It is more complex than it sounds. It is part of the crisis I am going through. I just wanted to express it. If you want to say something, good, and if not, that is fine too.
Riding the energy of frustration
One of the things to see is how the emotional reactivity is part of that same pattern. Being pissed at yourself is part of the habit. There is an aspect of what we are describing here, which is to ride that energy, ride the anger and frustration, and move it into passion for what you want. Any imagination of what I went through should only at best be taken as something to inspire. Chasing what I went through is a complete waste of time.
If you are chasing the imagination of what I went through, that is just more distraction. It is about what you want. Go after what you want the most. This is where there is no distinction between spiritual and non-spiritual, worldly and not worldly.
What the universe wants through you
If we do go after what we want the most, we will face the untamed. We will go through a deep spiritual process. You see all these stories of meditators who go to a temple and spend their whole life meditating or doing all kinds of practices, and nothing happens. Then possibly they were avoiding a life of sexuality, parenthood, and working the fields, out of fear of the pain of that kind of journey. This is not a map for anybody; it is just an example. That is why I always ask the question: what is it that the universe wants through you, or as you? I phrase it that way because it is not a small thing. It is the biggest thing that your whole being could conceive, explore, imagine. And if you allow yourself to listen to that and live that, you will wake up. You will face the untamed. You will know the unknowable. It will just be a matter of time.
Yeah, but sometimes we come to these groups and we think we are evolving, and we are not noticing how we are avoiding all these fears in our lives.
You could use anything to avoid. All spiritual practice, all facing of emotions, all psychological training or therapy, all self-inquiry: all of it can be used to avoid. So what matters is the important question of what do you want.
Pursuing the imagination of awakening is also possibly a way to avoid life, to avoid something. For instance, I have been noticing fantasies around awakening. Part of me thought things like, "If I awakened, life would be easier," or "I would attract more of what I want."
That is exactly how what I am describing presents. Whenever a whole spiritual search is an avoidance mechanism, an avoidance strategy, that is exactly how it shows up.
That is what I think I am seeing, and why I am angry. I am not sure all of it is an avoidance mechanism, but part of it is.
The core question: what do you really want?
The core of it is: what do you want, and are you willing to go after it? If what you are wanting is a spiritual awakening, which is something you imagine is going to make life easier, then ask yourself: what is the "easier"? What is the "harder"? What is it that you are avoiding?
Yeah, I am seeing all that.
This is quite natural. I do not think there is a single person who goes into spiritual work not as a strategy to avoid challenges and pains in life. But at some point that strategy fails, and that is when the practice becomes more real, because it is no longer about avoiding life or avoiding what you really want.
Then, really, there are not two. Life lived in all ways, the abundance of the world, what is "in the world," is the spiritual life, is the self-inquiry. So the direction is: what do I most deeply want? But if what I most deeply want is spiritual awakening so I can avoid life, I am splitting the universe in two. And if what I most deeply want is the pleasures of life while staying away from anything scary in my internal experience, I am also splitting the world in two. That is where most people are. But people who go into spiritual practice often harbor a deep attempt to avoid something in life.
At the same time, it seems like a somewhat inevitable or natural process. First you go into it because you cannot stand your life and your suffering, and it is a way of avoidance. But you learn things that help you realize how you are avoiding.
Hopefully you learn, and hopefully you want to. Because you could avoid life your whole life doing spiritual practice, just creating a world of the known within spiritual practice, never facing what you really want or what is really calling you.
If you listen at that really deep level, then the spiritual life and the worldly life will collide and be the same thing.
I guess there have also been cases of people who never went into spiritual practice and woke up.
Yes. And in the cases where it goes the other way around, you also have to consider the mysteries of past lives, of what was already lived. There are situations where so much has already been lived that there is not room for anything else but waking up.
Inner integrity and transparency
That is where it really matters for you to look within yourself and be very transparent and honest, to have the inner integrity to see: what do I really want? If nothing in life calls you and you have no fear of it, that is one thing. But that is where inner integrity and clarity come in. If you say, "No, I have a lot of fear of life," then there is probably something there. If you have a lot of fear of, say, the ambition you feel around money or the desire you feel around relationship, there is probably something to face. But if there is nothing there, no fear, no activation, and you go into it and there is genuinely nothing, no interest, and what calls you is just sitting and self-inquiry, then you are probably the kind of person who just needs to do that, and you are going to wake up soon. That is also very much the case with people who are so fully in life, so fully in all of it, that they wake up without a spiritual practice.
Yeah. Thanks.
You are welcome. You are in a big crisis, and it is a good one. It is a big wake-up from the dreams and visions. It is great.