| Article: Give Up, Kill the Seeker and Other Strange Suggestions |
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by Jose Stevens
Skeptics and people genuinely seeking spiritual growth and enlightenment sometimes ask me, "If there is only oneness, a single divine Spirit that we are connected with, who exists in an eternal state of now, how can there be past lives or soul ages? How can there be karma and lessons and agreements etc?" Well, the answer to that in all truth is, there cannot be.
With this in mind, let us explore the dilemma of how we become free of the appearances in this dreamscape. In the context of our dream, younger souls usually do not concern themselves with enlightenment but sometimes cultural pressure, familial, and economic pressures drive them into religious life where they bring their values of 'winning above all' to bear. Thus a younger soul may become acutely religious to the degree that they advocate the deaths of all non-believers and aspire to go to heaven where they can enjoy the great benefits of having won. Yet they are not much interested in real awakening because they are usually too identified with the false personality and it does not want to dissolve or be ignored by any means. Mature souls on the other hand are so tired of the earth games that they aspire to go home to spirit, sometimes almost desperately. They just want out because their reality involves so much suffering, angst, depression, and anxiety. They are no longer gratified very much by winning in a material sense. So they try very hard to transform the world into their idealistic vision of freedom and utopia only to be cruelly disappointed over and over. Even though the mature soul wants out they are still very much in and the in is mostly run by false personality in disguise. Old souls are similarly fed up with the negative version of world games and they are hell bent on liberation but they often know something that mature souls do not. They begin to glimpse that no matter how hard they try to break out of the system and become free, they can never do it via the personality. Now this poses a very great dilemma. It is similar to the difficulty a fish might have describing the world outside of the pond, much less actually being able to go to that non fishy world. The difficulty is that even though a seeker (as the Zen folks describe it) develops within the personality, it is still always under the control of the false personality or separated self. Since the false personality is defiant of the one Spirit, imagining itself to be separate, how can it actually reach the state of being 'One'? The truth be told it cannot. This is the conundrum all human beings face. Being a separate personality with a separate body wandering around in a world where all seems fragmented always has and always will be an illusion. How can an illusion find what is true without vanishing? From this point of view there is no hope and when late level mature and old souls discover this they often become very depressed. They feel like everything they have ever done in the name of seeking liberation has been a vast waste of time and in a strange sort of way they are absolutely right. All the meditating for years or lifetimes, all the exercises and processes, all the prayer, all the abstentions and disciplines, have been utterly futile. Then it begins to dawn on them that the part of them that is discouraged and feeling depressed has to be pure fiction because it comes out of the false personality like everything else. That which is liberated, pure essence, never was depressed and never will be because it does not acknowledge the rest as being real. In fact it was never imprisoned so it need not be liberated. So you might ask, how can I be so conflicted, so caught in struggle if there is no problem and never has been one? If pure Spirit exists how can I get in touch with that enough to know it is real and this struggle is but a dream? And, and, and, and...? Here include all the other questions crowding your mind as well. If we were to ask mystics and shamans how to deal with this they would of course say you have to become quiet but how do we become quiet when the mind is in a state of constant chatter and never shuts up. Now if you are not confused by now you probably ought to be. There is only one way out of this hopeless quagmire. As a human being caught in this web of false personality and ego, struggling to seek but never finding a real way out, you are hopelessly trapped. There is no way out so you might as well just forget about ever extracting yourself from fragmentation under your own steam. Yet there is a way through and that way is a no-brainer. Using the analogy of the fish you cannot swim your way onto dry land. You can approach it but at some point you will have to leave the water and when you leave the water you are afraid you will die. You cannot use the personality to get to Spirit. At some point you will have to leave it but who in their right mind wants to leave what they know and identify with and regard as their total existence. The alternative looks like you have to die to become free and who wants that? Congratulations! You have just discovered the most powerful argument of the false personality to keep you trapped forever. It always threatens, "If you don't listen to me you will certainly die! What it does not want you to know is that if you listen to it you will surely die, over and over, and not just at the end of each fictional lifetime but all during these lives as you suffer loss upon loss upon loss. The oldest souls learn that eventually even the seeker has to be let go of, has to be ignored. No matter how badly you want it, you won't get it through the seeker. The seeker will hold you back because deep down the seeker is corrupt and loyal to the false personality. I know that is hard to accept but if you look closely enough you will discover that it is true, otherwise you would already feel that you are at your destination. You must give up, surrender to something larger in order to move forward. What does that mean? Well it does not mean that you stop desiring freedom and awakening. It does not mean that you give up the world and your everyday life. It does not mean that you let go of the practices that you find enjoyable and satisfying to do. If they are torturous, yes, by all means let go of them. What you do let go of is the struggle that the seeker is so attached to. You let go of your impatience with and resistance to your self so that you can be in the present. Ultimately if you want to experience pure Essence, pure Spirit, All that Is, Christ energy, a State of Grace or the highest of the Higher Centers then there is only one thing you can do. If you have a plumbing problem then you have to talk to an experienced plumber. If you have an electrical problem you have to talk to a master electrician. If you have an engine problem you have to talk to an expert mechanic and so on. Therefore if you want to know more about Spirit you cannot ever get the right information from another human being who is being run by false personality. Since all religions are run by human beings who are being run by their false personalities, they cannot provide answers. Since much spiritual literature has been heavily contaminated by the agendas of false personalities over the ages, you cannot ultimately rely on them either. Since your mind usually interprets everything via the filters of false personality, that is not reliable either. So you go directly to Spirit itself because it knows itself through and through. Spirit is the expert on Spirit and is the only one who actually knows what it's doing. What then does this look like, going directly to Spirit? Well to most people it looks like eating humble pie. Here is what you might sound like if you were to go direct: "Well Spirit you win. I've tried everything I know how to do and I have failed to reach you in a way that is ultimately satisfying to me. Maybe I got a glimpse of you a few times but that just doesn't cut it. I am not satisfied with crumbs. I need the real deal. But the truth is I don't even know what I'm really talking about here. I just have a feeling of what I am looking for. Connection. No more fragmentation. So, since being totally connected is your reality you are the expert on that and know everything there is to know about that, I call upon you to get me there. Yes, I need help because I just haven't seemed to be able to get there on my own. Give me the direction, the guidance, the information, and the inspiration. Help me to listen without distractions. I agree to follow your instructions because you are the master of this. Find a way to circumnavigate my ego, and use the influence of my essence, the part of me that is free of false personality to waken me." In all truth this is all you can do. You let go of your fantasy of being in control, Ask (tell) Spirit to help you, listen, follow instructions, and then wait. Now I know what you are probably thinking. As long as you address Spirit as 'Other' you seem to be separate from it and this is an obstacle to becoming one with Spirit. But let's give ourselves a break here. We have to start somewhere so this is an OK semantic error to make just to have a starting point. So now that you have started the process, you must be prepared for anything that happens. What if your jerk of a neighbor next door who has never done a day of spiritual practice in their lives suddenly wakes up in a flash of light and says, "My God. I finally see. I am enlightened." You, on the other hand, have been working hard for lifetimes and are sitting there closed hearted in grumpy darkness. Well this is tough to swallow but instead of feeling horribly victimized and angry, you celebrate your neighbor's awakening and you wait patiently listening, listening, listening for your own awakening. The truth is your neighbor's enlightenment is a major victory for you because until everyone wakes up, you won't be awake either since they are you. So the hard news is this. You don't control your enlightenment. Spirit does. You don't control the time or the place of your awakening. You make yourself available and you go about your business. You provide service; you ask for forgiveness for thinking you were a dumb cluck and for thinking you made mistakes; you forgive others for thinking they were dumb clucks and for acting foolishly in their dream state; you bless everyone and everything and celebrate that they are extensions of Spirit and therefore of you; you give thanks for the marvelous opportunity of having been created as Spirit. You never accept the faulty appearance of things, the falseness of separation. And you pay attention to your presence. You laugh, you chop wood, and you carry water. And every day you say often: "I call upon you Spirit. Wake me up. Help me remember where home is. I never left. I never will. I remain as you created me. Aho." Waking up to Spirit is guaranteed. It's just the 'when' you have to get over. |
