AFTER DRIVING FOR three days, a young and restless archaeologist was late for a conference in Laramie, Wyoming. Pressed and pressing, he was speeding through a sunlit basin somewhere between the vast plains and the front ridge of the Rocky Mountains when he suddenly found himself in the midst of a herd of elk. Exasperated, he honked at the herd to let him pass. They simply crowded in closer and stared at him. Forced to stop, he turned his truck off, and the herd kept him there for a long time. Then he realized they weren’t staring at him, but off into the big sunlit sky behind him. When the sun began to set behind the highest ridge, they left. He sat there till the last elk was out of view. As he restarted his truck, everything seemed different. This brief encounter with a herd of elk did something to his eyes. He was no longer heading anywhere but sweetly lost in the Oneness the elk silence had opened. Now he was entering time and no longer chasing it.
This story represents yet another choice between our student-self and teacher-soul. The choice can be framed this way. From which sense of center will we live our days: as an arrow always seeking its mark, or as a drop of water always seeking its home? Half the time, we’re so eager to get somewhere only because we’re uncomfortable with where we are. Much of the time, we’re trying so hard to keep the difficult things out that we stop letting in what is always present and beautiful.
The journey is always different than we expect and much longer than we imagine. Ultimately, life is not something to chase or push through but to enter and absorb. While this seems simple, it is one of the hardest truths to keep before us. And keeping the deeper truths before us is like wrestling a whale that has broken the surface—imploring it to stay with us in the world, though in order to survive, it has to dive back into the deep.
We could say that keeping things that matter in view is the aim of all knowledge. The great Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel tells us that, in the eyes of the Jews of Eastern Europe, knowledge was not a means for achieving power, but a way to keep drinking from the Source of All Reality. In their eyes, study for the sake of acquiring something was considered a desecration. The aim of study was to partake of spiritual beauty. Why? As a means of staying resilient and whole.
In light of this, the little conversation between Ramana Maharshi and his student, that we discussed in an earlier chapter, invites us to make a sacred and personal practice of discerning these choices again and again: to listen to the problem-solver we carry or to the spirit within that lives beneath all problems, to deepen our doubt or our faith, to exert our will or our surrender, and whether to manipulate the world with our ego or to relate to the world with our larger self.
When tossed about by hesitation and confusion, which will happen, we can still ourselves and make a conscious assessment as to who is leading us: the student eager to manage things or the inner teacher offering us a way to apprehend things more deeply. When pressed by insecure turnings, which will happen, we can stop working the time-management quandaries that heighten our doubt and inflame our will, and try to receive the lift of the Oneness of Things.
When in the midst of crisis, which will happen, we can take the risk to believe that the work will go on by itself. When drowning in pain and sorrow, which will happen, we can summon the courage to stay with our feelings long enough to experience something deeper than our pain and sorrow. To be sure, the pragmatist in us will always feed on a divided world it must manage for us to survive. But given the chance, the larger self in us will find its place in the Universal Stream, where we will discover, again and again, the peace a small boat knows as it floats on the sea.
The journey is always different than we expect and much longer than we imagine.