ADMIRAL ACKBAR, IN STAR WARS, EPISODE VI: THE RETURN OF THE JEDI
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BLEED INTO ONE
The deeper we go with meditations such as the One with the Eternal Everything, the more we naturally and effortlessly begin to experience life from the place of Everything Mind. We strengthen our connection to the place of boundless Witnessing Awareness, which, as an added bonus, makes navigating life’s difficulties easier, as we now experience them in a significantly less personal way. Imagine you’re sitting on a small stage in a room with roughly a hundred people who have gathered to hear you give a talk on Buddhism. When you initially took the stage, you were, for the most part, relaxed. Then, just as you’re about to begin the talk, your mind goes completely blank, not even knowing why you’re on the stage in the first place.
You sit in a bewildered state as various forms of physical and mental anxiety begin to arise, when all of a sudden, something deep inside of you—below your conscious rational mind—begins to take over. This deeper wisdom guides you to close your eyes, place your palms together in front of your heart, and mindfully recite all the thoughts and emotions that are arising for you in the moment: “Afraid, embarrassed, confused, sense of dying, lost.” After a few minutes of doing this, your body begins to relax, your mind calms, and your senses return. Slowly, you raise your head, look around the room, and begin to remember why you are there.
The preceding is actually a true story, though it’s not mine. I read about “Jacob,” an elderly man and longtime meditator who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, in Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance.1 His story reminded me of why I set out on a spiritual path in the first place: to cultivate greater equanimity in life no matter what comes my way, and to establish a deeper connection with God in the grand, nondual context of Everything Mind.
Having the addiction background that I do—which resulted in many of the shitty circumstances I’ve already covered—I was a poster boy for the hopeless. While Jacob’s second nature was to turn inward and pay attention when shit hit the fan, mine was to get high. It didn’t matter what the substance was; anything that kept me from having to face reality would do just fine. Unlike Jacob, during those years, I didn’t have any spiritual reference to draw from, so I did what I had to in order to survive. If it hadn’t been for the relief the drugs provided me, there’s a good chance I’d be dead today. (The Catch-22 being that those drugs almost killed me numerous times as well. . . . Ah, life.)
Grace eventually entered my life in the form of a professor who turned me on to spirituality. And now, after years of cultivating an integral spiritual practice (including, among other things, meditation, prayer, exercise, and service work), more often than not, I’m able to navigate the difficult times in my life with that greater equanimity I initially set out looking for.
Life is still far from perfect. But now, when the shit hits the fan, I know there’s nothing that any drug or sense-pleasing distraction can offer that one simple, conscious breath can’t get me through. For it’s in that one breath that the entire essence of our being—the perfect nondual Suchness from which all things arise—exists. And spiritual practice helps us live with the understanding that we’re always just a moment away from a new breath, and with that, our already inherently perfect state of Divine Being. That is no small thing.
But there’s also a trap that can come with our spiritual practice: becoming absorbed with our personal spiritual progress. (I know we briefly touched on this in chapter 21, but I believe it’s important enough to quickly revisit, since self-absorption can really be a sneaky bastard.) It can start happening particularly once we begin to have exciting “peak” experiences that are a natural byproduct of things like meditation, prayer, and mantra. These peak experiences are alluring because the peace and liberation we experience as we’re reconnecting with our ever-present Self through them is incredible. It then becomes tempting to continue seeking more peak experiences and the subsequent bliss, peace, and love they produce. Those qualities are important things to cultivate, but if that’s all we’re focusing on—the bliss of our own spiritual growth—and not caring about the external world, our practice has become narcissistic.
The Gospel according to John tells us that Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (10:30), meaning that he recognized his true Divinity. This Divinity is within every one of us and all things manifest. How could it not be? The material world is that of Spirit continuing to awaken to more and more of Itself. According to many of the wisdom traditions, Spirit, on the level of form, began unfolding Itself at the big bang and will continue to unfold until all sentient beings have awakened, and then the entire process will start over again. (But in all fairness, who really knows for sure about that part?)
The Father (or Divine Mother, Brahman, Emptiness) and I are One. The same goes for you. We include all beings and all things. This is hidden in plain sight for us all to see. As we begin to experience this, let’s please keep it in (Everything) mind so that our spiritual practices move forward with the intention of benefitting all beings, and not just ourselves. I hope that this sounds obvious, but, man, I’ve seen some things . . .