Signposts ~ along the way to greater Love
image by Sylwia Bartyzel
(first 7 pages of 15 – more to follow)
A brief writing exploration as a reflection on my search to live in greater Love ~ some lessons learned, and some contemplations that have supported me on this Quest. From early awakenings to learning how to trust in life and whatever we might call ‘That’ which is behind it all. A Path that awakens me to acknowledge and welcome life in all its Glory and various challenges.
This exploration is in four main areas :
- First Awakenings
- Developing Perception
- Spiritual Consciousness
- Conclusion
FIRST AWAKENINGS
From a Source Divine I come into physical being … into consciousness … gradually realising what I am a part of, and the lessons that bless me … as I learn to accept, embrace, and celebrate, this precious gift we call ‘life’.
I imagine myself newly born, again in a physical form, challenged by the changes and at the beginning of learning to surrender again. But first, a need to learn about my individuality and apparent separation from ‘the One’. I go through my set of challenges as I learn who I am in truth and what I choose as I move forward in growth and learning. I am ‘me’ as well as ‘I Am’ but a part of ‘The One’.
A dear companion of mine, Tarajyoti Govinda, wrote in her book Becoming Whole: the psychology of Light : ‘I discovered that there was indeed a psychology of the heart. It was to be found in my own heart. I had looked everywhere, searched high and low; it came only when I looked within. There I found the map for my journey’ (p.xxx)
Early Influences
In a state of innocence I was, perhaps, first awakened through evocative music and some lofty ideas. Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, Verdi, Purcell and Gregorian chants filled my childhood sensitivities with the hint of vast and glorious realms. Also with popular and folk music at the time, and then the fullness of voice and heart with Pavarotti and Andrei Bocelli. I was also stimulated by ideas that intrigued a child’s receptiveness and delight such as the possibility of Heaven and the unwelcome threats of Hell. I was also drawn into the more ethereal and deeply mysterious promises of Love Poetry from around the World, and a deep interest in the sheer wonders of nature.
In my informative years, I was inspired by many poets and artists of my generation. The 1960’s brought so many singers that filled my life with beauty, belief, and idealism. I was introduced to a more idealistic way of thinking in the beginnings of the Aquarian Age and along with everyone else, challenged to consider what we each choose and in the way we construct our modern world. Some artists such as Cat Stevens asked if we cherished the world and cared for it, on behalf of ourselves, our children and, in turn, theirs. On his music album Tea for the Tillerman Stevens asked ‘Where do the Children Play?’ Cat Stevens, Melanie Safka, Pete Seger, and others all asked of me ‘what is in your heart and what can you give to the well-being and benefit of all?’ Many other musicians inspired me to contemplate love, or passion, or the beauty of day-to-day life. Artists that were greatly influential including Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, Joe Cocker, Jacques Brel and many others.
Developing Ego
Around the age of seven I knew who I was and what I wanted in life. I was frustrated that many of the adults around me seemed lost in worrying about what other people might think, or many social rules, or just not as idealistic as was in my heart. I also observed how I was expected to take on so many of other peoples views and values.
Even after 70 years I am still not sure if it was partly because my father read me so many idealistic stories – or if it was just my own true nature that my father helped to bring to the fore. My father certainly taught me how to argue and opinion or perspective, and my innate passion often led me into conflict with others and eventually into walking the path alone for many years. I found it more peaceful to walk my own way and to leave others to theirs. I enjoyed being with people but I also required time-alone to be with my own thoughts and away from anyone who required of me to think like they did. My mind was somehow constructed differently and I needed to be sure to get my fill of just feeling inner peace.
Later in life, around the age of 25 and after a nervous collapse, I was introduced to the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections changed my life and understanding profoundly. In that book Jung wrote : ‘Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.’ It was awhile before I realised the degree to which my way of thinking was different to the way of the herd. I instinctively knew to avoid the way of herd mentality that had so negatively influenced the masses throughout World War II and many other times in history. I had no desire to go along with the crowd and find myself without full freedom to think and say what I believed in. It also took many years for me to learn to be cautious in what thoughts I expressed, to whom, and when. It was safer to simply think what I think and to find out what others believe before I confuse or agitate them in sharing my own.
Pressure, Control & Release
My youth and Aquarian idealism caused me to challenge the world where I found it wanting and experienced pushback on many occasions. People were not necessarily comfortable with me wanting for the world to change. Over time I redirected my efforts away from trying to convince others and gave my energy more to prayer as well as working on myself, and leave others to their own choices. As the ex-Harvard professor Richard Alpert, then known as Ram Dass wrote : ‘I can do nothing for you but work on myself. You can do nothing for me but work on yourself!.’ (Be Here Now, p.214)
As a teenager, as well as when in primary school, I felt like the Education system in my country, was pushing me to think in a specific way rather than guide me in how to think, or how to find my own path in life. What they were doing in the name of Education felt more like conditioning and programming and this extended into when I completed my Bachelor in Education and attempted to ‘teach’ in the system that I was confounded by. I did my utmost to teach the children about how to connect with who they were in truth but this was exhausting and seemed to be going nowhere. I eventually became exhausted from it all. Unhappy, dissatisfied and disillusioned, I gave up my position as a ‘school teacher’, left the mainstream and went walkabout.
Walkabout
I left a society that never made sense and left what I thought was to be my career as well. For some quiet time, I lived in the backyard of a friend’s house where I was able to setup a sanctuary for myself in an old guard’s-van. I purchased a disused train carriage that had a section I turned into a bedroom with a view and a larger open area that became my lounge and general room. In the back yard of an old mining cottage in a quiet county town, for brief time I found a place where I could break free from the restraints that had plagued my life until that time. I could let go of every rule and manner and restriction that had limited me until then. It was there that I shed my old skin and invited God Almighty to help me to begin again.
At the ripe young age of 23 I had abandoned my career and home and left everything behind. Travelling to Tasmania I eventually met fellow travellers who took me in and I lived in a one room cabin in the woods with several other people as well as others who came and went. As part of my recovery I read every single book I could find on Zen and penned line drawings. For a time this was where I could begin to heal. As is attributed to the poet and sage Rumi : ‘When you give up everything, everything is yours’.
Dark Times
Lost in anger and mistrust, I regressed from being a contributing member of society, losing faith in humanity which was only regained some decades later when I realised my trust had been misplaced. It needed to be given to the Divine Itself and inner government of the Earth. I eventually decided that we, as humans, evolve too slowly for placing my trust there but could begin to train myself to give my trust to the ‘All That Is’ (the Source and Instigator behind all of Creation).
On the road and then living alone for 5 years I studied all I could of Zen, Sufism, Taoism, I-Ching, and anything else that brought me closer to who I was in essence. The writings of psychologist Carl Jung, and my studies of Eastern perspective, were an essential support to my healing and return from self-exile.
A perspective I learned from Zen Master Hui Neng, from The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch was : ‘… One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is again an ordinary person.’ It seemed that, if I dedicated myself enough to training, that I might eventually train my mind to let go of judging everything and everyone, around and outside of it in some way, that I might learn and grow into becoming ‘a Buddha’ more of the time. I might even become enlightened one day.
Wonder-full Zen
From the moment of my break-down, the teachings of Zen gave me connection with what was more true for me than where society was at, and my level of consciousness, at that time. I was most fortunate to discover the teaching stories and practice of Zazen which helped me break through to new levels of perception and profoundly deeper sense of inner calm and intimate peace.
In Zen I was freed from some of the limitations and narrow mental constructs that had held me back before. The dear teacher D.T. Suzuki expressed it most eloquently in his introduction to Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel : ‘He thinks like the waves rolling on the ocean; he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens; he thinks like the green foliage shooting forth in the relaxing spring breeze. Indeed, he is the showers, the ocean, the stars, the foliage.’
Two poems I wrote to express something of my own journey in the unknown wonder :
New Lands
I enter now, into the mystery
of this dream, within a dream within … who knows what.
I journey, wondering, what will come
of stepping into new lands.
If you come with me, I will share what I find
and the feelings that try to persuade me.
A Light that beckons from the depths of my heart
I live on the edge of discovery.
On pathways that lead, to spaces that invite
some courage and will, and recovery.
I find a deep well, and the realm of peace
eternally present for all.
Miracles we share, though taken for granted
this wonder, this mystery,
in awe.
And …
Zen
I have no idea what to say about zen
except to share that it helped me
To regain my health
To restore some balance
to recover the peace
when there was none
Ready to leave
a frantic world
All by itself
Zen drew my return
Beyond mind
Beyond cares
Beyond worry
A lessened pain
I quit my job and went to the beach
Left my clothes with the shore
… and began again.
~ (2 poems) Arjuna Govinda / After the Storm
Psychotherapy Group
The study and practice of Zen carried me along for many years. Zen helped me to find my own inner core again. It also gave me signposts to lift my consciousness out of the corral-like ones that had created the breakdown in the first place.
Many years later, in deep illness and in a dream state, I was told that the breakdown had come from not being able to meet the expectations put upon me in my childhood and young adult years. Finally I had cracked under the pressure when I tried to work in a system that didn’t want my connection to Spirit or what I thought was valuable to serve the evolution of the human condition.
Leaving society was a necessity for me before I cracked and went mad without recourse. Sometime later I did experience that madness for perhaps half a minute or so and it was, to this day, the most scary thing I have ever experienced. I would warn anyone ever going near that place. The best way I have found to stay in the peace and beauty and gift of life is to regularly sit quietly and allow the blessings of life to flow through and upon you. To be present to what is and the Love and beauty in that.
After years of living alone, mostly in a cabin in the forest, I felt my time had come to rejoin society. I found a psychologist in the city and attended group sessions where we sat in a circle over ongoing weekends. In my initial session with the psychologist, I felt that, in one hour of listening, Susie heard everything I had been unable to express in 6 years of isolation. In one session I felt freed from needing isolation to being confident to join her group therapy circle for ongoing help and development. I could begin to find my place with humanity again.
A book that was being read by many in the group inspired me to read it as well and my life was changed by the very first sentence. The book was The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck and the sentence was : ‘Life is difficult’.
Peck wrote :‘Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.’
I had taken on the belief that life ‘should be’ a particular way but I had not been able to accomplish that. I was giving my all to achieve something that others had convinced me that I should reach for but that was not my own dream or path in life. – it was something obscure to who I was in truth. Whatever those goals were, were not mine and I had been trapped in that. The acknowledgement that life was indeed ‘difficult’ released a major cultural belief within me that life ‘should’ be otherwise. I had been resisting truth and this release freed me in a profound way.
I am not recommending that “life is difficult” be taken on as a mantra but to acknowledge that truth that life is not only positive without negative. That earthly life has a duality, and that difficulties and challenges are equally relevant, and part of the gifts in life, as the more fun and easy going opportunities.
In Timelessness
At the end of my sojourn in the forest cabin, I went to Nepal and climbed in the mountains and trekked the land for over 5 weeks. Setting myself a challenge to know that I could complete something and continue to work through the many unconscious fears that had residence in my unconscious mind.
On the way I met a more spiritually aligned aspect of myself, finding myself stopping mid river crossings, placing my hands into prayer position, and with closed eyes, bowing to what I felt there. On the first morning, in my hotel room before the trek, I opened the Bible and randomly picked a page. Continuing my random selection I placed my finger on the page and was surprised to read : ‘Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His holy mountain …’ (Psalm 99:9).
On the trek I often felt contact with Spirit as I left my old lifefar behind. I was no longer someone’s child or nephew or employee or other object of expectations, I was simply whomever and whatever I was in truth. Whomever and whatever I chose to be. I existed in relation to my sacred self and whatever contact I could find with Life and the Divine Itself. I was beginning to let go of all the previous restrictions on me and open to what the spiritual teacher Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj wrote : ‘When you want for nothing, then the Supreme state will come to you.’ (I Am That : talks with Sri Nisargadatta p.195)
DEVELOPING PERCEPTION
Awakening
Learning about oneself and especially about one’s higher Self, at some stage we get to recognise the way our ego-mind tries to get us to believe that “It” is what is most real. The ego-mind convinces us that it is the thing that is most important and around which the rest of life should serve. It is only over time and by Grace that we get to see how the ego-mind comes into being, where a group of thoughts form to develop a way of thinking; which this entity attaches to and projects as the ‘real world’, and then attempts to persuade its host to serve its survival and what it perceives of as its needs. One of the healthiest processes is when you become observant of the way your lower-mind behaves and you gain some perspective and freedom from it.
The ego diminishes as we become more and more aware of how it is behaving and it shrinks in what it demands. It also works at getting its needs met in a more subtle and nuanced way. Over time the ego-mind accepts that it is not in charge of centre stage and one’s heart and heart-mind in collaboration or Spirit may get to hold that central place.
Monkey Mind
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in Marharshi’s Gospel wrote : ‘Peace is your natural state. It is your mind that destroys it.’ … and … ’The mind is a layer of thought obstructing the Real Self.’
To get back to this natural and peaceful state one only need be disciplined enough to stop from being overly active and allow oneself to sit quietly, breathe relaxedly, and observe what is actually going on. You have the chance to experience this natural state of peace when you are not constantly active and with an outer focus, and instead, go within.
One way to experience the Real Self is to stop allowing the lower ego-mind so much control and look past this lower-attachment to worldly things. As is says in the Bible : ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom, and all else shall be added unto you.’
Another way to lessen the control of the lower, monkey-mind is as the Third Zen Patriach taught : ‘If you wish to know the truth, only cease to cherish opinion.’
(to be continued)