Does Your Spiritual Path Have a Goal?
Are you more interested in finding happiness—or finding out what is true? This is the question that Adyashanti, an innovative spiritual teacher out of the Zen tradition and the author of a provocative new book from Sounds True entitled The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment, asked his wife Mukti on their very first date.
This is the kind of question I love. It reminds me of a question I often like to ask meditators: What is the goal of your meditation practice?
For me the goal of meditation (and spiritual practice of all kinds) is wholeness or inclusiveness. What this means is that I am practicing not to achieve a certain chosen state—be it ecstasy or deep bliss—but instead, so that I can accept and embrace everything that I am and everything that is arising.
I have often met people on a spiritual path who say that the goal of their practice is to feel something in particular—usually peacefulness or happiness or some other positive state. And although this sounds nice, I find this approach problematic for several reasons.
1) Focusing on feeling a particular way can lead to what John Welwood calls “spiritual bypassing.” “Spiritual bypassing” means using spiritual ideals (like feeling peaceful) to bypass personal developmental challenges. For example, a friend of mine is terribly angry at her boyfriend for all kinds of really good reasons. He is not a very attentive listener and is unwilling to see many things from her perspective, instead simply trying to convince her of his view. Yet my friend is determined not to be angry. In her world view, her “practice” is to be understanding and forgiving and compassionate. Yet I know that, just beneath the surface, she is fuming. (I think she knows this, too.) She is “bypassing” her anger, and in the process is avoiding the growth that would come from confronting her partner in a constructive way. In the meantime, where is her anger going? Will it simply dissolve if she doesn’t acknowledge it? I don’t think so. When we bypass emotions in favor of “living our spiritual ideals,” we stuff these feelings into our body, where they hide out, simmer and wait to erupt.
2) When we’re seeking a particular feeling state, our spiritual path, which is supposed to free us, becomes another method of control. When we try to control the moment-to-moment experience of our lives by insisting that we feel a certain way, we end up telling ourselves things that are not true—i.e., that we are feeling something we are not actually feeling. (Again, I hear Adyashanti’s question in my ear: are we interested in discovering happiness or knowing what is true?) Instead of our spiritual path opening us to a fresh experience of each moment, we are now using spiritual ideals (like happiness or peace) as a control funnel through which reality is filtered.
3) If we’re hoping for positive mind states, we run the risk of abandoning our path when uncomfortable experiences surface and challenge our stated objective. If we use being “comfortable” or “peaceful” as a yardstick of our path’s success, then we might stop working with a particular practice just as it is beginning to do its work, revealing some hidden material that could prove to be the next step in our evolution.
One of the spiritual teachers who has spent more than five decades mapping what he calls “the transformative process” is Benedictine monk Father Thomas Keating. (This fall, Sounds True will be releasing a home study course with Father Thomas on centering prayer and the transformative process it catalyzes.) Father Thomas uses Christian language to describe the process of prayer and transformation, and yet I find his work to be completely universal and, interestingly, perfectly resonant with my own experience of meditation and transformation within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. According to Father Thomas, God could be called “the Divine Therapist.” When we rest in God’s presence, there erupts within us what he calls “an unloading of the unconscious.” If we are able to accept this unconscious material without repressing it or reacting to it, a further “evacuation” of unconscious material occurs. (I just love the use of the word “evacuation” in this context!) This leads to greater interior freedom and an increase in our overall capacity for awareness.
I recently had my own experience of an “evacuation,” which was quite dramatic. Last summer, I went on a solitary meditation retreat for 10 days in a cabin in Crestone, Colorado. This is the third solitary retreat I have been on, and I have learned from my other two experiences to enter retreat with an open and innocent mind—an attitude of “who knows what will happen?” About three days into retreat, I started having what I can only describe as a “panic attack” – my breathing changed and I started gasping for air as if my life were at risk. At first, I thought the panic attack had to do with a new house I had just purchased—or, more accurately, with my new mortgage. (The amount of the mortgage kept repeating over and over in my head as I panicked.) At the same time, it was clear to me that the panic I was feeling was about something deeper. In reality I was safe, in a lovely cabin, and I could afford my new mortgage. And yet, after three days of meditation practice, I was on my knees gasping for air for no reason I could name.
After several hours of gasping, I collapsed outside on the ground. I gave myself to the earth and to whatever process was unfolding in me. The insight that came later was that a core panic I’d been carrying inside since birth was being released from my being into awareness. Here on this retreat, I was finally ready for the somatic memory of my birth—a difficult delivery that was experienced by my infant self as a life-or-death drama—to come forward, be known, and be released.
What if the real goal of our spiritual path is to have the courage to face everything, and I mean everything, without turning away? Might there be a type of unshakeable peace and unshakeable happiness that denies nothing but instead welcomes every experience as exactly what is needed? Could that type of unconditional acceptance rightly be called faith?
In The End of Your World, Adyashanti talks about how he has worked with many students who have had breakthrough experiences of spiritual awakening, and how all of these students report that the experience is not what they had imagined. Adya comments that awakening has to be beyond our preconceived ideas, since we can only conceive of something based on past experiences. Spiritual awakening is a total shift in perception, completely unprecedented in our lives. According to Adya, when we awaken, our “world ends”— the world that is held together by our ideas of subject and object, of how the world functions, and of who we are in its midst. When Adya had his great spiritual awakening he says he “awoke from Zen,” meaning that even the tradition and its practices no longer defined his experience. What if any goal we can describe for our spiritual path will be outgrown? What if there is literally nothing we can hold on to, not even our maps and presumed destinations?
Tags: Adyashanti, John Welwood, The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the
May 7th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
[...] Tami Simon Blog - Sounds True » Blog Archive » Does Your Spiritual … [...]
May 7th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Interesting. I see all sides to your points. Perhaps that IS the point.
I have been listening to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) tapes by Tony Robbins lately. All about changing your state. Useful.. and yes it IS bypassing the real issue(s) that need to be uncovered and addressed. A Gal in Boulder is holding NLP Workshops. I won’t be going to those for the same reason I won’t finish reading my copy of The Secret.. I like the Middle Ground. One extreme is that we are responsible for everything that occurs simply by focusing on it, another is to deny everything by “bypassing” it. Both sides send me spinning.
The CoDependency lessons also come into play here.. it’s OKAY to backslide into the crazy-thinking.. it’s part of the process to grow and evolve out of it. Like the Alan Watts tapes: “AWARE” is the heart of all Art and Poetry.. it’s great when the poets can take something that you dread and transform it into something wondrous. I’m doing that with the Job Hunt. My fellow Seekers identify with my Job Hunt Poetry all about trying to fit and then trying to be different. Both are Possible. Both are needed for True Growth.
- Sue U.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:20 am
[...] Another fellow blogger added an interesting post today on Does Your Spiritual Path Have a Goal?Here’s a small reading…universal and, interestingly, perfectly resonant with my own experience of meditation and transformation within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. [...]
May 8th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
[...] The One All Blog created an interesting post today on Does Your Spiritual Path Have a Goal?Here’s a short outline…in this context!) This leads to greater interior freedom and an … spiritual awakening he says he “awoke from Zen,” meaning that even the [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Tami-
Once again, a great post.
I was floored by your experience.
I don’t normally share what I call the “hot seat” with those who do not directly ask me about it, probably because these experiences are so deep and “personal” that they embarrass me.
In any case, I need to share with you, that one of these deep releases in me was also like yours: the puret terror of a panic attack.My eminent death seemed absolutely certain. I could not breath.
The certainty was so overwhelming that I sat off in a corner, on the floor, so that when “I” died, I would not hit my head on the marble floor, leaving a mess to clean up. These moments of terror, facing the certainty of immanent death, occurred directly out of deep sleep, with absolutely no warning.
My complete surrender delivered me to a new place after the third day. It turned out to be a major portal.
Some of the occurrences I have experienced by deeply embracing the moment, welcoming it, in fact, have left me in very unpredictable circumstances. For most of these experiences, I have no explanation as to why or from whence they arose. The good news is that. in due time, they passed, and when they did, they never returned.
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm
This is another lovely post, because it touches on some of the past paradoxes and sources of confusion in spiritual development, which no longer need be so. Many of us are capable of understanding at the outset of our conscious spiritual work, at least on a mental level, some of the issues that have led many past spiritual seekers through seemingly endless byways of effort and frustration. Those byways were, and sometimes still are necessary, but now for many people they are not.
The first is the idea of spiritual goals. As humans we need goals; as mental beings we can’t function without them. They provide us with a mental direction, an orientation and some set of guides for achieving the ends we seek to accomplish, whether in ordinary life—such as to earn a living or change our life circumstances, or a myriad of other things–, or in spiritual development, at least initially.
The main problem with spiritual goals as they are usually conceived is twofold: they are, or they become, inappropriate or limited. This difficulty is expressed on many levels, and Tami gives several examples. Frequently, once-appropriate goals eventually cease to be so. Seeking or clinging to a particular type of experience, for instance, inevitably prevents us from moving on to a greater one, whether we are doing it to dodge discomfort in our personal lives, or through a fear of change, or we are merely resting on the laurels of some level of achievement in our path as a spiritual guide or seeker.
But in reality this is an expression of personal limitation: we cling to an experience, or a point of view, or a level of achievement because we are capable of going no farther. And when we become capable of moving beyond, either we do so voluntarily by our own awareness that the past goal is no longer appropriate, or else we are pushed out of it, often painfully. This process has been expressed in many ways, sometimes rather poetically, such as a “constant death and rebirth,” or an “endless becoming.”
But the apparent paradox and irony of spiritual goals is that the ultimate goal seems to be to no longer need a goal, to achieve a level of awareness where we no longer have any real personal goals, but simply move under the impulsion of a higher consciousness guiding our every act.
A further apparent paradox and irony, is that this state cannot be achieved by any effort, any work, any type of goal-achieving method we are familiar with in normal life. Instead, it requires a release, a letting go of the mental, emotional, and physical tension needed for our usual existence.
A yet further paradox and irony is that by giving up the struggle of personal effort in order to open ourselves to this higher consciousness, we invite an even greater struggle, the battle of letting go of all of our mental, emotional, and even physical habits in order to allow that higher consciousness to emerge.
And this is the real struggle, not because the release is inherently difficult, but because of our own and the earth’s subconscious resistance to it. Even when our mind wants to let go, our subconscious beliefs, our spontaneous old emotional reactions and bodily habits constantly throw up their more or less effective blocks, which can only be overcome by a long discipline. And this is the real nature of spiritual work, the spiritual work that is now being demanded of all of us.
And this state, this non-goal goal, can only be achieved by an increasing awareness of the higher consciousness working in ourselves and the rest of the world, and an increasing trust in its action, in spite of the mind’s temporary inability to see its motive or purpose. And that is the nature of true spiritual faith.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:05 am
DEAR TAMI,
I WISH TO SHARE WITH YOU OF THE GREAT FULLNESS FOR THE WORK(PLAY) YOU CREATE IN(FLUENCE) “MY” LIFE!
1) READING GANGAJI’S BOOK: “THE DIAMOND IN YOUR POCKET: DISCOVERING YOUR TRUE RADIANCE”
2) “EVEN THE SUN WILL DIE” YOUR MASTERPEACE INTERVIEW WITH ECKHART TOLLE
THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2009
The Diamond in My Drawer
Many years ago I found a clear rectangular ‘gem’ near the place where I worked. (this was my all-time favorite job because of the people I “worked” with and the nature of the ‘business’)
I put it in my pocket. I assumed it was a piece of glass or (at best) a cubic zirconia (I was a little familiar with these synthetic “diamonds” due to another job I’d held, going back a few years… before Europe(September 1980 to November 1981). This “gem” didn’t, really, look as good as one of those fakes.
Anyway, the collector that I was saved it among some other “precious” stones and jewelry components in a tiny Chinese silk embroidered box for approximately 22 years. (I recall that “Time Stands Still” was featured at the Nickelodeon Cinema, 1983, I think.)
Occasionally, over those years, I looked at the contents of that box. Usually, while looking at it, I wondered what it truly was; but I was never motivated to find out. “Just a piece of glass!” And for several years prior to 2005, I never looked at it or thought about it. It sat, quietly, waiting in my drawer.
So, around 2000, I can look “back” and See that my “waking up” process was, in a sense, “beginning”… in 2004 I was on the “horizon” of it. And in the summer of 2005, I read “The Diamond in Your Pocket: Discovering Your True Radiance” by Gangaji… I could not put it down, I breezed through it! (Eventually, introduced by this book to Eckhart Tolle who wrote the forward). Friends that I suggested read the book “literally” could not read it! Much like those who can and those who cannot read Eckhart. (It is not a judgment, it is a reflection of one’s readiness for this (a-HA!))
The year 2000 was not my 1st introduction to matters of the “spirit” but all previous endeavors related to a “spiritual search” had been encapsulated in a feeling that that part of my early “life” had been almost like having a different lifetime within this lifetime! I had moved on to raising a family… little did I know how much they were “raising” me too!
So, in 2005, I had a ‘breakthrough’ into “Space Consciousness” which was tied-In to re-Connecting with a Friend that I had met in Europe in October 1981. The interesting thing is this: I did not know why I was compelled to look for him because at the time of our 1st encounter I had dropped him like a “hot potato”! I knew him for 8 days and then fled in fear of him… for my “life” due to a deep distrust of the “Other” and a “woundedness” from most human relationships; I sensed a neediness in him that reflected my own, thus my survival mechanism kicked into high gear. It is like the way most humans function on a daily basis: they live with a false sense of fear in everyday interactions and the result is an abundance of stress.
Anyway, I cannot go into All the details here of this Awakening process but suffice it to say that what I experienced was misinterpreted by my husband and friends. I know that they could not help having their interpretations, “they know not what they do”.
After the initial shock for my husband, he was willing, for a brief period, to try to understand what was happening. He went with me to visit my guide to get further clarification on what I was experiencing but his own pain from this and the deeper pain within him was too much to “handle”. I remember, on that day, that he was willing to help me find a way to go to Sweden to meet with Arne. Strangely, on our ride in the car back home from this meeting with my guide, I thought about that piece of glass in my drawer and thought: “It must be a diamond!!”
Really… I had this thought come to me!
So, when I returned home I rummaged through my drawer and found the piece of cut glass! “Maybe it truly is a diamond! This will give me the money I need to travel to Stockholm!” I took that “stone” to a jeweler to test it, the next day. They made a test on it…they were 98% sure that it was a Diamond!! But they would have to have their expert diamond appraiser examine it for its worth, etc. I left it there… I was flying 20 feet off the ground! How could this be?!! It had never looked very sparkly or colorful until I saw it at the jeweler’s…”under the Light”.
Synchronistically, the weaving of the content of Gangaji’s book with this “magical, mystery tour” in my life hit me over the head, brought me full force, full circle In To my LIFE! I have (had) many of these co-incidences throughout my life that Serve(d) to wake me up.
You can think any thought about my life as You wish but No thought about it can take this knowing away from Life. You can’t make me live less Life. You can’t remove Love, All there Is. We don’t “need” it, We Are It. It’s been in Your pocket, all along, You just couldn’t See It.
POSTED BY DOREEN AT 10:37 AM
6 COMMENTS:
Marite said…
Could you post a picture of the gem you found?
Abrazos,
Marite
MAY 21, 2009 4:31 PM
Doreen said…
I will “dig it out” soon!
MAY 22, 2009 9:26 AM
Marite said…
Fascinating story soo far. You’ve got me glued to the screen…!
Sweden; the Svensk connection.
Maybe you ought to start writing a book.
MAY 23, 2009 5:18 AM
Doreen said…
Here is a link to Arne’s perspective on our 1st meeting, along with comments by me:
http://gradual-awakening.blogspot.com/search?q=doreen
If my computer co-operates today I write more, here.
I would Love to write a book… it may have already been “written”! HA!
I Love Your Art and Writing so Very Much!
MAY 23, 2009 9:34 AM
Doreen said…
Indeed, it was a diamond! A very big diamond! I assume that whoever lost it, in the first place, had cashed in the insurance? Goes Way beyond One’s Wildest Dreams! Not the “value” of it, but the recognition of the Value of It, Life Itself! You can’t know It, but You know that You Know It at the same time! You Sense it through Your Essential Beingness!
Magnificent!
JUNE 2, 2009 10:04 AM
Diane Meier said…
Loved the story! And isn’t it funny when we DO find out that we are LOVE, all there is, and we’ve been searching for it out there for so long……..we just have to laugh out loud at the absurdity and the thrill of “finding ourselves” at last!
JUNE 2, 2009 6:15 PM
June 9th, 2009 at 10:55 am
A Tribute to Stephen and Ondrea Levine - A Year to Live
Speaking of gems, thought I would share a small story of these two great people who have changed my life.
During my almost 15 years of hospice work, it was always Stephen and Ondrea Levine that provided meaning to a sometimes overwhelming sense of loss and suffering. His books, A Gradual Awakening and Who Dies, became like my bible, a constant well of words that filled my soul and helped me be present and accepting of whatever arose.
Their workshops broke our hearts open with compassion and filled us with infinite light and love. In closing, we would do a Sufi dance, moving from person to person, looking deeply into their eyes, sending and receiving love into our hearts. The dance was a tribute to one of my favorite phrases of his “The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.” Bless them both for their unique and devoted contribution.
A Year to Live, Stephen’s most recent book, has been sitting on my bookshelf for a few years just patiently waiting. Now I am ready. A group will be forming. Even as I wait, not quite ready to start, I find myself increasingly more conscious of choices I make. Now when I awaken in the morning, there is a poignant awareness of this day - this one precious day, which becomes this one precious moment throughout this one day. Thank you Stephen.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:02 am
Virtually every self help, personal growth, personal development, spiritual growth, or how to succeed in life and business strategy hammers home the importance of setting goals, having targets, preferred outcomes, desired results, having a clear intent for every action and activity.
July 27th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Grace comes in when we “give up” all intentions.
August 26th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Wow! I loved this post so much. I love your insights. I wrote a poem that had almost those exact words in the end of your post! That’s crazy to me. I didn’t know about this blog, but surly am going to revisit it soon. Thank you for your true investigations Tami. I really appreciate your sincerity.
September 10th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to say, then started reading the other comments and was blown away by the deep insights of so many of them. Thanks, especially, to J S, who was so clear regarding the paradoxes and ironies of spiritual goals.
If I think of spiritual goals in terms of an either/or (truth or happiness) it takes me in a unique direction. Thank you (and Adyashanti) for the question, and for the thoughts it sparked.
Dissipating delusion is inherent in a path that addresses suffering. Having a “right view” and/or “right understanding” is what I understand this to be about. In this sense, “finding out what is true,” or is in line with reality, is part and parcel of the path that leads away from suffering and toward well-being or happiness.
If happiness is understood as a feeling based on how things are going at the moment, if it is a positive mind-state that is dependent on things being well, it is unsustainable. It blows here and there with whatever wind comes up. If happiness is understood, however, as a state of peace that is devoid of clinging or grasping, of fear, hatred, or delusion, then a “true” understanding will lead to this state, don’t you think?
You hit the nail on the head, for me, when you asked if there could be an “unshakeable” peace and happiness that is based on denying nothing and accepting everything as exactly what is needed. This type of long-term, non-circumstantial happiness is what a healthy understanding of truth leads to, methinks.
Thanks for stirring the pot.