Rebuilding From The Ground of Being / II
Rebuilding on the Level of Practice
If you have landed on this page before reading Part 1, click here.
In part 1, I described how consciousness in embodied (human) form identifies solely with that part of itself from which knowledge (i.e. a  collection of concepts that includes images of self as a separate subject/object) arises-- as Descartes did. Here, Iâd like to explore what is presupposed by this misidentification and a way of practice in the time of pandemic. Â
It is inherent in the experience of embodied consciousness to feel, as it were, off or outside of its center. This is what allows for each of us to mistake ourselves for one or another of the images we create, crystallizing the ego-self. When consciousness becomes aware of this as its underlying condition driving; as the driver of all his action, as a means of fulfillment; this it is said, is the first moment of awakening. This is the beginning of the spiritual journey.
However, by the function of consciousnessâ conditioning, it views the journey ahead as a search for what is lost; it conceives a state to be attained (and in so doing creates and identifies with another concept) and makes it way by grasping (which it subconsciously justifies by believing it to be the highest attainment). Without the guidance of a truth-realized teacher, or at least one who is oriented towards the truth*, nothing proceeds from the initial awakening except greater confusion. This could cause someone to later conclude, because of the futility of the endeavor, that the Truth is but an illusion. The only other outcome is the aggrandizement of the ego and all the delusions it has of itself. Â
This is more important than it first appears. The necessity of clarity surrounding the goal of Yoga hardly needs justification when clarity or clear-seeing is the âgoalâ itself. So we must proceed accordingly, according to the âgoalâ. Isnât that freedom from the delusion; freedom from the mistaking oneself to be anything other than what it is? This is important.
The metaphor of the well-equipped runner at a race makes this more clear. (S)he can have the best engineered shoes but if (s)he is running in the opposite direction of the finish line, or in any other direction than that of the finish line, equipment does not matter. In this case, the different practices may be perfectly engineered technologies, but without right orientation, serve absolutely no purpose. This a metaphor often employed in tradition to emphasize the importance of right knowledge for the practice to actually work. To this, Â I would personally add two more things. Without right orientation, the practices are not without effect and neither are these effects benign. Practice without right view, barring divine intervention, most certainly creates greater delusion, leaving one more muddled than before encountering the practices. The second is with proper orientation, one is able to discern which practices are in most alignment with the goal, and most appropriate for them at any given time, insofar as this goal is concerned.**
Especially now, with the majority in isolation, I am compelled to revisit what is most fundamental about the spiritual journey. In fact, traditionally, darshan or view, would be the first teaching a student would receive from their teacher, well before any type of practice. Â This pandemic, that has ravaged everything we as a society have been without question devoted to preserving, has and will in the coming weeks, and months, serve as a mass initiation for those whoâve yet to experience initial awakening.*** And for those already (formally) on the path (because we really are only ever on the path, even when we think we arenât), we now have more time to devote to the ever-deepening of our sadhana.
If we are to scale the highest of heights through practice; and for it to bear the sweetest possible fruit, we must revisit its foundations and honestly inquire into its stability-- how rooted in truth is our practice? There are enough truth-realized human beings that have both come before and walk amongst us, who have expressed the true glory of Being which is the radiance of our essence-nature-- the recognition of which is the end of suffering and delusion.
And with them came practices that lead to both the direct experience of our essence-nature and the means by which we are able to abide in it, while living and participating in the world. To encounter these teachings should mean the end of our seeking and the end of our grasping. If we encounter these teachings and have understood the direction to which it has intended to orient us, truly, that would mean the end of all seeking and the end of all grasping.
Our essence-nature cannot be found, because it was never lost; it cannot be attained, because it cannot be grasped; and it cannot be seen because it is the place from which all seeing is done.
There wasnât a time that you werenât who you truly are; even in your darkest and most confused hours, for if it were to be the truth of your being, then there cannot be a time that you werenât it, or that it was not you. This part of you cannot be caused and it cannot be uncaused. Your practice and your good deeds do not create or increase it; and even when you act out of your pain or your conditioning, causing harm, you are not diminished, and certainly not destroyed.
I cannot prove it to you through a logical argument because it is the condition by which anything is. All arguments presuppose it. It is in that same way that you cannot see it, because it is the place from which all seeing is done.
You can only be it, which you already are.
That which we seek to attain is already and has always been our original state. The spiritual path is not a matter of fashioning yourself into a certain way, which you currently are not. It is a matter of becoming aware of what already is, or directly experiencing what is. It eludes our search because it is not an object of awareness but the condition by which we can be aware (of anything)-- it is awareness itself. You are awareness: the field from and within which all experience, all things come and go, rise and fall -- the world, phenomena, the mind and the body, they are all within you.
But from the time that we learn to speak, we are conditioned towards one mode of being, where our attention and sense-perception is constantly if not permanently directed at their objects. In this mode of being objects appear as external to awareness which is viewed as within the body-mind. The different structures that make up our culture and society engage us from this level alone, forming the totality of our experience. It is why we cannot help to mistake it for the sole possibility and the only way of being. We are locked into this way of perceiving-- which becomes the basis of our experience, our reality. So while our essence-nature is always present, because of the way this mode of being is configured, it passes underneath our perception. Â
So the fundamental practice is one that allows us direct access to our essence-nature. This practice is what is called meditation in the form of awareness cultivation. Turning your faculty of attention unto awareness itself, the field within which all things arise and return to. This is meditation in its truest sense of the word: cultivating an awareness of awareness; or leaning into the open presence that is at the core of your being. Traditionally, Yoga referred to the inner practice of awareness cultivation, the practice that brings about a direct experience of the ground of all Being.
And it is in many ways, as simple and as straight-forward as it sounds. Why shouldnât it be, when it is already what we are? Only the ego-self, through the mind, rejects the simple-- it rejects the simple because in the simple it has no room to hide. Over-complication and doing is the way of the mind and the ego-self.
From this perspective meditation is better understood as something one progressively relaxes into, rather than something that one does. Meditation is synonymous to true relaxation where oneâs awareness moves from a state of contraction (i.e. grasping unto any one of its concepts-objects) to one of expansion; opening to the fullness of itself, to hold all that is, as they are, or as they manifest. True relaxation is pure, open, attentive (devotional, non-judgmental) awareness. Meditation is not a thought or emotion-free state per se but can appear to be so because on a level of  pure, open presence, we do not experience the same attachment or aversion that we have to any given experience that the mind has. Â
This practice moves in the direction opposite to what we have been conditioned to believe and how we have been conditioned to behave. So much so that as a people weâve built ourselves into structures that keep (our awareness) in this contracted and stimulated state. Our body-mind is chronically contracted; our nervous-system is perpetually in its sympathetic (fight or flight) state; silence and non-doing is incredibly uncomfortable if not frightening. In this day and age, weâve managed to create a whole list of activities and call it relaxation and weâve now set out to achieve yoga. Â
Then it turns out that the practice in its application is not as simple because it is counter to our conditioning. This is profound! If you can realize that it is our conditioning that is the impediment to experiencing our essence-nature, you will never see relaxation in the same way again. You will see deep rest, which is preparatory for true relaxation, and which from here on you will know as meditation or awareness cultivation, as an act of rebellion on one level, and truly divine, on an even more fundamental level.
For most of us, including those who have been practicing some forms of hatha yoga, it will be a challenge finding their way through rest. It will prove to be radically humbling. During this indefinite period of isolation, whether you are well-practiced or only now deciding to look into some form of yoga, consider rest as foundational to, and perhaps for the time being, the main part of your practice, particularly if you find it difficult to sit in stillness, absolute stillness, for more than ten minutes. Your ability to rest and be still is an accurate barometer for where you are.
Take time to ask yourself, before beginning your next practice, to whom or what does it (your practice) serve? Is it in service of some an idealized version of oneself, which is but another mental construct? Has the ego-structure co-opted your practice? How are you conditioned and how does this show up in your motive for practice? What might your practice look like if your intention was to open to the possibility that lies beyond what you know, what you believe, and what you think of as true? If you, even just for a moment, allowed for the possibility that you are perfect, that your perfection is so much so that it destroys all ideations of perfection, what would your practice look like? What would you be doing? What emotion, state, or mood comes up for you as you consider this possibility? What actions and activities do they inspire?
As we revisit the foundations on which we set our practice, on both the motives behind and the ideas weâve taken on about yoga (e.g. realization, enlightenment, etc.), I invite you to include in your reflection a remembrance of the origins of the practice and the first yogis. They who, in response to the beginnings of the stratification of society in service of formal economy, as as we know it; Â these yogis, as an act of rebellion to the growing materialization of society, that would later glorify industry, productivity, and the bottom line above all, stepped out of the system, leaving these newly formed cities. And they went into the forest. They went into the forest to discover the truth, the truth of our humanity and the truth of being. It is often taught that many of these yogis had renounced the world, when in actuality it was a renunciation of a world-view and a culture that was out of harmony with the natural expression of human and natural life.
This was yoga. And I dare say, in light of the awakening brought on by current events, this again will be Yoga. Â
There is power waiting to be embodied in this time that the majority of us are in quarantine and isolation. And by tuning in, we come into the only real ground from which we can rebuild the world.
I want to point out that the only thing we have been truly separated from is the way by which we have been living that is based on a narrative we have unconsciously taken on. What we are not separated from, what we have never been and never could be separated from, is one another (all manifestation of the One), that is to say our Self, which is the very source of truth (sat), wisdom (chit) and bliss (ananda). By being separated from all the noise, and all the non-essential, we can move towards the direct experience of ourselves, through practice.
Because the fundamental practice is one of opening, surrender (of all concepts), and true relaxation, which is unavailable to many of us at this time because of our conditioning, we take the first steps towards it by deep rest, by looking into the other practices that restore and free the body-mind. I will be sharing and guiding some of them in the coming days. If you would like to take part, please subscribe to my website.
The last thing I want to invite you to contemplate, as a possibility, is the idea that there is only truth, transcending ideas of right and wrong and good or bad, etc.
That is to say that while it is inherent in embodied consciousness to have forgotten, so to speak, the truth of its essence-nature, it does not mean that there is something inherently wrong or flawed in it or that it is actually incomplete. Can we be with this paradox? Can we sense into the limits that our concepts place on our experience, and sense into the open expanse beyond its limits? Â
Awareness wills itself into the concealment of its essence-nature. Awareness is not a static reality  but is living, is pulsating-- how can we say that we are experiencing Life (indicated by movement) and not think that our very-essence, which is Life / Awareness itself, would exhibit the same qualities of aliveness? Awarenessâ experience of itself is ever-deepening, infinitely, and a part of this unfolding is cycles of concealment and revelation.
