#pathless path

[1introvertedsage]

🪶Seen🪶

In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow.

~Michael Meade~

[cobotis]

You like the idea of being on a journey... You like the idea that you're going somewhere... You think if you're going somewhere you might get somewhere... You're seduced by the prospect of progress... It's a measure of your discontent. Ram Tzu knows this... You can't get here from there...  You think Ram Tzu is talking about someone else...

Ram Tzu

[1introvertedsage]

On the pathless path. Turning inspiration into reality. A project that brings purpose. Self mastery. Lessons from the past bring acceptance to move forward.

⁂07.2023.05

[lahotar-lahotar]

[beloved-judged]

Some thoughts on mysticism

This, as always, might just be me.

One of the things that I find interesting and irritating about differences between individuals is where they start noticing things happening. I can be sitting with a group of people and they’ll have trouble noticing what I do, and I’ll sometimes miss very obvious stuff because I’m busy paying attention to something small happening in the background. The waiter/waitresses’ expression, I’ll notice, or small signs of tension, but I may not notice the conversation happening around me.

It’s the threshold for noticing stuff itself that I find interesting--where people put it, what has to happen before they notice.

Organized churches were always weird for me that way. I kept noticing how little people engaged actively. They went through the movements: the stand up, the sit down, the singing, the sitting quietly during the sermon. For the most part, their expressions seemed... vacant. People doodled, talked quietly to each other, napped, stared ahead in silence. The preacher droned into the microphone. And in the parking lot after sermons, people I talked to were hard pressed to remember the contents of the sermon.

Bible studies were slightly more active, but for the most part, the same one or two people spoke and everyone else just listened--I actually got in trouble for speaking, because the only people who are supposed to speak in a mixed sex Bible study group are men.

And not a few of those sermons were about the need to be sheep of a shepherd, the need to passively surrender one’s will, the need to go through the motions as a sort of sanctity of conformity, a holiness of staying exactly where you are. If you do notice, as I did, you’re eventually asked to leave if you keep talking about it, as I was.

I didn’t see change in them. Talk about change, sure. But the same sorts of... maladies of the soul became life-long burdens. Nothing changed. Nothing was made clean or clear. The smallest and tiniest of triumphs were made mountains, just for confirmation that conformity was the right way, the only way.

Theoretically, the spirit could have been moving in those congregations and there’s no reason I would know, but I never really saw it. I wondered sometimes if anyone over the age of a small child would have noticed, during sermons, if someone danced across the stage behind the preacher wearing a gorilla costume, as long as the preacher did not break flow.

There was a sort of apparent moribund peace in it for people. It was peaceful, even soothing to go on, go through the apparent motions, and leave as if doing one’s duty to god in a once per week occupation of a pew and a 10% tithe.

It was to be expected that you go, sit, theoretically listen, and leave. That is or was the role of the church--more conformity than anything else, and social conformity at that.

Anything outside one’s expectations was, if it became naggingly persistent, to be exiled. And in time, consciousness becomes armored against noticing. I’ve irritated a lot of people over the years in a lot of different arenas this way, from the waiter or waitresses’ apparent emotional state to the stagnant rituals of churches.

I think on what my papa has to say about our role in spirituality, what I have experienced, and wonder: is there a reason for the pathlessness of this path?

I suspect there is in refusing to let us expect, passively, a pattern. That threshold is not our friend with the spirit, because we will and can so easily ignore, so easily neglect to see. Because our expectations will keep us walking the same ruts.

There’s a lot unpleasant to be said about formlessness, too, but I suspect vodou is a religion that must be experienced, at least partially, to prevent us from plodding on, to force a bit more sensitivity, to force us to live without the armor of expectation against change, surprised by our own stagnation but unwilling or incapable of seeing it.

How does one know the balance between seeking patterns in what the spirit reveals and being sensitive to change?

That, I have no explanation for but the spirit, as it leads us on. Inspiration because it is of us, in us, to sink into patterns and expect nothing more. Because the thing which makes change tolerable is knowing that the spirit walks in it. None of us are going to naturally discover a taste for social alienation and the pain that comes with it.

Because the pathless path is profoundly unnatural to some of our instincts, at least the social ones which tell us to survive is to be a part of a society, while being utterly natural to our spiritual selves, which are uncovered as we choose to conform to the spirit and not to society.

My spiritual self tells me that there is no conformity that will save me, that I cannot hide in the comfort of patterns. There is no group which will let me no longer be responsible for walking the invisible path, fumbling and stumbling among barriers that I see clearest in retrospect, and as the lessons change me, become only a temporary pain through which I can see more.

In retrospect, churches never were for me. Perhaps, when the time comes and if I am permitted, when I move closer to my temple, I will learn something more, but I suspect it is a blessing or a favor that I am apart now, learning to have stronger bonds with the spirit than I do with humanity, as desperately as I wish for the company of others.

Mistake me not, I wish I could be admired. But the point is not glory, or for that matter anyone else. The point is not comfort, either, or compensation in the form of praise for the pain of walking.

To walk the path is the point, and spirit willing, I will come to realize it is reward enough as I learn to dodge the self which seeks to settle me down, that so rewards sitting passively and treats tests like torture, instead of an invitation to come closer.

[santmat]

“Pathless Path” by Charles Lloyd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8orVS1B8vs&ab_channel=kottmeier

[unefemmesansculottes-blog]

Be total in your acts, and if you are total you have to be aware; nobody can be total without being aware. Being total means no other thinking. If you are eating, you are simply eating; you are totally here-now. The eating is all: you are not only stuffing, you are enjoying it. Body, mind, soul all are in tune while you are eating: there is a harmony, a deep rhythm, between all three layers of your being. Then eating becomes meditation, walking becomes meditation, chopping wood becomes meditation, carrying water from the well becomes meditation, cooking food becomes meditation. Small things are transformed: they become luminous acts, and each act becomes so total that each act has the quality of Tao

tHE pATHLESS pATH

[man-in-the-way-blog]

Actually, all paths lead away from the truth. How about that? All paths! There's no such thing as a path to the truth. The truth's already here, where are you going?

Adyashanti video