Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep...
-Rumi
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| -Akiane |
Good morning dear children of immortality:
"Arise, awake, stop not till the goal is reached."
-Katha Upanishad
The word decide comes from the roots "de" and "cide" which means literally "to kill" (like the word homicide). When you decide to do something, you must kill something else. A possibility. Many possibilities. Choice. So much in our lives has to do with choice. What choices are we making. But the choice doesn't always lie where we think it lies. Most often, the choice truths (lies) where we decide to put our attention. Remember that behind every life lies (or truths) a combination of habits, good and bad. But we don't choose habits. Habits are made up of tendencies that have be reinforced repeatedly, and tendencies are made up of repeated actions, and actions are caused by thoughts. This sequence is like a snowball rolling downhill; though you can stop it at any point, as it gets further down the hill, it picks up more and more snow, more speed, more momentum, until it requires a tremendous amount of force to alter it's course. That's where we are with habits. The most efficient place to start is altering one's own thoughts. Mind control. The only kind of mind control that's not immoral, self mind control.
Minds don't get controlled by force for very long. That's suppression and it's like one of those cans of mixed nuts that actually contains springy snakes. As soon as you let up pressure on the lid for a fraction of a second, the snakes spring out. Suppressing our thoughts is temporary, and just makes the thoughts and feelings more pressurized.
Like trying to not think of a pink elephant, the act of trying not to think about something makes you think about it. What you need to do is apparent if you've ever worked with small children. If you tell them "no" they just want it even more, they start crying, etc. If you instead present them with something else interesting that's not problematic, and remove the other thing from view, they quickly and happily switch to that.
It's important to validate and not dismiss feelings, but it's also important to then do something about them, and one of the main things to do is find something else to focus on aside from the stimulus that's getting you upset. This is one of the main purposes of of the various religious practises that use God or Spirit as a focus. Namasmarana, the Jesus prayer, Buddhist prayer beads, etc. They are all about having something really positive to focus on. You can do this in meditation, but as one of my teachers said, meditation ultimately is an all day affair, not just a few minutes with your eyes closed.
To that effect, I ran across a good description of "renunciation of the fruits of action" an idea mentioned repeatedly in the Bhagavad-Gita, and a concept that is somewhat perplexing to me, in how to actually implement it. But it's one of the main ways to be practicing spirituality during every-day life, when you can't be focusing on a mantra or such.
The idea is that you act for the sake of the action, rather than for it's fruits. You renounce the fruits, in a sense. Why would you do that? How would you do that?
Why is because when you're overly attached to outcomes, you loose your equilibrium and peace. You start worrying if you'll succeed, maybe you even do something dishonest to get what your after. If you fail, you feel bad, if you succeed, you start worrying about loosing what you've gained.
The analogy given is: if it's hot (like it is here in Iowa now. Today was up in the 90's) and you don't have electricity so you are fanning someone out of love, you can stop whenever you want. If you are a servant who's fanning someone as a job, expecting a paycheck at the end of the day, you can't stop even if you desperately want to. You are under obligation to your employer. Likewise, when you are over attached to the fruits of action, you are beholden to them. They compel you to action or inaction, even when you don't feel good about it. When you let go of your attachment to the outcomes and simply focus on doing the best action that you can, you are free. No more performance anxiety distracting you, no more fear of failure, no more fear of loss. No more unhealthy compulsions.
To be clear, this doesn't mean you aren't allowed to enjoy the outcomes of your actions. Another visual aid I read about from Phyllis Krystal: imagine you are walking on a tightrope. Flying on either side of you are a crow with cruelly sharp beak and talons, and a beautiful, cute dove cooing softly. you reach out for the Dove, wanting it to land on your hand so you can pet it, but overextend, and fall. Next, you push away and flail at the crow, trying to keep it away, and loose your balance again.
This is attachment and aversion. If instead, you have a healthy detachment from the good and bad results of your actions, you walk with both hands outstretched, balancing more easily. If the dove comes and lands on your hand, you accept, and enjoy the good fortune. If the crow lands on your hand, digging in it's talons, you accept patiently and keep walking. In either case, you remain balanced, moving swiftly towards your ultimate goal which lies at the end of the tightrope. Focused on your next step, and the next, and the next.
The how is both simpler and much more challenging. As they say, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. I'm still a newbie at it myself, so I don't feel qualified to teach others, but for myself, sometimes I actually visualize handing over the future results, good or bad to a higher power. Sometimes I just remind myself to do the action that feels right, because it feels right, and let go of worry about how it turns out. Sometimes I remind myself, before starting on a task, that God is present at the point of my focus, wherever that may be, say writing a blog entry, and my spiritual practice for now is focusing with full attention on that point and doing the best job I can with it. I think the thing which tripped me up the most was just thinking it was more complicated that it was. It is exactly what it says on the label. Let God, let the universe, worry about the results. You cannot control those. As Byron Katie and the 12 Step programs say, that's somebody else's business, stay in your own business. Your business is what you choose to focus on, and the actions you take. You cannot control the outcomes.
But if you keep focusing on impeccable action, the results will eventually take care of themselves. You can't control when, but the law of Karma says you will eventually get back the reflection and resound of whatever you are putting out into the universe.
Just remember more important even than action is the feeling behind the action. You can do all the charity in the world but if you doing from a place of pride and self aggrandizement, or judgmentalism and superiority, what you get back will not be good. I could tell a little story about the Buddha and the rich man and poor old woman who went to visit him and give him a gift, but this is getting long and I have to go to sleep. It will just have to be a teaser for next time, or perhaps next time we meet in person, if you remind me of it. ;D
Good night,
-Eye
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