The Chains of Suffering…

“I am not what happens, but the space in which it happens.” -Author Unknown

The move from locating the identity of ourselves in the events and circumstances of our lives, to understanding, accepting, and even celebrating the realization that we are truly the space in which the experiences of our lives unfold; is as simple as the breath, as near as a heartbeat, as valuable as the dawn, and as frightening as death.

“Die before you die” said Jesus…he might just as easily have said “relocate yourself”. Ok, that’s a bit tongue in cheek…but truly all the useless suffering you and I have ever endured, is one born of being mistakenly located.

By looking at children, I make the assumption, that they believe themselves to be located in the body, chubby fists grasping chubbier thighs, small round and dimpled knuckles being sucked by soft plump mouths, they surely must take great pleasure and solace, in so physical an existence as they experience themselves to be. Sadly, a great number of people never move beyond the notion that they are only, their alternately pleasure providing or pain filled bodies.

Most of us, however, journey inward to the emotional self and begin the often life-long sojourn of identifying ourselves as some version of happy/sad, hopeful/hopeless, angry/calm, sorrowful/joyful and so on.

Here an even more dedicated group of people park themselves and never journey deeper, to regions which in all likelihood are frightening, in that to be free of them it is required we give up our favorite emotional state of mind, to become capable of investigating the truth that “seeking” is a deeply effective form of hiding from the truth. No one, in so far as I can tell, has escaped the desire to seek when the source of their identity springs from the emotional levels of being. Seeking is not a strictly spiritual process, material seeking, security seeking, romantic seeking, pleasure seeking, all these searches and many more define the entire lives, of the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived.

Then there are those among us, who move into the realms of mental being, they develop and disguise their search in the power and prowess of a well-developed and muscular mind. Effective thinkers and capable users of the mind, they may become captains of industry or science, leaders in politics or even religion…and yet, they too, are incapable of teasing apart the puzzle of existence and purpose, finding that location which is nearer than the breath where the true heart of us lies, available and awaiting our return home.

I have come to see that searching for the solution to the problems and circumstances of the physical, emotional, and mental bodies can and does, occupy millions for lifetimes. And further, that all of that seeking is, on the deepest and most profound levels entirely fruitless. I do not mean to say, and please do not hear, that we cannot “fix” our bodies imbalances, or our emotional tendencies toward suffering, or our circumstantial life situations. But rather, living and working on these levels does no more than plugging our most recent leak with a determined, and perhaps even well educated and talented finger. Like the little Dutch boy we are forever trying to stop up the damn that threatens us at every turn, an entirely inadequate response to a threatening flood that is deeply mistakenly perceived as dangerous. The very waters we are trying so to hold back, are the life giving boon of a loving and intelligent creator, who would have us fully embrace the drowning we so fear…so that we might yet awaken to the Truth of Being, which if given the chance, would lift us far above the daily problems and fears our lives are infused with.

The journey from form to formlessness is one that can be achieved in the blink of an eye, in a second split in halves, in a moment small enough for an electron to be born, live, and die. That realization is the only thing that will count on the day of your physical death, on that day you and I and all of creation, will know itself as more than form…but waiting until that day comes, to discover this highest of truths is the only tragedy that has ever, or will ever, occur.

The move from identifying ourselves as the story of “me”, or the historical events of our lives, or the anticipatory future we are so emotionally invested in, to the space of the formless, timeless, silent Ground of Impersonal Being is a shift from the false to the Real, one that is paradoxically effortless and yet requires all the courage that any human could possibly ever muster.

Discovering, or uncovering your true identity as the Watcher, or the Witness, or the Container of your life’s events, circumstances, and evolution, is very much like waking up from a horror filled dream. You can clearly remember the terror of being trapped and lost and wandering, but now there is a spaciousness that cannot be breached by the mind that “believes”. A calm centeredness that both surrounds, supports, stabilizes, and sustains you…here from this place you can look back, or perhaps more accurately outward, upon your life and its many twists and turns, and smile at the fears that once left you breathless and agonized. Here in your True North no evil can befall you, no harm can penetrate, no loneliness can carve its name upon your heart. Here in the peace that passes understanding lies the open and available depth of Being, a loving and care filled center of the known and unknown Universe. A nameless, faceless, fountain of renewal, rebirth, and everlasting acceptance…The Source…

“Selflessness is the highest state attainable”, thus spoke my Teacher.

To a life still located and emotionally invested in the knowable self, no idea could be more threatening or more worthy of active denial. Protection of the self is the alter upon which the mind worships, holding the self’s place in the world, achieving recognition for the self, supporting the self, finding and forging comfort for the self, caring for and lovingly helping the “selves” of others, these are notions more dear than life and limb and freedom, yet they are entirely without merit or reality.

Spiritual “True North” is the direct and complete dissolution of every version of this form of “self”. The death that comes before death, the Bible entreats us to be willing to endure.

It is not easy, I will give you that. But it is simpler than can even be imagined. And the rewards cannot even be spoken about…

It is not possible to discover this selfless self, without being entirely ready and willing to give up our hopes that what we want will be found in the next moment, the next thought, the next adventure, the next achievement, the next lover, the next religious fervor, the next ecstatic state of mind, or the next healing.

Every footfall that you place upon the “path” takes you farther away from the heart that beats beneath your physical one. Farther from the release that is so desired, farther from the “truth that will set you free”.

So how do we do this thing?

This letting go of the self, this waking up to the Selfless One?

We must begin precisely where we find ourselves, aware of what and how and who we are.

Let me give you the most mundane and simple example I can express. Yesterday I went to my favorite grocery store, past the colorful boxes and carefully lined shelves, to the back of the store where the white coated butcher labored to bring red and marbled meat to the counter.

He is a handsome young man, swarthy in complexion with a carefully manicured black mustache, just the sort that I once favored in days gone by. His demeanor and behavior has never indicated any measure of joy in his work or professional circumstances, he is polite but only nominally so, he is helpful but entirely without interest in being so, and thus I have always thought of him as unhappy to varying degrees.

But yesterday he must have been having a particularly unpleasant day, when I appeared before him, asking him to package a product that was already packaged and on display in an ice tub right behind me.

With a mildly exasperated tone he informed me that what I wanted was already packaged and had been done so, freshly, just this morning and was within arms reach right behind me. I of course knew that, but wanted a smaller quantity than was held in the case he indicated. As I stumbled around attempting to reframe the request I had made of him, he sighed beneath his breath and got out a container to comply with my request. Written across the entire width of his face and mannerisms, was his annoyance at my quirky demand on his time and energies. His resistance was a palpable presence standing between us like Scrooge’s departed partner Marley, dressed up in his chains and cement blocks, with his decaying jaw held in place by a handkerchief tied under his chin.

His mind had to have been saying to him some form of “why can’t she just take the one that is already prepared, why can’t she just leave me alone…etc, and so on and so forth.”

And just like Marley in Dickens famed fable, he will wear the chains he was in that moment forging, as we all will.

The chains of indignation and resignation, of resistance and argument, of displeasure and striving, of want and desire, of ill use of time and exclusively external focus…in that precise moment… a priceless opportunity slipped by the butcher, and once again he swam in the murky waters of a mind that believes it knows how life should be, and ought to be. And worse, he was almost certainly comparing his actual life to the illusions his mind populates his inner landscape with, where he is somewhere other than dealing with customers who want what they shouldn’t want, and by doing so disturb the fantasies and ruminations of a mind unknown to itself.

On the other hand, he could have chosen to abide with himself…to see his resistance rather than my demand. If he had made that choice instead of the one he made, his life and future would be measurably lighter and freer.

That is how it works. Just like that. As simple as that. Nothing else… no spiritual bells, no whistles, no burning bushes, no angels from on high, or visions of golden beings. Just a butcher in a white coat, facing not a customer…but himself, and his wish to be other than himself, other than his place in the world at that precise moment, other than the where, the how, and the who of his present tense experience.

Here is how we deny ourselves; we look out when we could be looking in. We see the other, when we could be seeing the self that needs releasing. We believe the lie the mind fuels our seeking with, that if this or that circumstance were just different, then… oh…then we could be happy, and peaceful, and free.

I tell you this story, not to take the butcher to task…but to allow his missed opportunity to fund your understanding. Freedom is the most mundane of tasks, the most common and frequently missed opportunity the world round. There is nowhere you need go to find the portal, nothing you must possess, no one you must meet, nothing you must learn, for all of that exists in the mind of the believer, in the mind that “knows”. That mind must die if you truly want liberation, and I have found that the vast majority of folk who confess to wanting the truth, really just want a little bit more comfort and ease, a little bit more prosperity or well being, a little bit more of a little bit more.

An effective spiritual no-path path, is a path of loss and release…. and as far as I can tell now, the losses and releases are without end - but do not despair, once you get the hang of it you can’t wait to give up the next thing, and the next. It doesn’t take long before the marrow of your bone understands that liberation is a naked thing, and naked is a glorious thing.

Two days ago, life gave me the opportunity to give up the hope of the love and acceptance - in the way I define it - of a mother/sister, and to serve us both in the doing of it. Already I can feel the lift, the resurrection, and the restoration. Twenty plus years have prepared the ground upon which I now find myself standing, seven years with a Teacher whose will was developed beyond reckoning, and two and half years of no external life have forged in me the will to practice every day and in every way the release of the forms of my life, in favor of meeting the formless before my days are through…to say that I have been blessed is an understatement of incalculable size.

I, like all of us, came into this life with the self forged chains that Dickens illustrated so well in his beloved classic, and yet, I have been given by grace, the will and the tools by which I have begun to pull apart each singular link, releasing me to the unknowable and to the salvation of its embrace.

I alone can find my way home, true also of the butcher and the baker and the taxman…and true of you, as well.

May you enter the portal of release through the very next moment that brings you irritation, or indignation, or resistance, or disagreement…see your “self” and not the other and you too, will be setting your chains aside and preparing for flight into the unknowable, and the wonder of Being.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day”.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

“Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self”.

- Bhagavad-Gita

A mind stilled in the Self is the end of prison, the breaking of a new dawn, the removing of the chains of suffering…

Adayre R. Miller

1/28/11

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