But I Do Know, that the “Future” has Dissolved…

I recently saw a presentation in which a very intelligent gentleman defined well being on a progressive scale; beginning with comfort, rising to contentment, arriving at joy, which gave way to delight, and finally bliss.

I am sure that it was not his intention to suggest that they appear, and are sustained, in a linear fashion… but rather that they have an ascending order in terms of “lightness of Being”, which is, after all, what produces these finer, and ever more refined, states of well being.

In most of the worlds religions traditions, these finer internal states of experience of Being are set forward, into the future, and onto to some form of after-death heaven…but, as you know, I am committed to the esoteric Spiritual understanding, that these attributes of the Impersonal Self, may be experienced in the here and now.

In fact, my Teacher very often stated that the spiritual path had not even begun, until we are contented with our lives. He taught this no doubt, to increase our understanding that the very activity of “spiritual seeking” is the conditioned minds, most seductive and capable form of preventing us from fully dissolving the bondage of that mind, in the grace and light of the current moment.

I remember quite clearly when I first experienced comfort, and it became a sustainable and reliable internal state. In my twenties, when I lived cowering in the fear of being found out as “not good enough” and hid myself behind a series of masks or personas’ that were ever more sophisticated and capable…I thought of myself, then, as a “head on a pole”. I was quite literally so removed from my body, (which is of course, the only reliable indicator of the “here and now” the most basic form of truly functioning Spirituality), that I could not even experience my body. I don’t mean that if I burnt my fingers, that I somehow didn’t feel it…but rather, that my life was lived in such an illusory continuum of fantasy, and the “someday” in which all my dreams would be realized, that I was incapable of deepening into my body’s experience because its location, is always in the here and now. (Which is the reason we have a body in the first place.) Learning to live within its parameters is the surest way to discover the portal to depth understanding, and the freedom that comes from the capacity to open one’s heart to the present moment.

At the time I had a very capable and quite spiritually oriented therapist. She would often ask me “where was I located, in the room?” At first I found that question, to be quite threatening…and was disturbed to discover that when I did as she bid, and looked for my sense of self, I found myself hovering about 8 inches above my right ear.

In time, I finally got inside my body and when “looking” for myself I could be found to be about the size of a hen’s egg in my solar plexus. Over the years I would perform this simple test that she had taught me, and was steeped in wonder at its accuracy. When I would think to inquire as to “where I was”… I could find myself expanding slowly, but with constant forward momentum, until one day I literally popped to the surface of my skin. I had filled out my entire body, no longer a “head on a pole.” I lived free and true inside myself. Great external changes occasioned this journey of grounding myself in my body, the need to compare myself to others… particularly in the arena of physical attraction, dropped away entirely. I stopped wearing make-up except for rare occasions, (there is nothing wrong with make-up, provided it is not a way of hiding the truth from the world, as I had always used it). I stopped reading about, or being the slightest bit interested in, what the rich and famous do with their time…and way too many other marvelous outcomes, which are too great in number to put to paper.

The best thing about that leg of my journey is that I achieved a sustainable and reliable level of “comfort”. A level that abides to this day…

Next came contentment, this one is considerable trickier, as I have just recently discovered.

Contentment cannot be a sustained experience, if there is a future lurking anywhere inside your mind or heart.

I have no doubt that you may take issue with this idea, but as Einstein said, “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” I cannot speak to the relativity of time that he is addressing; I am not smart enough to do so. But I can speak to an even more illusory system of “future” time, which is the thought – that the future as a coming event – may be shaped in some form which will bring with it our much sought after, and “someday” happiness. I can provide a sure and certain testimony that there is no outer event, that can bring with it happiness…if there is no inner corollary, for the happiness we seek.

To hold the notion that the future will somehow rescue us from the daily events of life is the most widespread illusion that the world has ever known. Its reach is near total, and its grasp is universal. I, personally, have known only one living man who does not believe in a “better tomorrow”. And he stands alone as the benchmark in my pursuit of understanding, and the will to know the truth. (There are of course, a great many others Jesus and Buddha, chief among them – but I am speaking here of seeing it, up close and personal. And for those of you, who may think that I am comparing my Teacher to Jesus and Buddha…please climb down off that pole…I am making no such comparison.)

A better tomorrow is crafted from the wheat and chaff of today’s understanding, if we bring into tomorrow the same consciousness with which today’s experience has been shaped, we will get the same results as have always found us.

Karma is not a thing that comes to us, but rather one that comes from us. The Bible encourages us to build our house upon the rock of understanding, rather than the shifting sands of the hope and promise of a “better tomorrow”.

In my journey toward the light of understanding, I have had glimpses …and even occasional weeks… of joy, delight, and even bliss. They were in direct proportion to my ability to stand still inside myself, and bear witness to the truth of the here and the now.

When I lost my job, a thing I had worked with all my might to prevent, my house once more shifted to sand rather than rock. (Only once before in my life have I studied, applied myself, and dedicated the amount of time, that I gave to those damnable machines and that was my own business which I was deeply inspired by, rather than a complex system of machinery, I really had no hope of truly understanding.)

I wanted to keep my job, very much. Not because I was good at it, or because I liked it, or because I took any measure of pleasure in it … but rather, because I did not want to find myself back here again.

I don’t mind the poverty. I haven’t been in a mall for the purpose of shopping in at least a decade. I don’t really want anything, although, my house could use new flooring, as the carpet can no longer be kept clean of stains it has grown so old. And the roof has developed what is currently a small leak, which may in time become a larger problem than it appears to be now. I would use money, if I had it, in these specific and practical ways…and of course, I would use it to keep my promises to my animals and my sister for their welfare and well-being. That said, it has been a very long time since I yearned for anything that can be purchased with money.

So it is not material need that caused me to want to avoid this old, yet somehow new place. Perhaps I had a premonition that I would have to face, and really deal with, the true end to my belief in a “better tomorrow”.

I came up out of my childhood with a driving and fierce need to be anywhere but where I was… a need so great it nearly took my life, and resolving it demanded of me all of my mother’s prodigious will…which I, gratefully, inherited.

We live in a culture and a current climate that is all but besotted with a “better tomorrow”. It is the American dream, to be sure – a little sullied now, by greed and corruption – but none-the-less, the reason masses of people just three generations ago, swarmed to our shores intent upon creating a better tomorrow.

A better tomorrow is a kind of code for the conditioned mind’s belief that if our circumstances would only change, our lives would be happier, better, richer, more secure, sheltered from the storms of living – or more truthfully, that somehow we will be the exception to the rule – that all that exists will be required to meet the unknown, in the form of physical death.

Please do not misunderstand, my examination of the concept of a “better tomorrow”… does not mean … that if you are hungry you should not plant and harvest corn, (or travel to your local food vendor). Or that if you are thirsty you should not fill a glass, and drink. To take my message to that place is an intense and quite stubborn form of avoidance, and I know you to be wiser than that.

I am speaking of the desires born of the mind. The desire for admiration, approval, applause, and recognition … the desire to be someone, to garner the attention of others, to create a home for the self made illusory mind, in a world filled to the brim with self-made illusory minds.

Einstein also said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” There is no greater value that can be brought to a suffering world, than an individual mind freed from the captivity of the fear of the unknown.

A “better tomorrow”… plain and simple, is a child’s wish for personal immortality. Hidden from view, even from the mind that pursues the goals, is the shaking and quaking fear that we do not count. That somehow and in some awful way, we are here alone, traveling to a destination we cannot know, for a purpose we cannot understand, toward an end which cause us to become paralyzed in fear, by the mists that veil from our sight the true end to our lives.

I have learned at every step along this path, that the only worthy action I can take is one of surrender and acceptance, not in the world of external forms … but in the formless world of the interior.

Not long ago, my thoughts stopped, and joy, delight, and bliss were my traveling companions. I thought, and perhaps naively so, that like contentment they were here to stay … but I was wrong.

An old friend once shared with me the Biblical story of the requirement that we not put “new wine, into old skins”. I interpret this Bible analogy to mean, that we cannot expect to sustain life affirming internal experiences, while also grasping onto any form of believing.

The gift of that writer’s workshop I attended has revealed to me the newest level of hope that shackled me to the images of a “better tomorrow” and the illusory nature of the conditioned minds dreams.

The only thing that prevents me from sliding backward into full scale depression, is the deep commitment I have made to learning the truth no matter how scary it might be, and the built up musculature that prevents me from traveling to far into the victim mind, out of which I made my escape.

I am not willing to live in the world of good and bad, of right and wrong, of this versus that. The relative truth is not enough for me. Having the illusion of safety and security, hiding from death, and hoping for a better tomorrow are wastes of precious time. We are in the race of our lives; anyone and everyone can sense that.

Playing the fiddle while Rome burns, is a fool’s errand.

So many among us, know and feel the urgency, with which we are faced. The globe is nearing its exhaustion point, all of our institutions are rocking on their heels, strife and pain surround even the most isolated, inoculated, and seemingly immune.

The difference between those who are activists and my own understanding, is that the battlefield is not “out there”… but rather in the deep “in here.” There is nothing in the outer that can save us, not until we are sourcing our actions from a sane and settled interior.

As I watched, and studied, and greatly loved, my Teacher … I would often be confused by his calm assurance that all manner of action can come from the deepest aspects of Being, from the still and quiet center point of non-duality.

He asserted with great confidence that an awakened warrior could continue to make war … while also being entirely compassionate, kind-hearted, and open to Life and its demands. I was not capable of understanding him at the time, as I was still too lost in the world of form, to understand that the formless world of non-duality has no opposing sides to it. That coming from non-duality a warrior could become as clear and effective a channel for the formless, to enter the world as can the potter or the carpenter.

We imagine that peace is the absence of war. That is not the case …

Peace is not the absence of some outer circumstance, but rather, the inclusion of all external experience, which thereby makes whole the heart, which in turn, bears no resistance to the many forms by which Life chooses to express.

I am struggling right now. Joy, delight, and bliss have left a memory trace, but are gone, and I am returned to the process of yielding myself to the hollowness, that comes from surrendering our beliefs. My external life cannot save me from the absolute uncertainty that is, the human experience. I cannot continue to look to an illusory future to modulate and soothe, the last vestiges of the despair that once consumed me.

I can, only and always, continue to lay down my struggle and my seeking, for some better experience in the world of form … and instead, turn my attention to ending the grasping that keeps me looking for my joy in some future event. My joy, your joy, is not in a turn of events, however sweet they might appear. Joy, the Master’s tell us, is the very nature of our Being buried so deep beneath the conditioned mind, that we can no longer hear its call.

I know the truth of that, as I have both touched it and witnessed it.

Adayre R. Miller

9/30/11

Addendum: 10/3/11

I wrote the above essay three days ago, today I awoke in a state of mind that I have never experienced before.

I feel lethargic to the point of turning to stone. I do not feel, (emotionally), classically depressed… and yet I am experiencing the hallmarks of depression.

This is the first time in my life that I have drawn a single breath without a future orientation attached to it. My “dream” has been with me for as long as I can remember, and I am clearly adrift without it. The loss I feel has called into question every thing I have learned over these past 25 years of study and dedication. I am struck by the fact that the essay I wrote, and which you have just finished reading, in some ways asks for the experience I am having at this precise moment.

Over these last few weeks, as I have tasted the sweeping breadth and depth of a No Thought mind…and the brief exposures to Joy, Delight, and Bliss that Silence has afforded me the opportunity to experience…I found it quite easy to focus my awareness on the “present moment”.

During those experiences, I felt an extraordinary aliveness that captured my attention like nothing ever has, before or since.

A few precious moments – which occurred during meditation – I could even experience the Breadth of Being that the Master’s have spoken about, and was able to fully engage the realization that my body existed inside my consciousness and NOT, the other way around. (We, most of us, believe that our consciousness is a small light filled ball that hovers, just behind our skull bone, slightly above and between our eyes.) In those precious moments I fully realized that my body, mind, consciousness, and all the other stuff of “me” resides inside some larger unknown field, this field is what my Teacher was fond of calling the Impersonal Self. (It is so much better than being a personal self, that it cannot even be expressed).

And yet, all of that wonder, awe, startling awareness, and extraordinary joy, faded over the span of two weeks or so… and if I did not trust myself to the degree that I do, I would question whether I truly had those experiences at all. (Particularly today, when I can barely function).

I can make no sense of these two bookended experiences. To taste the sublime and return too less than ash, is beyond my maturity to comprehend. I cannot ask my Teacher, his mind is gone. I cannot ask another, in the form of angels, or guides, or seers – or the like – as I do not believe in the duality that those things would require. There is not two, only One. And the One is curiously silent.

Perhaps, this is the “dark night of the Soul” that the poets speak so romantically of…

I have always believed that I had already traversed the dark night of the soul, due to the amount of terror that I have experienced and resolved. I am not at all afraid, and haven’t been for years now. Fear is not a part of this experience, but rather, some form of grief – in the form of loss – to deep to even express itself in words.

I have no ideas about where I am emotionally, spiritually, functionally, or actually.

But I do know, that the “future” has dissolved…

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