My soul sister, Zahara, called me from Florida today.
She always sparks something that arises as a feeling in my heart center, which I can only describe as,
I know she sees it in me, and I also see it in her (Namaste).
We talked and laughed. And she asked about how I’m doing – the cancer thing – and the words that came out of me were, “I totally TRUST it will all be okay.”
(Translation: Whether I live to experience life as an old lady, or whether inflammatory breast cancer causes my demise as a younger woman – I TRUST either path.)
I have my moments when this wavers, of course. This Trust, I mean, though I know it’s quality of omnipresence, I forget. My ego takes the reins. It wants to think it can control or it wants to think that it will find the reason for cancer, for the world’s insanity. When I remember, this immense Trust simply observes and then lets go of all these ideas.
And I empowered the Trust by listening to this talk today, which I’ve highlighted/paraphrased below. For almost 15 years I’ve been learning from this being’s wisdom, and the teaching is endlessly alive within me. It is rewarding to hear this wise soul, Adyashanti, articulate what I feel.
Namaste, Zahara.
Namaste, Adya.
“There’s a part of the mind that is almost incessantly talking to itself. Ego is kind of like the verb of self-consciousness – I am a something that exists.
When awareness reflects back upon itself, that’s the absolute essential component for self-consciousness. It starts out in a relatively mild form, and as you grow up it becomes more dense.
Ego can also be thought of as a psychic function, a function of self-consciousness, the sense of I Am-ness, even before it becomes the narrative, I am worthy or unworthy, etc.
There’s another kind of psychic structure that’s very different from the ego. In some traditions it’s called the Self (equated often with God, Buddha nature, etc).
Sometimes we can actually be called to look within to mitigate suffering, or to have a better experience of being. It makes sense at some point that the ego would want to mitigate as much suffering as it can.
But there can also be another call. Something else which calls us to look within. A totally different domain of this immensity of the psyche – the Self. (the God-head, Buddha nature etc). The Self really knows there is no boundary. There is no experience of limitation or edge to the Self. When it’s experienced it is boundless. Therefore it’s often called the fundamental reality.
The spiritual instinct properly belongs to the Self. When the Self begins to move within you, there is no ambiguity that you as an ego are being acted upon that’s completely beyond the ego. The spiritual impulse from the ego’s point of view is something it receives, not creates.
The ego is the recipient, not the creator of the spiritual impulse.
It’s as if you as an ego can be chasing God or enlightenment, prayer, meditation, etc., and then all of the sudden you realize that the game has shifted, its reversed. And all of the sudden it feels like you are being chased by God. You still don’t know what that is but you can feel the transition from when the spiritual instinct within the self is activated, you then have a feeling that your own spiritual search doesn’t really fundamentally belong to you as an ego. It’s kind of unsettling. You have the feeling your spiritual search is not entirely in your control.
It’s not something you’re creating but it’s something that’s calling for some kind of response from you. That’s why words like God got invented – a word for this immensity that’s infinitely bigger than the ego. The ego is experiencing this awakening impulse but it’s not just for the ego, its somehow something outside of that. Often you don’t understand it.
For me, it felt like some sort of force came and lit up this desire for Truth. I didn’t understand why I was interested in those things. Wherever that impulse came from, I knew I received it but I didn’t create it. Then there’s this transition that happens inside, if it happens at all.
Ramana (Maharshi) has a great image for this: Getting your head caught in the tiger’s mouth.
Well you’ve just gotten your head caught in something bigger and stronger than you are.
The nature of the Self being without limit. When there’s no cosmic line drawn anywhere that you can say, I’ve experienced all there is to experience about it. You can think it, feel it, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually true.
In esoteric or contemplative teachings of reality, God is within you, and that’s relatively true, but not absolutely true. It’s said in order to get us to stop looking for God out there, and to get us to look for God inside of us. But really, we exist within God (or what the word is pointing to). The same way the ego exists within the totality of the psyche/ which is limitless. The greater part of your psyche does not exist within your ego. Your ego exists as a very small portion of your psyche. To stop exteriorizing God, we shouldn’t take it literally. God doesn’t exist within the ego. The ego exists within God, within the Self, within Buddha nature. All words for the same immensity. This is all theory right up until the point that this immensity starts to impose itself, act upon the ego in a very direct way. You can understand why people would create Gods and deities “out there” because the true spiritual impulse is something that comes outside of the ego. If you’ve ever really had the spiritual impulse that comes from the totality, its abundantly clear to you that you as an ego did not create it.
Awakening is when our sense of being wakes from being contained within the limiting sense of the ego structure and suddenly becomes aware of the immensity by whatever name one gives it.
When the Self decides that It wants to stir into consciousness through your incarnation, well you’ll feel it. You’ll start to feel this evolutionary thrust, yearning, and of course, the ego is going to coopt that to some extent or another. That’s okay, the Self will utilize the ego’s desire not to suffer, but the impulse itself transcends our own personal wants and desires.
The true part of God existing outside of you does exist outside and beyond the ego. But it’s within you in the sense that it is all originating in the cosmic psyche. It’s not the ego that awakens; it’s the Self – in a certain sense – that awakens from the identification with the ego. Then we realize the Self isn’t really out there, but the self isn’t even something in here. Properly speaking, the whole point isn’t to look inside as opposed to outside, because inside and outside are actually mental constructs. When those constructs fall away – when we see through the constructs – then even the idea of in and out doesn’t make sense anymore. At a certain point it no longer even fits experience or perception. It’s just something that conditions perception. Like the Buddha would call it “thus-ness” the “such-ness” of something. When something is not dual, how do you describe it? So you really can’t describe it. In the Self, the opposites are not even dictating perception.
Awakening is a grace. That’s simply to say it is something the ego cannot produce. The ego can’t make awakening happen, however, it can start to undermine its fixed identity. If you really get what I’m talking about, the ego can start to deeply relax. Okay, it’s participating in its awakening but it’s not the cause of it. Your true being, your total being is the Self. So it’s a kind of trust in the Self.
If you can conceive of it, it’s too small.
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT IT THAT YOU CAN TRUST.”
Adyashanti
