Exaltation

Exaltation: now there is a word that does not generally come up in polite conversation! To exalt others, to exalt ourselves and to exalt the lives we are living is, well, not generally on everyone’s daily to-do list. For many of us such a thing might appear to be not only mightily inappropriate but also totally impossible. “What, me exalted? Come on now.”

We have grown up with a barrage of perceived limitations, wrongdoing, faultfinding and diminishment, such that we would find it difficult to imagine a life free of such things. Quite apart from what we might hear, for example, in church or synagogue, totally permeating all of society is a pervasive flavor of original sin, of being flawed, of being thrown out of the garden. This same mind set might be extended to include karma and reincarnation and other beliefs that diminish us. We have been trained up in and grown so accustomed to these powerful forces of internalized oppression that there seems to be no other way of being.

We can easily recognize externalized oppression in countries with dictatorships, tyranny, political repression, extreme class, ethnic or gender bias and overt discrimination in its many forms, and we can not only recognize these things but also acknowledge the total revulsion we have for them. However, within ourselves, these profound levels of internalized oppression are just assumed, sustained and perpetuated from one generation to the next. “Wrong, wrong, wrong; bad, bad, bad; insufficient, insufficient, insufficient.” Ironically, even in cases where the opposite seems to be manifested--“I am the greatest; look at me”---there is nevertheless still a basic sense of wrong-ness present.

Well, what to do? My experience has been that there is nothing to be accomplished by trying to talk ourselves out of this. We can do all the positive affirmations we want, but at some point that is going to break down. We could undertake massive self-improvement projects, but as long as the basic, underlying configuration of negativity is in place, the methods that are applied will always be arising from the same flawed context which they are meant to defeat.

Ah, but there is a way out! Or, better said, there is actually no way out and no way in, because we have never been apart from that which is totally untouched by any of this---the pure, pristine, primordial open intelligence that pervades all things. We are resting in that intelligence at all times and have never left it; we have only been distracted by things that caught our attention over and over again. So, instead of constantly focusing our attention on the flaw, we simply let things be as they are. Without grasping, without improving, we simply let things be as they are for short moments many times. Without seeking or wanting anything, we rest and relax into the pervasive open intelligence that becomes increasingly evident once we choose to put our attention there.

This is such an incredibly simple practice and is sure to bring the result. It is a time-tested method that actually works; the benefits are not theoretical but actual and provable. This simple practice of relying on open intelligence for short moments many times is the first of four sustaining foundational mainstays. The second mainstay is to be supported by a person who has more experience in this practice and who knows all about the things we will be going through along the way---so, a teacher or trainer who helps bring us along. The third is a sustaining training with media that elucidate and reaffirm and clarify at every step. Whether the message comes through texts, audios, videos or direct trainings, it is an unvarying beacon towards truth. The fourth mainstay is a worldwide community—a community that no one need join and from which no one can be excluded.

So, now we come full circle back to the original theme: exaltation! Through a simple practice and the support of all these mainstays, a crack begins to appear in the bastion of wrong-ness that has so dominated our lives. We just relax, and then we relax again, and by doing so we are pulled out of the mud and our eyes are opened to possibilities never before imagined. We see the exaltation in ourselves and in all of life that is unearned and unaccomplished---the exaltation that is the natural luminosity of open intelligence.

Our vantage shifts almost without our noticing how or when; where once we saw flaws in ourselves and others, we see exaltation. Life has a spark and a power that it seemed to have lacked before. We are not embarrassed by the idea that we are indeed exalted beings whose birthright is one of joy, courage, wisdom and ease of being. We never meet a stranger, and what we see in ourselves we see in others. We discern that no matter what possible criticism can be leveled because of claiming these things to be true, we know our own experience and we are undaunted.
Exaltation, exaltation, exaltation.

Education in the Nature of Mind

Once upon a time I was a young lad of sixteen, very much like most of the other sixteen year-olds who surrounded me, and I was set to begin a life devoted to the values of the culture in which I grew up in the southern U.S. I was meant to follow a familiar path, one laid out for me by my family and community, whose lives were also consciously or unconsciously shaped by the values passed down to them. The swirl of school, sports and the social activities surrounding country club, debutante balls, dances and girlfriends swept me up and carried me along. This was all I really knew, and it all seemed fine to me. Some version of this lifestyle was what was probably meant for me for the rest of my life.

Then something very interesting and unexpected happened. Suddenly and without any cause, reason or forewarning, while sitting in Mrs. Sutherland’s class at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, NC reading a psychology book, a strong notion just arrived in my mind stream: “They haven’t told us everything.” Now, at first glance that might not sound like much of a revelation, but for me it was an incredibly powerful eye-opener and motivator. I knew very directly and immediately that there had to be more to life than what was being presented to me, and that whatever this “more” was, it was very much worth discovering. But where could I go and what could I do to find this “more” that they hadn’t told me about?

This slight break in the worlds — this glimpse into a higher significance in life — set me off on a lifelong journey. My approach altogether was very much like trying to put lots and lots and lots of puzzle pieces together, form a coherent whole and then figure out the whole cosmic picture through intellectual means. The first step on the journey was one taken in the direction of wanting to learn EVERYTHING. This meant reading every book possible, asking every question and looking under every rock. It then also took the form of extensive travel over a period of many years and a broad exposure to other cultures. I had concluded that if I could live for an extended time in other countries, learn the languages, read all about everything and be totally conversant with the history and culture, then I would be on the right track.

The next step on the journey was to go off to India and immerse myself in the spirituality available there. I would eventually find a number of wonderful teachers and would end up spending a number of years there in a monastic setting. I was dedicated to a meditation practice and intensive study and was living quite an austere and introverted life, and this was very satisfying and inspiring for me.

Now, please let me make it perfectly clear that I do not for one instant regret any of this journey. It was a completely wonderful adventure which provided me so much, and I am extraordinarily grateful for all that I learned, experienced and received. However, this “more” that I had been looking for from an early age remained elusive. Along the way I had heard very wonderful descriptions of it, and I had had glimpses of what it might be, but the ongoing, moment-by-moment experience of that special something still seemed to be out of reach.

This was to change. Through a very simple teaching that pointed to the basis of all things through my own direct experience, I came to see that nothing had ever been lacking. The “more” I had been seeking is not a “more,” but is just this, right here and now, with nothing needing to be added. This essential knowledge is available for everyone; it is our birthright and is not earned or achieved.

The good news is that now I can say with full conviction that whatever it was that I was looking for has never been out of reach. The deliriously joyous fact is that what I and so many others have been looking for is that which was doing the looking; that which we were looking for is simply what was looking! Who would have known! It was never a matter of finding something, accomplishing something or being something other than I already was.

What is required to come to this recognition is an education in the nature of mind. Another way of saying “education in the nature of mind” is “unerring instruction in and direct experience of the nature of existence.” This knowledge of the basis of the mind is the knowledge, knowing which, all things come to be known. It is the most essential and fundamental knowledge, but it is for the most part completely lacking in our schools, universities or anywhere else in society for that matter. We may know every possible fact in every available field, but if we are lacking in the education of the nature of the mind, then the basic knowledge necessary in all fields will be lacking. How ironic — we have seen so much advancement in learning as well as an exponential increase in educational resources through the Internet, but yet the most crucial form of education has remained neglected.

It also became clear to me that the apparent diversity that we perceive is in fact all one thing — uncreated, indivisible, timelessly perfect, uncompounded and totally permeated with pure benefit. No matter what appears, it is nothing other than this profound intelligence that fills every speck of space. We have gone through our whole life convinced that thoughts, emotions, experiences and all phenomena had an independent existence; however, through education in the nature of mind we come to see that we have merely been falsely educated in this matter; that is all.

It is just a simple matter now of being rightly educated. What is required for this right education to occur is an openness and interest in what is true. If openness and interest are there, then upon introduction to the education in the nature of mind and with further immersion in unerring instruction, a new vantage will be trained up.

I am not describing some theoretical circumstance which will occur at some distant time in the future. This is my own lived experience and the experience of so many others. I do not have the depth of vision to predict what will happen in the future, but I know that right now education in the nature of mind is spreading around the world and is influencing thousands of lives for the better. Right here, right now, the teachings in the education in the nature of mind are available for all.

Words from the Heart, To the Heart

Today I would like to speak of something of great interest to so many of us, and it has to do with how profoundly intimate communication can take place. We so much want to connect with one another in a meaningful way, but the commonplace give-and-take of daily life usually leaves us lacking. We attend to an onrush of words from so many sources, yet we get very little sustaining nourishment from these words, which are typically given and received without passion or conviction. There is no fault-finding intended by saying this, only to point out that we do not often find ourselves in situations where the deepest aspect of another is touching the deepest part of us.

Somehow, through an extraordinary good fortune in my privileged life, I have come to know of something different from this. When I was a young lad of twenty-seven I first came to India, a place I found to be very exotic and mysterious—filled with myriad contradictions and incongruities. One evening I ended up almost by accident at a large gathering where a very highly respected spiritual teacher would be speaking. I had no real interest in such things, but I was sufficiently curious that I went nonetheless.

What happened next was beyond anything I had ever experienced before. This woman was speaking in Hindi, a language I did not understand at all, about ideas completely unfamiliar to me, in a context that I had never been in before, but yet when I got up from my seat at the end of her talk, I knew that everything she had said had gone right into my heart. Something had been communicated which would totally change my way of seeing the world, and yet I had not understood a single word. What is this?

I speak as a person who does not at all tend towards the spectacular or the fantastic, but this was my direct experience. A person spoke, and something remarkable was communicated that did not come from the words that were spoken. It was a direct transmission that allowed an essential intercommunication to be imparted directly and immediately through non-verbal means. Having had this experience, it made me wonder what it implies about the nature of all communication.

But the example I just gave may be so unfamiliar and unlikely for most people as to be unhelpful, so let us look instead at more viable instances in life where such communication can take place. Can one envision a bond between two people, totally relaxed with each other, easefully coming together in unconditional love and respect, where the words that were spoken came directly from the heart and are received devotedly in the heart?

Not demanding anything from one another, perfectly present in the here-and-now, speaking and listening from a place of not-knowing, completely freed from the cage of narrow notions of who one is or who the other is. Hearing everything as if for the first time, without goal or obstruction, open in a way that merges the space between the two.

For this to be so, what would be required? Well, nothing additional is required. There is no effort to make, no habits to be corrected, no attentiveness to be created or obligation to be fulfilled. It is simply a matter of allowing our moment-by-moment attention to be undistracted. We may have been trained in life to follow after all our thoughts and emotions and all our judgments and assessments, but instead, for short moments many times, over and over again we keep returning to our own natural intelligence that is open and vast.

We discover this place again and again and grow more and more confident that it is not distant from us. We sense to our delight that no one is a stranger and that every sound calls us back to that place. When the heart is at rest in this place of peace, then it is not distant from other hearts that are at rest. From this place of non-separation, the most intimate of heartfelt communication takes place.

Memory Sticks

How fun it is to play with language and to see all the subtleties that can be discovered if we just pay a little bit of attention. We are so accustomed to viewing things from only one angle, but if we are able to come at things in a slightly different way, no telling how many diverse meanings can be found!

The other day I went out to the store to buy a memory stick for my computer, and while I was standing there looking at the advertising display, I had one of those odd little insights that comes now and again from out of the blue.

I have long known “memory sticks” to be data storage devices, but for some reason, in a moment of deflected attention, I saw the phrase in a completely new way. It was such a sudden and unexpected twist on a common phrase that I had to smile to myself. In that moment “memory stick” did not refer to data storage but to how our memory stays with us. We have a thought or experience, we then remember it as part of the flow of our lives, and then the memory sticks—-it stays with us and is held by the mind.

At one level, yes of course, it is great that we have this ability that is so painfully lacking in people with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. We can remember what occurred when we went to the store to buy the memory stick because the memory stuck, and we can remember many of the experiences we have had over the course of our lives because those memories stuck as well.

We have these memories that remain in our minds, and that is all well and good, but then usually something less useful happens: we apply judgments to those memories. We call some good and some bad and others are judged to be merely neutral.

From these judgments we often derive conclusions about ourselves and our overall experience: “Oh, yeah, so many of my relationships have failed. So, the next one should fail too. I have messed up so badly so many times; I am just a person who messes up,” or, “I have undergone so much, and I know that life is sad and unfair,” or conversely “That was so great for me, and it needs to happen again or something is wrong.” You get the picture: a past memory can be stuck in us so firmly that it shapes and influences our present experience. Now, surely that is one disadvantage of memory sticking.

But there is another way. What if we let the data flow on by without grabbing it or categorizing it? What a different life we would have: we would still have the gift of memory, but it would not be a held memory that clouds the perspective. From a vantage of childlike wonder we would see everything without prejudice and with wide open eyes. We would be free in a most fundamental way, because each moment of life would be filled with effortlessness and ease. Our intentions and actions would be unbiased and our way forward undistracted.

I am so very honored to be able to say that I have met people who demonstrate this choice. I know for sure that what I have described is not merely theoretical but is the actual lived expression of amazing people.

For all intents and purposes, these people look the same as the rest of us; they dress like us, speak like us and have normal human experiences like us, but what sets them apart is the choice that they make. It is a simple choice, one that all of us can make: to not get stuck in memories or anywhere else. Because of their clarity and simplicity, they may actually have prodigious powers of recall and can remember specific details of events long past, but they are not bound by any of it.

I know from my own experience what a joy it is to be in the presence of someone in whom memory is not stuck. Each moment is rich and profound for them, unfettered by confusion. When they see anyone or anything, they see only the shining essence. They are totally present and fully engaged with life in all its many manifestations. They bathe in a love that is ever present, and they willingly share that love with all the world. They are not distracted by any of the labels conjured up by memory. When they speak, it is with an authority that no position could provide.

Now, while I have described a type of person that is not yet often seen in the world, the freedom of choice to not be stuck in memory is available to all of us, with none excluded, and more and more it WILL be the choice that is made. For short moments, many times, over and over again, we can rely on our own native intelligence, acquiring experiences and memories as we move through life, but not allowing ourselves to be limited by any of them.

In this way, that memory stick in our pocket can carry a reminder of a way of life that will take us beyond memory.