Archive | October, 2016

Many senior teachers tell us that continual contemplative prayer, continual surrender to spirit without interruption or distraction is necessary for a full realization of our true nature. Ramana Maharshi said surrender itself is a mighty prayer. The prayer of surrender is the willingness to continually deepen our receiving our life force, receiving unconditional love that is freely offered from infinite consciousness. Of course our seeking minds take this surrendered prayer being constant as a goal for us to achieve. I spent many years beating myself up for not being able to accomplish the intention of being in the state of constant contemplation of the deep question ‘what is THIS?’, or ‘what is the actual substance of the presence looking out of our eyes right now?’

But then as Baker Roshi stated, in Buddhist philosophy the formulating and articulating of an intention is equivalent to accomplishing that intention. Applied to contemplative practice, this actually means that the essence of the intention of authentic spiritual inquiry is to simply be here now. Being here now is already always the case; before, during, and after we formulate the intention.

So we formulate the intention for prayer of surrender to the presence we are. This is enough, faith in just the awareness of being present is all we need. All else is mere imaginings of the mind. We need to drop all faith that is merely expectation of results. Constant evaluating like ‘Am I present now, can I notice just being present without clinging to desires of anything else other than just being present?’, is useful in that it reminds us of our intention. But trying to self consciously accomplish this intention through comparison of others’ accomplishments, or our own perfectionist standards, is based on our attachment to results.

Faith in just the awareness of being present is not a result, just as the awareness of being present is not the result of anything. They aren’t the result of any self conscious effort. Awareness is its own result in the sense of it having no absolute beginning or ending. Awareness is always present before the idea of a beginning can arise; it is the source of ideas of beginning and ending, but it is not bound by the ideas of beginning and ending. The absence of awareness, and the beginning of awareness itself are just thoughts in the mind, based on our attempts to define and limit awareness. As Nisargadata said, ‘There is no such thing as nothing, nothing is just an idea based on the memory of something.’ There is no such thing as the absence of awareness, the absence of awareness is just an idea based on the memory of the idea of awareness.

So rather than take the practice of continual prayer and surrender to spirit as a goal to attain, we learn to just pay attention to the constant prayer that is always here. It is simply the constant flow of our awareness, the constant flow of our experience. Continual timeless prayer is manifesting the source we are at every moment. We formulate the intention to surrender to the sense of ‘I Am’, and just notice the sense of ‘I Am’, without clinging to ideas of I am this, or I am that. This doesn’t mean to exclude the awareness of dishes that need to be washed, or to exclude the awareness of the details of child care that need to be attended to. The intention to surrender to the constant prayer of just being present, is surrender to the dishes and child care as just being present. We intend to see beyond the conceptual haze of our opinions and judgments about the details of our life, and just let our attachments to them be present.

This morning there is a cool autumn breeze as I write in my hammock. Many bright colorful leaves are effortlessly and joyfully dancing in the breeze as they fall to the ground. This free flow of our experience is like a constantly flowing river, and nothing can ever interrupt it. What could ever possibly interrupt or distract from the sheer joy of our alive being? When seen and experienced clearly and fully, our self conscious efforts to cling to our thoughts, to control our experience, are merely different expressions of the same delightful energy of the dancing leaves!

The mere witnessing of our self conscious attachments, is the joy of the constant prayer of surrender being present as the manifestation of the details of our life. Why not just allow the river of experience to flow by? In this way, we are learning to experience our attachments clearly, and to experience them free of our opinions about them. And we realize they have absolute value as expressions of awareness, of spirit itself. So rather than ignoring the details of our life, we feel energized and vitalized in their expression of the spirit we share with all beings, and we naturally want to care and express love for them as we would for our own selves.

In our contemplative practice, constant care and love for all beings is becoming one with our constant prayer for union with the divine spirit we are. This prayer includes the prayer for the union all of creation with the divine spirit of creation itself. We and all beings together are becoming the constant prayer of surrender free from all mental fabrication, and free to love and care for all beings.

One important way to take our spiritual inquiry deeper is to ask, ‘What is the actual substance of this sense of a separate self?’ We will ask this question a countless number of times, each time will be in the midst of different circumstances. If we’re really honest with ourselves, we’ll begin to notice that we always respond with an attempt to conceptually grasp the question, and attempt to formulate an answer in our minds. This noticing begins to include noticing that the particular circumstances involved influence our attempts at asking and answering. For example, it’s 5 am on a dark Sunday morning, and I’m concerned about my 12 yr. old son Danny being too emotional over his chipped tooth.

I’m noticing that in fact I’m suffering emotionally over his emotional reaction to his suffering. This noticing is good and natural; I’m aware that I’m inquiring about the actual substance of this separate self colored by thoughts emanating with tinges of helplessness and inadequacy in my role of being father. Just witnessing the thought energy continually flowing, echoing, and dissolving in waves of discovery, I’m put in touch with the common source of all of my suffering. What IS its actual substance? I don’t know, and this not knowing is the absence of conceptual content, arising together, and one with an alive loving acceptance of all this experience.

So there is a shift from the boundaries of the one who is experiencing, to the vast expanse of consciousness, the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is, and will be. When we look at anything, it is the ultimate that we see, but we don’t realize this because we’re attached to the idea that we’re looking at something else. Every mode of perception is subjective; what is seen or heard, touched or smelled, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in our small minds only, and has no own being in the actual boundless reality.

Perhaps the hardest part of the path for students in our culture is learning to trust that our true nature is continually supporting and unconditionally loving us in our imagined struggles. Even the sense of ‘I am’ a separate person is composed of the pure light and the sense of being. Could it be composed of something else? The ‘I’ is there even without the ‘am’. So is the pure light there whether you say ‘I’ or not. If we become aware of that pure light, we’ll begin to see that we can never lose it. The overwhelming actuality of the presence of being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience – these are not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.