Kabir – Public Domain
Centuries ago in India, there lived a poet named Kabir. Legend has it that he was orphaned by a Hindu family and was raised by a Muslim family. He was illiterate and impoverished throughout his life, but he became one of the greatest mystics of all time. Kabir rejected dogmas and rites of both Hinduism and Islam, seeking instead to know the God within directly without any intermediary. He never hesitated to point out flaws in ideas and practices he thought were lacking.
Don’t go outside your house to see the flowers
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your own body there are flowers…
One has a thousand petals! -Kabir
The advent of mass communication has given spiritual “seekers” on their “paths” unprecedented access to mystical schools the world over. I can read texts like the Tao Te Ching or the Bhagavad Gita in a dozen different translations in my own language. Modern gurus usually cite lists like this when describing their “teaching” or whatever. If you want it all in a smoothie, amazon has a catagory for that. The spiritual drought of modern life has scattered people across the world, looking for nourishment under every rock
“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.You don’t grasp the fact that
what is most alive of all
is inside your own house; and so you walk from one holy city to the next
with a confused look!
Kabir will tell you the truth:
go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can’t find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!” -Kabir
There’s an old zen Buddhist koan that goes “if you meet Buddha in the road, kill him.” What this means is that there is no perfect teacher, no flawless practice, and no final enlightenment. The essence of existence is unending flux. In his book “Finite and Infinite Games,” James Carse writes about the two type of games that can be played: finite ones and infinite ones. Finite games are played for the sake of winning, but infinite games are played for the sake of playing. The goal in infinite games is not to win, but to keep playing.
“Enlightenment,” or whatever you want to call, it is not a finite game. If you think you can “win” reality somehow, I’d say you’ve missed the point entirely. To borrow from Alan Watts, no one listens to a song just to hear the last note. Life and the universe are musical affairs. God is moving, but He’s not going anywhere. All He wants is to be in motion.
“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you. Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. Set your life on fire. -Rumi
If we have an inner connection to All That Is, why do we need a clown car of gurus, sages, teachers, ascended masters, and enlightened ones to teach us how to reach the transcendental? If the All is in us already, then certainly that is more reliable and miraculous than any teaching or practice could possibly be. When I think about this, I feel as if I have uncovered the meaning of the pearl of great price from the gospels. Here is the verse:
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. -Matthew 13:45-46
The pearl is your soul, your link to the divine. All teachers and sacred texts are just flickering shadows of the soul’s light. Why buy the water when your already own the spring? All the mystical mumbo jumbo in the world (including every word of this blog) is just a bedtime story time story at the end of the day. The only true teaching is the one that comes wordlessly from your own soul.
“Daiju visited the master Baso in China. Baso asked: “What do you seek?”
“Enlightenment,” replied Daiju.
“You have your own treasure house. Why do you search outside?” Baso asked.
Daiju inquired: “Where is my treasure house?”
Baso answered: “What you are asking is your treasure house.”
Daiju was enlightened! Ever after he urged his friends: “Open your own treasure house and use those treasures.” -Zen Koan
It is only because we think that we are incapable or inferior that we deny our birthright to the “secrets” of the universe. If you consider yourself a flawed product because of your humanity, biology, race, gender, sexual orientation, individuality, class, nationality, “ego” or whatever, then it will be very difficult to access the wonders within. If you cut up existence into “good” and “bad,” you cut up yourself in a similar manner.
“I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.” -Buddha’s Zen
There is no “true” and “false” self. There is one multidimensional self expressing itself in infinite ways. There is no “real” and “illusionary” reality. There is one reality with manifold aspects. Nirvana is right here and now, and its one and the same with samsara. Why cut the universe in two and try to find its “good” half? Instead, look for the ground out of which all things emerge, and that ground is in your own psyche.
“We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.” -Terrence Mckenna
I’ve read all sorts of books about traditions the world over, but the more I read the further I felt I was getting from spirituality. I feel like I’ve been enriched by my reading, but I wish I had spent that time looking within. There’s a lot of enlightenment in the world’s traditions, but there’s just as much garbage. Self reliance is the only way you can sort through it all. We are all self reliant to some degree, even if its just to declare that something is true. Mixing all the world’s traditions together to gain enlightenment is a bit liking thinking that mixing everything in your refrigerator will automatically make a good smoothie. There has to be some form of discretion.
“None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think society is wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s disheartening to me to see the practices, ideas, and dogmas that constitute modern spirituality. Even those people who tell you God is within you will ask you to spin around three times and say “love,” or whatever the word is, to find him. Why not just ask God? There are bookstores filled with instruction manuals on how to listen to your “inner guide.” If your inner guide is at all reliable, why are these necessary? Again, just ask the inner guide.
“I don’t know what sort of God we have been talking about.
The caller calls in a loud voice to the Holy One at dusk.
Why? Surely the Holy One is not deaf.
He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks.” -Kabir
Most of the “spiritual systems” I’ve encountered start with the premise that something is fundamentally wrong with you or your life, and that something is blocking you from happiness. Then, they give you instructions on how to fix what is wrong, and create dependency. What is so unholy about who and what you are? A teacher who wishes to create dependency on themselves or their teaching will target the integrity of your being first. Whether its called original sin or ego, the result is the same: you become separated from your soul, and its not necessary!
Many of you keep searching for some seemingly remote spiritual inner self that you can trust and look to for help and support, but all the while you distrust the familiar self with which you have such intimate contact. You set up divisions between portions of the self that are unnecessary. -Seth (IatNoME session 872)
“If you cannot trust that which keeps you alive, what can you trust?”
“You cannot equivocate. You either trust the self or you do not.”
Why do you need books or gurus? Inside of you is the source of all their teachings and infinitely more. I’ve ran from teacher to teacher and from text to text looking for a materialization of the inner knowledge I’ve had all along. In doing so, I’ve gotten further from truth and deeper into the murky waters of dogma. The closest manifestation to my sense of truth I’ve ever got is the Seth material, but by its own admission it is a poor reflection of the glory of the soul. Burn your books before setting them above your own soul. Turn within and never look back.
“Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings no one touches, and the source
of all water.
If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.” -Kabir
Process and Spirituality 