"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."If it is awakening or spiritual elevation we wish to attain, we must stop living only for ourselves and start living for others, work not only for our own pleasure, comfort, security, and self-image, but work for the liberation of all people from slavery and oppression.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
There is no other work to be done, and all "spiritual work" done without this intention is inherently selfish and ultimately self-defeating.
All effort toward our own awakening and spiritual elevation is exerted in vain, in vanity, if not aimed at working for the benefit of others. It is easy for us to rationalize our vain concepts of our spiritual work on ourselves as "work for others," though, if we truly examine our motives, we may see we are actually more concerned with things such as financial prosperity, fame and prestige, and simple personal comfort. We may also see that we are not actually working to improve our own spiritual condition, but merely rearranging our concepts of who and what we are, in order to suit our emotional disposition, focusing on "our wounds" (and our entitlements) without understanding the context in which these wounds are created, a context which affects and wounds every living being on this planet. Believing ourselves to be spiritual, we couch our personal pursuits in spiritual language and give them the appearance of being selflessly aimed.
"We know that one of the most unpleasant aspects of human behavior is the fact that sapiens lies to himself with astounding frequency. His lies are so astute, subtle, and perfect, that he may waste many years of his life, only to discover that he was being cheated and he himself was the charlatan. The object of this self-deception has been very precisely identified by psychology, and generally refers to the individual's need for a high level of self-esteem.In order for any work for others, toward their liberation, to be effective, rightly aimed and concentrated, we must understand that we ourselves are not free or fully awake. Though, this is an unpopular concept, the denial of which is precisely what keeps us from waking up and becoming free.
There are many techniques for self-deception and these are grouped under the general category of "rationalization." Professor Gordon Allport gives this definition: "Reason fits one's impulses and beliefs to the world of reality; rationalization fits one's concept of reality to one's impulses and beliefs. Reasoning reveals the real causes of our actions, and rationalization finds good reasons, to justify them."
- John Baines, The Stellar Man
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."We are told by those who wish to justify their own apathy toward the human condition and, in many cases, who wish to take our money, that everything is perfect as it is, that we are perfect in our imperfection. We are then permitted to believe that awakening implies no necessity for us to work on ourselves or change. Many of us, whose consciences are sporadically active, will attempt to "help others," but this "help" tends to be tainted by our own vanity, attempting to mold the world into our own deluded self-image. As we are now, we see no real reason to work on ourselves, except to avoid our own current emotional suffering.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We don't realize that working only to resolve our own emotional suffering will not deliver us to any more spiritually or morally elevated state than we currently occupy. So instead of working on ourselves sincerely, doing the hard work of impartial introspection and self-correction, we take "medicines" (drugs) of the mind, be they even as apparently innocuous as meditation. Understanding the critical role cognitive dissonance plays in our self-perpetuating delusion and oppression, we also come to understand that beliefs, themselves, are usually drugs, tools of rationalization. We do everything in our feeble power not to look at objective reality. We spend decades of our lives completely detached from reality. An example of the reality I'm speaking of is that the computer you're reading this on was produced by slave labor - and the usual definition of slavery has only to be broadened marginally to make my statement precise. If you look, you will see, and you will be horrified. At this point, many will tune out, taking comfort in their belief that all that is required to be spiritual is to avoid anything unpleasant, to remain constantly blissful. How calloused our hearts are, how pathetically meek and insecure we are in the face of reality.
The necessity for any human being to work on their self is only realized through sharp and inescapably painful contact with the reality of our fellow people - to whom we are each spiritually connected, if we know at all what love is - who endure tortures and degradation we can not even imagine.
Notice that "the Buddha" did not start working on himself, seeking truth, redeeming his own ignorance and apathy, until he saw what common people endured. Had he been influenced by the types of pseudo-spirituality we are, he would have thought it perfectly sufficient and even superior for himself to remain a prince, sheltered in an ivory tower, with every pleasure a human being could imagine. How many of us mistake ourselves for royalty, living in imaginary castles, or work toward placing ourselves in one, in some fantastic future in which all negativity is magically resolved?
If we want to awaken, we must actually work on ourselves, and in order for us to recognize the necessity for this work, not just in theory, we must see how our personal suffering, as well as our luxury, is tied directly (remember your computer) to the inhuman conditions faced by a majority of human beings on our planet.
What is required is for something, some event, to break through our layer of egoistic indifference, our heavily programmed personality bubble that, if we are honest with ourselves, doesn't really care that much about people suffering in the world. If we are further honest with ourselves, we will recognize that our personality is not actually who we are. Understanding this, being able to distinguish between our personality and our essence is essential to awakening. To awaken, our character structure must split open and begin to dissolve, to reveal that which is essential in us - that which doesn't even want to identify with the nonsense we usually take to be who we are. We must be willing to witness ourselves, to witness and feel the pain of our human family, recognizing our intrinsic connection to all human beings, and therefore all human suffering.
What we tend to ignore is that the relationship between our conveniently neurotic lives to the suffering of the slave class is reciprocal - though it would require too many words to explain this fully right now. In a relatively obvious way, being of a privileged class, we reflect the cause of the suffering of the laborers. Though, taking a slightly wider view, we are all suffering from a common malady, a common infectious and parasitic culture. Understanding this, beyond shallow intellectual agreement or disagreement, requires looking and studying; studying ourselves (rather than pacifying ourselves), and studying the nature of the world.
We don't do this, primarily because we are me "on drugs." It has been said that "religion is the opiate of the masses." Opiates are pain killers, which cause euphoric apathy and morbid dependence. The new religion of "positive thinking" and "self-love" is the most advanced religion yet invented, as it burdens nobody with moral doctrine or responsibility toward others. Of course, it preaches "love" toward others, but this love is a passive and symbolic love, a convenient love that need not be acted upon, that need not disturb our inertia and comfort.
The new religion is built upon self-affirmation, and therefore generates high levels of self-esteem, which is perhaps the greatest opiate of all. As suffering in the world is "negative," new religion advises against giving one's attention to it. To acknowledge negativity is taken as being "non-spiritual." Instead, one is instructed to focus on their own happiness, excluding from awareness anything that might bring down their emotional high. This is exactly why people are not going to wake up or "ascend." Religion is the most insidious means of social control, as it disallows exactly what it promises to provide - liberation. New Age doctrines of self-comforting belief are the most insidious of all historical belief systems, as they promise something for nothing. We must all have the maturity to recognize that nothing worth having is gained without effort, or without a price to pay.
People who argue that they are already fully awake, who are satisfied with shallow promises of automatic ascension, or who imagine in their naive arrogance they have the solutions to the world's problems, though they actually have little understanding of themselves or the world, are "free" to live in their own imagination lands - where they will function just as intended, as cogs in the machine. Though, for the sake of all humanity, it is advised and requested that they stop making any effort to help people or to change the world. I know this sounds extreme, but is it extreme to question our every intention when we presume ourselves to be altering reality for other people? Deluded people with good intentions can do really stupid and damaging things. Trust me, I have, myself. We all buy our own bullshit, till we realize it is empty.
Awakening, rather than transcendence, means precisely to be AWARE of the entire condition of things, progressively more, until one reaches the level of absolute awareness. Absolute awareness is a goal beyond any of our purview, in our current incarnations, despite what certain New Age "thought leaders" (need I name names?) currently claim for themselves. Though, however far from our reach absolute awareness is, there is no reason not to make effort toward it, starting from exactly where we are, which is essentially a somnambulistic (sleep-walking) state. We operate almost entirely mechanically (without volition), and if you look, you will see this.
Our efforts, currently, should be realistic. In reality, the vast majority of us are unable to sustain momentary self-awareness, undiluted by reflective thoughts, analysis and self-comforting rationalization (or self-abusive degradation), for more than a few seconds. Recognizing the difficulty of clear, impartial sight, and our constant state of self-deception is the first step - a step most people will never make. Our first effort should be toward practicing self-awareness, as frequently as possible. This skill is not automatic. In order to look, we must first learn to look, to develop the "muscle," which has atrophied in us since birth. The most effective way I have discovered to do this is the dual practice of "self-observing" and "self-remembering," as taught by Gurdjieff. Those with the will and awareness required will investigate this practice for themselves. Others will take the convenient path of believing they already know what is meant by these terms and will therefore never actually know. (Belief often precludes knowledge.) "Self-observing" and "self-remembering" inherently involve "non-identification," a term which provides one of the greatest clues for awakening I am aware of.
Equally important to awakening is the necessity of learning to look at the world, to look at the things we fear looking at, objectively and impartially. This task is as difficult and as necessary as looking at oneself objectively. Again, it requires learning to look, to maintain focus without looking away. Seeing oneself and seeing the world objectively is the beginning of the work of awakening and, truly, the beginning of "beingness." Without being consciously connected to a reality greater than ourselves, we are living only in delusion, and therefore one could say that, rather than "being," we "are not."
But nobody recognizes the need to do this kind of work without first being unmistakable and painfully struck by the horror of the world, the horror of human suffering, and equally the horror of one's own self-delusion.
"When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as man is not horrified at himself, he knows nothing about himself."The same could be said for knowing the world. If we choose to look away from one aspect of reality, we are, in truth, denying all of reality.
- P.D. Ouspensky
Seeing and feeling the terror and pain of the world, if we keep our eyes and hearts open long enough, we are able to recognize that we feel the world's pain because we are the world. This is the reality of "oneness" in our terrestrial incarnations. To even catch a glimpse of this larger reality, as it applies to our physical, material lives, is horrifying and painful. Sometimes, a person will first be horrified with their self, finding out that they are not at all who or what they thought they were. This is just as terrifying as realizing that expendable child sex slaves are a common commodity of the elite and that somebody may have died from the glue they applied to the back of your iPhone screen (this is information I gathered from an inside source, close to a Foxconn executive. Foxconn, infamously, manufactures iPads and iPhones at slave-like labor camps). Only those with strength and potential for awakening will not look away. The rest will continue sleeping.
Objectively, while the aforementioned horrors of reality are indeed negative in the context of human life, you recognizing them and feeling something about them is actually quite positive. Many of us feel actually quite hopeful when you get sick to your stomach for the first time, when you fall to the floor in grief that isn't about YOU. The day you recognize, viscerally, something larger than yourself, is a happy day for humanity. It is the day your spiritual work, working on yourself and working for the world, can begin. So, being positive isn't just about generating positive emotional states or getting what YOU want (what your personality wants). Nor is it just about pointing out everything negative in the world. Being positive is about doing positive work for the world, not just for yourself.And in order to do this work effectively, one must be able to see and feel the world, in all its ugliness and in its beauty; see and feel oneself, in all one's ugliness and all one's beauty; and not look away.
I was asked to give a workshop on The Way of the Warrior for a women's group up at some lodge on the lake.
I am a martial arts instructor and have lived and traveled throughout Asia studying these arts. What no one knew, until now, is that my interest in martial arts was inspired by Gurdjieff who was himself a practitioner. Hence, for me, martial arts is 'work' on the moving and instinctive centers.
The essential lesson of my Way of the Warrior talk is that life is tough, and that enlightenment, and hence reality, can be even tougher, as the voluminous writings of the past masters warned.
I explained that learning some self defense is a valuable skill since, even if you still can't defend yourself physically, the mental toughness one acquires by simply approaching the subject of self defense, can still win the day. As Musashi wrote; that between two fighters it is not the strongest, nor the most skilled, but the one who's spirit is strongest, that will win.
I also interpret this to apply to our battle against sleep, only the strongest spirit can hope for awareness.
I had no sooner presented this opening premise than one of the women interrupted me and told me that they have no need for such negative philosophy since they never think negative thoughts and thus they would never be victims.
This was my first encounter with what I later called, "The Happy Thinkers" and I had no idea what she was talking about. She explained that they were all very 'into' the Celestine Prophecies, one of a long line of Happy Thinker books.
A year earlier someone had given my a copy of the book with heaping praise for its deep content, and it was one of only two books I ever read where I tore the book in half, threw it on the ground and stomped on it. So you know my opinion on that subject.
She went on to explain that she personally wishes everyday to be living on a tropical island with talking dolphins and she's sure that one day it will all become so.
I thought she was kidding me, I looked at her waiting for her to say Gotcha. But no Gotcha. I felt myself blush in embarrassment, as though I had walked in on her talking a shower or something. Here was a grown woman, married with three kids and a professorship at a university and she was telling me she believed in unicorn castles in the clouds.
I thought I must be dealing with someone in the throes of a neurotic breakdown so I gently, and without condescension explained that, although I believe a positive attitude does have beneficial effects on the mind and body, happy thoughts, however, have little to no effect on the evil in the world.
At this point the poor woman stood up, pointed an accusatory finger at me and screamed "You're Evil! You're Evil" then turning to the group "He's the devil!"
I spoke calmly to her. I said I was not evil, that i just wanted to warn people that the world can often be cruel and that not acknowledging this reality will not prevent you from becoming of victim of cruelty.
Still standing she began crying and said "You sound just like my husband!' at which point she ran from the room crying with three or four other women chasing after her to calm her down or possibly prevent her from throwing herself into the lake.
The rest of the group was so emotionally distraught that everyone felt it was best to just cancel the presentation.
I had spoke for all of five minutes.
Since that incident I have watched the 'Happy Thinker' movement through all its incarnations and have come to think that rather it being simply spiritual candy floss that rots the minds and souls of its practitioners, it was actually for worse than that.
This new age nonsense is, in the words of the article's author, drugs. What is particularly dangerous is that these followers truly believe that by simply sitting on the divan and thinking happy thoughts, is saving the world. What they are doing instead is insuring that the world goes down the drain under their loving gaze until their turn comes to be swept into the whirlpool.
I agree with the author that spiritual development does not occur exclusively in the mind, but must occur in one's being. Work on oneself means work, it means getting your hands dirty, breaking a sweat, throwing a couple of elbows, and taking some on the jaw.
My advice to all my students has always been stopping talking, DO something. By Doing, we create the friction needed for spiritual development in ourselves, and also help to improve the lives of the people and other creatures on this planet.
Although it may seem I am indicting women in this story the truth is that while these women may sit on the couch thinking happy thoughts, their menfolk are likely also sitting on the couch thinking... nothing at all, nothing.