You Are What You Seek

[Guest guest]

You Are What You Seek

Attention spiritual shoppers: enlightenment is not something you

acquire. How to avoid common pitfalls of the seeker.

 

By Deepak Chopra

 

 

 

From " The Book of Secrets " by Deepak Chopra. Copyright© 2004 by

Deepak Chopra. Excerpted by permission of Harmony Books, a division of Random

House, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

Seeking is a word often applied to the spiritual path, and many

people are proud to call themselves seekers. Often, they are the same people who

once chased too hard after money, sex, alcohol, or work. With the same addictive

intensity they now hope to find God, the soul, the higher self. The problem is

that seeking begins with a false assumption. I don't mean the assumption that

materialism is corrupt and spirituality is pure. Yes, materialism can become

all-consuming, but that's not the really important point. Seeking is doomed

because it is a chase that takes you outside yourself.

 

 

Whether the object is God or money makes no real difference. Productive seeking

requires that you throw out all assumptions that there is a prize to be won.

This means acting without hope of rising to some ideal self, hope being a wish

that you'll get somewhere better than the place you started from. You are

starting from yourself, and it's the self that contains all the answers. So you

have to give up on the idea that you must go from A to B. There is no linear

path when the goal isn't somewhere else. You must also discard fixed judgments

about high and low, good and evil, holy and profane. The one reality includes

everything in its tangle of experiences, and what we are trying to find is the

experiencer who is present no matter what experience you are having.

 

Looking at the people who race around trying to be models of goodness, someone

coined the apt phrase " spiritual materialism, " the transfer of values that work

in the material world over to the spiritual world.

 

Spiritual Materialism

 

Pitfalls of the Seeker:

 

Knowing where you're going.

Struggling to get there.

Using someone else's map.

Working to improve yourself.

Setting a timetable.

Waiting for a miracle.

 

There's no better way to be a genuine seeker than to avoid these pitfalls.

 

 

a.. Don't know where you're going. Spiritual growth is spontaneous. The big

events come along unexpectedly, and so do the small ones. A single word can open

your heart; a single glance can tell you who you really are. Awakening doesn't

happen according to the plan. It's much more like putting together a jigsaw

puzzle without knowing the finished picture in advance. The Buddhists have a

saying, " If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him, " which means if you're

following a spiritual script written in advance, bury it. All you can imagine in

advance are images, and images are never the same as the goal.

a.. Don't struggle to get there. If there were a spiritual payoff at the end of

the trail, like a pot of gold or the key to heaven, everyone would work as hard

as possible for the reward. Any struggle would be worth it. But does it help a

two-year-old to struggle to become three? No, because the process of child

development unfolds from within. You don't get a paycheck; you turn into a new

person. The same is true for spiritual unfolding. It happens just as naturally

as childhood development, but on the plane of awareness rather than in the realm

of physiology.

a.. Don't follow someone else's map. There was a time when I was certain that

deep meditation using one specific mantra for the rest of my life was the key to

reaching enlightenment. I was following a map laid down thousands of years ago

by venerable sages who belonged to India's greatest spiritual tradition. But

caution is always required: If you follow someone else's map, you could be

training yourself in a fixed way of thinking. Fixed ways, even those devoted to

spirit, are not the same as being free. You should glean teachings from all

directions, keeping true to those that bring progress yet remaining open to

changes in yourself.

 

 

a.. Don't make this a self-improvement project. Self-improvement is real. People

get stuck in bad places that they can learn to get out of. Depression,

loneliness, and insecurity are tangible experiences that can be improved. But if

you seek to reach God or enlightenment because you want to stop being depressed

or anxious, if you want greater self-esteem or less loneliness, your search may

never end. This area of understanding isn't cut-and-dried. Some people feel

tremendously self-improved as their awareness expands; but it takes a strong

sense of self to confront the many obstacles and challenges that lie on the

path. If you feel weak or fragile, you may feel weaker and more fragile when you

confront the shadow energies within. Expanded awareness comes at a price—you

have to give up your limitations—and for anyone who feels victimized, that

limitation is often so stubborn that spiritual progress becomes very slow. To

the extent that you feel any deep conflict inside yourself, a large hurdle

stands before you on the path. The wise thing is to seek help at the level where

the problem exists.

a.. Don't set yourself a timetable. I've met countless people who gave up on

spirituality because they didn't reach their goals fast enough. " I gave it ten

years. What can I do? Life is only so long. I'm moving on. " More likely they

devoted just one year or a month to being on the path, and then the weekend

warriors fell away, discouraged by lack of results. The best way to avoid

disappointment is not to set a deadline in the first place, although many people

find this difficult to do without losing motivation. But motivation was never

going to get them there in the first place. Discipline is involved, no doubt, in

remembering to meditate regularly, to keep up Yoga class, to read inspiring

texts, and to keep your vision before you. Getting into the spiritual habit

requires a sense of dedication. But unless the vision is unfolding every day,

you will inevitably get distracted. Rather than a timetable, give yourself

support for spiritual growth. This can be in the form of a personal teacher, a

discussion group, a partner who shares the path with you, regular retreats, and

keeping a daily journal. You will be much less likely to fall prey to

disappointment.

a.. Don't wait for a miracle. It really doesn't matter how you define

miracle—whether it is the sudden appearance of perfect love, a cure for a

life-threatening disease, anointment from a great spiritual leader, or permanent

and everlasting bliss. A miracle is letting God do all the work; it separates

the supernatural world from this world, with the expectation that one day the

supernatural world will notice you. Since there is only one reality, your task

is to break through boundaries of division and separation. Watching and waiting

for a miracle keeps the boundaries up. You are ever at a remove from God,

connected to him by wishful thinking.

a.. If you can avoid these pitfalls of spiritual materialism, you will be much

less tempted to chase after an impossible goal. The chase began because people

came to believe that God, disapproving of what he sees in us, expects us to

adopt a certain ideal. It seems impossible to imagine a God, however loving, who

doesn't get disappointed, angry, vengeful, or disgusted with us when we fall

short. The most spiritual figures in history were not totally good, however, but

totally human. They accepted and forgave; they lacked judgment. I think the

highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every

possible quality given some outlet for expression. People need to accept once

and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it

through the choices we make. Seeking can't get anyone out of the tangle because

everything is tangled up. The only thing that will ever be pure and pristine is

your own awareness, once you sort it out.

 

It's much easier to keep up the fight between good and evil, holy and profane,

us and them. But as awareness grows, these opposites begin to calm down in their

clashes, and something else emerges—a world you feel at home in. The ego did you

a terrible disservice by throwing you into a world of opposites. Opposites

always conflict—that's the only way they know—and who can feel at home in the

middle of a fight? Awareness offers an alternative beyond the fray.

[Guest guest]

thank you lisa for this timely wise & informative

article. it's encouraging to have someone pointing out

the 'right way'.

 

vincent

 

--- Lisa Day <day6 wrote:

 

> You Are What You Seek

>