Going Within (6 page)

Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe not. I do know that as soon as I allowed myself to take responsibility for my depression about her,
she
began to take responsibility for her healing. I’m still not sure how it works, but I believe it does.

Another time I was involved in a lawsuit with a person who was unreasonably demanding money from me. I became very self-righteous and decided to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. I was outraged. My lawyers recommended that I settle. I refused, saying the whole thing was grossly unfair. They agreed but said I should pay the money and forget about it. I lay awake nights, fuming, running endless dialogues in which I justifiably devastated this person, playing out scenes in courtrooms with the whole world watching while I reduced him to ruins, which I thought was fair under the circumstances. Internal anger doing its ugly thing to me. Then one afternoon in the court chambers I stood off from myself and tried to use my “new perspective” technique. I consciously decided to perceive this man who was demanding money from me as a “teacher.” I thought,
“This person is serving as a catalyst for
my
growth. I am being afforded the opportunity here to look at my own anger and study why it is so intense.”

Almost involuntarily I dissolved into tears. Slowly the frustration subsided and I realized that it had been there a long, long time. It was not just the result of this immediate situation. Then I
really
cried, relieved that the conflict was gone, grateful that this man had acted as a teacher and a motivator for my evolvement. As a matter of fact, I went even further. I
decided
to see him as a person who had interrupted his own growth to serve as a catalyst for mine. The effect of such a shift in perspective was immediate.

First, when I stopped crying, I instructed my attorneys to pay what he had demanded. To my astonishment, they came back later and said they couldn’t understand why, but he had withdrawn his gargantuan claim and now wanted a modest sum. I had never spoken directly to him, but the shift in my attitude somehow neutralized the energy creating the conflict between us. In giving up the battle, or “surrendering my anger,” the fundamental energy in the polarity between us shifted until tugging and war were not possible. In the most personal way I realized it does indeed take two to tango, and when I checked out of the dance, the music stopped too.

Again, I don’t know how it works, but when sincerely undertaken, this attitude in perspective becomes very powerful. If there is a tug-of-war and one side ceases to pull, the other side collapses because
the game depends upon the polarity of opposites. I was learning that to assure a positive and fresh outlook, it was necessary to release the feelings that gave me pain. Not to control those feelings, but actually to let them go. But first came the need to recognize that
it was my choice
to have had those feelings in the first place.

In dealing with the realities of the world we live in I was always drawn to participate in social change. I have enjoyed it, reveled in the successes, and agonized over the delays in moving faster. I worked for peace organizations. I protested against war organizations. I traveled to learn about foreign cultures and customs. I became a feminist. I championed the downtrodden. I worried about the Supreme Court and campaigned for Presidential candidates who respected the liberal persuasion of the intellect. I hung out with journalists and tried to learn to ask questions as rigorously as they did. I observed the press as watchdogs of the government and I deplored the dishonesty and corruption of both. I believed and still do that the American people are hardworking, fair, reasonably honest, and reasonably open-minded; and that a large percentage of them strive to understand the fairness, complications, and intricacies of democracy. We Americans also put up with intense stress. Perhaps the freedom of democracy itself results
in stress because it creates the complications of free choices, responsibilities, and competitiveness, which are experienced to a much lesser extent in authoritarian cultures and in societies heavily dominated by religion. The price we pay for a society of free social individuals, versus a society controlled by state or church, is complexity. This causes stress in the individual as well as in the culture itself.

Somewhere along the line, I began to evaluate the speed of my personal growth, relative to stress, to the speed of the growth of the society around me. And I realized, eventually, that if I truly desired social transformation, I would have to begin with the transformation of myself. As with everything else, positive effort has to begin with the self.

I felt that I myself and the society in which I live were suffering, individually and collectively, from the bereavement of something we could not define. For me it was nothing physical or even mental. It was more subtle; more subtle and yet more profound. The bereavement spoke to the spirit of the individual, and thence to the spirit of the nation and its institutions. On some level, we knew intuitively that we had become spiritually impoverished.

In the main, the various churches were not fulfilling our spiritual needs. Besides that, their leadership, in part, was corrupt. I had given up allegiance to formal religion years ago although I continued to try to act with “Christian” love. What other formalized values did we live by? In the world of business, even
stock market institutions seemed corrupt, with brokers and big money speculators being slapped on the wrist by inadequate regulations set up by a government that was itself broke and conflicted, lashing about in confusion and waging illegal wars that had become a higher priority than the Constitution.

Along with all of that, we were faced with the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, destruction of the Earth’s environment, pollution, the greenhouse effect, a tear in the ozone: a general malaise about nearly everything was being expressed by waves of violent crime, endemic drug use, child abuse, battering of wives, and acts of unprecedented individual outrage. As a democracy, for many years we Americans looked to the authorities we had elected and set up for validation and protection of our personal values, ideologies, and identities. Now those institutions, for which we had more regard than ourselves, were disintegrating before our very eyes. Our world, our standards, even our beliefs, appeared to be going to hell in a handbasket.

We were left with no recourse but
ourselves;
we had to look to our own sense of decency and honesty, to our own values—in short, we had to find ourselves within.

Perhaps all of it, the whole mess, was to the good.

Perhaps we created the exterior we are now experiencing with the values and the visions we basically perceive in ourselves. If we feel that it is okay to be a little bit dishonest, do a little cheating here, get away
with a “smart” little hassle there, what would prevent us from creating powerful institutions that, because of their very power, are a whole lot more than a “little” dishonest—which are, in fact, corrupt. They would merely be reflections of ourselves on a larger scale. We
are
those institutions, after all. We accept what our conditioning has taught us is acceptable.

But if, one fine day, an individual gains new insight into himself, he sees the world around him in a new light also, and as a result he can be more effective in promulgating change. The petty corruption is then no more acceptable than the grand larceny. The changes effected in society would then be a natural extension of the changes of perception in oneself.

I came to recognize the need for personal transformation before I could address any longer the issue of participating in transforming the world I live in. So I began my personal transformation in earnest—some would say too earnest. That doesn’t mean that I cut myself off from political and social activism, but it does mean that I saw the necessity for change in a clearer light because I was viewing myself more clearly.

It was at that point that I began a program of exercises of the mind which I put myself through nearly every day in order to accomplish a feeling of inner transformation. As a result, I began to feel more centered in my own power and more aligned, not only with my own destiny but with the destinies of those around me who moved in and out of my life
as they pursued their own journeys toward understanding.

At the same time, Î recognized how little I knew and understood. When that happened, I tried to focus on what I did know. What I understand today is a result of the knowledge I’ve gleaned from ancient teachers and modern students who are far more evolved than I. They have all been through their own personal fires in an attempt to understand themselves and how they fit into the great overall universal consciousness of which we are all a part. Whenever things go wrong I have learned to use these events as catalysts to help me understand how Î participated in them. In that respect it is
because
of conflicts and problems and pressures that I have learned to handle both them and myself in a more balanced way. So, though the journey within has often been painful, it has reflected every area of the human condition and how I relate to my immediate world. It has helped me in the most practical ways to deal with reality.

I feel a great acceleration in learning taking place all over the world. And God knows the problems are becoming more and more painful. I feel the lessons in my own life, in my relationships, and in my own personal karma. Karma is the law of cause and effect—that which we put out comes back to us. What goes around comes around. Three years ago, it took three months for something I did or said about someone to come back to me. Now I see it return in three hours! What a lesson Karma has become. What an instant
and constant reminder that to express with love is to receive love. To express with anger and hostility is to receive the same. The amount of experience in one twelve-hour day is becoming more and more intense, as though I am living three days of experience in one day.

My interpersonal relationships have become deeper and more demanding of honesty and directness. Sometimes it is almost beyond my capacity to feel safe in the increasing demand for sincerity. Sometimes it is very painful to see myself reflected in my friends, loved ones, and—more important—in
my adversaries.
Sometimes it is as though they are each mirroring aspects of myself that I would otherwise be unwilling to confront, and that is the reason these people exist in my life.

I am shifting from my feelings of helplessness about having any effect in helping to change the world, to a position that recognizes there
is
a power within me, and within each of us, so awesome that, when tapped, a transformation in the world could result. It is not only possible but necessary—and part of the next stage of our own evolution and development is to realize (literally “make real”) that power. I am obviously not the only one conscious of this approach to bringing about change.

A great awakening is taking place. Individuals all across the world are tapping in to their internal power to understand who they are and using that knowledge to elevate their lives and their circumstances
to a higher octave of happiness and productivity. Sharing the search, and the techniques of searching, is only a part of the help we can give one another.

As I have said, this book is an attempt to share how I learned to access the spirituality in myself. Spiritual engineering has become a fascinating study, essential to me in stress reduction and social and personal conflicts.

As I began to go within myself more deeply, and my spiritual studies and investigations advanced, I became more and more interested in the correlation between body and spirit. I had been trained as a dancer so my approach to many of these issues was from a physical culturista point of view. Anyone who is intensely involved with the physicality of performance knows that the body does not perform well if the spirit is gloomy. Therefore, the connection between the two needs improvement and the access to “interior light” is necessary.

I had heard a great deal about meditation from many of my friends around the world who had been doing it for years, claiming that their very survival depended upon it. “One needs to go within for concentration, balance, strength, and flexibility,” they said. “You just can’t get that on the outside.” So I became interested in the “going within” process. In order to achieve a better and less painful physical performance, I tried my own brand of meditation. I wanted the outer results of my physical life to improve,
so that meant I would have to touch the “inner results.” I found the experience phenomenal.

One night, after dancing two shows on fifty-odd-year-old legs, Vita-Bath therapy and massage were not enough. In the stillness of my bedroom, I sat cross-legged on the floor and shut my eyes. I got up and put a cassette of music on the tape recorder, sat down, and shut my eyes again. I listened to a quiet tinkle of harp music and tried to allow my mind to have no thoughts at all. This wasn’t easy. It required trust and a kind of passive discipline that I was not used to because I am an overachiever who is motivated by will and by thought: but thoughts were what were causing the emotional glitches that in turn manifested as pain and tension in my body.