The Authentic Life (11 page)

The next step is to directly feel the physical contraction in the thought-body connected with this belief. What does it feel like, physically, when we believe this thought? Is there a specific feeling in the body that accompanies our negative self-judgments? If we observe closely, the answer will be yes. The sensations, of course, are the feelings of fear and emotional pain that arise from deep within our conditioning—the pain of feeling basically alone and separate. This feeling of incompleteness is very unpleasant, and we will instinctively want to turn away from it, because we tend to want to avoid discomfort in any form. That's why the quality of perseverance is of key importance; we have to learn to just
stay
, even when our experience is not pleasing us in the ordinary sense. Put simply, the solution is never about fixing but rather about staying.

When we consciously reside in the physical feeling accompanying the belief in our fundamental separation, we gradually begin to recognize its insubstantiality. Staying fully present with this discomfort will often diminish it to the extent that it's no longer problematic. However, the objective is not to wage war with our judgments or with our discomfort, but to just observe and feel, as objectively as possible, what is happening
right now.
This is bound to require repeated efforts, since the patterns are so deeply embedded. What we're doing is learning to receive and include the whole of our being, just as it is, no longer judging, editing, rejecting.

I spoke earlier of my initial experiences in meditation, where I would be regularly disappointed by my spinning mind, judging myself and then trying harder, mostly unsuccessfully, to become calm. Now, many years later, there are still times when I sit down to meditate and my mind is all over the map. However, the difference now is that I am not particularly disappointed in myself. I don't judge myself as lacking, nor do I try to calm down. Instead, I just stay with the present-moment experience of scattered energy and thoughts. To really stay with scattered energy, without judgment, can actually bring a sense of equanimity.

Bringing conscious awareness to our self-judgment that we are fundamentally not okay allows us to see it for what it is—a deeply conditioned belief that causes not only suffering but also our endless and misguided quest to measure up. Yet as we feel into the roots of our suffering, not only does compassion for ourselves arise but also compassion for others who are caught in similar patterns of suffering.

As our understanding and compassion deepens, even though the self-judgments may still arise, we will no longer believe them as The Truth. You certainly don't have to accept this on faith. If you sincerely want to live more authentically, you can
verify for yourself what is possible. Remember, it's a given that the mind will ceaselessly generate judgments. Yet with each unexamined judgment, and the consequent effort to measure up, we end up living a life that is neither real nor satisfying. This is the inauthentic subjective world of living from “Me.” But observing our patterns of judging and striving, and feeling how they impact the body, it becomes possible to open to the experience of just being. Just as the judging mind and the need to measure up are at the root of our dissatisfaction, this underlying awareness of just being is one of the sources of our fundamental contentment. But to cultivate this awareness and to live a truly authentic life, we have to start by uncovering and working with the judgments and behaviors that block it.

10

Shades of Gray

T
here is a common tendency among human beings to see things in terms of black or white—in an attempt to simplify life and create the illusion that we understand things and are in control. But things are rarely simple—life comes to us much more in the form of complexity and continuums; and further, life is always changing. So it's important to look beyond our tendency to see things as black or white, and instead be aware that life appears in many shades of gray. This is particularly true when trying to learn to live more authentically, when we can easily get lost in confusion, especially in those areas where we don't see the subtle shades of gray in our own feelings and behavior.

E
XPECTATION
AND
A
SPIRATION

One of the main places we get confused is in not differentiating between expectation and aspiration. Everyone has expectations
when they start practice, often in the form of hopes of becoming calm and peaceful. My expectation, and what drove me for many years, was that practice would help me become free from my fears. On the other hand, when we think about aspiration, we usually think about something higher than a personal expectation—a higher calling.

Yet the question might arise, Isn't our aspiration to wake up just another way of trying to fulfill our expectations that practice will take away our difficulties, and consequently make us feel better? This is an important question, and the best way to answer it is to look inside ourselves at our own experience. Sometimes it's difficult to tell what exactly is driving us; is it the small mind that just wants to feel better, or is it something deeper inside us?

One clue: being driven by expectations will almost always lead to disappointment. Why? Because it is not based on what life is, but on what we want life to be. For example, expectation, which is based in the mind, is often rooted in the ego-driven ambition to get something, such as enlightenment, or, at very least, to feel differently, namely calm, free from fear, or to appear wise. Sometimes practice may, in part, meet our expectations and thereby reinforce them. But when practice doesn't meet our expectations—that is, when we don't get what we want—we experience disappointment.

Having the expectation that we can be free from all of our problems can even lead to discouragement and depression, because it ignores the fact that life will never stop testing us with difficulties. Yet our disappointment, whether in the form of sadness, anger, self-pity, bitterness or whatever, is like a red flag. It is telling us to look more closely at what we're up to. What we'll see is that our expectations were an exact setup for our disappointment. This is why it's important to recognize where we're
caught in our expectations, or in feeling entitled to have life be
any
particular way.

While expectation is based in the mind, we can say that aspiration is based in the heart, or in our essential nature. Aspiration has been described as our true nature striving to reveal itself. In other words, it can be seen as an inherent movement toward who we truly are, like an acorn becoming an oak tree. Conversely, the efforts of expectation are often characterized by ambition, neediness, and fear. The effort of aspiration is softer, not as driven by results as by the inner impulse to live more genuinely.

I remember sitting in Trinity Church on a trip to New York City fairly recently. I love to meditate in churches—there's something about the setting that I believe is very conducive to getting in touch with oneself. As I was sitting there, I wasn't thinking about anything in particular, and then out of the blue it hit me that what I most deeply wanted, what I have always wanted, ever since I began the path of meditation over forty years ago, is to simply dwell in the heart of awareness, and to live from that place. This includes living with kindness and gratitude, and being free of the constriction of attachment and fear. To me, this is what it means to live from aspiration, to live most authentically. It's not about getting somewhere or becoming someone else—it's about becoming who I most truly am.

Unfortunately, when expectations become dominant, our aspiration tends to get dwarfed. The small mind of the ego wants what it wants—often based in the desire for comfort and security—and it speaks with a louder voice than the softer voice of aspiration. But over time, particularly as we learn to be more inwardly quiet and open, we can hear the more deeply compelling message of our aspiration.

Often aspiration and expectation intertwine, and it may be
hard to know who's who in our internal zoo. This is why it's rarely black or white—one or the other. Yet an important part of the practice life is to continually feed the part of us that wants to wake up. Whether it's through meditation, prayer, reading, being in nature—we have to use whatever we can to nourish the aspiration that urges us to realize our true nature.

P
ERSONAL
L
OVE AND THE
B
IG
L
OVE

This one is very difficult to talk about, in part because there are many different forms of personal love. There is the love of a parent for a child, the love between friends, romantic love, sexual love, and others. Personal love always involves intense good feelings, and often a sense of connectedness. In some cases, particularly in romantic love, there is an accompanying flow of chemicals, such as dopamine and endorphins, that contribute to a very rosy view. Then, as the initial glow subsides, so does the flow of chemicals, and we can go from “roses, roses” to “thorns, thorns.”

Personal love is always based on attachment to our feelings. In other words, it's predicated on the emotion-based belief that without this particular person I can't be happy. This form of clinging includes the enjoyment we get when we're with the person, as well as the angst we feel when we think of losing the person. But is attachment really love? Is it love when what we love is the idea of the person and what we believe they can give us, and not the actual person? Is it love when what we love is the feeling of love and not the actual person? Is it love when we believe we can't live or be happy without the person? Isn't this much closer to neediness and fear than it is to love?

It's important to acknowledge up front that most of us are going to have—or want—personal love. This is normal. We just
need to see it for what it is. Now let's compare personal love to Big Love, the love that is our true nature. This Big Love is very hard to talk about without getting theoretical. But if you've experienced this, it becomes clear that there are certain qualities that are quite different from our normal experience of personal love. One quality of Big Love is that it is all-embracing—that is, it includes everyone and everything. Like the sun's rays shining on everyone equally, regardless of good or bad, the experience of Big Love is not directed toward just one person.

Nor does it ask for something in return. In personal love there is always the expectation that we'll get something—attention, security, emotional gratification, pleasure, and on and on. There is an unspoken bargain: if you don't give me what I want I won't give you what you want. But in Big Love there are no expectations of reward; the love is given freely—freely in the most literal sense.

Big Love is also not personal—that is, it is not exactly about “Me.” There is not the thought that
I
am loving, or that my love deserves merit. The only way to put this is, “Big Love simply
is
.” This is why we say that Big Love is the natural state of our being, when our personal needs, agendas, and fears no longer block it.

It's easy to lose sight of even the possibility of Big Love, even though it is the fruit of living most authentically, most in touch with our true nature. We are seduced again and again by the promise of personal love, in spite of all the disappointment and anguish and fear that is so much a part of the personal-love dynamic. Where the shades of gray appear is in the experience of connectedness that is common to both personal love and Big Love. But once we have enough tastes of Big Love, it gets easier to see the difference—the connectedness of personal love is very small and subjective, always directed toward another person,
whereas the sense of connectedness in Big Love is more global and inclusive.

Recently, when I was out for a cup of coffee with Elizabeth, I ate a rather big piece of chocolate. Twenty minutes later, when the chemicals hit, I felt full of love and the feeling of connectedness. In other words, I was feeling personally very happy in the moment. But even though it felt close to Big Love, in truth, I knew it was just an ephemeral feeling. It certainly felt good and there was nothing wrong with it, but it was clear that the feeling was dependent on my having had a good day as well as a good dose of chocolate. It was also clear that the love I was experiencing wasn't the state of Being that is revealed when our fears and stories and agendas drop away—where we experience the freedom of just being, where the love includes everyone and everything.

Again, there's nothing wrong with personal love, other than that it is often based in ever-changing external conditions—sometimes something as simple as a piece of chocolate. We can still enjoy it and appreciate it, as long as we understand it for what it actually is, and as long as we can remain open to the bigger love that is our true nature. The question is, how long will we go on living a life where Big Love is not a real part? How long will we settle for just the pleasure of personal love? To live most authentically requires working with whatever blocks the love that is our true nature from coming forth.

L
ETTING
G
O AND
L
ETTING
B
E

“Letting go” is one of the most popular phrases in spiritual practice. It is even common in everyday usage. Basically, letting go means that we can, and should, drop something that is not good for us, such as a harmful attitude or a burdensome emotion.

Often the advice to “let something go” is well intentioned, and certainly we can occasionally unburden ourselves by just letting go. But usually the things we can simply let go of are very small. For example, if the Yankees, which are my favorite baseball team, lose a game, it is fairly easy for me to shrug it off and not wallow in upset. However, when it comes to deep-seated emotions or deeply conditioned attitudes, the idea of letting go is, for me, more wishful thinking than it is a realistic possibility.