GOING FORWARD BY STEPPING BACK

“When you walk on the road in an evening and suddenly find a thick piece of long rope lying on the ground, instinctively you think of it as a snake and get scared! Where did this fear come from? How does it disappear? Did the snake change into a rope for your fear to disappear? No! The rope is still a rope, you mistook it to be a snake! The hallucination effect you had is a result of the worldly point of view. Realize that the whole world is a manifestation of the Divine (Brahman). Your vision is blurred by ignorance, illusion and hallucination, which sees the world as material objects and not as Divine Creations. Know that all you see in the world and think as real is actually unreal and false. The spiritual point of view clarifies your vision, and will let you experience truth as truth and will remove any fear.” Sai Baba 12-25-80

If all that we do or do most of the time, is to push forward to make progress, we engage in a one-trick pony. How many situations have we gotten ourselves into by being “brave” and going head-on in a situation? We often were ill-prepared, especially in reflecting on the merits of this technique versus another. Even if our choice modality is not to go forward blindly, we did so because we did not know of an alternative that could work, short of doing nothing. But that wouldn’t be brave would it? Bull-rushing responses are often characterized as meritorious despite their mediocrity in success.

We are made stronger, right?! We certainly are not availing ourselves of our options, options that may have a greater efficacy.

The prevailing problem in ‘pushing’ or it’s flip-side, ‘clinging’, is the near total ignorance of ‘the’ problem. The problem is that we are coming from the space and time of “problem”, not “fullness”. Secondly, we abandon ‘cause’ and deal with ‘effect’. That is, action versus re-action.

There is Buddhist thought that basically states that the majority of suffering is the result of ‘clinging’. Whether the form is ‘clinging’ or ‘pushing’, the core issue always boils down to attachment of ego to the phenomena. This ‘attachment’ reflects the desire to own and control and further belies the additional problem of ‘separation’ from Self.

Unconsciousness of our own desire to leave the ‘fullness’ with the apparition of mind that can never be sated, is the practice we engage in daily. Desiring, pushing, getting, wanting, clinging, thirsting for things outside of ourselves means that our starting point cannot be fullness. If our starting point were ‘fullness’, the meaninglessness of the above activity would be apparent to the degree that we would not be ‘so’ engaged in the drama. Effortlessness is not sticky and clingy and forceful like its counterpart of “pushing/clinging”.

Funny thing is, is that ‘fullness’ is our starting point and we don’t have to do anything to get there. Doing ‘something’ would be like Alan Watts said, putting legs on a snake.

When we push or cling, we are reacting to having a perceived deficit. We are no longer ‘Cause’, ‘acting’ or Being. We disengage, becoming ‘effect’, ‘reaction’, and ‘doing’. The “Fullness” just Is. When we misidentify ourselves with the stuff ‘outside’ and the comorbidity of ‘separateness’, we downgrade our existence to suffering and deficits. The ‘pushing/clinging’ model the ego/mind indulges in, is the abode of perennial suffering. The model is insufficient to sate ourselves deeply.

In Aikido, harmony with an opposing force is often first ‘stepping back’ in order to maintain connection with Self, the universe, and the aggressor. Stepping back is an extremely strong and effective technique. It creates space and reveals the intention and disharmony. It allows the opposing force to express itself fully and robustly. Then the harmonious movement of ‘two’ becomes ‘one’. Nothing was forced. The opportunity for ‘non-thinking’ Oneness appears with subsequent effortlessness of movement.

So, too, in disengaging the rant of the mind. We ‘practice’ in the Moment, seeing we are ‘in’ that open space that allows us to ‘see’ our hidden agendas of resistance to change and attachment to how we think things should be. We trade all that, for a ‘look’ at our reasons for feeling strongly about having this or that reaction. Why are we resisting helping this person? Do we really think that eating this cake will give us our missing part that we feel is gone right now? Why do we feel so compelled to talk ill of another when we know it’s negative effects?

Shifting out of our regular patterns allows us space to see our unconsciousness in action. We step back, ideally, habitually, to enable a bigger view of ourselves, so that we face ourselves and our less than heroic motivations. It is here where the purification and healing begin. The allowing and seeing, which is the effortless Cause, can now abide.

Through consistent practice of awareness and Being, we reveal the back doors of the mind where the light has not recently reached. We realize that the problems we have is not with others but with ourselves. We glare at the darkness that caused us to react the way we did and see that it began with us. ‘Us’ also is now expanded because we feel our separateness being reduced. We have become the Cause not the effect.

We can now love people as they are, without inwardly asking them to be different. We have made up that difference by ‘seeing’ ourselves more clearly by asking ourselves what our motivations and reasons are for feeling ‘this’ way. We realize that us changing inwardly changes the world outwardly to the degree we ‘see’ and ‘let’ it Be.

When we are ‘stuck’ we begin to understand that the universe is constantly changing and does not get ‘stuck’. The Universe changes. Our “stuckness” softens with forgiveness. Forgiveness for self and others is change. It allows us to go on and flex with the universe. The Universe is constantly forgiving and changing. Forgiving is changing, changing is forgiving, is letting go.

What we ‘think’ is real is not real. Be effortlessly the Cause. Step back and watch the drama unfold, let intentions be seen, and source the eternal witness and the plenum of fullness, constantly. This is the Real world. The Stillness and potentiate for everything Is always inside us. Attend to that. Stickiness and stuckness keep us glued to the ‘unreal’. Go forward by letting go and stepping back.

Be the Moment. This Iz Daddy’O