Month: November 2010

Whenever I am in experience, which is occurring all the time, where would I place my experience? Close to me, on the other end of my relationship or in-between? The position of the experience tells me my own integrity and responsibility I take upon myself. When I am upset, I observe that my experience is either far on the opposite side, or middle, and rarely close to me. I seldom realize that the experience is actually me, but instead want someone to take responsibility of it and thus project it upon them. In other words, I viewed that the person who is relating to me is the cause of my upset, hence placing that upset experience close to him, making him responsible for my pain.

And when I become more conscious of such act, I play the in-between game, making both of us responsible for the pain. I give the meaning that it takes two palms to clap and thus it cannot be me alone that is causing the pain but because of him or her that initiated that pain in me. Doing so makes me experience half of what I am feeling and wanting the other too to be in pain. And if I don’t get to see what I am wanting to experience, I will scheme my way through to make the other suffer by either continuing the argument, blowing it up or if I failed, I will start a cold war with the other.

And when I find that I have made even with the other, I’d call it a truce and come to peace with my pain. But rarely did I get out from that guilt. It is just a matter of time I see the other doing that to me again. It is a constantly painful journey of attack and defence, repeating itself anciently over and over again – so obvious that it can be anticipated what is coming up next in my space and what I am going to do, in revenge, with addiction and not able to get out of it.

And when I finally see the pain of this unbreakable chain, I willingly come fully to my own integrity and see what is the cause of this matter. Could it be that I am missing the mark of each experience? Could it be that I am not seeing that the experience is actually me rather than to me or for me?

For that I have to turn the radar of attention inward instead of outward each time I am being praised, admonished, disapproved, blamed, whatever. There is something that I am not seeing other than what I thought is coming from “out there” other than me. Each experience is indicating a truth about me, except that I do not see further than that. I do not see what ideas run behind my experience. I do not see how my feelings have much to do with my perception. I also do not see how my perception has much to do with what I have judged or concluded in the past. There is an unquestioned history to all my experiences and to be awake is to undo all the history that blocks me from peace, from total freedom in each experience.

Come back to nature
when the heart is weary
when pain is not resolved
when solution seems unseen

Come back to nature
when expectation is unmet
when need is unfulfilled
and desire seems to pound

Come back to who we are
come back to what is
come back to any experiences
that we had projected outwardly

For everything is nature
unfolding itself
exactly as it is
of conditions met
having results as its end

How then can I say I want it another way?
how can there be a should
when conditions are not met
that resulted other than what I want.

I missed the mark when I react to result
forgetting that it is the cause that make it so
for cause and effect, a set of completion
is nature taking its own course.

Hence to come to my own peace
let me be wise to observe its correlations
and to work on its cause
so that its effect is what I am
and not the other way round.

In that process
I am nature
working with nature
undoing the world
making peace and freedom as my objective.

When I am in the process of awakening to myself, in short, taking on the spiritual path, every relationship that comes my way becomes a spiritual relationship. The difference between a normal relationship of what I experience in the past, and a spiritual relationship of which I experience now is that the former was unconscious, and the latter, conscious. Spiritual relationship constantly brings me to face myself, eventhough it seems there is someone out there that I need to face. Ultimately, both of it is actually one – me with myself.

In relationship, I am constantly being tossed left and right, to and fro, or up and down, like a ship on a rough sea. And my work is to make sure that I am not drowned by it. But most of the time it is not a pleasant ride, as “to relate” as in a relationship, is to mean relating my idea with another coming up my way. Rarely my idea is in synchronicity with the world, as the world itself too is not in sync. What I am to mean is that majority of the time, we come from the space of ego, or ignorance, rather than from wisdom, or spirit. There is always intrusion into what is natural, of wanting to get in the way, or pushing and rushing in. Impatience and eagerness make us scheme and manipulate what is flowing, having its own natural course interrupted, hence creating discordance and disharmony.

I am constantly over-extending or under-extending myself in a relationship. It is more obvious when a new relationship comes into the picture compared to one that is already deeply ingrained in guilt. I catch myself many a time where there is a tendency of manipulating my speech to escape my own pain or to make the other small so as to entice them into my own need. For one who is not conscious of how the mind works, he or she may not be aware that the result of a loving state can arise from manipulation. In reality the loving state we constantly experience is conditional and not unconditional, and as such it is pretty obvious that it has attachment to it, deriving from satisfaction of certain causes that each has the same root mentality of “what’s in for me”. With that in mind, scheming is already at play, probably so deeply rooted in us that we are not conscious at all about its presence in our thought, speech or action and thus thought we are holy in a loving state.

Many will attest that when we become spiritual, we start to find how evil or crooked our intentions can be. As the saying goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions. There is a certain level of truth to that statement as the good intention we think it is, is actually frequently tainted with ill-intent. Look at most of the good deeds we do – seldom is it from the space of unconditional love, but what’s in for me.

It is a calling for vigilance in spiritual relationship so that the wholesome purpose of mental purification does not fall back into its old pattern of co-dependency of deception. It is so easy to fall and difficult to be awakened to that pattern. And it takes another conscious spirit to spar to awaken another to this journey. In fact, when both are intended towards spirituality, acceleration of the path is unavoidable. But be forewarned, it is a journey of discomfort in the beginning and joy and freedom in the end, constantly in process as and when relationship of ideas comes into picture. That’s the bane and boon of spiritual relationship.