Unaltered State

Sogyal Rinpoche says in today’s meditation (Glimpse After Glimpse); “If you are in an unaltered state, it is Rigpa.” This tells me that I am led to believe that I am mistaken when I am trying to achieve some sort of altered state when I meditate. We think we need the right guru, the right gong, the right candles, the right incense and the right quiet place to achieve such a state of mind. The reality is that we when we depend on these things we are simply avoiding ourselves as we are. True humility tells me that I must see myself as I am without any of the subterfuges of ego and any meditation that takes me out of this awareness is contrary to any form of enlightenment and thus puts a barrier between me and you. Love is hard enough to understand and spiritual materialism is simply another wall that separates us. Even Bill W.  says; in his essay on Love (first published in the Grapevine’s January 1958 issue and can be found in The Best of Bill, p. 55); “There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of Saint Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away…. I found that I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever…” We can erroneously substitute ashrams, churches or whatever causes me to believe I am separate, superior or inferior from/to others.

This is the Saint Francis Prayer Bill W. is referring to: 

"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace --- that where there is hatred, I may bring love --- that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness --- that where there is discord, I may bring harmony --- that where there is doubt, I may bring faith --- that where there is dispair, I may bring hope --- that where there are shadows, I may bring light --- that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted --- to understand than to be understood --- to love than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen."

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