San Juan De la Cruz (1542 to 1591)

*****

WITHOUT A PLACE

Without a place and with a place
to rest, living darkly with no ray
of light, I burn myself away.

My soul, no longer bound, is free
From the creations of the world;
above itself is hurled
into a life of ecstasy,
leaning only on God. The world
will therefore clarify at last
what I esteem of highest grace:
my soul revealing it can rest
without a place and with a place.

Although I suffer a dark night
In mortal life, I also know
My agony is slight, for though
I am in darkness without light,
a clear heavenly life I know;
for love gives power to my life,
however black and blind my day,
to yield my soul, and free of strife
to rest, living darkly with no ray.

Love can perform a wondrous labor
which I have learned internally,
and all the good or bad in me
takes on a penetrating savor,
changing my soul so it can be
consumed in a delicious flame.
I feel it in me as a ray;
and quickly killing every trace
of light, I burn myself away.

With a Place and Without a Place

San Juan de la Cruz

(@ 1542 to Dec. 14, 1591)

~

For the longest night of the year, Winter Solstice, my offering today is this poem by my mentor in hard times. He teaches that it never gets so bleak that the Heart of Compassion can’t reach my soul. If fact, it is in those dark nights of the soul that this Spirit draws nearest.

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Agents of Confusion

To probe into your roots:
The ignorance and confusion are you yourself.
The preconceptions which are yourself
Are envoys and agents sent by yourself.

Drinking the Mountain Stream:

Songs of Tibet's Beloved

Saint, Milarepa

~

Agents sent by myself… If I’m confused or ignorant; my words, my thoughts, my ideals and everything about me sets up a vibration… a mood… an attitude that projects to others. What is meant by ignorance by Milarepa? I know deep down that he’s talking about being uneducated as much as about being unaware. Unaware of myself as well as how my actions affect others. My attitude determines how my thinking is put into actions that reinforce these beliefs. In AA we say that we can’t think our way into sobriety but we can act our way into it. Unfortunately, many mistakenly suppose that this means that our actions preempt mediation. This happens because it is also supposed that meditation is about sitting in the lotus position and thinking about our character defects and hoping to change them through introspection. Probing into our roots in a manner that is most productive to me has more to do with mindfully bringing my motivations to light without judgment; looking at myself from a perspective free of preconceptions. The more I am successful at this the better able I am to see others in the same light with compassion and understanding.

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Calm Abiding

The practice of mindfulness, of bringing the scattered mind home, and so of bringing the different aspects of being into focus, is called Peacefully Remaining or Calm Abiding.

    All the fragmented aspects of ourselves, which had been at war, settle and dissolve and became friends. In that settling we begin to understand ourselves more, and sometimes even have glimpses or the radiance of our fundamental nature.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

~

   I get it, this whole business of mindfulness, when I defragment my computer. Files scattered all over the disk are brought together… defragmented. The more scattered the files on the disk, the longer it takes. The ultimate end of it is to help my computer run more efficiently. My mind is fragmented… worries;… plans… even beliefs… all of these and more distract me, putting obstacles in the way of clarity. Living in the past or projecting into the future, the present is skipped over as though it wasn’t important at all. I look back at my life and can see a series of moments resulting in long term consequences… both for good and bad. How many times did a chance meeting result in a life-long friendship or love affair? I have sat in a jail cell regretting that moment of fear, desire, anger or drunken disregard for consequences that ended badly for me. It is the moment I am in that insists on clarity of mind; from how I act down to the words I use rooted in my consciousness. Conscious contact with the Heart of Compassion opens my mind to a Calm Abiding moment, free of fear, resulting in a consciousness that transmits compassion.

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Grace of God or Psychological Tricks

HONESTY WITH NEWCOMERS

Tell him exactly what happened to you. Stress the spiritual feature freely.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 93

The marvel of A.A. is that I tell only what happened to me. I don’t waste time offering advice to the potential newcomers, for, if advice worked, nobody would get to A.A. All I have to do is show what has brought me to sobriety and what has changed my life. If I fail to stress the spiritual feature of A.A.’s program. I am being dishonest. The newcomer should not be given a false impression of sobriety. I am sober only through the grace of my Higher Power, and that makes it possible for me to share with others.

DAILY REFLECTIONS, p. 361

~

This “grace of God” business is the absolute top priority for obtaining any sort of reliable sobriety for most of us. Granted, there are those who put down the bottle, the pills, the pipe and the kit for the rest of their lives on their own power. However, I have seen that programs omitting the necessity of a spiritual awakening depend mostly on self-awareness and teachings of doctrines with some kind of moral component or psychological tricks in order to avoid the obvious temptation to pick up and use. Any one of these things might have worked for me if they were seen as supplements to continually improved contact with a power greater than myself, but would have failed in frustration and despair, otherwise. It becomes a business of “Thou shalt nots…” instead of the new freedom and joy of discovery I'd found, once I surrendered all the devices of ego.

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The Clarity of "I Don't Know"

When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn. And in it all-revealing clarity can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and nature of reality.
Glimpse After Glimpse
Sogyal Rinpoche

~

The mindfulness of meditation seems an unreachable goal in the face of the nature of reality that reveals itself in the horrors of the day. Sometimes it is the absolute terror and insanity of the nature of reality that challenges my equilibrium and I look for answers… solutions to the problem… falling back into self-righteous indignation… seeking something, anything, to blame… depression over my own powerlessness to do anything about it… anger seething deep inside where the darkness of confusion reigns.

Facing this reality; I sit, wait, pause… and ask: do I believe in a power greater than myself? Is there evil in the world? Can I see it for what it is? Can I trust that the Heart of Compassion will prevail in the midst of chaos? Where do I place my faith? I look inside with questions of this nature and sense a direction transcending, but not escaping the apparent reality of suffering. If ever there has been a need for clarity it is in times like these when faith is challenged. Letting go of long-held beliefs, I look into my heart and seek direction: which ones do I hold as “articles of faith” and which ones do I know to be true through experience?

I trust in the Spirit of Compassion because that mysterious reality lifted me from the grips of an unyielding and powerful addiction that I could not overcome of my own volition. This is the thin thread of faith that extends to the rest… a holy “I Don’t Know” is my best starting point towards an all-revealing clarity of mind.
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Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Buy the truth and sell it not; also wisdom and instruction, and understanding (Proverbs 12:23).

…You will never demonstrate or progress on mere theories that you have not put to the test. You will never demonstrate or grow spiritually on what is in a textbook or a lecture until you have begun to put such knowledge into practice. It is far better to have a thimble of spiritual knowledge and use it than to have a whole mountain of correct spiritual doctrine most of which you have never made work.

From: Around the Year

With Emmet Fox, p. 350

~

    A friend was being proselytized by a religious fanatic when he tried to give the preacher pause by saying, “I want to believe in the religion God believes in.”

    The preacher answered, asserting in all honesty the finality of his faith, “God is a Catholic.” 

    I wonder what this guy thinks God believed in before there ever was a Catholic, a Buddhist, Lutheran, or any other religion invented or contrived by us.

   The first thing that comes to mind for most of us, when we are asked about faith, we will almost instinctively answer with which Faith we belong to; Catholic, Lutheran, Buddhist and so on. Or, if we aren’t religious, we might try to explain the philosophy we adhere to… existentialism, Communism, or Laissez Faire capitalism, but for me, faith is an action I take and not a theory or doctrine. 

   A practical faith is that which I have found useful. It does take a leap of faith at first, but soon after I find something that works, the nature of my faith evolves into trust. Where faith fails me is where I find I can no longer trust what I acted on in the past. What has worked in the past may not work for me now. If I am not willing to allow my faith to grow, I will sink into a set of beliefs that have no actual meaning in my daily affairs or how I act. I.e., walking into a cathedral might inspire and lift my spirit enough to evoke some peace and calm in my heart. But, if that is as far as I go, my faith will dissolve and this experience will become routine and stagnant.

   Meditation is like that too. At first I sat thinking that peace and calm was all there was to it until I put into practice the teachings and was willing to try them out in a practical context. When I treat others as I would like to be treated I am at first amazed at how well it works. But even this is only a doorstep to a higher consciousness and I rob myself if I don’t enter the door that step leads to. 
   After all, I'm just knockin' on Heaven's door.

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The Buddha Prayer

By the power and the truth of this practice
May all beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness;
May all be free from sorrow, and the causes of sorrow;
May all never be separated from the sacred happiness which is sorrowless;
And may all have equanimity; without too much
attachment and too much aversion,
And live believing in the equality of all that lives.

Prayer offered by

Sogyal Rinpoche today  in,

Glimpse After Glimpse

~

In light of yesterday’s tragedy, I pause today. This is not the time for answers… this is a time for grief. Before I allow myself to escape, from the heart to the head, I must grieve. That computer behind the eyes and between the ears does the job of theorizing and compiling information towards action but it behooves me not to go there in times like these because it is when these horrible incidents occur that I am tempted to bypass the heart and go straight to the head. As I watched the day unwind, I can admit that my mind searched for a reason… I am almost ashamed to admit that my head, searching for answers, hoped the murderer would have been an Islamic extremist… a radical extremist of some sort... someone with a motivation… someone to blame… something to be outraged about. But when the truth unraveled that it was just another one of us whose lid had blown… my God, there was no REASON! So I sat and grieved. I just had to allow my heart to take in what had happened to those children and their families… to those teachers and their loved ones… to the family of the soul that walked in the school and pulled the trigger on the innocents… Feel the sorrow and breathe it in… accept that there are no answers at this time. Maybe later when the head can take what the heart has revealed… but not until the heart has healed… in the meantime I must, for my own sanity's sake, keep my heart focused where I can grieve out of respect for those who suffer.

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