Freedom and Responsibility

The Bait and Switch of The Spiritual Path

The Bait

At least for most of us as we find ourselves setting off on this spiritual search, we hear words or promises like peace, freedom, bliss, love or enlightenment. And any one of those things sounds quite enticing because we’re aware at least on some level of a basic dissatisfaction, something at the core level that’s unfulfilled. So quite naturally the ego hears of this possibility of peace or freedom and wants to know how to get it, how to keep it for itself.

Early on as I was reading all kinds of spiritual books, one definition I came across for Enlightenment that stuck with me all these years was this (paraphrased from memory): ‘Enlightenment is everything you’ve read about. It IS bliss, it is perfection, pure immortal love, spacious awareness… It is all that and more. The only problem with it is, you can’t be there.’

I know for myself, freedom really equated to an absence of responsibility, a feeling of I’m free to do as I wish when I want. It was more on the level of leaving work on a Friday before heading out on a vacation and the freeing feeling of leaving your everyday responsibilities behind. And while there certainly is a kind of freedom in that, it’s short lived and it’s relatively superficial.

Often we seek out a spiritual teacher, or we become religious in some way because we believe they, whether it’s the guru, priest or god can give us what we want; and we may actually believe that it’s their responsibility to do so. Truly there are so many traps in any religious or spiritual tradition because we hear things like “give it to god” or ‘trust god with all your heart,’ ‘Give your heart to Jesus,’ We're all one,’ ‘Put it in Gods hands…’.

The Switch

And so the ego hears an offering like that and it sounds like a very good deal. ‘Great, God will take my suffering, my pain, my problems…’ But what if when God said give it all to me, he meant all that can be lost or gained which includes your form, your identity, your personality, your good karma, your beliefs, your life.

This is when the honeymoon phase of the spiritual marriage ends and it starts getting very real; at least that’s how it has played out in my own experience. At first it was like finding a long lost love, and there was a loving joy and an experience of true and deep rest in myself. And it was exciting. Suddenly I was gravitating towards spiritual books and deeply resonating with Buddhist teachings and philosophies. The light flickered on.

Then at some point my attention switched from what am I wanting to get, hold onto or keep, to what am I willing to lose. And this can be quite a challenge because we definitely do have our attachments and what we perceive they give us, whether it’s comfort, safety, a sense of familiarity or just a sense of me and how I belong in this world. But finally this is a game of losing; the willingness to lose everything; to die before the body dies and discover what isn’t subject to coming and going—a challenge and an opportunity of a lifetime.

It takes everything.
It takes everything.

The ego, which always wants more, starts to sense it’s own demise and it begins to get very uncomfortable. In that discomfort, it resists, it contracts in fear, it defends, fights with everything it has. This can be extremely useful as it does its job in tiring itself out. And finally when we gets tired enough, and see the futility of the fight, there is an opportunity to truly surrender, to say I’ve tried everything, I’ve done everything I could do—I gave it my best shot.

Responsibility

Soon after I met my teacher, a rage I had no idea was even alive in me started to arise. Initially as it showed up it was directed at him. There was a fury brewing because he wouldn’t let me get away with anything. Somehow all my escape hatches were no longer accessible; it felt like the complete opposite of freedom. I felt trapped. My seemingly clever ways of avoiding, diverting, misdirecting, distracting, appeasing, amusing…all created so I could stay small, safe, comfortable and out of harms way were no longer working. In this, came a type of burn. The ego was burning up and the rage that has been avoided or even gone unnoticed my whole life was the friction needed to burn through a lifetime of conditioning. The crust around the eyes from a lifetime of sleepwalking was beginning to peel off. Through this process, because I was forced to sit face to face with myself and see the depth of self-betrayal, a love of truth was born only because it was too painful to continue the lie, the false narrative of a mechanical, unconscious self any longer.

Now that all my emergency exits were closed and it was quite clear that as long as my anger was directed outward, in this case towards my teacher, there was no chance of actually taking responsibility—only a victim story. But when I saw him as nothing more than a perfectly clear reflection of my own self, then there was an opportunity for a deeper seeing; and a space for clarity, wisdom and integrity to emerge. There was no god or guru to avoid, resist or impress—just me and a full “yes” to myself.

Truth and Love

At some point the realization sets in, that this isn’t just about reading spiritual books, nor is it about learning anything new; and it’s not about spiritual communities or meditation retreats. It is simply about telling the truth and then seeing what’s an even deeper truth than that, and then even deeper. It’s a willingness to be ruthlessly and lovingly honest with yourself. In this truth telling, all the subtle and unconscious lies gets exposed and ultimately we begin to see through the most elusive lie of all, the lie of “me and my importance.” The part the ego really doesn’t want to hear is that it is irrelevant. When this actually starts to set in, this is often the moment when those that eagerly signed up for a spiritual retreat start looking for something else, something more comforting, or more positive. Suddenly this spiritual path is not a matter of feeling better or self-improvement, it is a matter of life or death and Everything is on the line.

Beyond Belief

I’ve always considered myself very lucky in that I never got caught in the trap of religion. I was raised Jewish but it was very reformed and there was never an imposition on me to believe anything. I attended Hebrew school up to my Bar Mitzvah at age 13 and then that was the end of my affiliation with the Jewish religion, though I still do appreciate aspects of some of the Jewish holidays and certainly my love of Jewish food is well intact.

What I started to observe in people around me who claimed to be religious was a heavy emphasis on belief. A belief in this god or that god; this religion or that religion. But it started to dawn on me that it wasn’t really god people believed in, it was their beliefs in god and the learned practices that they were actually devoted to. God was already a few steps removed, “he” seemed to be nothing more than a concept. Some believe it’s bad to swear or it’s a sin to eat meat or shellfish, or a belief that if I do enough good deeds, I’ll go to heaven. As I started to see through the futility of beliefs I became much more interested in truth. And that meant starting with me. It meant seeing the beliefs I had running about myself, my own limited definitions of life and death, of reality and questioning their validity. In telling the truth, in opening to my irrelevance as a someone, there arose a deep humility in seeing the vast unknown mystery and an incredible tenderness in discovering the sacredness of each moment.

It became clear that any belief was actually some sort of protection, it was a way of sustaining a world view that made sense to me. In a strongly held belief I can hold something even as big as god inside me and in that there’s still a belief of Me in control, a Me who is doing the right thing. Of course there is comfort in beliefs, even more so if we surround ourselves with others who agree to believe the same thing. However, telling the truth, being willing to be naked, exposed and transparent, willing to not know, to lose is a bit more gritty, more gutsy; it’s not something you can recite or remember. But the willingness to tell the truth, just to yourself is actually an incredible act of love and kindness. In telling the truth, it isn’t about fixing, improving or guilt tripping, but simply the willingness to be open and unprotected and discover what is already free; what is true whether I believe it or not.