My Attempt at Summing Up the Spiritual Journey in One Article
If my head explodes in the process, it’s been nice knowing y’all.
Most of my articles zoom in on a specific aspect of the spiritual journey, often drawing on teachings from the likes of Ram Dass, Neem Karoli Baba, Michael Singer, Eckhart Tolle, et al. They’re meant to be pointers to nudge you forward.
It occurred to me that it would be useful to try zooming out, for a change; that is, to give the broad-brush summation of the whole path. And not in 50,000 words (in a book which I plan to write this year), but 1,000.
Let’s see if I can do that in a way that doesn’t make my head explode.
Two steps, awareness and practice
The journey can be boiled down to two steps, which we undertake simultaneously. Those two steps can be honed down to: awareness of our reality and practice.
Awareness, or understanding, simply means learning the reality of our situation. If I had to sum up the central problem plaguing humanity it would be that most of Earth’s inhabitants have no clue about that reality. The result is that most Earthlings are several French Fries short of a McDonald’s Happy Meal, to put it mildly.
What is that reality that most people aren’t aware of? The fact that their chattering, judgmental, insecure, fearful, out of control minds are not who they are.
Self-realization is what it’s all about
Realizing that you are not your thoughts is a massively consequential step on the path to overall well-being. It’s also the main point of Eckhart Tolle’s iconic book The Power of Now.
What do people do who think they are their thoughts and everything that goes on inside their crazy heads? They listen to all those things and respond accordingly, which usually doesn’t turn out well.
What kinds of things do they listen to?
- “She’d never go out with me. I’m a loser. Always have been. My parents told me that all the time and they should know.”
- “I’m an unattractive, lesser woman because my body isn’t pretty enough.”
- “Who am I, you ask? An incredibly brilliant, successful businessman.”
None of those are true. What all three of those people are, at their core, is a beautiful, conscious being. They’ve layered all that other stuff on top of that great being from their earliest years…just like the rest of us.
What do we call all that layered stuff on top that obscures the good stuff? The ego.
Why do we develop this ego that obscures the beauty of our natural self?
It’s complicated. But suffice it to say that we develop egos in order to defend ourselves from the outside world. I’ll offer the brief example of my dad.
My dad’s ego roots
My grandfather, dad’s dad, gambled away any money they had, resulting in their family having to move into an apartment with another family they didn’t know. It was deeply humiliating for my dad who for years made excuses to his friends about why they couldn’t come to his home.
The ego defense he built to protect himself was to work his ass off and become voraciously ambitious. This ego construction ultimately led him to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
That was the good part of it. The bad part is that he remained insecure in his core up until his last breath at age 93.
Bottom line on step one: We need to be aware of who we truly are, who we’re not, and why.
Fine. So we know who we are and who we aren’t. What do we do with that?
We cultivate it.
We incorporate it into our being.
How?
Through practicing.
Practicing what?
Anything that serves to quiet the mind and let go of the ego.
What practices help facilitate that?
There are three main ones that I recommend.
1. Meditation
You’ve heard me mention this in countless articles, but meditation is a profoundly helpful practice. Why?
Meditation is simply placing our attention on something that is in our field of present moment awareness.
The best-known example? Our breathing. Why is breathing commonly used in meditation? Because we can’t breathe five minutes ago or two hours in the future. Breathing ALWAYS takes place in the present moment.
How do we do it? We simply place our attention on the breath coming in, and the breath going out.
Inevitably, as we do this, our mind will snatch away our attention into thinking. When that happens, we simply notice that we’ve drifted and then bring our attention back to the breath.
We do this over and over and over again. As mindfulness icon Jon Kabat Zinn teaches:
“If your attention gets drawn into thought a thousand times, you simply bring it back to your breathing a thousand times.”
In addition to the salutary benefits of spending time in the present moment, meditation’s other critical function is to strengthen our “noticer” muscle, AKA our awareness. The stronger our awareness of thinking gets, the more distance we create between the two, which results in a gradual quieting of the mind.
How to get going on meditating? I’ll be writing an article in the coming weeks that will serve as a starter kit for you. My overarching objective will be to make it as EASY as possible.
2. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a macro form of meditation that we do in our daily lives. How so?
Well, in meditation, we place our attention on something happening in the moment, like our breathing, then, when we notice we’ve drifted into thinking, we return to our breath.
With mindfulness, we notice in our daily lives when we drift away from the moment we’re in to thinking or egoic, reactive behaviors. Like what?
- Leaning on your horn and screaming at a driver who cut you off.
- Staring out your office window for five minutes ruminating about how mad you are at your boyfriend.
- While your five-year-old daughter excitedly recounts her day as you put her to bed, all you can think about is which Netflix show you’ll watch when she nods off.
When these things happen, we simply notice it, and then situate ourselves again in the moment in front of us.
And we do this non-judgmentally. Meaning, we don’t say, “What a crappy dad I am for not listening to my daughter.” Instead, we simply say, “Drifted into thinking about Netflix shows. Time to go back to listening to Mia.” Boom. That’s it.
Doing this several times a day, day after day, results in a quieter mind.
3. Letting Go
I’ve written extensively about letting go, which is a subset of mindfulness. Suffice it to say that we all have experiences in our lives that were either really good, which we cling to, or really bad, which we resist, but in doing so, hold onto them instead of letting them pass through.
All of those ‘held onto’ experiences comprise, in the form of energy, our emotional, egoic baggage, or Samskaras in the Sanskrit language. Those energies run, and in many cases ruin, our lives.
Think of it as a little tank of energy floating around in our lower selves. Each time one of those Samskaras is provoked, it is released from the tank.
We can then either react to it with sadness or anger, etc.; or, we can relax, lean away from it, give it space, and let it go.
Reacting and engaging with the Samskara results in it returning to the tank, stronger than ever. Relaxing and leaning away from it allows the Samskara to escape from the tank.
A major, if not the major, objective of spiritual work is draining that tank of stuck energy.
The sum up of the sum up
So there it is. The path to liberation in a little over 1335 words (sorry, couldn’t do 1,000).
It’s about continually working to quiet the mind, through practices like meditation, mindfulness and letting go, until we finally realize who we truly are…
A beautiful, compassionate, peaceful field of consciousness.