After
work tonight, I left the library in a bit of haste, trying to get to the gym on
time. But as I was walking down the broken escalator, the thoughts I had during
the day were coming back to me.
I was reflecting earlier in the
day on a problem during lunch hour. I had the thought: if people practice spirituality
for a long time, do they somehow start to neglect the phenomenal experiences or
dismiss them as ‘illusory’? And would this mean that spiritual practice leads
to a neglect of social activism? How do those two practices really connect with
each other? I couldn’t find an answer at all, and I think ruminating on that
one after lunch was a mistake for my stomach. I let it go as I went back to my
projects at work.
Later
during the day, I read the following lines from Keren Hering’s book, Writing to Wake the Soul. It reads: “A spiritual
practice…requires our internal consent, a willingness to sit still long enough
to receive—and be changed by—what comes” (p.26). I tried this practice of just receiving
the world as it is, and a totality, without imposing any sense of bounded ‘me’
against the other impressions coming up. And what I found was, as I was
descending the escalator step by step, there is no disconnect between being and
doing. The doing of something is always within a totality that is already
present, already here, and already available. There isn't this disconnect between being and going to do something. The boundary is somehow artificially created, perhaps out of some anxiety of wanting to keep these terms separate. I wonder: perhaps activism is just what is happening in this moment. It doesn't need some special alien motivation, it is what arises when defenses have come down and one sees interconnection with all experience. Walking is walking, sitting is sitting.
And when I came to open a door to
the subway, it felt natural for me to see the confusion of two teenage girls
who couldn’t decide which door to take, and then hold the door for them. They
said a very surprised (or maybe just embarrassed) “thank you”. I sensed an
older man carrying a small bicycle-like vehicle behind me, and I held the door
for him as well. I ended up just being a door for a few other people coming in
from the subway as well. Why? I think in that moment, I only really had to be
the door, to hold the door, to not have any sense of me doing anything at all.
And that was a relief from all the pressure of those doubts coming up from
earlier in the day.
If
someone were to ask me, why learn about spirituality or do a kind of practice
(such as prayer or meditation or mindful walking), I would have to say then
that it is not about emptying the contents of experience or mind. It is to
learn to fully receive those contents, or to frame them as part of true and
total mind. From there, anything is possible, including a heartfelt activism.
But most of the time, the state of mind can be very coarse and untrained. It takes practice to keep receiving the world in this way, not putting “I” here
and assigning “world” to there. That is why spiritual community and practice is so important.
Hering, Karen, (2013) Writing to Wake the Soul: Opening the Sacred Conversation Within. Hillsborough, Oregon: Beyond Words
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