Parkway to Paradise, Highway to Hell: in Search of the Gateless Gate

Lately I’ve been hearing quite personally all those reminders that Nirvana and Samsara ("liberation into the goal” and “obsession with the obstacle” respectively)—well, they both exist in the same moment, use the same stuff, occupy the same space. Intellectually, it makes me think Christians need to expand their cosmologies of heaven and hell in similar directions, but I didn’t want to write an intellectually driven post today. Lately, see, I’ve been hearing Ram Dass’ warning with particular force, the one from his book Love Service Devotion about the way we “recreate our own heaven or hell wherever we go—whichever one we’re attached to, anyway.” I’ve been noticing I am so obsessed with the ego, that I can’t connect with egolessness. And lately it’s been getting to me.

In the past, I’ve had several opportunities to encounter what I consider to be “the door to egolessness.” What I mean by this is, I’ll be full of a bunch of mind-moments that seem Very Important, or Very Spiritual. I’ll be, on some level, conscious of the fact that I’m “praying." And in the midst of these mind-moments, “egolessness” will be represented. People say that, if you’re in prayer and you see a door, go through it. If you see a snake, jump into its mouth. Give it a hug. Turn and face it. I come to that wise advice with a history of having misinterpreted the mental phenomena of my spiritual life, though, and it makes it hard to hear. [bxA]

Thus far, every time I’ve been "given a door” in prayer—and this can be as literal as the time I mentally “saw a door” and knew it was “non-self”—I’ve backed away from it. On a dualistic level, where part of the game is evaluating the relative spiritual worth of those phenomena, those doors were either false spiritual phenomena, or the real thing. Failing to go through them is either a genuine missed opportunity, a mistake that will require many more lifetimes of ego-shedding to correct, or it’s spiritually prudent. I don’t know which, though, and I’m slowly learning not to care.

When I was in the monastery, using the different phenomena I experienced in prayer as credentials, I built a narrative that talked about my own spiritual proficiency. I looked down on other people. I paid lip service to needing a redeemer, but balked when he presented himself as a stranger in need. Upon realizing this, I tried to resolve it with a path other than the monastery, failing to see that the problem was the “me” doing the journeying, the degree to which I identified with that “me,” and the system of desires to which that "me" was over-attached.

I’ve been getting pre-occupied lately, and yet I am suspicious of the spiritually obvious. The devil can present himself, and has presented himself, as an angel of light. As the rule of St. Benedict references proverbs 16:25 saying “there are ways that men call right which in the end plunge him into the depths of hell.” I bought both of those T-shirts with great gusto. Were Christ’s second coming to happen, if I were faced with the final, rapturous messiah, I’d probably flee. I’d courteously give my apologies: “Look, man, it’s for your own good. I crucified you the first time around.” The question arises, and it’s valid: is all the work of Under the Influence re-creating
the hell I was in during my time in the monastery, just a hell wearing the saffron robes of a buddhist monk rather than the black and white ones of the Trappists?

If the door to non-self and humility and enlightenment is going to be obvious, I’ll most likely be playing a high stakes game of "Ding Dong Ditch” for the rest of this incarnation. I’ll ring the doorbell atop the stairway to heaven, then hide in the bushes, fearing being found, and costumed in my ego. If the door to humility were obvious, I’d make a great game of spiritual tomfoolery, make it a halloween night full of bag snatching and egging celestial mansions. I’d think myself above dressing up like a princess and begging sweets door to door. I’d be a spiritual curmudgeon, unwilling to wait for the great pumpkin to come like the rest of the losers.

Marshaling as much honest self-appraisal I can muster, I feel I can bank on three things.

For one thing, I need to look critically at chasing insight.  Often, I’ll hear a little voice in my head, one that loops statements like “I've answered a great many koans, with what, if I do say so myself, seems like success.” Even when my seeming “enlightened responses” garner something more than self congratulation, as they sometimes have, they’re perilous. You see, those “Aha” moments (where distance and potential and time all collapse into "here and now" and “doing what I’m doing”) well, those moments are nothing special. And if I treat it as remarkable, I’m going to get caught up in ego and desire again, albeit ego and desire dressed in Guru’s Garments.

For another thing, I need to look critically at interpreting my spiritual practices. To set this up: I “om” on my way back from work. I have an “om” audio track, and I join in, and I work with feelings and sounds. I like spending my commute this way, because the physical isolation of a moving car forces a confrontation with interior motion, helps me to “just drive." Not being able to go anywhere eventually leads me to be right where I am. Also, in a car, I can’t chase after altered states of consciousness. If my Sahasrara Chakra (the “Big" and "Important one," on the top of the head) opens on 355 North, if I go into nirvakalp samadhi, taking leave of my senses and allowing myself to be mentally elsewhere, I’ll cause a 7 car pileup. Death in a twisted ball of flaming metal is reason aplenty to keep my feet nailed to the floor.

Anyway, I om, and if I get caught up in “why I om” or “what om-ing means” I start abstracting, thinking about life instead of living it, building up the “false self” that om-ing was meant to shoot through with the vibration of healing. But letting the sound do the work while I rest in its vibrations implies a fierce relaxation of “myself as the doer." Allowing “om” to be the vehicle of a change wrought by God implies resting at what Under the Influence calls the “First theonoia” of pure perception: it means feeling the sensation and letting it go.

On the Level of Dualism, I still very much need a redeemer. I still need someone to be devoted to. I look at the consistency with which my own spiritual practices have led me to eating Ego and attachment for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and my need for a redeemer who comes to the banquet at midnight and takes things in another direction is obvious. In the meanwhile, the scriptures are fulfilled. I project my egoic woundedness onto other people and God, I blame other people for my problems, and the words of Zechariah 12:10 ring in the ears of my ears "You will look on the one whom you have pierced.” This is profoundly true. I’d like to say I’m hoping that a day will come when the scripture from Isaiah 10:20 is fulfilled that says "You will no longer lean on the one who struck you.” I’d like a day to come when I’m done with ego. But in any given moment, I’m apt to have my eyes closed to the ways I’m confusing hope (which is delight in what God provides) with expectation (egotistically setting up a paradigm in my head which will net disappointment if it doesn’t happen.) If I’m doing that, then "not giving me what I hope for" is just of God, and somewhat begrudgingly much-appreciated.

On a level of monism, I know I have work to do internalizing the messiah. The Apostles had to do it with Jesus after his death, and he trained them in that way. First he died, then he rose, appearing to them first in a form they recognized, then in the form of strangers-revealed-as-Christ. Eventually the apostles were doing less internal gymnastics to reach the conclusion that the person in front of them was Christ. By the time Christianity gets to the apostle Paul, our True Selves are “hidden with Christ in God” and by the time it gets to Therese of Lisieux, we’re told “Christ has no body now but yours.” These are text-book patterns, common in Bhakti, or Devotional Yoga, and precisely identical to, say, the movements of “Guru Kripa” or the internalization of the guru in Hinduism. With my own rabbi, I have that work to do. I may eventually realize that everyone, including myself, is the messiah.
But all that is analysis. And if the spiritual game is like monopoly, analysis is a chance card that either gives you a sudden windfall or sends you to jail, directly to jail, without passing go, without collecting two hundred dollars.

It seems, finally, that there is another way, and it seems to be the way that, for me, gets the job done. If I find myself anxious about anything—God and spirituality included, because neurosis will use anything it can to snag a fella-- I concentrate on listening actively. Eventually I calm down. If I’m caught up in “Trying to listen,” I om.  Concentrating on the feelings associated with producing the sound backs my attention off from what Under the Influence called "active volition," puts me in a space of "Passive volition," or presence to reality. Eventually, I calm down. And if I find myself obsessing about om-ing, I have a beer, do the dishes and watch junk television with my Jackie: the kind my fiancee can admit she likes, the kind I can only admit I like to make fun of.  The point is, only clear-minded acceptance of reality, not thinking about God, is the ultimate expression of union with God.

This “Other Way” is to simply practice without getting freaked about it. It’s to balance the importance of the present moment with the infinite mercy of God, and the real possibility that I’ve been doing this for thousands of lifetimes, and will do it for thousands of lifetimes, until the Christ who is simultaneously my true self and "time itself" decides he can take off every last bit of “Me” costume, give away all his candy, turn on spooky music and dance around his lit jack-o-lantern in the dark.

Because the answer to the question above, “am i recreating my own hell” is “Yes." Verily: one hundred percent indubitably, and stuff. Am I getting closer to enlightenment? Well, not while there’s a “me” writing a blog about it, I’m not—and at other times, it’s a solid maybe.

But also, who cares? I do, I suppose, and I will, until the rock-hard “I” who thinks it’s doing the caring gets ground into the sands of time, only to find compassion and God and and enlightenment singing “all we are is dust in the wind." And the words will ring out, the trumpet will sound: certainly the dead will be raised imperishable. Even if the debate about resurrection versus reincarnation endures for many lifetimes, if a trumpet blows, but I have ceased to identify with the ear that hears it, does it make a sound? In the face of the question, we might give up, call both sides right. And in that "then" (which is also "now") I will see no door, just a there that's here, and wide as openness.