Because the Humble Tenfold Way is dualism seeking unity, we can confidently paraphrase the Tao: the way that can be seen is not the eternal way. The Humble Tenfold Way identifies ten strongholds of egotism, asks us to play with energies deeper than self. It notes the suffering we're surrounded by, sees the mental muscles that use compulsive thought to bypass embodiment, then invites us to wonder what "mental rest" would feel like. The different paths of the Humble Tenfold Way are all deep dives into self-imposed suffering--and having helped us identify and back away from our attachments, they reveal a simpler life than we could have imagined.
Humble prayer is the first path on the way. Like the publican--who stood at the back of the temple saying "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner"--we needed a way, morning by morning, to remember our liabilities. At base, we knew thought to be an effort at control. So--a thousand times a day--we said "I'm powerless over God, self and others." At the same time, we sought to be self-protective. As hard as it was, we increasingly took cues from the Teacher's passion. Just as he remained silent before Pilate, trusting in the impermanence of all things, we sought to take refuge in quiet and patience. Sure enough, the bits that were challenging two weeks ago seem small compared today's challenges.
Humble presence is important. We are absolutely certain, at the very least, of this: If our mind were on the past or the future, if we were concerned about things we can't control, if we willfully manipulated people instead of cooperating with them or pushed our way through the world--our energy would be sapped that could have otherwise been used for openness and willingness. Be here now: this is the advice Bhagavan Dass gave Richard Alpert, who would become Ram Dass and write a book with that title. We students of the Logos know this isn't just a pithy phrase, it's an entry-point into oneness with the intelligent force that rules the entire cosmos. There is a still point in which the spirit moves as it wills, and serenity rests on remaining there, but bodies in motion tend to stay in motion: it's available to all, but few find it.
Humble intention is necessary if we're to live in the moment. Rabbouni's students follow the dictum "limit the suffering you cause and do what you will." In the hands of ego, faith hope and love all become shadows of what they should be. Even Augustine's "love and do what you will" becomes the banner of all kinds of egotistical relativism. So followers of the logos start by asking "why are you blocking the light?" Nothing would make us happier than if troubleshooting our toxicity led to goodness and holiness. But we don't do it for results. We do it to find skillful means: to "live into" being more compassionate with the broken parts of ourselves. Hopefully, efficient work with the right tools will lead to a quality result.
Humble action is. We wanted to say "humble action is necessary to live a good spiritual life" but then we realized we were just duplicating the problem. We compromised our peace by getting too hung up on results. We compromised our relationships by acting with the subtle expectation of being able to influence others. Now we simply wish to move in the world in a manner less driven by our subtle agendas and attachments. Too rare were the instances of walking down the street for the sake of walking down the street alone. We were usually going somewhere. Too seldom were the instances of giving alms with a pure heart--our left hands always knew what our right hands were doing. And it was merely a first-step corrective to say "if the Lord wills we will live and do this or that." Eventually, we had to simply do this or that, putting the details in the Father's hands.
There can be no serenity without humble effort. For the ego, there is no in between: it either over-exerts itself, or opts out. Energetically, both cost us dearly. Humble effort is, above all, a yielding of the spirit within to the Holy Spirit transcending all things. That involves deep attentiveness to things as they are, and gentle movement that's congruous with the Way of all the earth. Humble effort is a well known thing: religious thinkers have called it "betweenness"--a willing effort that's neither willful nor avoidant. Martial artists talk about "1000 strikes" with the Katana. The point is to so exhaust your capacity for added mental effort that the natural gravity of your body drives the strike. For students of the logos, that's a perfect allegory for exactly half of the spiritual life. We are disciples of the logos. Isaiah says: "As the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty." We see, in this, a symbol of how the Spirit works within us. Like a tree that takes root in the crag of a rock, splitting it apart, so does the Spirit break open the stone of our hearts. Both in our non-action and in our action, we train our attention on the empty space. Within and without, we don't move until something within or outside us does.
This is the malady: an unrestrained tongue will only net anxiety. Patterns of compliance and defiance establish themselves first in the mouth. Humble speech--the next step in the Tenfold Path--is simply remembering that the mouth is a liability: that we say things we don't mean, opting instead for what we think will get us what we want. It not only perpetuates our own delusions, but mindlessly pokes at others' sensitivities. So we are quiet--excessively, if our life situation and emotional constitution will support it. We want our speech to be guided by the creative tension between intelligence and intuition. If we take refuge in quiet, how the tension resolves will be determined by a power greater than ourselves. We'll hear Jesus' words "When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourself or what you are to say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour." They'll strike us differently if we know that every hour of life--every moment we could possibly call now--is precisely this kind of trial. As always, we seek not only to know what the scripture says--we want to know why it was said the way it was. Perhaps, if we're fully acquainted with the predicaments the scripture talks about, the words will sink into our hearts faster.
With humble work, We students of the logos asked: if our occupations were humanizing, would our lives be more peaceful? Ecclesiastes asks "What do people get for all the work with which they toil under the sun? Even at night their minds do not rest." We spend the majority of our lives working to earn money--that, in itself, causes suffering. We make it worse if we're involved in an industry that's inherently exploitative. We ask ourselves: does our work seek unreasonable profit from the needs of others? Does our work value our own labor enough to survive? Does our work allow us enough time to rest? If the answers to those questions falls short of ideal, we make choices that gradually move them as close as possible.
All of the disciplines in the humble tenfold path eliminate a dualism: they gradually unite subject and object. This is particularly true with humble knowing. In the realm of revelation, where ego reigns, we don't "know" a thing until we are aware of how little we know. This can also take the form of mirroring, of "others projecting our own purgatorial predicament back to us": we will see selfishness in others, then realize that it's in us as well. In the realm of mystery, as the dualism inherent in incarnations diminishes, we don't know something until the knower and the known become one. In Christian Tantra, this is most clear in the discipline of internalizing the teacher. After we've done all the external actions he did, we go within. We imagine every thought to be Christ's thoughts, every sensation to be his sensations. Our arms are his arms, our feet his feet, our hands his hands. His depression and ours are one, his anger and ours are one. Our sin is our own only because we put him out of our mind long enough to do what we wanted. That doesn't mean he wasn't there and can't incorporate it--the isolationism was ours, and ours alone.
Especially when it's used as a means of control, nothing is more exhausting than thinking. Thinking enforces a subject-object distinction, holds all creation at a distance so that it can be examined. Humble thinking, which relaxes the objectifying gaze that's part of egotism, is more like perception. Absent from humble thinking are things like craving, desire, clinging to what's attractive or rejecting what we're averse to--and as the force involved diminishes, our general sense of calm increases. Our first forays into this kind of perception occur through realizations and "contemplative experiences"-- they're given to us less frequently as "involuntary, transcendent events" as the emotional tools for ego relaxation become more voluntarily accessible. Humble thinking nets a greater openness to intuition and increased speed at letting go of what we can't change.
Humble belief is trust in the unseen, full stop. It often happens amidst a great struggle with doubt and fear. And it helps us arrive at certain helpful first principles. But this is why we need the "dark nights" of the faith journey: because the superego re-entrenches, names those first principles "our beliefs," then rejects anything other than iron-clad certainty. Perhaps alongside super-egoic "belief-sets" students of Rabouni make shadow work and the facing of doubt a normal practice. Humble belief asks us to face the abyss more often, to remain on the horns of a dilemma until the ego dies and the "new creation" rises again within us. This process often more vulnerable than we wish to be, and certainly more than we can handle. Daily, we ask God to show us how our wounds can be a door to the divine image.
If Jesus came into the world to judge anything, it is judgement itself. If a belief doesn't help us as individuals, we throw it out. If a belief divides us from others or gives us a superiority complex, we get rid of it. Division always creates anxiety, and union always yields serenity. In all these things, we gradually diminish ego's foothold, poke holes in the iron-clad facade of "put together." It's constant work: sometimes it involves gentle effort, sometimes it involves relaxing. We learn to read the subtexts of self-deception and anxiety beneath our steady flow of "self chatter."
The primary effect of Jesus' teaching, for us, his students, is this: we cease to be a judging subject, objectifying the whole world. He has come to blind those who see. If it had been our eyes that the teacher had blinded, our sin would remain. Instead, he blinded our wills. So while we don't cease to act out our purgatorial predicament--which includes elements of (God willing, ever-decreasing) sinfulness--the "we" who is sinful is harder and harder to locate.
We looked so deeply that the beholder and the beheld merged. We looked until the whole body became the ego's blinded eye. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? Listen: the entire cosmos is a living question. "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" it asks. We thought him a prophet a prophet at first, and in the thinking, both the ears and the eyes of our heart began to open. We didn't know how, but had to just bow to the one whose silence makes here and now the route to an answer. At all times, in all places, through everything, the one speaking to us is he. No one says "Lord, we believe," except in the Spirit. And in the Spirit, listening and worship are one.
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