isaac_hill

One of Richard Rose's favorite sayings was that "you must become your own authority", because in finding the truth of your essential identity, you ultimately can't rely on any external authority. Nobody can tell you who you are, and "you can't agree your way to the truth." (another Rose maxim) This is hard though, because the self is tricky. This is because the "self" seems to be, rather than one, indissoluble thing, a flux of competing desires and fears. So some parts of yourself can trick other parts of yourself. Also, it seems that people don't really like to look at themselves, or see the bad parts about themselves. Of course, unless they can wallow in how bad they are, and therefore, how special they are. I've certainly seen these tendencies within myself, and in other people.

My idea of the spiritual path is greatly influenced by Rose and his students, and his teachings make a lot of sense to me. Doubt everything. Back away from untruth to find truth. No paradigm can encompass the truth, so the path is one of transcending paradigms by opposing paradigms with their opposite. The tension thus created gives the energy to transcend.

So my goal is to define myself. To see clearly what I am, and thus acquire a yardstick for understanding the world at least. If not much, much more. (For the open secret is that you are God, I am God, but we are not what we think we are.) And I define myself by seeing all these conflicting desires come up, all these secret, dark, tricky selfishness, all this weaselly humanness. And as I see it, it becomes objective. It can now be worked with consciously. It is now "not-me"- not my essential self. But this is work of the spiritual path. Embracing the humanness, the drudgery, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor.

Becoming your own authority means taking responsibility for yourself, not bypassing the muck. And, paradoxically, it can't really be done alone. Solitude is an important part of the process, but it is too easy for the tricky parts to fool the innocent parts, and steal the driver's seat. This is why friends are so important. Real friends, friends that will tell you when you're trying to pull a fast one (even when you're only half conscious of it.) Friends who have their own center in themselves, instead of relying fully on external sources of authority. Because it's hard to be responsible for your own actions. It takes will to be responsible for how one thinks, how one believes, how one speaks, how one acts. But it's also so easy to use other people's advice as excuses for listening to the still, quiet voice inside, the voice of intuition. That's the voice that really matters.

This is a topic that I will probably come back to again and again in different ways. Today though, I come to it from the desire to know the Truth. It seems to me that we live in a world of conflicting opinions, worldviews, and hence realities. It is very difficult to sift through all of these viewpoints, especially when we are all born and raised with beliefs that are largely unconscious. Beliefs of what the world is, what other beings are, what we are.

This I think is what drives the Search for a lot of people. What am I? But also, what is the Right View? In Buddhism, it is a given that there is one right view, in fact "Right View" is the first spoke of the eight fold path. For me, it seems to be more of a koan than a given. Maybe there is no "Right View", but what if there is? Can a human even comprehend "Right View?" There are so many moving parts, and the act of observing changes the observed... Can there be a Transcendant view outside of time and space that observes the Whole of Creation? Maybe not. But maybe. How would you know for sure that there isn't?

This brings me to a saying of my teachers' teacher, Richard Rose. Oftentimes when he'd meet a new person for the first time, as part of his greeting he'd say "Well, what do you know for sure?" He said their answer would tell a whole lot about them, much more than he'd get if he asked them how they were doing. This is a koan too, for me at least. How does anybody know anything for sure? The only thing that I can say that I know for sure is that I am. Something is aware. It may not be a "thing", but it is more core to what I am than these fingers typing, these thoughts going through my head, these feelings moving through me like tides, like the Moon through the Signs.

So, what is spiritual seeking? For me, it's trying, assaying, working diligently towards getting a wider, deeper, more comprehensive view of what I am... or in the opposite way, as Rose says "backing away from untruth." That is, allowing the cracks in the view to appear, seeing how beliefs are false, seeing what beliefs have been unconscious, seeing what I am not.

Hello folks, if there are indeed any folks reading this. My intention for this blog is for it to be a place for me to write down my thoughts on the spiritual path, gardening, permaculture, to post new Plant Cunning Podcast interviews, and eventually to offer horary readings. As some wise folks say, practice makes perfect, so another main intention is to practice the craft of writing! So, even if nobody reads this, that's perfectly fine with me.