The Five Spiritual Powers FAITH Faith is critical for a spiritual journey, for it’s through faith that we move from the known to the unknown. Without faith, not much is possible in any endeavor. If there’s no end goal which we particularly value, or if we lack faith in God and that God will give us the ability to get to it, we tend to stay in a rut. We don’t go much of anywhere. Because the source of faith is outside ourselves, we’re very dependent on its not changing in any way at all. But gradually faith is internalized. We see for ourselves that the teaching works. We discover that we can sit with physical pain and not be overwhelmed. We begin to taste the happiness of a concentrated mind. Faith deepens, and gives the courage to go beyond our former limits. We begin to allow ourselves to feel more of what we’re feeling. So much of what we feel, we close off, because we fear the pain will be too much to bear. But faith that’s been tested in the crucible of experience comes to know that even in the midst of suffering, there is calm. When we meet difficulties, faith gives the courage to go on. It’s important to note, however, that faith is very different from hope. Hope is for a specific outcome. Hope is associated with expectation and desire. If hope is disappointed, sadness and fear or anger are the result. Faith is different. It’s trust in the ongoing process. It’s confidence that we can handle whatever comes—for in faith, we can. It’s knowing that each step we take is an unfolding of our life’s journey, even if we don’t know at all where we’re going. EFFORT Energy, or effort, is the second spiritual power. These two words are linked, but they’re not quite the same. Energy comes first, and effort channels it, and puts it to use. Nothing happens without effort in any kind of endeavor, but especially, perhaps, in spiritual practice. This practice isn’t easy. The instructions are simple, but carrying them out isn’t simple. To be with the breath, feeling it, knowing it, and not identifying with it; to be with an emotion, a mind-state, feeling it, knowing, not identifying; to be with sensations, thoughts, the whole spectrum of experience, seeing it clearly and dispassionately—such work is not child’s play. A lot of energy is expended here just to get out of the pull of habit, the kind of gravitational pull of the mind that would get us and keep us in the grooves of habit that have been worn over years of time. The mind is used to wandering, just erratically wandering from one thing to the next, keeping itself busy with planning and hoping and fantasizing, fearing, complaining, judging. It doesn’t even know that anything might lie outside of its own limited scope. Right effort is the effort to be mindful, and to bring the mind back when it wanders, so it knows what is happening right now. To do this is really a very delicate balancing act. On the one hand, hard work is needed, in the attempt to keep paying attention. On the other hand, there’s nothing to do, because awareness is already present. It’s just that we’ve been distracted. Right effort is not striving. Striving leads to clinging. It reinforces the sense of self, and can be very painful. Right effort isn’t trying to get anything, for there’s nothing to get. It’s not trying to penetrate something and go deeper and deeper. Rather, it’s the effort to listen with greater sensitivity. It’s a soft receptivity. Just total surrender, receiving and welcoming whatever God allows. MINDFULNESS Mindfulness is the third of the spiritual powers. It’s the one factor of mind of which we can never have too much. Mindfulness is the observing power of the mind, the active aspect of awareness. Mindfulness means not forgetting to pay attention, not forgetting to be aware of whatever is happening within us, around us, from moment to moment to moment. It’s a very subtle process. When first we notice something, there is a fleeting moment of pure awareness, before the thinking mind jumps in. It’s a moment that’s nonverbal, pre-verbal. It has in it no thought. It’s a moment of seeing with very great clarity and no thought. The thing noticed is not yet separated out, but is simply part of the whole flow of the process of life. Perception then fixates on the thing, puts boundaries around it and labels it. Then the thinking mind jumps in, and the mind is back in its everyday mode. Under ordinary circumstances, that first pristine moment of awareness is very brief, and it goes unnoticed. What this practice of mindfulness does is to prolong the moments of pre-verbal knowing. The effect of doing that, over time, is profound. It’s a kind of deep knowing which changes the way that we understand the world. When mindfulness is present, it’s like an empty mirror. It sees whatever appears before it with no distortion. Mindfulness has no likes and no dislikes. There is no passion or prejudice to color what is seen. It knows things in the round, as it were—in their totality, just as they are. CONCENTRATION The key to developing concentration is one word: effort. It’s the effort to pay close attention, to keep coming back. Usually the energies of the mind are scattered in a thousand different directions. The mind is all over the place, and its energy is simply frittered away in random thoughts and desires, hopes, fears, feelings. All the huge potential power that it has is wasted. But as the effort to be mindful becomes more consistent, these scattered energies come together and converge around a single point, and the mind becomes focused, like a lens. If parallel rays of light fall upon a piece of paper, they won’t do much more than warm the paper. But if the same amount of light is focused through a lens, the paper will burst into flame. In the same way, concentration focuses the energy of the mind, and gives it the power to cut through surface appearance. As concentration deepens, the mind becomes calm and centered. It’s less reactive. It comes into greater emotional balance. We can more easily let go and let things be. The mind has a spaciousness which gives room for pain and anger and fear all to arise and pass, without our being broken by them, or needing to act them out. Concentration is very powerful, but it’s only a tool. Despite its astonishing power, it cannot of itself lead to wisdom. When it’s balanced with mindfulness, the two together cut through conventional reality, and understanding unfolds by itself. WISDOM Wisdom is the last of the spiritual qualities. It is ongoing inspiration for the work of the other four, and also their fulfillment. Wisdom is not knowledge. It cannot be learned from books, for it is intuitive understanding that arises from close observation of experience. It is insight into reality, into the nature of things as they are. One aspect of wisdom is seeing the omnipresence of mortality. Wisdom knows that nothing in this conditioned realm will last. It knows that everything that arises passes away. It knows that change occurs at every level from the cosmic to the microscopic. A star, a civilization, a tree, a thought—each arises, evolves through time, disintegrates and disappears. Timetables differ of course, for every phenomenon and event. And change can be so rapid—or so slow—that it is not ordinarily seen at all. But the trajectory is always the same. Whatever is, will be... was. We may think we know this truth, and perhaps we do. But is it living wisdom? For each of us, the mark of impermanence reveals itself most intimately in our inescapable mortality. We all are going to die. However unwelcome that thought may be, death is at the end of every life. You and I are no exception. Everything that is born will die. But because we do not live our lives from this place of understanding, we suffer. There is a constant clash between the nature of existence and our desires. In a world of radical change, we want permanence and security and enduring happiness, and they cannot be found. We live in an imaginary world, and grasp and cling to the way things used to be, or how we want them to be, and find it hard to accept the way they actually are. The result is —suffering, all the dissatisfactions and sorrows of the human heart. Suffering is the second truth, which wisdom more and more deeply comes to know. But the deepest lesson that wisdom has to teach is the fact of Illusion—the fact that nothing is inherently substantial and real. We think that we are separate, solid entities, and struggle to protect and satisfy and gratify our precious sense of self, not understanding that at the closest level of examination, no permanent, unchanging self is ever to be found. The constituents of mind and body are, in fact, in constant flux. Body, sensations, thoughts, emotions, arise and disappear, arise and disappear, moment by moment by moment. Keen observation reveals that mind and body are an ever changing process, a moving energy field. There is no permanent being behind phenomena to whom it all is happening. There is no one here to suffer. This fact is summed up very simply: “No self. No problem.” Yet this truth is baffling, and eludes us until the mind is purified. The doors of perception are gradually cleansed as the spiritual powers gather strength. Mindfulness sees ever more deeply, and greed, hate and delusion diminish. Our endless likes and dislikes thin out and fall away. The confusion that clouds perception begins to dissolve. We glimpse the interweaving laws of impermanence, suffering and selflessness, and the knowledge is transforming. The way that we understand ourselves and live our lives begins to change. We don’t hold on so much, and make fewer demands upon existence. We begin to relax, and ease more into the flow of things. We can delight in the good things of life when they are present, and accept change without protest when they end. The heart opens wider as it learns there is nothing to lose… The sense of self lessens. We become less selfish, less self centered. As mindfulness reveals our suffering and we experience its pain, we begin to feel the suffering of others. Boundaries disappear, and we turn to the needs of others as if they were our own. Gradually the delicate art of loving without possessing becomes apparent—the art of how to care, yet not to care. There is a growing sense of similarity, of oneness, of communion with all—which more and more means that the only possible response is concern and care for all. Wisdom is very hard won. It comes from facing our own suffering and learning the profound lessons that suffering has to teach. The lessons are all about letting go. Not holding on to desire, but letting it go. Wherever we hold, the sense of self is present together with suffering. When we let go, self vanishes and suffering dissolves into lightness, ease and peace. It is in the deep understanding of suffering that compassion comes to full bloom. For when the heart/mind no longer holds to anything, it is fully open. There is no self-centeredness and so, no separation. No I, no you. Love then is boundless, and ceaselessly responsive.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 02:01:27 +0000
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