OBLITERATION

This blog is for prosperity. It seems important to me to record these kinds of events especially those which set my life on the course that I fantasize to be the work and progress of many life-times.

Sometime, maybe a few years ago, I became very interested in the endeavor for spiritual knowledge, ultimate truth and wisdom. It was unknown to me at the time that I was only thinking about the spiritual path but I was not on it. I did not yet know the difference. And it may have been for that reason that my suffering and delusion continued on, despite mistakenly thinking that my study of Eastern knowledge was my practice of it. It was not! My delusion and suffering was becoming so unbearable to the point that life was colorless and I wished to not be anymore. Confusion and mania persisted!

One night – it was only last summer – the culmination of years of hurting and yearning welled up inside me so deeply that I couldn’t hold on to it anymore. The tension had reached it’s climax and I knew not where to turn my thought nor my energy. I had nothing left to give. There was nothing more to think of. All thoughts of hope escaped and I knew not where the peace could be found.

It was summer time. I lied awake for hours with an insomnia that I’d never known before. Tossing and turning, the anxiety and depression of all the years pervaded everything in the room, especially and including my own being. I knew not what to do, but I did what I’d never done in my life before. The ultimate act of surrender. The years up till then forcibly stripped me down to the smallest and most humble I’d ever been. There was nothing left but surrender. The upmost being in humility.

It was the early morning, I was brought to my knees with all my consciousness pointed outward to all that was not me. That is to say, EVERYTHING except that which I felt as my own small experience in this infinite and mysterious cosmos. Due to the limitation of language and the small view it offers, I can only use these unworthy words to describe my act of prayer to that which is not me. The cosmos. The creation. The vastness of everything which I knew not. These words do not give it justice. My “prayer” – if I must call it that – was a vow for my life in the search for the ultimate, and in service to that force. Only in hopes that I would find my way out of delusion and into some peace. In somewhat of a thought, I made this vow. I would dedicate all my life, all my mind, everything that I knew to the search for that which they call “God”. Although I believe that even the word “God” and the meaning that men have ascribed to it, does not suffice for that which I try to imagine as the all pervading spirit. I have heard some masters say that it is better to drop the word “God,” because it has been tainted. I don’t know how much it matters, but “God” seems to be the one of the only word which I know of to refer tp that spirit and mighty force which I aspire to join with.

In my moment of deep yearning and inner explosion, my so called “knowledge” could not help me. It could not. That giving of myself could not happen if there was any thought or past learning to have been there for me. That sweet surrender was actually characterized by the fact that nothing which I might apply would be there at that time. In fact, any knowledge which I had was actually leading me and trying to point to that moment of annihilation. It was not by my conscious design that I arrived there, rather it was an implicit consequence of all that I thought was leading me to the place I meant to have been going in my juvenile curiosity. I arrived to the first step of spirituality and destruction of this person by accident. It was that night that put me on the path I meant to be on. Only this night it happened by a different way which I could not have seen coming. Either way I wanted, this way it happened. That night, I became a humble seeker. That night was the start of the spiritual path. I started my course of action for the duration of this whole life. I have kept that vow, and it had not been difficult to do so. When you hit that low valley, than you are finally empty, and ready to be received by the grave of almighty. When your vessel becomes empty, then you are ready to be filled. This bit of knowledge I know. And because I have tested and seen it true by my experience, it is now part of my values. That I must strive always to remain pure. Small and humble is the way. Mind free of judgement and prejudice. This is the way. By this virtue, my vessel remains open.

With a childlike mind, always curious and innocent, my life has changed. It changed in a way so simple. So simple that it is also an extraordinary change. I am trying to describe grace. I did not know grace before. Even though I heard grace over and over in my years of Sunday school, I did not know the meaning. It had not come into my experience. And before the surrender, I would read all about this grace. I would strive for it. But it did not come. After surrendering, the striving stopped and the grace came. How strange and humorous the way of the creator is. How can I describe grace? I cannot. But I tell stories about it. Many stories, which are written in my other blog. Life went from striving to non striving. And with non striving came the most curious, strange and wonderful experiences. I have met so many people in which I have learned from like a child learns from the world when he is innocent and young. This grace is fragile. It is like the word “silence” – it exists. . . it is there – but one you speak its name it is broken. So no use is investigating, “grace why are you here, and where are you coming from?” Receive it instead. Because if you have found the grace, then it seems that you have only made yourself in a way to be receptive to it.

There are many great forces outside our understanding. We see them working in the myriad of life. Yet our premature and egoistic intelligence often makes a battle with the creative forces of life. We are sure to lose that battle. I know this also, because I have tried. Somehow, I thought so prideful that I can think my way through this life. That if only I thought about it hard enough and maybe in the right combination, I would find out how it works, and see that to my own advantage. The way is not like this. I learned this from Jaggi Vasudev. “The nature of life is such that if you allow it to flow, life is a beautiful experience. If you hold it back, it becomes misery.”

It has not been without the many spiritual traps which lie in the way. But with a solemn and unbreakable vow, there is not trap which is not realized. This because my heart is already at the destination, it is only to go the way from here to there, no matter the obstacle on the path. This also I call Faith NO fear. These values – Faith, Surrender, Devotion and Action – came to me after my night of surrender. I could not continue on with my inquiry without them and though I did not see them there, they were always there dormant, looming there in the seeds which I was sowing through my own suffering. What a great and even humorous design that has unfolded thus far. I have seen it now!