“The Divine is none of our business.”
When I heard Thomas Huebl say this recently I had to laugh. You would think, on any kind of spiritual path, the Divine is of central concern. But I loved the shattering effect this statement creates. No matter how much insight we receive, we are still human and therefore limited. We can never know the eternal.
This statement goes hand in hand with another: “My awakening is not dependent on my experience.”
Which means that no matter how my life looks, it has nothing to say about my awakening.
These both may be radical for us to hear. We are so used to ideas, pictures, and stories about what an awakened life looks like. But the awakening happens inside. Moreover, it’s a process happening now. We therefore cannot hold a concept in our minds and attempt to work toward it.
Awakening isn’t something that can be seen, especially at higher levels of consciousness than we have opened to ourselves. So why do we think we can see it through the quality of experience? We can only notice some of the wisdom come through in the level of openness and compassion someone walks with.
We have long projected capitalistic ideals and scientific/academic success onto the spiritual path. This has created a goal-oriented approach to awakening. Where we practice hard enough and eventually get to a better place. This is a delusional form of practice. You can never get further than now. And here is where the opening emerges from anyway. We awaken in presence, not later.
Although our life situation may become more effortless and we can enjoy the spectrum of life through practice, this is a side-effect of something much more significant. This isn’t what we are going for. It’s nice, yes, but again it says little about the level of awakening.
It's assumed that what we do now will pay off later, like some sort of investment. While this may be true on some level, it disregards the element of grace. An impenetrable territory largely responsible for our existence.
We can’t systemize grace. We cannot fabricate or attain it. Grace comes on its own terms and through our openness to receive it. So we can practice diligently but know a large part of this process is out of our control. This shouldn’t be discouraging though.
The practice itself becomes a bow to how significant the unknown power of grace is. Through which, we create space for the possibility of it to land. Notice that this is different than practicing to receive grace.
It’s not about getting somewhere but awakening to what’s already here. Practice becomes a blessing rather than what we do to get some kind of attainment. This is a relief because there’s less pressure on performance. We’re less caught in the trip of doing it right, good, hard, or long enough, which is all of our time-bound inadequacies projected onto something infinite.
Further, it becomes less about me and my awakening and more about being with that which awakens. I believe this is a huge milestone in development because we begin to practice through the lens of interconnectedness. We focus on continuously returning to our nature.
We only become dissatisfied, hopeless, or frustrated with our practice or progress when we have idealistic expectations. This is dangerous because the prerequisite is to imagine that we are isolated instances of consciousness, rather than seeing our interdependence. The gap we make between embodied life and our ideal will inevitably create despair. We go to war with what is.
All this is much more challenging to work with in practice. But it’s true practice because, through it, our conditioning dissolves into a more fluid way of being.
I also hope I haven’t misguided you into thinking I’m on the other side. I constantly find myself in delusion and am partially writing this as a reminder. I believe any path always brings you back to the only thing you can possibly do in the wake of understanding how incomprehensible life is – bowing.
Do your practice because you love it, not for the ideals of where it may take you. And may grace find you in your humble offering.
P.S. If you enjoy my writing and want to support me further, I’m raising money to support writing my first book. Check the link below for more details.