Exploring the Edge of Enlightenment: Where Frustration Meets Calm
In the journey towards enlightenment, we often find ourselves oscillating between states of inner calm and frustrating restlessness. This post delves into the paradoxical relationship between these contrasting experiences, examining how each plays a unique role in our spiritual development. Whether you’re a seasoned meditator or a newcomer grappling with a restless mind, this exploration aims to shed light on the nuanced pathways that lead us closer to enlightenment.
Of course, there is always the debate of whether anything we do leads us closer to enlightenment!
Who’s Closer to the Possibility of Enlightenment?
Of course, they are both just as close, but let’s explore the question from a common misunderstanding in many spiritual circles.
Let’s explore the question from common ideas about meditation
The poor guy on the left has a mind that won’t calm down. His meditation is constant mental activity accompanied by efforts to control his mind and judgments about his inability to do so.
His meditation practice is a source of frustration, confusion, and impotency. Teachers and friends say, “Stick with it. We all go through this. Things will change.”
Five years of practice with nothing to show but mounting frustration.
The meditative mind on the right has settled down to some degree. This person’s practice is a bright spot in the day. Meditation connects them with an inner calm, a sense of well-being, a view that all is as it should be. Striving and frustration, like breathing, are part of the mindfulness practice.
Here’s the juxtaposed for considering my question:
A. H. Almaas like most nondual spiritual teachers addresses the issue of ego-death.
There is no ego as an entity; there is only the soul that can become ego by becoming structured with mental forms. Therefore, the idea of ego death is a misnomer. There is no entity that dies, for the soul does not die. All that happens in such experiences is that an ego structure dissolves, and the soul field is liberated from its influence. More accurately, the soul ceases to structure her experience through these mental forms. This can bring about the dissolution or transcendence of one’s identity, but this identity is a feeling that arises from the soul being structured by a particular self-representation. A representation dies, but no entity. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality
The question I want to raise is: In the image above, what is more likely to lead to the collapse of ego structure – the frustrated life on the left or the meditative life on the right. Who is more on the edge of possible collapse?
Consider this point that Almaas and others reference in regard to ego-death:
There comes a point when the ego has to confront the reality of its existence. This usually happens after a seeming lifetime of effort, and frustration results in an unplanned, unconceived collapse into helplessness, powerlessness, and hopelessness – the reality of the structured self.
The frustration reaches a point where one just cannot go on. One has a moment of ‘brain freeze,” mental activity ceases and the experience of self created by that endless activity ceases.
Lucid perception and discrimination and knowing and functioning continue, but without the familiar historical subjectivity along with its story.
So, this is not so much about who is more likely to collapse into loss of self as it is encouragement for the frustrated whose monkey-mind won’t leave them alone.
You’re closer than you think!
Thank you, reading this is a balm for a cloudy mind.; -).