Where did I leave my keys?
So much is going to change very soon and not all the changes, I think, will be predictable.
But I believe it always works to prepare ourselves and ease the process as much as possible.
And so I’d like to reflect on how the spiritual process of detachment fits into leaving Third Dimensionality.
Let me start with the animal world and work my way up.
A spider leaves its home, makes its way, and lives its life with nothing used, nothing saved, and nothing to let go of.
No lipstick. No handkerchief. No keys. The same for a snake, horse, or elephant. None of them misplaces their keys because none of them uses artifacts.
Every time I notice this, I’m amazed at how much we carry around. Only humans carry a shoulder bag with a cellphone, credit cards, and keys. We live in an artifactual world and that affects everything we think and feel, and say and do.
An artifactual world is a mediated world. An artifactual world is anything but natural.
Enlightenment is a totally-unmediated and natural state of being. No signposts, no crutches, no footholds.
Our attachment to things and experiences keeps our energies lower-vibrational by inducing us to worry, hope and fear about breakage, loss, and theft. It insulates us from a natural life and weighs us down.
Sahaja samadhi, the enlightenment of the deep Fifth Dimension, is the “natural” state (“sahaja” means “natural”). We’re headed for a dimensional state of being that accepts everything as it is, that sees the oneness of all things rather than differentiation and separation.
Our natural state is free of worry, hope and fear. In our natural state, I’m told, we’ll create what we need from nothing.
Before we reach that point, will we shuck all our implements and instruments? I don’t think so.
What we will be called upon to shuck is our attachments to things and experiences and that’s the point I’m getting at.
What does detachment mean?
Well, it means that an outcome is OK if it happens and OK if it doesn’t. It means that we’re equanimous with life any way it works out. It means that outcomes don’t determine the way we feel. We’re independent of circumstances. There’s then nothing for us to hold onto.
Detachment doesn’t mean not having anything. But it does mean holding all ties to the material domain lightly.
The Buddha called our attachments craving and aversion. The cycle of desire is an endless merry-go-round. Nothing satisfies us for long and so we end up seeking something else – more, better and different.
On and on we go, acquiring, preserving, and tossing aside one thing, one experience, one feeling state after another.
The only respite from our cultural round of life is that, when we get what we want, we stop seeking for a brief time.
Nothing will ever satisfy us for long except God. The endless craving we feel, the endless chasm we face can only be satisfied by the One.
Let go, let go, let go, Ajahn Sumedho said. He once quipped that he’d rather live his life as an earthworm than attend international Buddhist conferences. (1) Even spiritual people, he implies, can be plagued by separation, scarcity, and survival thinking.
It’s a major milestone in our lives when we turn from the cycle of desire and want only the One. Just as the truth of a vasana will set us free from it, so the truth of our essential nature will set us free from everything.
Attachment to things and experiences can hold us back. Detachment means to travel lightly. As it turns out, we can’t get to where we’re going to by holding on to what we’re leaving.
Only attachment to the One serves. For all else, detachment is the order of the day. Right now, it’s the old Third we hold onto. But, in the future, every dimension we land on we’ll have to leave eventually and totally let go of to travel Home.
Footnotes
(1) “The practice of ‘letting go’ is very effective for minds obsessed with compulsive thinking: you simplify your meditation practice down to just two words—’letting go.’ Rather than trying to develop this practice and then develop that, and achieve this and go into that; … just let go, let go, let go.
“I did nothing but this for about two years—every time I tried to understand or figure things out, I’d just say, ‘let go, let go’ until the desire would fade out. So I’m making it very simple for you, to save you from getting caught in incredible amounts of suffering.
“There’s nothing more sorrowful than having to attend International Buddhist Conferences! Some of you might have the desire to become the Buddha of the age, Maitreya, radiating love throughout the world – but instead, I suggest just being an earthworm … who knows only two words – ‘let go, let go, let go.’” (Ajahn Sumedho, Cittaviveka. Teachings from the Silent Mind. (Great Gaddesden: Amaravati Publications, 1992; c1984, 44.)