Category: Spirituality (Page 19 of 19)

State of love and trust
as I busted down the pretext
sin still plays and preaches
but to have an empty court

The pretext of love and trust…to first look at the definition of both.

The accepted definition of love is “a strong affection for another rising out of desire or kinship.” Desire or kinship , rather uniquely human emotions closely tied to ego, a matter of form that is the source of all suffering in the world. In order to have desire or kinship with another, you must first identify with that other and the feelings of love of that other. That identity denotes ego, and all forms of ego eventually lead to suffering.

The accepted definition of trust is “a reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” This reliance is a form of ego, of identification with the form of something or someone, which also denotes the eventuality of suffering at some level at some time.

The accepted definition of a relationship is “a romantic or passionate attachment.” Therefore, as an attachment to the form of romance or passion is egoic, it can be said easily that all matters of relationship will, at some time or another, lead to suffering.

In this, all matters in the State of Love and Trust, including the relationship to which it can be said these matters pertain, are egoic and will eventually lead to suffering. That is as long as we identify with these forms. It is easily understood that there can be two types of love, because love in it’s purest sense is the absence of self, the absence of ego, and the absence of form. When this occurs, love creates no expectations like the issues of trust, it just is as perfect as the Creator who made it.

When that pure form of love is attained, the folly of sin, literally defined as “missing the mark”, plays “to the empty court”, in that no true form of love can be effected by sin (also an egoic state of judgment). Sure there will still be sin, and there will still be preachers, as the egoic state of form will still exist in the minds of many who cannot live without it, but to those who endure the truest sense of love, there is no need for the form of trust, of rules, of expectations.

So, to say that trust is the thread of all relationships is to doom the relationship to failure. It’s to stitch the fabric of love with a thread of air.

Take a look at the essence of a relationship. We become attached or “in love” (the state of ego that attaches oneself to another). In this attachment, since it is all ego, we create expectations in ourselves of how that other is to behave, to act, and to treat us. We wish to enforce that attachment by finding proof that the attachment is mutual, and that proof is found in the rules and boundaries we create that bolster our need for confidence. So, in this we have “trust” that the other who shares our attachment will forever honor those matters of form (boundaries) that we have created. Since this is egoic in nature, the only thing we can really have confidence in with surety is that at some time, some day, we will suffer the consequence of not only setting those boundaries, but also of having them set on us.

At that point the thread of air starts to evaporate, and the pieces begin to fall apart. It may be a minor tear, or it could be a devastating one, depending on the strength of the boundary and the strength of the force that crossed it.

Promises and/or a vows also are very egoic. They are actions of the form of power, as to say “I have the power to get this done and it will be done.” Now, unless you are all-powerful, you cannot say that you, at any time, have complete control. So therefore, in the egoic nature of a promise, you are introducing suffering into the situation for both the promiser and the promisee. So it is quite easy to say that if you make promises, you are going to suffer or cause suffering (or even perhaps both) at some point in some way. Introduce trust that the promise will be kept, and you sure magnify the suffering. Introduce trust and promises into a relationship that involves love and you have a recipe for disaster.

To simplify things, become aware that a promise is a matter of form that should be eliminated from your Being. You are not all powerful, so there is not one promise whose outcome you are in control of. Even if you promise something you are 100% certain of, you could be wrong. For instance, if a man promises someone else that “I am a man”, the promiser could be wrong, depending on what the definition of “a man” the promisee holds to be true. If my definition of a man is someone who has no children, and my father promises me he is a man, he would have broken his promise because both the promise and the foundation of it are tied to form, which is very dynamic and readily changed.

You should also not “trust” in anything except the present moment. This moment is the pure form of truth in that it is not tied to form. You should resolve to be “true” to yourself, and to not tie in your baggage (i.e. boundaries, expectations) to others. You should not recognize the promises of others as absolute, as they are beyond their control, but rather see them as egoic and easily manipulated. You should see vows as not concrete, but rather fluctuating as all things of form are. Therefore, you are not setting yourself or the promiser to the suffering the promise itself will cause.

You should also not identify with the egoic state of love. To judge something is to lower something else. To love something in ego is to love something else less. Rather, find your way of discovering the pure form of love, in which you love all things equally. When you say to yourself that it is impossible, understand that you are hearing your ego talking, not your true Being. You must understand that it is easy to love a tree as much as your children; you do not love the children less, you love the tree more.

In the pure sense of love, you do not identify with anything of form. You don’t identify with the cute ass of your lover, or their hairstyle, or their sexual ability. Your ego does, but the true sense of being does not. If they were to fail your ego, the true sense of love does not fade and the crossing of the boundaries of ego does not create suffering.

Finally, it is true to believe that if the pure, egoless state of love replaced the egoic “trust” as the thread that binds all relationships, there would be no suffering – no anger, no pain, no sorrow. Trust in things are as they should be as long as the ego has not created them – that is the pure sense of trust. Find kinship in the pure form of love and trust – in that you find the pure form of relationship.

To that end I close with a poem from Hafiz, a great Sufi poet:

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”

Look what happens
with a love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.

We often banter about our life’s purpose. What are we here for? What is our reason for being? To some, that reason is to worship God. To others, it is to be successful in all that they do. However, when on your deathbed, would you consider yourself finished with anything you can possibly consider your “purpose”?

The short answer is probably not. When once asked what I considered my life’s purpose to be, I replied “to live in the service of others”. Yet daily I see myself failing in this purpose as well as succeeding. In the great paradox of the universe, success cannot exist without failure, so in order to experience one you must surely experience the other. So, if I fail so readily at “my life’s purpose”, can it really be my purpose at all?

The continuance of the short answer makes it a rather lengthy one. In doing some research, both from the external and the internal perspective, it has become quite clear that we have two purposes. One, the outer purpose, is the purpose we serve in our natural egoic state of needed something to succeed at. In this, we can never succeed, because anything rooted in ego is doomed to failure and to illicit suffering. My outer purpose is to live in the service of others, and in that I will surely find failure and success. I will do my best daily to serve others, to help where possible. I will succeed, and I will fail. I will experience glory, and eventually as with all outer purpose – suffering.

Similarly, the “praise God” purpose will offer success and failure if it is the outer purpose. That is why the Bible instructs us to keep our “light under a basket”, which could simply be a metaphor for converting an outer purpose to an “inner purpose”.

The inner purpose is quite different from the outer purpose. It involves awareness and consciousness, meaning complete dedication to the present moment. It turns whatever you are doing at that present moment into your life’s purpose. For instance, when you are walking across a room to get a book, your purpose is walking across the room (not getting the book). When you reach the book, your purpose is to get the book. And when you begin reading it, that becomes your purpose. There can be no success or failure in inner purpose, and their can be no loss of significance of each moment, of each purpose. There is no ego involved in the inner purpose, and since it is all about the event of the present moment, it can change quite quickly.

For instance, I used to be a specialize rescue technician. My life’s purpose could quickly change from grilling burgers for the family to rappelling down a 50-foot shaft and skirting out an icy pond. Each individual moment is your life’s purpose. The end result – the rescue – is the outer purpose, yet each individual moment in that effort is the inner purpose.

I once read an article of a spelunker who was repelling into a 250′ canyon to explore some caves. He apparently was a very experienced at rappelling, spelunking, and rock climbing. It became his purpose to explore some particularly dangerous caves, and his death became the subject of a lesson to all of us who took part in such activities: don’t become so engrossed in the success of your goal (outer purpose) to forget the minute details of each moment of it (inner purpose). Although each moment of his inner purpose happened exactly as it was ordained to, he ultimately failed in his outer purpose because of a lack of awareness, that moment when ego took over and mistakes were made.

Apparently the drop to the canyon floor was 250 feet, but our explorer only had 150′ of rope. Now, a common practice in rappelling is to tie off the end of your rope for two reasons: first, so that your rope bag stays at the end and second so that you cannot rappel past it. He apparently thought he had 250′ plus of rope, and only found out how wrong he was when his brake (he was using a figure 8) ran out of rope and he fell 100 feet to his death.

Now I am positive that while he was on rope he was very in tune to each moment, we all are. He checked his rigging, his harness, his light, all of his gear. He was very in tune with his surroundings, very true to his inner purpose. Each movement went slowly in his mind. He served his life’s purpose with each move, and as he realize he had quite literally reached the end of his rope, he served his life purpose in the end of his earthly existence. He failed in his outer purpose, and much suffering came of this failure, but each moment of his inner purpose was as it was meant to be.

If you take any form of outer purpose (all outer purpose is of form) and apply it to this man’s life, he would sure have failed (that is, unless his outer purpose was to die in a rappelling accident that could have been easily avoided). If glorifying God was his purpose, would he have succeeded? Probably not, as since the action of “glorifying God” is egoic, it is subject to judgment as to what is success or failure, so the measuring stick can be quite different depending on who you talk to. If his life’s purpose was “the service of man”, would he have succeeded? Probably not, since that too is egoic in nature so one cannot measure it’s success. However, if you break down each moment near the end of his life, did he succeed in inner purpose? Of course he did, for you cannot fail in purpose of each moment even if the purpose of your final moment is to die.

Inner purpose, because it involves awareness, cannot be of form so it cannot be egoic. To quantify it as “success” is unnecessary, just as describing water as “wet” is unnecessary. It is how it is, and the ultimate success is in whether or not you are aware of it. Your inner purpose never changes in the fact that it is always as it is, only your level of awareness of it can change.

Right now, my life’s purpose is to complete this post. Then it will change. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.