The spiritual journey is not a linear progression as our scientific reductionist roots lead us to believe. The expansion of spirit does not occur in metered steps over even ground. It is both ecstatic and gut-wrenching that expansion comes in violent waves that pull you under the water as they wash over you. Ecstatic because you are engulfed in a flood of spirit as your consciousness wrenches beyond its previous boundaries. Gut-wrenching because the sense of motion occurs in more dimensions than you are physically aware. This is not bad; the birthing of the soul comes in stages, and that's probably for the better. But when the balance of awareness between the essential self and the body/mind identity changes, the integral being must again achieve a stable state. The individual must go through an integration, where experiential knowledge is absorbed into the combined awareness of the spiritual and the physical.
While the world we inhabit is ostensible objective, or at least consensual, all of our experience is perceived through the subjectivity of our identity. So it's hard to call reality strictly objective, especially when we are so capable of radical change. But the spiritual seeker must be prepared for the fact that the most important experiences shift awareness in fundamental ways, and this has a direct impact on the perception of and interaction with the external world. The challenge of this is you, changed, remain in the world, itself unchanged -- at least unchanged in its patterns of changing. The question is, how do you adjust?
One option is to run away to the mountains and become a hermit. It is easy to understand why throughout history, many who have experienced profound truth have chosen to isolate themselves from the external world that conflicts and distracts the profound stillness and joy of essential being. The advantages are obvious. Simplicity and silence foster a continual evenness of mind that is conducive to spiritual practice. Sanctuary from distractions and plenty of free time would only deepen the practice. If you didn't go mad first, that is. It is naive to think that the life of the renunciant is without its pitfalls. Sages from Patanjali to Ramana Maharshi have advocated against renunciation of the "householder's" life. And not just because renunciation can itself become a pursuit of ego. While that is true, the bigger risk is that one mistakes renunciation of the ephemeral for the renunciation that really matters. Ramana said:
Renunciation is always in the mind, not in going to forests or solitary places or giving up one’s duties. The main thing is to see that the mind does not turn outward but inward. It does not rest with a man whether he goes to this place or that place or whether he gives up his duties or not."
So if abdication from normal life is not the right path, what other options are there when expansion of consciousness has left one with an altered view of the world, feeling like a boat, becalmed in still waters after a violent storm; adrift, with neither direction to go nor motive force to move? A Zen koan states:
Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
Continue as you were. The transformation is not addressed at all; simply continue as you were. What has changed? You might say the doer has changed, or that the mind of the doer rests differently on these tasks, but does that really tell us anything, or is it just exchanging one ambiguity for another? Or is there something else? If you read it as it is, it describes enlightenment as something completely ordinary, which according to many sages is absolutely true. But koans are not meant as answers to be learned, but as questions to keep asking. They are meant to be meditated upon until the rational mind ties itself up in knots; when thinking ends and knowing begins.
A different interpretation is to be found if read in light of Eckhart Tolle's teaching in The Power of Now:
Our preoccupation with past and future -- memory and anticipation -- leaves us prisoners of time and our minds. Being focused on the past and/or future prevents us from the Now. Now is the only truly precious thing that matters. There is only Now.
The proverb says, "Before...After..." It deals with past and future, but Zen is continually occupied with the present. So why does it tell us before and after? What is in between? Enlightenment; the only enlightenment is the enlightenment of the present moment. Outside of that, enlightenment doesn't exist except in the words of the past or the hopes of the future. Enlightenment not to be looked forward to or back up; it is to be dwelt in continually. This is not just the charge for those who have tasted it, it is the path for those who think they have not. Enlightenment is ever-present; it is your ever-presence. No matter what your experience, when you feel like you should be moving on your spiritual path, maybe what you really need is to reach inside and experience the stillness, the joy, the enlightenment that awaits. Maybe becalmed isn't a bad thing?
