Great River Institute - Finding the Truth

Finding the Truth

ML;

Regarding the people and work of the former school, I did not feel you were denigrating the school. I felt you were denigrating yourself and your studies there. I understand the points you are making regarding the studies there and your descriptions are opening the pathway to truth more. I want you to consider that the views and manners you adopted there do in fact contain an important message of truth. We have the truth as you have already stated, regarding your recent realizations. But, let’s have courage to go in deeper. I see more truth being hidden in your hopes and illusions while in study there. Our studies are to show how the inner, often hidden sense of truth can be known and Known. I am willing to find it even where you say it isn’t at.

Also of importance is the worse-seers. Let’s qualify that you are describing the truth. But, let’s also look even deeper for some more. Here is an example to understanding the worse=seers.

I once met someone who was very narrow in their view of other cultural values. It wasn’t just a lack of knowing, it was a deliberate manner to being adverse to interacting with the different culture. Then, I saw someone call this person to do a job. They wanted the person to fix their roof and this person went quickly to work and did a superior job. The caller needing roof repair was very adverse to roofing and the culture of it. They did not like to be closely around the actual form.

We all have areas that we are worse-seers in. Some are better at seeing some things and some others. All these truths are part of our humanity. Some focus living on certain values and the reasons that represent those values while others do the same at other points in understanding. While the points of understanding may be deeper for some in some areas, they are deeper for others in other areas. Even the homeless addict knows a depth of being unknown to many.

The point is that the truth is in all things and that we are all engaging it at all times. It is more important to treat our relationship to it by considering our reason for being in it. This will help us align better at every station of life and being.

I am interested in your studies and inward hopes, even where you have had difficulty. I remember talking with the roofer and noticing how well he could see the repairs and tasks needed to do a superb job. He lit up in genuine appreciation and gratitude. This is an area where he is the better-seer and I am truly grateful that he is present there. He may not understand this conversation like some would, but they might not understand roofing like he does. When we talked and stood on his relationship to knowing, it was easier to engage in the truth of the moment. This is also true of your studies. There is a truth present that has been important to you. And like the roofer awaiting the service call, you may be waiting for yours. Meanwhile, you still count at the point of seeing right now. As you consider this more, you will realize that people are in proximity to their inner reasons and purpose. And that the clarity of glasses they currently have on has everything to do with their current reasoning.

This is truth at work and even the disparity is demonstrating the truth. We do have a clear need for more understanding in our world of being. We that can see this need must address it, and everyone can see the need to some extent, just like everyone can to some extent understand the need for a roof. But the roofer knows it better. What you know better is your area of service, but it does not have to be limited by your outer knowing. Give merit to the inner. This is the world of invention. And as you grow to know Knowing more, you will need invention to serve the Knowing for the benefit of others.

What you were dreaming in your Sufi studies has some important Truth to you. Let’s Know it.

Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic resonance is certainly an important work. I have been familiar with his work and the concepts even earlier than his publications and early discussions. There is a common field of consciousness and we can affect it. Just as there are many roofs around the world and roofing is a common practice, so is the consciousness and the consciousness worker. The work itself can be global when we address those reasons common in all stages of seeing and being. It becomes a value that all are needing, whether a roofer, an educator, a Sufi, a warrior, a Christian, a child, a seeker or someone on death’s bed.

Your writing and expressing is being more focused. We are still converging on the more inner Truth of your reasoning. Let’s continue to practice and even more will be Known. There is a morphic resonance that is occurring and that will become more global in your own awareness. Do not dismiss the values you were pursuing before at the school. Let’s realize them. Let’s morph the inability into ability. Is this resonating better?

sensei

September 16, 2009 at 10:56 | sensei

JO,

What you said in your post about my falling in love with Truth and abandoning the reserve I used to show in postings elsewhere is completely accurate. That's exactly how I feel, and in fact, after my last post to sensei, I was thinking precisely in those terms about how my stance has changed - you could have been reading my mind.

I was also wondering if you were reading the posts, and what you might be thinking about them, and considering sending you an email to enquire this very day. You’ve also seemingly read my mind about one area I would have been particularly interested to find out about. Namely, whether you found anything useful; whether, in conventional educational terminology, there was any “vicarious learning” going on, and you have answered that without my having to ask.

You say that your understanding of the principles is flimsy. As sensei points out, there is the conscious, deliberate way of going through the principles, and the way that they emerge when one naturally engages in a practical sense, as I believe you have done here. I’d love to hear more from you here, JO. You don’t have two left feet: it might just feel that way to you when you try the deliberate approach.

Don’t think that at times I don’t also wonder how fancy my own footwork is. I’d say only sensei is fully aware of the principles in action.

September 16, 2009 at 11:22 | ML

Sensei,

I want you to consider that the views and manners you adopted there do in fact contain an important message of truth. We have the truth as you have already stated, regarding your recent realizations. But, let’s have courage to go in deeper. I see more truth being hidden in your hopes and illusions while in study there. Our studies are to show how the inner, often hidden sense of truth can be known and Known. I am willing to find it even where you say it isn’t at.

I will try to address this. I’d divide my life since my mid-twenties into three phases. First came what I’ll call my “Idries Shah” period (around three decades), when I was very much influenced by his books. Now: Sufism as projected by Shah (who died in 1996), despite the modern Westernized spin he placed on it, still maintains a core, very Eastern element. Namely, that the student knows nothing, is completely helpless to develop his Self, and needs to put himself completely in the hands of the master (that word is often used rather than “teacher” or “guide”).

The master, as far as the student is concerned, is as good as being God, might be considered to stand in lieu of God, until such time as he considers the student can be set free to go his own way. This kind of idea gibes well with Islam, in which complete submission to God is required; and since the master stands in lieu of God, then until release from the bond with him, complete submission to him is required.

Shah drove home this message, and one characteristic of many of his readers is that they are convinced there’s little they can do to help themselves until they find an authentic Sufi teacher. But since Shah says bogus teachers abound, and nobody out there seems to be definitely authentic, they become frozen.

I was frozen like this until I discovered my former school, decided to take a risk, and joined it: thus began the second phase (my former school period - around five years). I did not know if it was authentic, but also thought that if I were to stand a chance of learning in it, I would need to adopt an attitude of enthusiasm, dedication and sincerity.

However, it was quite a lot different from the expectations of a school as exemplified in Shah’s books. So if I was to maintain my chosen attitude, I had to revise my interpretations of Shah. And in so doing, I came to see all sorts of new ways (inventions) of understanding his work. I also came to admit the possibility that Shah himself might not have been what many think him to be.

Now, it doesn’t matter whether or not my former school was authentic or bogus. The plain fact is, that my new understandings about Shah’s work seemed True to me. So that is one very important thing my former school gave me – the capacity to invent, though I wouldn’t have called it that at the time.

That said, and perhaps ironically, this didn’t stop me having doubts about my school. I could not for the life of me, and I really tried, form any kind of affection for my teacher. Many other students virtually adore him, but I couldn’t. And, for me, this was a very big problem. When doing an exercise to connect with him, I was actually trying to connect with something else, call it Source if you wish. I regarded him, theoretically, as the conduit for the energy, or baraka, of Source.

I did in fact have a number of “classic” experiences – a feeling of one with all, of love for all, and so on. But here’s the point: did those come via my school, the teacher, or were they the result of a certain attitude on my part, one that would yield results whether or not I belonged to the school? After all, the first and possibly most significant experience of this kind had come out of the blue ten years before I joined the school, when I wasn’t a member of any school at all.

Despite repeated attempts to dispel doubts, they kept recurring, and then, I’d say over the past year or so, the situation became chronic. Anyone who was following my posts on Hidden Recess will be aware of this. I suppose it was just waiting for some crunch point to come, and that happened very recently with one particular incident that I won’t detail, but which made it impossible for me to continue.

That would have happened, I feel sure, whether or not I had discovered this forum (the third period). But it’s interesting that it did coincide. So: it took about 12-18 months in my former school to heavily revise my ideas about Shah, and a few weeks in the forum to heavily revise my ideas about the school. But nonetheless it is true that one period led to the next, and that each helped me see the prior one in a new light, as well as giving me something to build on. So I’m not dismissing completely the value of the first two periods. Given my nature and personal history, they probably gave me the grounding that I needed at the time, and provided a platform from which to move on. It all seems like a natural progression to me.

I have already intimated the key point. More and more, I am realizing here that the classic master/student relationship may not be suitable for all, perhaps especially Westerners (though some might take to it). Another model is that it is one’s own Higher Self that can take the lead, stand in lieu of God/represent Source if you like, if some method can be found to allow it to do so. One will still benefit greatly from a teacher or guide, but that guide needn’t stand in lieu of God. He can instead be someone qualified, willing and able to help you develop your own Self-reliance (-confidence?).

Yes, it requires a certain degree of courage to say that, when for 35 years, one has accepted the need for a “master”-type teacher. It’s a major paradigm shift, and one I wouldn’t have dared attempt only a short while ago. So you see, sensei, it’s been a progression from Shah to the school to here. Over the past year or so, the shift has been brewing in my subconscious mind. And if anything, I see that as the truth being hidden in my “hopes and illusions” at the school and brought to fruition here.

In one sense, my hope has never changed: it’s always been to find Source. But for sure, the spectacles have changed. The latest pair have brought the Brueghel into a sudden new focus. When I said there was a void, I meant one empty of certain illusions, but also, full of potential for invention, the latest of which is my new paradigm. It’s a great liberation from past shackles, past habits of mind. I feel a peculiar new freedom, and as never before in my spiritual quest, a genuine optimism and desire to get on with it.

I don’t have to worry about developing respect or affection for you; they arise quite naturally out of the gratitude I feel for your help. I’m even beginning to feel a restoration of a feeling of connection with Source, tending to confirm that what is important for me is my attitude or approach: but for once, that’s not at odds with my place of learning, or, I feel, its teacher.

Moving on to your point about better/worse-seers, I accept that it’s not a wholly linear thing. In some areas, I might be a better-seer than you, or you than I. It’s all relative to one’s reasons for being. That’s a good point, and I actually should have said it, knowing that if I didn’t, you’d quite possibly pick up on it! :-)

I suppose we’re all acting according to the Adam/Eve model within us, can all find balance in relation to specific things or situations - nearer to or farther from Source - if not to others. Perhaps if one were working with someone, one might try to connect with them through their own best point of balance, and relate it to a point of balance in some other area, nearer to Source.

Marrying this up with Rupert Sheldrake, there’s a marvelous dialogue with Terence McKenna at YouTube where at one point McKenna talks eloquently about patterns occurring at all sorts of different levels in all sorts of different realms which are essentially expressions of the same underlying principle of morphic resonance. And there’s an energetic discussion about whether it’s a “push” or “pull” universe, or some combination of the two principles.

Sheldrake thinks that everything evolves, including the so-called laws of nature. I think he frowns on Platonism - perfect and unchanging forms that have been there from all eternity. It seems to me that what you have said about the change from the post-Fall to the Christ Model (a.k.a. Form?) would be consistent with that. Except that you give a role to conscious beings in shaping evolution.

There is a morphic resonance that is occurring and that will become more global in your own awareness.

Just to be sure I understand that, do you mean that it will become more global to the extent that I will become added to those already resonating with it?

September 17, 2009 at 0:57 | ML

ML...

i went through a short period several years ago where i convinced myself there was no truth to be found anywhere in religion... it was a revelation to discover i was merely taking the truth from one box and putting it in another...the exact thing i was accusing religion of doing, i was doing myself... i had learned really well how to put truth in a box...

why would anyone want to put truth in a box with boundaries and limitations, and while we're at it do so to the exclusion of others?... as far as i can see nothing Sensei does or says ought to conflict with any religion or school or belief system of anyone else... so why would this be and how can he do this? ... this is just my observation... but one reason is that the truth is the truth, regardless of the layers we all bury it under or the boxes we put it in, and as a lover of the truth he has a practiced kind of ease in seeing the truth in all things... secondly, is his inclusiveness of others... third, is a demonstration of openness in a dynamic and movement oriented way... and actually, opening by it's nature suggests it is movement oriented... if opening ceases, closing enters the picture... once there is closing, there is restriction...

Sensei has said before that while his teachings and principles represent the best way he has found so far to draw closer to the truth (the truth being something he states he loves), he has also said that if he were to discover another way (or if someone were to present to him another way) that could do it better, he would go that way... wouldn't a lover of truth always want to go toward whatever it is that brings them closer to that which they say they love...? ... and yet, as far as i can see there is no need to put him or anyone on a pedestal... the love that flows is just very natural as one falls in love with the truth... the way i see it there is a natural affection between those who are lovers of the truth... so you (it seems to me) are just doing the same thing he says he would do... drawing closer to whatever it is that brings you closer to the truth...

regardless of whether the package is Sufi, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, etc... i perceive differing degrees of openness, but also a point of eventual closing... which sometimes manifests in ways like exclusiveness rather than inclusiveness, but shows up in other ways too... turning away in the face of the truth... is it because we aren't lovers of the truth above ALL else?...this isn't limited to religion for sure... i know i do it... i know i turn away... i know i do it and i know i do it even when i know i'm doing it (so i can't even use being unaware as an excuse much of the time)... i say i want to love the truth more than i love excuses, more than i love turning away, more than i love sitting in rooms where i am fed things like low self esteem etc....more than i love falling into whatever invention i choose to fall in to at any moment... i say that... and i mean it... (and i still turn away)...

September 17, 2009 at 11:16 | JO

Can we look at this, JO?

You express gratitude that sensei is open to Truth, which is something you value greatly, and yet you go on to say that despite that, and despite Knowing you are doing it, you still turn away from Truth.

The way you say it seems almost as if it’s something that can’t be helped; that, in a way, you have given up on ever finding a way of not turning away. This seems to me to be a very negative value.

But, ironically, you seem to have chosen it to be one Truth you won’t turn away from. And so, its value must be an extremely important one for you at your current point of dwell. But you cannot say that you don’t know how not to turn away – you are demonstrating extremely well that you can not turn away. So that’s not a value I think you need develop. If there is one, it must be something else, applied to some other invented Truth which is closer to your real reason for being.

Let’s not be censorious. Rather, let’s try to look at this as an example of someone’s invented Truth – in this case, yours. It must be real, otherwise it couldn’t have any effect on you. And the weight you give it must be related to your current reasons for being, which are also real. There’s nothing invalid about your Truth, your reason for being.

And yet, at the same time, it’s clear that you feel discontent. So isn’t it plain that there is somewhere within you a different value struggling to come out? Not just to be expressed, but to come to be lived, honored and be felt grateful for?

You are the heroine, JO. The white charger awaits. What might this struggling value be, I wonder? Only you can say...

September 17, 2009 at 18:39 | ML