“Conditional existence DOES hurt---and not just when it is especially hurting. It hurts ALL the time!” (Adi Da).
(Please note I am not endorsing Adi Da. I’m well aware of the controversies surrounding him, but I do believe a couple of his earlier books were pretty good at refining the esoteric.)
In the preface of The Method of the Siddhas, the author says “Meditation and esoteric practices do not lead to love, happiness, freedom, and the Sacrifice that can be called God-Realization. Rather, exactly the reverse is true — only active sacrifice, God-Communion in the moment, the life of love, happiness, and freedom in every ordinary action, is the ground for real spiritual practice and Realization.”
And I believe that’s a central point: the method is our motivation to be with God at all times. Note: be with God, not just seek Him.
Carl McColman says, “For herein is a paradox: contemplation means we seek the God who has already found us, but our longing will, at least on this side of eternity, never be fully satisfied.”
Here again, the sages say there is nothing that a man can do to save himself, to become God Realized. If we approach Truth from the point of view of the search, it will always evade us.
In a Christ-like manner, we must sacrifice of our search, striving, and effort. We can only take the motivated posture to inhabit our intimacy with God.
We can set the conditions for this sacrifice, also known as self-emptying or kenosis, but it is not done by us. McColman adds,
“In other words, if you wake up one morning and say, ‘I think I will empty myself today,’ even if you spend the day performing very worthy and loving actions designed to foster your humility or lessen your dualistic mind or sense of self-importance, in truth you will still in some way miss the kenotic mark, because all of your actions will still carry the faint imprint of self-directed, self-important striving. I will humble myself—see where the emphasis is placed? ‘It's all about me’ is the best way to distract yourself from the kenotic call. … A much more useful approach would be to regard kenosis as an antidote to the lust for experience.”It reminds me of the punchline to the joke where the Rabbi observes the self-flagellation of a poor man, and then elbows a banker and whispers “Look who thinks he’s nothing.”
