Ain't No Place for Sissies

It was Bettie Davis who coined the phrase “old age ain't no place for sissies.” As someone getting closer to that train stop, relatively speaking she's spot on. Absolutely speaking, I would say seeking God (or allowing God to seek you) tops the list. Too many think they want to find God, wake up, be Self-realized, when it's just ego trying to feel good about what it's doing for itself. (“Those who turn to God for comfort may find comfort, but I do not think they will find God.” — Mignon McLaughlin)

While the journey to God may be simple from a certain vantage point, it's not necessarily all that easy. Just take a look at the path Bernedette Roberts laid out that she went through (assumingly similar for many others also)... 

From Bernedette Roberts “The Christian Contemplative Journey”

Sure, there a some priceless experiences. But there are the dark nights, the voids, and all this ending in an annihilation. What ego—in his/her right, contracted mind—would want to go through this? Mine sure doesn't on some days; it would rather stream Netflix, play out lustful thoughts, and fear the Coronovirus.

I recently read a radically honest book by David Carse. He notes, 

“If you're going to do anything, do this. First, figure out whether this waking up, this enlightenment is really something you want. Do you really want to die? Do you really want for 'you' not to exist; and for living to continue, if it does, not as who you know and love as yourself but as a hollow husk with impersonal Consciousness blowing through it? If this is what you want (how can you possibly?) then you are talking about waking up from the false dream of individuality, and then you can proceed. Your thinking, your praying, your meditating, your asking questions at satsang, whatever you 'do,' will be with the realization that what you think you are is illusory, and with the intent of exploding, obliterating, that illusion called 'you.' Can you 'do' this? Of course not; 'you' is a dream character following its role in the dream. But who knows what that role calls for? If that role calls for this character to wake up, then it has to start somewhere, and the character may find itself engaging in things that will ultimately bring about its own death. Not physical death. These are disposable containers; look around, they're being recycled constantly. Rather, real death, as real as death gets. Death of the one who cares.”

Okay, you've got my attention! Carse continues,

“If you decide that what you really want is something other than this complete and ultimate 'waking up,' then bless you. Have a wonderful life; enjoy the incredible edible banquet of material and spiritual and psychological and New Age goodies that are out there. Grow and expand and change and develop and improve your life immeasurably; evolve and become more mature and deeper and wiser and more beautiful. Discover your higher self and your higher purpose and fulfill them. I mean this absolutely sincerely; and even, I notice, with a touch of delicious wistfulness from what's left of the david thing. This is not in any way some kind of second class status; there is no such thing. Take what the dream has to offer; that's what the dream's there for, to be enjoyed. Consciousness only enjoys it, only perceives it at all, through the dream characters, and there have to be some through which can be experienced enjoyment of the whole panoply of the spiritual marketplace. But in that case don't come here talking about waking up; that just doesn't make any sense at all.”

Fair enough. But the issue is once we get a taste or intuition of something more, we can never go back and be the same. It's as if you're selling yourself out for who you're really not. We may enjoy the finite rewards at times, but the restless heart will always endure until the search is over for the infinite. We will always have a felt sense of, what David Walsh calls, “the unspoken irritant of all our aspirations” in the background. 

As such, I'm willing to suffer and sacrifice myself for what is.

⁂

As a reminder to myself, Sister Wendy Beckett (from Spiritual Letters) offers this precious insight:

“Patience is far more profound and more all-embracing than it appears to be. To enter deeply into patience means accepting our lowliness and, equally, his power and will to transform us.

Reality is his message and patience leads straight to it. We seem to see our shabbiness and conclude we are getting absolutely nowhere. It may not be so at all. We long to push ahead, to ‘take it by violence’. But helplessness, accepting the ordinariness of our day is the divine means of purification: all this is painful. So my first word is patience. Affirm his power; wait in trust. And my second is to remind you that pure love is usually experienced as nothingness. If all is his, what is there left for self? So never seek to judge from how it ‘feels’. To go on and on and never see anything ‘happening’: what trust we need!”