I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. -Bruce Lee
Published in Rebelle Society:
After reading up on this New Age spirituality concept, I felt this absolute overwhelm within me.
Have I been wasting my time the last six months? I thought.
Can I get a physical pat on the back from some higher entity that would somehow direct me to the path of enlightenment?
I started my life-awakening journey almost 8 years ago and I have consumed books, ideas and teachers as if I had only a few days left to live. I really loved some of them, ditched others and bitched about one or two.
However many teachers have left their mark on me:
- Buddha’s teachings, on the four noble truths and the eight-fold path to enlightenment. I think no other religious teacher hands power to us personally to reach inner peace.
- Hemingway for being larger than life and showing us that life is all about real life action. If you want to write about the Spanish Civil War, and then you must go there to witness it.
- Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha knew that essential truths couldn’t be taught; they must be learned through life experiences. His search for enlightenment echoes mine and the lesson here is that we need to balance the learning with experiencing. The river proved ultimately to be Siddhartha best teacher.
The Ideas that I loved include:
- The Subconscious Mind; the receptor of all our feelings, habits and conditioning over the years controls our conscious mind almost exclusively. So we can’t change anything with ourselves till we address the emotional subconscious mind, which has been worked on since birth.
- The Law of Attraction, which states you attract the essence of whatever you are focusing your energy on– whether wanted or unwanted. We create what we really want in our lives.
- We are all interconnected in a divine matrix known as a space of potentiality. This is an intelligent field of energy, which is the source of all creation. We are all somehow connected to it, but only if we experience our true nature.
I feel I’m applying many of the above ideas in my life, yet I also sometimes feel very much lost. I feel like I need a big calling or platform to allow me to practice all of the lessons I’ve learned, otherwise I will feel aimless and lose heart.
Thoreau said: “Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”
I need a task that is big enough for a lifetime. I need something that can get me “onto my bone.”
I need that “one thing” that can fit Deepak Chopra’s Law of Dharma measure.
This feeling of being lost and needing a way to practice these new ideas was reinforced when I met Elaine, a Reiki teacher. She had that inner glow and was insanely calm.
That’s what I need, I thought, when we first met. That’s it, nothing more and nothing less. I need whatever she’s on.
I found out that she had devoted her life to learning and teaching only Reiki. She didn’t give up and try Theta healing, which many “new age” healers have started to get into as the new thing.
She uses only Reiki to ask all her questions and to get all her answers. She uses it to grow, raise her awareness and serve people around her.
I recall a scene in the movie, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise. He spends some time in a quiet, peaceful village hiding where everyone is happily and dutifully going about their tasks. The Samurais living in the village are bound by a strict code of honour and discipline, and devote their time to improving their skills. They do it mindfully, peacefully and so happily. You could almost feel their content and inner peace radiating from the screen.
How I wish sometimes that I were living in that era, and in that particular village.
It isn’t only with so-called “spiritual” people that I’ve witnessed such devotion to a calling. I have seen this inner glow in many people around me.
I have seen it with a baker, who would open his bakery at 4am and work till noon greeting every customer with a smile and saying beautiful loving words to everyone who entered his shop.
The image of the housewife who simply gets sucked into a life of comfortable pleasures and who offers little to the household was turned on its head when I met Delores. She showed me in her own way that home making was her calling. She did it with great joy and was the rock upon which her whole family and friends leaned on.
I’ve envied those with a simple life, simple needs, and those who seem to get excited about anything and everything.
I’m learning that we are all very unique and have different strengths; niches and ways that make us grow. What makes me tick is very much different than what makes 99% of people around me tick.
I do understand that the courses I’ve completed, the books I’ve read, and the lessons I’ve learnt will not automatically reveal my Dharma.
However I feel I’m missing something and it’s like I’m in the middle of the ocean and I can’t see anything behind me and there is no sign of land ahead.
I feel I’m interested in everything but committed to nothing.
What is that one particular thing that can answer all my questions?
Unless, off course, that is the whole point. That the “one thing,” my calling, my Dharma, is to be interested in everything and committed to nothing.”
That is, perhaps the fact that I’m so non-committal allows me the freedom and intuition to delve into a trial-and-error, spiritual bucket list, addressing the big questions out there for me.
My questioning might be a kind of investigative reporting, and in that way, help others around me ask and find answers to their own questions.
When I think about it this way, I don’t feel like a poor lost soul who is hung up on new age spirituality, but rather someone in action who helps others like me. As Gandhi would say, I am being the change that I wish to see in the world.
When I began considering that this was my calling, I decided to put my “one thing” to Deepak Chopra’s 3 Component Law of Dharma test. Here’s what was revealed:
Q) We are here to discover our true self and to find out that we are essentially spiritual beings having a human experience.
A) Yes. I am always asking questions and getting answers that push me towards my higher self. I do truly believe we are spiritual beings having an earthly experience.
Q) What is my unique talent and how can I express it?
A) My talent is that I’m curious and courageous enough to ask the big questions. I’m open-minded to accept new learning’s, read, and never be satisfied with one idea. This search takes me into some kind of timeless awareness of who I am and where I am.
Q) How can I serve humanity?
A) There are many people out there who are as lost and confused as I am. As I stay committed to non-commitment, I remain a receptor to new ideas and teachings, and I’m able to express and communicate those ideas outwards to my tribe.
My Dharma is to awaken to my true self, live all the experiences that are possible to me and inspire others to the same.
The questioning I do puts me on the road that leads to the biggest question of all-Thoreau’s “am I onto my bone?”
At the end of the day my “one thing” has led me to no-thing and then finally to nothing. Isn’t that feeling of nothing the essence of what all the great spiritual masters tell us we must reach?
