The focus here is making the sometimes harrowing, sometimes ecstatic journey into an ever deepening aliveness. Or, the focus is getting to know the deepest version of yourself (beneath layers of conditioning and confusion) and bringing that uniqueness out in a way that is helpful to the world. That's just two ways of saying the same thing.
The method is hanging out together in an ever greater willingness to notice what's true...and what feels aligned to a felt sense of the Divine. Even when it's not comfortable. Even when it robs you of the feeling of being special or superior. Even when it doesn't jive with conventional reality or the beliefs through which you stabilize your sense of self. No teacher and no student. Just that shared willingness and all the doors that it opens.
Our approach applies some of the rigorous inquiry that spiritual systems use to test insights and stories: seeing if cherished beliefs match the lived wisdom of old sages and poets. Noticing if an experience nestles comfortably in with established teachings of this or that tradition. Exploring the techniques and practices that help reveal hidden dimensions of reality. And at the same time…we’re not in the business of building stairways to heaven. We live in this world - which can’t be tidied, transcended, fixed or healed. So we’re left with the opportunity to sit on the ground together and acknowledge the richness of reality as it is: no magic fix-all cures, no escape hatch.
Learning from spiritual traditions; standing on one's own
It's tempting to show up in spiritual spaces with the momentum of continuing to know oneself through old modes: the need to be validated and accepted; the drive to know more and climb ladders of accomplishment. Our hope here is to explore another set of possibilities: to lean more toward leaping out from the known and splashing into the deep nourishment and support at the root of our being. To give up for a moment ascending to more and better; to instead sit still in the deep compost pit of the world that decomposes what no longer serves. To form an allegiance to the mysterious, subterranean stillness which fountains up into our being as immovable strength, wholesomeness, clarity - and ten thousand ways of love.
So this dance - of respectfully treading paths laid down by sages. But not following them with such honour role student diligence that you overlook making your own meeting with ultimate reality. Which can mean stepping off the known path: walking through the cavern door that leads into the dark unknown - into the mystery and vitality from which every spiritual idea insight was born.
We may circle truth with the support of the great spiritual traditions - borrowing wisdom and a sense of possibility from ancient sages, wise women, cave poets, jungle shamans. And on the other hand, we may discover truth by setting down everything known to meet the real directly. No filters: just opening up to see with the wide-eyed fresh aliveness of a child or a holy fool. Knowing nothing. All formal techniques and tricks dropped on the floor. Just your own unique meeting with reality, moment to moment revealing truth in real time.
Our approach becomes a kind of wild circus with all the activity centered on a single tightrope. If we get too top heavy with self-aggrandizing spiritual egotism, we'll fall. So that invites respect for our spiritual forebears and the willingness to be challenged on comfortable illusions. And also - we can't hope to walk lightfooted and nimble on the rope if we're over-burdened with a mildewy library of spiritual advice. So exploring that too - what happens when all the formal techniques and ideas are thrown to the ground...for the chance to discover a fresh sense of how to move and dance in space - now and now and now.
Embodying the Divine
When we see some part of reality that we truly admire and love, it's as if we can dedicate the space within us - the space between our atoms - to embody and express this admired quality into the world. We see this in the example of the Bodhisattvas - who make vows through which they put a particular quality like compassion or wisdom at the center of their lives and being. Such beings don't manifest something for themselves. They themselves become manifestations of something larger.
The primary relationship here is with reality itself: an allegiance through which you gladly makes room in yourself for some part of the world - some aspect of the Divine - to embody and express itself through you into the world of form. The sense of getting for "me" or even giving to someone else is sidelined. Yet Divine Abundance flows through in a way that fountains blessings all directions.
Our opportunity involves holding open space into which some part of yourself can surface. Maybe what surfaces is something that’s been clenched and suppressed. So that there’s the relief of unclenching - and maybe gaining some perspective. The more startling possibility though is that some part of you that’s seemed neurotic or profane finds - in an offered space - an entirely new way of expressing into the world. Maybe a way that includes unexpected dignity.
So - the work of listening and noticing what awakening feels like in your unique heart. Feeling how it settles into and expesses through your body. Discovering what unique qualities live within you - ways of being and doing that will naturally express into the world. And then finding ways to root one's life in such a way that these qualities keep maturing and expressing themselves in a way that benefits the world.