An email: "I strive too much towards Liberation." A response

I received this message from a person with more than 10 years of experience of connection with the teachings of Dharma and Advaita (Non-duality, a spiritual tradition of India). She raises an important concern about the impact of striving for liberation.

We shared a WhatsApp call, and after I sent a response, which offered a summary of our exchange. I added much more text for this post below from our phone meeting and tweaked the text I sent her.

Wisdom sheds light on the expanse.

This is the email I received.

I find myself ‘striving too much’ towards liberation.

This is a recurrent pattern for me. Every couple of years, I find myself getting too focused on my “doing” related to the practices. Study of spiritual books and meditation are not an issue.

The strong desire for liberation and the ‘wanting to make it happen’ create tension in the mind and spirit of the being. 

Can you help me here with some ideas and reflection?

A Response

I appreciated your email and your concern. ‘Desire, striving and wanting to make liberation happen’ gets in the way of liberation. The desire for liberation pushes liberation further away as a goal for achievement.

We often have a conditioned tendency to try to get what we want, even with a noble endeavour. The word ‘practice’ can also become a subtle obstruction, making a gap between consciousness and the goal.

At times, we might ‘feel’ close to the goal. Then, the dynamics of change occur. So the view arises that the goal seems far away. Doubts can easily appear when a big gap appears between where we are and liberation.

Some spiritual teachers make the claim. “There is nothing to do. There is no goal to achieve. Everything is perfect already. It is only the wanting in your mind that has to be let go.”

The nature of things is neither perfect nor imperfect. Let us not confine our view of such a polarity due to our state of mind.

A practitioner might let go of the desire for liberation. Will the person suddenly feel liberated? Probably not. The conditioning arises so the desire moves onto a less significant object – unfulfilling, unsatisfying with no lasting significance.

The practitioner might feel caught on the horns of a dilemma – trapped in problematic desire, letting it go and ending up inept in a mind state of passivity.

Exploration of the emptiness (not caught up in) of desire and the emptiness of passivity matter. So one does not fall into struggle with this duality.

You may well be ready to drop the metaphorical language of path and goal, even though it provides a useful and important sense of direction for a period for the practitioner.

Your priority changes without converting the so-called Now or Being into the Goal.

A significant change reveals itself in the freedom to explore. The wise view confirms a depth of understanding that liberates us from the bondage of duality. In these teachings, an intellectual understanding only shows a comprehension lacking the power to make any major difference to life.

Examples of a Liberated Way of Seeing and Knowing

There is the freedom to practice and the freedom not to practice.

There is the freedom to be and the freedom to respond/to act.

There is the freedom to explore meditation, methods and techniques and the freedom to experience the formless - silence, stillness, love, spaciousness, happiness.

There is the freedom to be alone and the freedom to be with others.

Wisdom supports being and doing, action and stillness. This confirms a freedom to apply appropriate effort and the freedom abide and respond in effortless ways.

Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking it is all about choice. We have spent decades in the delusion of believing we have freedom of choice. Look where this belief has got us.

Look at the unhappy choices in the lives of people, in society and the public and private sector.  Look at the choices triggering destructive behaviour on Earth.

There is the freedom to be and there is the freedom to engage – to bring love into this world.

Liberation recognises and explores the challenges that come to our life and the life of others.

On one side, we all share much in common, such as being made of the same stuff – elements and consciousness, birth, living and death. On the other side, we are different in conditioning, appearance, views and attitudes.

The problematic state of mind finds itself stuck being for this and against that or indecisive. Unresolved and unclear patterns of greed, negativity and confusion intensify this duality.

The awakened ones proclaim, “Liberation is in all directions.”

Don't hesitate to send any reflections. Your years of connection with the Dharma, with Non-Duality, reveal liberating blessings. 

I can hear the wisdom in your voice with WhatsApp yesterday.

Liberation is as close as trees are to wood. You will know through much dissolution of suffering and problematic life, contentment and expressions of love for the welfare of others, near and far.

Love

Christopher