Fit to Receive. A Reflection on Going Deep within.
2000 words, 8 - 10 minute read.
FIT TO RECEIVE
The spiritual journey often begins outwardly. Through reflection and meditation, we observe how life unfolds and how we relate to it. Gradually, understanding arises. Trust and understanding support each other. In such trust, the mind frees up to look more deeply into life.
We look at the major fields of activity in our life. These areas include relationships, work and responsibilities. Through reflection and meditation, we observe the unfolding of our existence and our engagement with life. We come to an understanding of our activity in these major areas. This is a way to know their benefits and their limits. As we become established in this understanding, we develop a growing capacity to explore the mutual infuences of the inner and outer.
In most areas of our life, if we decide we want something (within reason) and we have energy, drive, discipline, knowledge and supporting conditions, we may achieve the goal. Nobody becomes a self‑made success story. That is a social myth, a fabrication of ego. Without this recognition of beneficial influences outside of our self, the ego can become full of itself.
We may strive and push our way towards a very desirable end and accomplish what we want. Yet success may not produce happiness, peace of mind or any depth of insight into fulfilling our potential as human beings. Our desires and achievements then push us on to the next goal, often an extension of the last one. We go around and around without knowing it.
As we turn our attention inward, we may face the gross forms of mind states – problematic desires, anger, pride, fears, confusion, anxiousness and more. Some of these states arise repeatedly through feelings, thoughts and emotions. Subtle forms of mental action that we usually do not notice – judgements, comparisons, opinions – reveal themselves. These subtle activities fuel gross states of mind.
Meditation practice reveals an area of life where the usual drive to accomplish goals does not apply. We can relate to life in another way. This is an important lesson. Striving to reach somewhere reinforces the sense of I, me and mine. Willpower puts pressure on consciousness. Striving intensifies mental activity with expectation of success and fear of failure. The power of the will create an upheaval within, affecting what is around us, near and far. In the end, the fruit of striving ends up far removed from inner peace, clarity and stability.
Mindfulness of the inner leads to refined levels of observation. Depth supports our capacity to abide in conscious ways, alert and decisive in our actions. We begin to realise that the seemingly endless array of choices, and the confusion that follows, reveal an unsettled mind, not freedom of choice. This state of mind has little to do with our real issues or our real interests.
As the mind settles, choices reduce in range and intensity. Stability comes to the forefront of our being with a sense of calm and purposefulness due to this natural reduction. Tensions, gross or subtle, caused by compressed feelings and sensations, will start to fade. We can breathe. We love the space. This is a sign of being fit to receive.
See-saws of the mind
We develop a direct relationship with the present. The mind often see‑saws from present to past, from present to future. Spiritual practice does not deny the past and future. It recognises that the present relates to both. Past, present and future support each other. As the present becomes more central in our lives, we reflect on the past and future in fresh ways.
This subtle shift has more significance in our spiritual life than we might imagine. Going more deeply into ourselves – and into the very nature of existence – brings a fundamental change in how we think about personal achievements. Are we prepared for this?
Meditation practice reveals an area of life where the usual drive to accomplish goals does not apply. We can relate to life in another way. This is an important lesson worth remembering.
In moving from the outer to the inner, from the gross to the subtle, we discover even deeper and more refined levels within. Sometimes the urgency of forcing and striving towards a particular spiritual end can produce an experience that seems remarkably different from all we have known before.
We may then affix a mental label to that exceptional experience and conclude, “I have arrived,” “I have found God” or “I have realised Nirvana or liberation. There is a thrill in experiencing what we wanted and strove for, perhaps for years. We had an experience that seemed to match what we desired. Then effort arises to reproduce or prolong that experience. This kind of desire and clinging leads the mind astray.
As we observe the various mind states that dominate us, we might put strong effort into becoming free of them – getting rid of, stopping, letting go, or whatever words we use inwardly. This can become a major priority in our practice. If we put too much emphasis here, we can lose sight of the deep significance of inner life.
The old way of pushing ourselves towards a goal obstructs the natural, organic movement into depth. Pushing is one extreme; passively waiting for something to happen is the other. A desire to dissolve or get rid can perpetuate desire. Ongoing effort can become a blind spot. Are we fit to receive what we have already received? Spiritual practice includes respect, patience and humility.
The belief that truth is hidden reveals another subtle deception of the ego. There is nowhere for truth to hide.
The practice of observation/bare attention reduces our identification with a wide range of states of mind. From a healthy spiritual standpoint, stepping back loosens our grip on all that we fix ourselves on namely body, mind and decades of conditioning, The known defines who and what “I” am.
We question the best-known one-liner in Western philosophy - cogito ergo sum. The common translation from Latin is, “I think, therefore I am” rather than the precise, “I am thinking, therefore I exist.” This questionable view seized upon in the West helped bring about dependency on thought, the rational mind, education, science and culture of individualism. Despite a modest value, cogito ergo sum reveals a contracted view of reality through subordination to thought.
René Descartes, a 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician, entered the phrase in Discourse on the Method, a book published in 1637. It would appear Descartes did not have the method for a transformative way of discovering reality, unlike the tradition of Dharma with its diverse range of methods for change, inner and outer.
Benefits of stepping back
We might feel stepping back brings about a life‑denying approach through being less involved with the drama of the inner and outer world – its beauty and ugliness. We forget that as we step back, we move towards seeing more clearly.
If you hold the palm of your hand close to your face, all you can see is your hand. If it is too close, even that becomes blurred, and you are in darkness. Stepping back allows you to see your hand more clearly. It works the same way with our mental states. With the movement of stepping back for clear observation and equanimity, we can witness the condition of the mind with clear comprehension.
Stepping back allows us to see not only the hand clearly but also the surrounding space. ‘I think therefore I am’ seems a lightweight view compared to the Four Noble Truths, dependent arisingand the emptiness of the ego. Being identified with a thought to confirm existence and an individual life, we indulge in more thoughts, views and images that become our ‘reality.’ Reality does not belong to the changeable and the insubstantial.
Spell of consciousness and its content
We often have a bias in our minds. It leans towards the pleasant or unpleasant, the emotional or the conceptual. This bias can shift over time. Blinded by preoccupation with troubling mental states, we can also become caught up in states we enjoy. We then risk becoming infatuated with the relationship between consciousness and its content – with how “I” feel, what “I” see, what “I” understand.
The pursuit of special experiences, including spiritual highs, has a modest place on the path. The spiritual life does not depend on any experience, however refined or sacred it may appear. Experiences arise and pass according to conditions. They cannot provide an ultimate discovery.
Awareness reveals the calm, the agitated, spiritual or worldly mind. If we cling to experiences, we continue to orbit in circles around “me and my experiences.”
Clarity diminishes our preoccupation with experiences and objects of interest. The movements of the mind and its formations take second place to the simple power of witnessing. In this shift, clarity, calmness and a quiet well‑being come to the foreground. We feel less defined by the experiences we once organised our life around.
Yet even the witness is not the end. Witnessing remains a subtle relationship between an apparent observer and what is observed. Being fit to receive does not arise from any object, nor from the witness, nor from having or not having spiritual practice. It points to a depth where the drive to secure experiences falls silent, and where consciousness is free to move without being bound to what appears in it.
In that depth, innocence and receptivity replace the search for special states. Experiences still come and go – pleasant, unpleasant, profound or ordinary – but they no longer define the heart of the spiritual life. What matters is revealed in the freedom to allow whatever arises and passes without ownership, without fear and without clinging.
If heavily involved in the content of consciousness, we become confined by it. Then it is difficult to sense what is truly transcendent. In such confinement, the subject (you), the witness and the object (whatever appears in consciousness, whether via the senses or from inner constructions) remain locked in a tight circle, a closed duality of self and other.
In our practice of equanimity and witnessing, we realise stepping back also means a step towards something else. At this juncture, one also becomes fit to receive. Insights and realisations come out of the blue. We can speak of a human being in a state of innocence, a primary mode that the unexpected reveals far more than defined limits of the chooser and choice, the self and the object to find or gain.
If effort appears, it creates a goal, a desirable end, which distorts the receptivity of innocence. For consciousness to evolve in the way referred to here, it expands without effort, revealing transcendent discoveries that support action and service in the world, not out of pressure or duty but out of the release of love.
The direction in which consciousness moves varies from person to person. Devotion may be a feature of not a real or mythical figure, but a devotion moving towards the felt sense of the transcendent, of something that embraces inner and outer. For others, devotion bears no relevance. Thought falls into silence or shows on the periphery of consciousness or as a subtle, pure intimation of “something else” At this point, in this clear seeing, thought often falls silent.
The power of standing back from the grip of the world of name and form, mentality and materiality confirms the truth of the capacity of being fit to receive transcendent realisations.
A precious realisation can reveal expansive freedom with insights into every area of our existence, including body, feeling tones, perceptions, thoughts and consciousness. Realisations reveal insights not tied to the condition of the so-called self. This confirms the reality of freedom beyond measurement.
Life reveals itself anew and timeless. Empathy and care for life become the norm. Naurally.