When Worlds Come Together
At a place called "Interbeing"
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She was disappointed with her meditation and wondered why to continue. She had expected much more. She told the Sage. He asked, "Why are you disappointed?" "Because," she said, "nothing's happening." The Sage replied, "There's always something happening."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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We may begin meditation - or any spiritual practice - and evaluate it based on the benefit we think we are or are not gaining. This expectation-driven strategy is a beginning. We soon learn meditation, provided we truly meditate, will not give us what we want. Nevertheless, it will give us what we want.
When assuming a spiritual path, the false self and the true self come with us. Ego and non-ego, in conflict, take up the practice. The inner conflict is likely what brings most persons to a spiritual path. Ego tends to think, "What can I get for myself out of this?" Non-ego tends to think, "I come to receive what I need from this." The "what I need" is not personal; that "I" is universal. Ego, the small "i," comes with well-honed tools to manufacture results in agreement with its consumer mentality. Often, this shows itself as subtle or flagrant bargaining with God. Non-ego comes to surrender. This surrender is spoken of in Zen Buddhism as non-gaining mind. Christians practice this when praying, "Thy will be done."
If we genuinely seek a spiritual path, we do so from deeper than the reasons we think. We cannot conceptualize motives not fitting the ego. Instead, the reasons we think will soon be exposed for what they are - the wish for control. We will utilize, if possible, spiritual practice to determine our destiny. Our spiritual practice, then, will be principally an extension of either the true self or the false self and, likely, always some mixture of both.
So, when we feel we are not benefiting from our spiritual practice, we can get discouraged and question it. We may try harder and get more frustrated when more - effort, techniques, advice, time invested, books read, retreats attended - does not work. And we may jump from one practice to another, trying to find the one that produces the desired outcome. We can become serial spiritualists, one partner - path, practice, teacher - after another, not committing to any.
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Yet, "nothing happening" is "something happening." And relaxing into this "nothing happening" in time yields the joy of "something is happening." However, we must go deep enough into "nothing happening," rather than escaping, to realize this. In the Christian Gospel, this waiting time is connoted in the day between Jesus' death and resurrection, what I have elsewhere termed "tomb time." In Buddhism, the gap is implied in the time Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree before awakening. All effort had failed him, so he sat and sat and sat.
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One lesson of meditation is learning there is always something happening, and we can learn to trust something more may be happening when nothing appears to be happening. The most needed work is not what we think is working, but the work we do not know is taking place. By not-knowing, we come to trust and appreciate this unseen grace. Buddha sat in not-knowing, while a work was preparing him for his awakening to Reality. Buddha most likely had no idea what the inner work was that was going on - neither do we. In the Jesus story, we have only from one-and-a-half to three years of his life. He entered his mission at about age thirty. What happened the prior three decades? Almost nothing is said of it. We can assume he was being prepared by an inner work. The Gospel of Luke 2.52 reads, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor" (NRSV). Sometimes, Life has a grace for us, and we need time to grow to be able to receive it.
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Jesus points to this silent, hidden work characteristic of the spiritual life. First, he uses the image of a mustard seed and, then, yeast (Matthew 13.31ff, NRSV).
He [Jesus] put before them [the crowds] another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
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Possibly, the principal, most challenging shift in the spiritual way is from trusting the seen to trusting the unseen. Almost nothing encourages this trust. Most of us live in societies that value above all or only what is called objective and label apparently non-empirical spiritual claims as superstitious and naive. Spiritual experience may be treated with suspicion and those who share it with contempt.
Online is a plethora of know-it-alls who enjoy downing anything religious, and one can wonder how many have studied religion in-depth. Yet, to live with prejudice for the objective, as opposed to all else, is to cut reality in half, so living a half-life. Instead, wisdom includes both what is termed the empirical and all else - what is called non-empirical.
We need not assume spiritual experience is non-empirical, however. Many things we now understand we once did not. If this applies on the material level, why not all experience? Sometimes, we hear science speak of findings that have been taught, for instance, for centuries in Oriental spiritual paths. Science and religion need not be at odds, for both are valid and needed means of exploring reality.
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In meditation, we can practice this contentment with this secretly working grace. We can learn to enjoy something as simple as the in-breath and out-breath. With our breathing, the universe is breathing. By mindfully breathing, we are saying "Yes" to the inner work while staying in fellowship with the here-and-now.
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Last, we learn spiritual practices do not produce outcomes anymore than watering a tree makes the tree produce fruit. The tree produces fruit - we could say the whole universe produces the fruit. Spiritual practices prepare for the fruition of positive, life-affirming outcomes. So, we learn, certain outcomes will not happen without spiritual practice, as the tree will not produce fruit without water, sunshine, and nutrients from the soil. Yet, these practices do not make these outcomes appear. Indeed, one reason for spiritual practice is to get you and me out of the way so the hidden can manifest in the world. This work we call grace. Grace is not merely a thing; grace is an action. What grace is is what grace does; what grace does is what grace is. We cannot engage in any spiritual act without it arising from this ever-present grace working in the unseen Depths. We, therefore, proceed on the verity that the seen is a small slice of the whole of Reality.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox, and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
