Ambivalence
Friday, August 19th, 2005Most of us are ambivalent most of the time. We tie our vital energy up in knots with our compulsive worrying, thinking, deciding, and analyzing. Please note: these activities are the same activity. They are all based on fear of the big zero, the void.
What should I do? Should it be this or that or the other? The future. The past. Our regrets and our plans. All of our fine little distinctions.
Not that life doesn’t require some thinking, but you know what I mean, and you know who you are!
Let’s get one or two things out of the way.
Life is neither meaningless nor meaningful.
It is neither important nor unimportant.
You can’t avoid the void.
Hey! “avoid the void.” Get it?
Anyway, the only thing worth saying about life is that it is.
“Isness” is the basis of amazement. And beauty.
Rather than compulsively cultivating plans, we could cultivate amazement.
We could cultivate our sensitivity to the beauty of the Isness of life.
Beauty and amazement.
Just a suggestion.
Okay. Back to ambivalence.
All ambivalence is the result of poor listening.
I was talking to a kula friend the other day, and I decided there are three kinds of people. (Dumb, huh?)
There are people who hear the desire for freedom running through them loud and clear and follow its instructions without hesitation. They follow. They don’t take charge and decide and plan. They take responsibility for freedom and they follow with total commitment. These people are rare. We call them Sadgurus and Mahasiddhas.
Then, there are people, such as myself, who hear the desire for freedom and who follow, sort of, after some consideration. It’s a mixed scene, but still requires lots of courage, because the fear factor is more intense. And even if we’re laggers, at least we’re still on the path with group number one. No going back.
Then, there are the people who just can’t hear so well at the moment. That’s most people. The best thing is to make them as comfortable as possible so they can relax and maybe hear Reality calling more loudly next time around.
Group two and three suffer from ambivalence. In the case of group two, at some point, we realize that ambivalence is a ruse. It’s what we do to ourselves on purpose to keep one foot all tangled up in life normal and our other foot, we hope, on the path to self-realization.
We pretend that we are ambivalent. We actually cultivate ambivalence so we don’t have to take the whole plunge. Oh gee, I’m soooo ambivalent. I mean, my partner hates it when I get up at 4:30 AM for sadhana. What should I do? What ever should I do?
Then we try to play both ends. We think: I’ll just enjoy this eensy-weensy week of compulsive worrying and get back to following freedom next week. Or: I”ll just hang onto this relationship that’s sucking up all my Shakti. No problem, I’ll cultivate s’more Shakti next month. Or: I’ll just ignore the fact that my mind is obsessed with knowing it all, winning it all, or hating it all. I can work my sadhana around that. No problem.
Did you ever notice that when you try to ease your way into a cold ocean, it just gets more and more uncomfortable? The only way in is all the way in. A lot of folks in group two figure this out, eventually.
The only thing we really need to focus on is listening to the desire for freedom. And following. If we learn to really listen, the desire for freedom is revealed as the ultimate Guru, the ultimate guide. It’s the voice of our spiritual ancestors and the entire cosmos playing through us.
As it says in the Veda:
TAT TVAM ASI
THOU ART THAT
OM Shanti, Shambhavi
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