Talk around the spiritual water cooler has it that you can’t know the fruits of a practice until you do the practice. Despite this sound insight, we all spend a large part of our time practicing with specific fruits firmly in mind. This one wants to levitate. That one wants great teachers to step into her dreams. Another does a million mantras, hoping for a 3-D glimpse of the deity of choice. Then there are those chasing larger, more generic fruit: I want peace. I want freedom. I want bliss. Rainbow body or bust.

Consider this: most of us are in a relatively contracted state. Anything we wish for or project as a possible outcome of our practice is a product of what we are capable of wishing for or projecting. Scary.

Even so, our concretized desires and projections are not entirely the products of limitation. They contain the kernel of the infinite. But this kernel is all tied up in knots. The best thing we can do for ourselves is relax our ideas about things and let the knots unwind to release their treasure naturally.

It’s like this. As much as we complain, many of us enjoy all the crap that goes on in our heads 24/7. Our thoughts, projections, compulsions, and imaginings are entertaining on some level. While these self-serving mental machinations are symptoms of energy under tension, the enjoyment is not. The world is also enjoying its creations. Siva enjoys Siva with Siva. So there is a kernel of that cosmic delight even amidst our samskaras.

Just so, the authentic spiritual longing we feel comes wrapped up in our attachment to concepts, specific outcomes, the knowable, and small self.

The desire (iccha shakti) that propels this world is open-ended. When we sit for practice and project or desire specific outcomes, we confine ourselves to a little roped in corner of the world’s infinite possibilities. A more expansive way is to let the desire flow without object, without concept. This objectless desire is receptive, not acquisitive. Open-ended, conceptless desire is Shakti, and she will be naturally answered and met by Shiva. Then the whole world will be yours.

Of course, we hear teachers talking about the fruits of practice all the time. And we eagerly ingest stories of all kinds of extraordinary experiences. But whatever we make of these words will be at least partially conditioned by our limitations. The kernal, the transmission of Reality just as it is, will submit to no concept or story.

Concepts and descriptions are useful at times to guide our practice. However, we should remember that these are always provisional, even when they sound ultimate. When we enter consciously into the natural state and taste the fruits of our practice, we should be ready to let go of anything we think we know and be prepared to fully receive what we actually find.

Holding concepts and descriptions provisionally saves us from the earnestness that plagues so many on the spiritual path. I would even say that we should maintain a sense of irony about our ideas of spiritual life and Reality. The demise of our most deeply-held conviction is always just around the corner. If we keep practicing, that is.

The unearnest View, the View of impermanence, of unknowability, and of Reality always being wilder than anything we can encompass, is the source of humor. And humor is one of the principle signs of enlightenment.

God is laughing. You are God.

So join in.

OM Shanti,
Shambhavi

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