Playing Around
Thursday, February 23rd, 2006Imagine the manifest world as a palatial mansion with an endless number of rooms equipped with fascinating, weird, and plain old stuff. You look out the window, and the gardens and hills seem to roll on forever. The sky dances with multi-colored lights.
Now, you can gather lumber and hammer and nails, and maybe enough canned goods to last a few decades. You can find some dark, cramped room off in a corner of the mansion and barricade yourself in there nice and tight. Then, for the rest of your days, you can sit “safely” in your mini-fortress, eating your food, and complaining about what went wrong, or bragging obsessively about what went so well, until you finally die.
This little room has lots of names:
“me”
“myself”
“I”
“my beliefs and convictions”
“my ideas”
“my experiences”
“my accomplishments”
“my stuff”
“my lack of stuff”
“my loneliness, anger, bitterness, fears, jealousy, shame, self-hatred, etc.”
“my traumatic childhood, adulthood, relationship, illness, etc.”
“my career”
“the people I can’t live without”
“the people I can’t stand”
“my karma”
“my astrology”
“science”
“religion”
“politics”
“ “ (fill in your preference here)
Oh yeah:
“my preferences”
OR, you could take that same lumber, hammer, and nails, and all the fresh food that originally went into making the canned goods, and build a temple out on the lawn, offer the fresh food to God, and invite all your friends over for kirtan and prasad.
OR, you could build yourself a hut by a little creek and hang out doing sadhana. Hint: Plant the seeds that went into growing the fresh food. Here, “seeds” = both plant seeds and mantric seeds (bijas). Tricky, huh?
OR, you could leave everything just as it is and make yourself available to what spontaneously unfolds.
Scenario One describes a person who is suffering from a strong sense of separation. “I” doesn’t yet get it that “I” is a construct based on fear and compulsive pleasure-seeking. The pleasures of “I” are pale reflections of cosmic virtues. “I” loves, but it is a narrow, possessive, unfulfilling reflection of cosmic love, devotion, and compassion. “I” hungers, but only for that which will reinforce “I.” The open-ended, creative, spontaneous desire of the world Self is unimaginable to “I.” “I” has convictions, but these only serve “I’s” limited attempts to create meaning. A direct encounter with the boundless, objectless devotion of the world would destroy “I,” and so “I” is terrified of the full flow of devotion.
Scenario Two describes someone with a natural disposition toward ritual, community, and external forms of worship such as kirtan and karma yoga (service).
Scenario Three describes a yogi type disposed toward self-transformational practices, often those that engage life directly at an energetic level.
Scenario Four describes someone for whom every moment and all aspects of life, are worship, service, and yajna (lit. “sacrifice” but in the largest View yajna means the continuous dissolving of Self into Self.)
In each of these scenarios, the world is the same world, and the tools are the same tools. Cosmic love, devotion, compassion, dedication, and creativity touch all beings, and these cosmic virtues shine through all beings. Only the mode of participation, or View, differs from being to being and life to life.
In the human realm, we have a fantastic array of helpers to assist us in opening our mode of participation and widening our View.
But to listen and follow the instructions takes effort. If we want to live consciously and lead a guided life, we must exercise our own version of cosmic svatantrya (freedom). We must cultivate the desire to live fully in Reality just as it is and relax the tension of “I” so that the cosmic virtues can come into full flower.
The Tantras call this world “the mansion of fun.” It’s not so much fun if you are sitting fearfully in your little room. Recognize the beautiful potentials of human life for expressing the freedom of the whole. And then, get out there and play.
OM Shanti,
Shambhavi
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