Most of us are living our lives from within funhouses of illusion, delusion, projection, and tension. Our moment-to-moment experience is driven by fear, anger, jealousy, shame, hunger, and pride. Fear, the real “F” word, underlies all, even a lot of what we call happiness.

When we are trying to grow, we first must relax enough to allow ourselves to feel just how scared we are. We absolutely must discover our real situation, no matter how painful. Alongside this, come breaks in the tension that give us little tastes of deeper relaxation and the natural state. We see the beacon flickering, however faintly, and we keep going.

Anyone who is committed to a spiritual practice soon understands just how entrenched are our fears and fantasies. We become painfully aware of how difficult it is to develop discrimination, or clear seeing, through the fog of projections and constructions. Sometimes it seems we will never be able to drop our tensions and breathe more freely.

However, with perseverance, guidance, and grace, we do manage to relax bit by bit. One day, we look back with surprise. What seemed like a hopeless situation has somehow resolved. In spite of our frustrations, we find ourselves in a new world. This is what Swami Rudrananda called “vertical change.” Our experience has altered. Our View has enlarged. It is as if we are standing on fresh ground.

Usually, our friends and teachers notice the change before we do. We are still hanging onto the last remnants of the old conceptual, self paradigm, even though our conduct in the world has shifted, sometimes dramatically. We’re like heroin addicts who keep a syringe or two wrapped up in a drawer even when the addiction has faded. We are still a little bit attached to and haunted by that old world. All of our friends and family are rejoicing, but we can’t join in one hundred percent. One day, we throw out the needles. Now, the thing is truly done!

In the life of a dedicated practitioner, there are many such movements and moments.

Sometimes, a vertical change feels so momentous, we think we have “arrived.” We believe we have reached our destination. This destination might be related to a change we have been seeking in our habitual way of responding to the world, or we might believe it’s something grander, such as an awakening.

How do we know when such a change has truly taken place? How can we be sure we are not still stuck in fantasy and delusion? After all, many people do get stuck, even after years and years of practice.

Ram Das often tells the story of the massive stroke he suffered and how this encounter with death revealed his real situation. In the middle of the stroke, as he lay paralyzed on the floor, his spiritual “accomplishments” deserted him, and he knew himself to be just a person afraid of death. As he puts it: “I had been superficial and arrogant and the stroke helped me to be humble.”

When we are in stressful situations, our real condition is more likely to be revealed. When we feel our lives are threatened, our real condition will certainly become clearer to us. If we want to discern our real condition, we must learn to observe ourselves in stressful situations.

What are we really feeling? What is our actual conduct? What thoughts are going through our minds? Observing our conduct in the world: mentally, emotionally, and physically is like the lens cleaner that will wipe away the fog of projection and fantasy.

As some readers of Living Tantra know, I have a long-standing fear of flying. At some point a few years ago, I stopped seeing my task as being that of getting rid of my fear. Now I experience the fearful situation as a gift. I fly regularly, and so I get to work with my root fear of death quite often. I get to see my situation. This is grace.

Now, I am not recommending that Living Tantra readers seek out near-death experiences. Although if you have a fear, such as I do, it is a wonderful opportunity to experience your real circumstance and work with that.

Even if you are not consciously terrified on a regular basis, you still have plenty of opportunities to observe yourself when you feel threatened by other people and situations.

It takes some courage and capacity to engage in self-reflection in the very moment when you’d rather be defending your territory, crawling into a hole, or dragging out your habitual responses, whatever they are. But if you do have this capacity and courage, this sadhana of asking yourself what am I doing, thinking, and feeling will let you know if you have indeed stabilized at a new level, or not.

Our patterns of reactivity are not so easily gotten rid of that they disappear altogether, even when we have been practicing for a long time. However, they do grow fainter and less frequent. Most importantly, we learn to relax in the moment as soon as we feel the reactive pattern beginning to pulse. We have stopped trying to fix everything. We just relax. Relaxation is residing in vastness. In that vastness, the energy of the pattern dissipates. Try it, and find out for yourself.

We need the world in order to grow spiritually. This may seem paradoxical to some of you who have been taught that the world must be transcended or, at the very least, abstained from in important ways.

Only in the push and pull of life do we learn the truth about ourselves.

Every evening I chant in front of the Sri Chakra. The first round is a celebration of manifest life, of Shakti as the easily visible, feel-able, taste-able world. I always experience a special rush of gratitude during this part of the sadhana. And I aways thank the Goddess for having an outward form that so generously nurtures and assists creatures such as ourselves.

OM Shanti,
Shambhavi

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