Los
Angeles, Fall 1996
The
Vast Wilderness of God
A few years
ago I happened to be in India when the Sharikaracharya, last of
a long lineage, died. The Times of India was filled with stories
and obituaries about him, one of which, an account by a journalist
friend of Indira Gandhi, caught my attention. It seems that during
one of Mrs. Gandhi's difficult periods as Prime Minister, she
decided to consult the Shankaraycharya, for whom she had great
respect. She invited the journalist friend to accompany her on
the trip to the ashram, and they flew to a nearby airport in a
private jet from New Delhi. Mrs. Gandhi went in for her audience
with the holy man while the journalist waited outside. After about
an hour or so, she emerged from the room, and she and the journalist
boarded the plane. She seemed to the journalist to be unusually
quiet and serene. He ventured to ask, "How did it go in there?"
Mrs. Gandhi replied, "It was wonderful. I put forth all my questions,
and he answered every one of them, but neither of us spoke a word."
William Butler
Yeats said, "We can make our minds so like still water that beings
gather about us to see their own images, and so live for a moment
with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our
silence."
Just being
in the pristine awareness of here and now, you become as a reflecting
pool, and those who gather around tend see their own images. What
has been murky suddenly clears up, and sometimes in that clearing
there is a fierceness. Truth and love don't always show up as
honey dipped. Sometimes it takes a great courageousness of heart
to allow a stripping away of all that is extra, all that we have
been holding onto for so long.
Haven't you
ever had the experience of finding yourself with someone who is
just quietly present and suddenly there is something like a quake
in your being. Some big construct of beliefs or identification
begins cracking up and falling away. And though it may mean immense
change of some sort, you find that you literally cannot hold onto
the false construct any longer. So you surrender. You surrender
into this fierce clarity. And there is love, there is compassion,
there is your own natural wakeful presence. Are you willing to
surrender to that?
Q: How
can we know that in this quiet that you speak of we will experience
goodness and clarity? Do you presume a benevolent force in the
universe?
CI: Look
to your own nature because, after all, we are each a microcosm
of totality, inseparable from the macrocosm. Those moments that
you have known pure love, have they not been the truest? Have
you not felt the most authentic, the most alive? Through all the
strange turns and wanderings of your life, isn't love what you
have always yearned for, what you have wanted to express, what
you have wanted to give? And can you imagine that on your deathbed
the love that you have known and shared will be all that will
have mattered?
So whenever
you find yourself in doubt about a benevolent force in the universe,
just return to this, back home, to your own true nature, love
itself.
Q: I
know that is true in my heart of hearts. But how does that explain
the horrors that go on in this world?
CI: Love
gets twisted sometimes. And it shows up in all kinds of sad and
even tragic ways when it has been perverted, suppressed, and denied.
Though love is everyone's essence, not everyone is aware of that
at all times. Stay with your own knowing of love. It transforms
your vision of the horrors.
Q:
It seems that things are worse than ever in our time.
CI:
The world has been mad for as long as we know. What is unique
to our time is that through extensive media we have awareness
of the darkness all over the planet simultaneously. This may result
in a quickening of the light, as these polarities are always dancing
with each other. But in any case, choose to rest in your own true
nature and then you meet in the same love that one might feel
for one's own children. Even those whose behavior is an outrage
and whom we might work to deter are seen as wayward children,
blind to the consequences of their actions. "They know not what
they do." You will then stop worrying about how bad it is in our
time. That worry will be transmuted into compassion and love for
what is shining before you.
Q:
Will you then know how to be, what to do, how to help out?
CI:
Being and doing are one continuum. Action flows from silence and
dissolves back into it. In this, you discover that love is running
the show and you just follow orders. You take dictation. The love
that you are says or does whatever needs to be said or done and
you find yourself as surprised as anyone else by what is coming
through you. It will be completely unique in its manifestation,
something nobody ever taught or told you. After all, the great
ones just went out and did their own thing. The Buddha, Christ,
all of them. They didn't follow anyone else's formula. They followed
only the dictates of their own hearts. And the power of their
integrity in that surrender was such that religions were created
around them, but they themselves were not out to create religions.
They were just living their lives in a wild, unconventional and
creative expression. What moved through them is now moving through
you. You may find yourself blazing for thousands or you may discover
that you were not as pivotal in changing the world as you once
had hoped. In any case, ah so.
Q:
In recognizing this true nature, is the body a distraction, like
thoughts are a distraction?
CI: Thoughts
are not necessarily a distraction. Nor is the body. Thoughts are
arising in this present awareness and dissolving back into it.
The silence remains untouched, unstained, immaculate. Thoughts
are only a problem if you are preoccupied with them, giving them
all your attention, believing in the entity of "me" around which
the thoughts swirl. But thoughts in and of themselves are not
some kind of enemy. Thoughts can be very useful, functional, and
even entertaining. They are allowed in this vast clearing. No
problem.
Q:
Isn't there a process? Don't we need to go through some sort of
mental purification to realize what you speak of?
CI:
No. You don't have to purify anything. It's all done. This awareness,
this love that you are is not diminished by your dips into neurosis
nor exalted by your soaring or poetic insights. It is always pure
and clear, here and now.
Q:
I want to believe that.
CI: No
need to believe this. Taste it. Experience it here and now. This
vastness that you are is quite full and obvious. This is the feast
and this feast is so rich that we couldn't possibly begin to take
in even what is in this room. Think of it, each of us a human
universe, yet made of all the same components. And all of thisthe
floor, the chairs, the flowers, the microphone, shimmering with
this presence. Shining and shimmering and pulsating with life.
Release your notions of "someday, I may experience this," "if
only," or any sense of deficiency or postponement. There is no
need to sit at the feast and feel hungry.
Q:
Catherine, sometimes I have experienced what I think you are pointing
to and it has come with a sense of boundlessness, nothing to hold
onto, a sense of being in some great wilderness with no end in
sight. It is occasionally frightening when I am in that state.
CI: You
get used to it. And you discover that there is no longer any sense
of in or out. It is only that-boundlessness in all directions,
and you are left in awe and wonder with no reference to any one
having an experience or being in any kind of state. At that point,
there is no reason for fear. There is only the natural experience
of being without limits.
And then
you realize that the wilderness you see with no end in sight is
merely the vast and exciting wilderness of God.
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