Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Ten
April 1, 2006
A. Sohan Ko (via email) asks:
1) What kind of spiritual practices did you do before the spiritual emergency you described in Darkness Shining Wild and what influences did they have on you during those two years?
2) When I read the book, I was thinking that the bigger one's attachment is, the more difficult he/she would find resting in absolute/perfect peace and emptiness. Attachment includes even slightly hanging on to one single idea; it includes any perception, any feeling, any opinion. Attachment could give us hard time during spiritual transcendence as they act like obstruction, impurity. Does this have any relevance to your experience? How did attachment affect your spiritual emergency?
3) What kind of spiritual practices do you do now? Are you still attached to something?
Robert answers:
1. Vipassana, Dzogchen, yoga and Feldenkrais, Rajneesh active meditations, lucid dreaming, intense exercise (running and weight-training) done mindfully. They all were helpful, but what was most helpful was the practice of remaining as present as possible no matter what was happening. An intimate witnessing.
2. Attachment is not the problem; what matters is what we choose to do with attachment. Do we let it mutate into clinging, greed, neediness, addiction? Do we overcontain it or dissociate from it in the name of spiritual correctness? Do we relate to it with aversion or compassion?
Attachment comes with life; without attachment, there’d be no compassion. Be careful of making a goal of nonattachment; you may just be demonstrating attachment to nonattachment. I recommend ceasing to blame attachment for our slippages.
Freedom from attachment does not mean the cessation of attachment, but rather awakened intimacy with both attachment and its sources.
3. My current spiritual practices? Being present as possible under all conditions; finding freedom through intimacy; opening until there is only openness; meditation; taking good care of details; practising nonreactivity.
Am I still attached to something? Yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Healthy attachment is not clingy or sticky, but connective. Whatever its gravitational pull toward a particular object, person, or outcome, it is not desperate, not needy, not graspy. We can be attached without losing our integrity or dignity.
Freedom is not a matter of no longer having any attachments, but rather of not being at their mercy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
B. MichaelD asks:
Arthur...you mentioned this earlier in the thread:
[quote]RAM's experience as a community leader is one topic I'd love for them to discuss, especially as it applies to the dynamics of spiritual communities with a strong leader. It would be interesting to hear RAM delve into the problems he perceived in other such communities, how he fell prey to much the same dynamics, and where he feels the evolution of such arrangements is going and/or how such communities may operate in the future - I'd love to hear him elaborate on something he mentioned in this thread, Tich Nhat Hanh's bit about the next Buddha being a community.[/quote]
I also have wondered about this, and would love it if Robert would expand on this topic a bit.
1. I'm particularly interested if Robert is aware of any communities out there in the great wide world that are embodying "spiritually mature peer" values...
2. I also wonder if Robert might have anything to say about the difference between "spiritual maturity" vs "spiritual attainment"? (E.g. integration into wholeness vs vertical development)
Robert answers:
1. I don’t know of any, but I have a feeling that such entities, or at least in prototypal form, are currently being birthed. The times call for them. They would be more than an association of like-minded individuals, more than a network of spiritual comrades, more than an organization of those devoted to a worthy cause. They would have as an essential part of their foundation a deep and ongoing intimacy, through which the well-being of all involved would be served. This would mean that their members would already be mature enough to understand, value, enter, and support such intimacy, without losing touch with themselves. Individual and community needs would, in other words, have to fruitfully coexist. A steep order this is, made even steeper by the fact that many who have the requisite maturity have little or no interest in forming and participating in community.
Many who want to join a community do so because of unresolved parent-child and security issues, which most communities don’t bother dealing with to any significant degree. In a truly functional community, these issues would not be pushed aside or ignored, regardless of whom they arose in. This would be unlikely to happen in a community with a single leader, which is why I think that the needed leadership ought to be multiple: an intimate group of mature peers, who have full permission among themselves to bust each other without any fear of reprisal. Part of their challenge is to create a safe enough environment to let go of playing safe. A sanctuary and a crucible for awakening...
To help ensure community integrity, being authentic has to be more important than making nice or hiding out in overdone tolerance; everyone needs to share the risk and responsibility of rocking the boat. This is necessary to keep the leadership on track, and to minimize the possibility of community abuses, such as cultism and neurotic power dynamics. A single individual as leader may have remarkable vision and capacities, but what about his or her blind spots? Who will point them out, and who will make sure that something is done about them? Emotionally literate, spiritually mature, well-integrated peers are needed to take good care of immature or unbalanced elements in the community (including in themselves). A difficult undertaking this is, but necessary, if we are to have communities that function in a truly integral sense.
2. I see spiritual attainment as a subset of spiritual maturity, and spiritual maturity as the greatest spiritual attainment. Implicit in such maturity, such fully-bloomed ripeness, is deeply embodied awakening and integration, at once transparent and grounded, lit throughout by unshakable compassion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. In a response to Rhonda/Feral you say "Meditation requires no props, robes, or equipment. It is not limited to a particular format or posture; one can be still, one can be moving, one can be quiet, one can be chanting or praying or crying. Whatever works. It's good to stay with a practice that works for you, but not to stay with it too long." (emphasis added)
The advice I've heard much more often is: don't keep changing practices; find something that works for you and stick with it until your head explodes (or something to that effect). So, could you elaborate on the whys and wherefores of your advice not to stay with one particular practice for too long? And how can one tell when you've been practicing one technique too long?
2. In your experience as a spiritual teacher and therapist, do you see any differences in how women and men tend to approach and work in these areas?
Robert answers:
1. When I say not to stay with it too long, I’m not advocating leaving prematurely. It’s important not to drop a practice just because it’s hard or pushes your buttons, but if you’ve stayed with it for awhile (long enough to get intimate with it), and it continues not to work for you even when you’ve wholeheartedly given yourself to it over and over and over, you might want to consider letting it go. Many who are having trouble with a practice are too hasty to fault themselves and too ready to let the actual practice and its applicability to them go unchallenged. To really handle this well -- the question of leaving or staying with a particular practice -- discernment is essential, as a kind of meta-practice that we don’t leave, but instead allow to evolve.
When we’ve been with a practice for too long, it’s somewhat similar to when we’ve been with a relationship for too long: we get stale, flattened, dulled, losing our edge, even as we rationalize or downplay our deadening. Sometimes a trial separation is what is called for; after a time apart from our practice, we may return to it rejuvenated and passionate, breathing new life into it. And sometimes we just need to let go. Many people don’t marry their partner, but instead marry their partner’s potential. The same error often occurs in the realm of spiritual practice.
2. Speaking very generally, I’d say that in the context of staying too long with a practice, men tend to get more fanatically driven, and women more devotionally driven. Neither is preferable; driven is driven. And when it’s time to let go, who does so more easily? I think it’s a draw.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A. Sohan Ko (via email) asks:
1) What kind of spiritual practices did you do before the spiritual emergency you described in Darkness Shining Wild and what influences did they have on you during those two years?
2) When I read the book, I was thinking that the bigger one's attachment is, the more difficult he/she would find resting in absolute/perfect peace and emptiness. Attachment includes even slightly hanging on to one single idea; it includes any perception, any feeling, any opinion. Attachment could give us hard time during spiritual transcendence as they act like obstruction, impurity. Does this have any relevance to your experience? How did attachment affect your spiritual emergency?
3) What kind of spiritual practices do you do now? Are you still attached to something?
Robert answers:
1. Vipassana, Dzogchen, yoga and Feldenkrais, Rajneesh active meditations, lucid dreaming, intense exercise (running and weight-training) done mindfully. They all were helpful, but what was most helpful was the practice of remaining as present as possible no matter what was happening. An intimate witnessing.
2. Attachment is not the problem; what matters is what we choose to do with attachment. Do we let it mutate into clinging, greed, neediness, addiction? Do we overcontain it or dissociate from it in the name of spiritual correctness? Do we relate to it with aversion or compassion?
Attachment comes with life; without attachment, there’d be no compassion. Be careful of making a goal of nonattachment; you may just be demonstrating attachment to nonattachment. I recommend ceasing to blame attachment for our slippages.
Freedom from attachment does not mean the cessation of attachment, but rather awakened intimacy with both attachment and its sources.
3. My current spiritual practices? Being present as possible under all conditions; finding freedom through intimacy; opening until there is only openness; meditation; taking good care of details; practising nonreactivity.
Am I still attached to something? Yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Healthy attachment is not clingy or sticky, but connective. Whatever its gravitational pull toward a particular object, person, or outcome, it is not desperate, not needy, not graspy. We can be attached without losing our integrity or dignity.
Freedom is not a matter of no longer having any attachments, but rather of not being at their mercy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
B. MichaelD asks:
Arthur...you mentioned this earlier in the thread:
[quote]RAM's experience as a community leader is one topic I'd love for them to discuss, especially as it applies to the dynamics of spiritual communities with a strong leader. It would be interesting to hear RAM delve into the problems he perceived in other such communities, how he fell prey to much the same dynamics, and where he feels the evolution of such arrangements is going and/or how such communities may operate in the future - I'd love to hear him elaborate on something he mentioned in this thread, Tich Nhat Hanh's bit about the next Buddha being a community.[/quote]
I also have wondered about this, and would love it if Robert would expand on this topic a bit.
1. I'm particularly interested if Robert is aware of any communities out there in the great wide world that are embodying "spiritually mature peer" values...
2. I also wonder if Robert might have anything to say about the difference between "spiritual maturity" vs "spiritual attainment"? (E.g. integration into wholeness vs vertical development)
Robert answers:
1. I don’t know of any, but I have a feeling that such entities, or at least in prototypal form, are currently being birthed. The times call for them. They would be more than an association of like-minded individuals, more than a network of spiritual comrades, more than an organization of those devoted to a worthy cause. They would have as an essential part of their foundation a deep and ongoing intimacy, through which the well-being of all involved would be served. This would mean that their members would already be mature enough to understand, value, enter, and support such intimacy, without losing touch with themselves. Individual and community needs would, in other words, have to fruitfully coexist. A steep order this is, made even steeper by the fact that many who have the requisite maturity have little or no interest in forming and participating in community.
Many who want to join a community do so because of unresolved parent-child and security issues, which most communities don’t bother dealing with to any significant degree. In a truly functional community, these issues would not be pushed aside or ignored, regardless of whom they arose in. This would be unlikely to happen in a community with a single leader, which is why I think that the needed leadership ought to be multiple: an intimate group of mature peers, who have full permission among themselves to bust each other without any fear of reprisal. Part of their challenge is to create a safe enough environment to let go of playing safe. A sanctuary and a crucible for awakening...
To help ensure community integrity, being authentic has to be more important than making nice or hiding out in overdone tolerance; everyone needs to share the risk and responsibility of rocking the boat. This is necessary to keep the leadership on track, and to minimize the possibility of community abuses, such as cultism and neurotic power dynamics. A single individual as leader may have remarkable vision and capacities, but what about his or her blind spots? Who will point them out, and who will make sure that something is done about them? Emotionally literate, spiritually mature, well-integrated peers are needed to take good care of immature or unbalanced elements in the community (including in themselves). A difficult undertaking this is, but necessary, if we are to have communities that function in a truly integral sense.
2. I see spiritual attainment as a subset of spiritual maturity, and spiritual maturity as the greatest spiritual attainment. Implicit in such maturity, such fully-bloomed ripeness, is deeply embodied awakening and integration, at once transparent and grounded, lit throughout by unshakable compassion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. In a response to Rhonda/Feral you say "Meditation requires no props, robes, or equipment. It is not limited to a particular format or posture; one can be still, one can be moving, one can be quiet, one can be chanting or praying or crying. Whatever works. It's good to stay with a practice that works for you, but not to stay with it too long." (emphasis added)
The advice I've heard much more often is: don't keep changing practices; find something that works for you and stick with it until your head explodes (or something to that effect). So, could you elaborate on the whys and wherefores of your advice not to stay with one particular practice for too long? And how can one tell when you've been practicing one technique too long?
2. In your experience as a spiritual teacher and therapist, do you see any differences in how women and men tend to approach and work in these areas?
Robert answers:
1. When I say not to stay with it too long, I’m not advocating leaving prematurely. It’s important not to drop a practice just because it’s hard or pushes your buttons, but if you’ve stayed with it for awhile (long enough to get intimate with it), and it continues not to work for you even when you’ve wholeheartedly given yourself to it over and over and over, you might want to consider letting it go. Many who are having trouble with a practice are too hasty to fault themselves and too ready to let the actual practice and its applicability to them go unchallenged. To really handle this well -- the question of leaving or staying with a particular practice -- discernment is essential, as a kind of meta-practice that we don’t leave, but instead allow to evolve.
When we’ve been with a practice for too long, it’s somewhat similar to when we’ve been with a relationship for too long: we get stale, flattened, dulled, losing our edge, even as we rationalize or downplay our deadening. Sometimes a trial separation is what is called for; after a time apart from our practice, we may return to it rejuvenated and passionate, breathing new life into it. And sometimes we just need to let go. Many people don’t marry their partner, but instead marry their partner’s potential. The same error often occurs in the realm of spiritual practice.
2. Speaking very generally, I’d say that in the context of staying too long with a practice, men tend to get more fanatically driven, and women more devotionally driven. Neither is preferable; driven is driven. And when it’s time to let go, who does so more easily? I think it’s a draw.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
posted by adastra at 7:22 AM
