For Self or For Others

Then something happens. It isn't dramatic. It isn't a bolt of lightning. There may be deep and insightful experiences along the way for sure, but what really changes us is very prosaic and goes almost unnoticed. Our spiritual practice changes the way night changes to dawn which changes to day, hardly noticed at all, but real nonetheless. Then we notice as we meditate that when we look for the real self we have been searching for we can't find it. If fact, when we look within and without we can't find any self. We just notice these thoughts and feelings that seem to arise of themselves and belong to no one in particular. We simultaneously notice that the search for the real or authentic or true or sane or wholesome self has withered away and with it the fear of the fraudulent self dissolves into the background mist of our own awareness. There is no real point at which this happens. It changes by eliding into this new no self form unburdened from the need for a true self or a cleansing of the fraudulent self.

 

Something else changes as well. We are no longer doing our spiritual practices (meditation, contemplation, zazen) for ourselves. It wasn't a conscious or intentional decision we made. It is a discovery that dawns on us. We are doing our spiritual practices for the world, for others, for the blind, for the hurt, for the lost, for the innocent, for the ordinary, for the common undistinguished ones, for us all. Through the years of fitful spiritual and meditative practice our foundation shifted in ways unknown to us, shifted behind our backs while we were busy with our fruitless search for a reliable sense of self. Now we know in a way we could not foretell the purpose of our life. It is for others, not for ourself. And everything we do, the holy and the profane, the noble and the hideous, the selfless and the selfish, the successful and the failing; all are for others. We are the same as before and paradoxically completely different. We have the same habits and patterns, the same stumbling blocks and difficulties, the same prejudices and preferences. But none of it seems to matter which makes it easier to slip away from their control and influence.

 

We have been quietly taken over in a non hostile acquisition, a take over that can fall apart at any moment. This is what Meister Eckhart calls "the birth of the Son in the soul." This is what St. Paul means when he says we are "in Christ." It happened to us. All we had to do was to unknowingly make ourselves available. The nothingness of our spiritual practice balances out a world that has gone mad with activity, or perhaps gone mad because of activity. It is a world crying desperately for what we have found and doesn't know it wants what has been offered to us. In our silence we add a tiny weight to balance out the insanity of the world. Now, when we enter the silence of our spiritual practice, we and all the world sink into the deepest stillness, quietly, gently, effortlessly, and tickle the heart of God.