Creativity and Detachment
Creating an extraordinary existence depends upon the energy that we select to weave into the fabric of our life. It is the consciousness of one’s ultimate creative projection that allows us to select what is needed to bring about the result. It is the continual attraction and encompassing of higher energy that increases the vitality of our life. Reaching for an illusion instead of satisfying the reality only permits weakness to develop in a human being. Maturity should allow a person to see when a situation lacks potential, and then detach from it. It is not different from opening a refrigerator to pick a morsel of food to satisfy your appetite; if you have stomach trouble, you stay away from spicy foods and pick something that will not produce indigestion. We should learn to stay away from things that do not satisfy the deeper part of us, even though they appeal to an immediate hunger. Satisfying the appetite only increases its demands, but doing the correct thing frees a human being and allows him to rise above the limitation of his more primitive needs and illusions. Inner discipline is the basis of all real teaching, and consciousness increases the capacity for discipline, as it helps us to understand the reason for our choices. It is only the childish nature of people to think that, once they have gone a certain distance, they can revoke the pattern that brought them there.
The subtle lack of reality that people accept is one of the defects of our socialization process. For example, almost no one getting married anticipates the natural results. The honeymoon, which exists during the brief interlude between illusion and reality, only makes the pattern of every day life more difficult. The naive couple intoxicated by their momentary position of being the center of attention is in for a rude awakening. They are like a child who expects Christmas to go on for 365 days a year. It is certainly possible to bring some of that happiness into one’s life to reflect Christmas each day, or to live with some attitude of love and sweetness that one experiences on a honeymoon, but it takes a conscious effort. It is only through training and the ability to accept everyday reality that one can bring joyousness into one’s life.
In spiritual work, it is the ability to live in several dimensions simultaneously that is the essential factor in trying to achieve a higher consciousness. During the height of a spiritual experience, there must still be detachment to allow the assimilation of higher energies into the physical body. It is the increased surrender that allows for increased spiritual experience, for the expansion of energy allows levels to build, so that we reach greater heights through each experience. The nourishment from the experience is the essential ingredient, not the experience per se. The experience without the content is only an empty illusion. It is the vital energy that we retain after the experience that can carry us to a higher level.
It is comparable to the difference between a psychic who works for other people, and a spiritualist who works for his own devolvement. Spirituality is not to justify our existence, but to allow us to take in nourishment and to grow. It is unfortunately used by weak people to stay the way they are. Human history records the lives of many great saints and teachers, which were filled with great experiences, reflecting their ability to work in depth. They did not sit and listen to other people’s stories, but met their own drama and fought their way through the temptations and obstacles that tested them.
People respond to energy in the way their mind has been conditioned to react. A great warrior is trained for a life that demands an ability to function under pressure. He is programmed to work under conditions that would stop an ordinary man. This type of training exists in many other areas of life. A doctor must act under circumstances that would completely paralyze most people, such as seeing another human being torn and bleeding. A pilot in a plane is trained to remain calm when a motor starts sputtering and various types of mechanical failures begin to reveal themselves. He works to correct, not to react. It is the amazing capacity of a human being to ignore the obvious and work above it to find a remedy that is otherwise hidden.
Everyone who has attained any state of responsibility in this world has also consciously or unconsciously been tested by life, until they have developed the capacity to detach and change the flow of their energy to suit their ultimate purpose. It should be the logic of life to attain that which we want. We lack the ability to move from level to level only because of a lack of imagination.
People tell me endlessly about situations that they find impossible. It is even more impossible to get them to change. They are so crystallized in patterns of right and wrong that their capacity to do what is needed is destroyed by their need to do what has been impressed upon them. The instinct in a human being to achieve the level that is expressed in his karma is a continual attraction within him. It is the ego responding to its ultimate expression and limitation. Unfortunately, most spiritual work reinforces this tendency. It brings the person from an insecurity to a crystallization. It takes tremendous faith in a teacher to not allow this limitation to form.
It is when we meet with somebody extraordinary that we open completely. In that eternal moment, their energy enters into the seed within us to nourish that which cannot form a personality. It is the nourishment that opens a human being to his connection with God. However, the personality of the teacher also forms the beginning of a new crystallization in the human being, because it is the combination of the limitation of the teacher’s mind and the student’s personality. The expression, "The mind is the slayer of the soul," explains that energy brought through the mind is coarse and causes crystallization. It is the energy that is taken internally through the chakras and up the spinal column that is energy without mind, and, as such, in no way causes the person any limitation. The thickness of the energy going through the mind, plus the karma of a human being, is what brings about an end of growth. Rebirth can only take place through the impact of spiritual energy upon the soul, and this rebirth has a capacity for occurring again and again.
I had a student who visited me yesterday. He told me about a recent spiritual experience. He was seated in meditation and felt me walk into him. My head touched his heart. This boy has such a sense of manners that he bowed his head so that it would touch the feet of my spiritual image. It was his way of showing humility, but it was also his mind handling the situation and bringing the energy to where he wanted it to be, not to where it was going. His mind destroyed 50 percent of the experience. He should have allowed my head to touch his heart.
There is no right or wrong in spiritual experience. There is only that which is, to which we must surrender. It is the mind’s lack of capacity to accept spiritual experience that destroys its energy. Without this nourishment the brain will not grow in the direction that is necessary for the next level of experience to take place, and so the person receiving these gifts with the limitation of their own personality will grow on a tangent until they become the expression of their own limitation. If God wishes to enter you through the ear, he enters through the ear; if he wishes to enter you through the nose, he enters through the nose; if he wishes to enter you through the anus, he enters through the anus. It is not for us to judge how spiritual energy operates. We must gratefully receive it in any way that it comes. It is a waste of time to try to explain the nature of God.
To undertake what we consider a spiritual effort should be to bring the very greatest capacity we have to the situation. Anything less than this demeans our energy capacity and demeans God.
It is noble to see an undeveloped human being making an effort to raise himself spiritually in infinitely small amounts, since we understand his limitation. But if we see a saint lifting a match stick, and making a great fuss about it, it is a disgusting experience. So many people become emotional when they see somebody who has a tremendous capacity doing a simple act. Their ignorance and his lack of accepting a challenge allow him to use his audience badly, and the audience to react in a way that allows the ego of the performer to feel secure. But this will never create the openness that continually absorbs the total person, reducing all his attachments to a free-flowing energy.
Sound is caused by the flowing of energy. The projecting of energy through a void allows it to develop sound and create life. This is the basic principle of spirituality. We ask inside ourselves, and our wish gathers around it the power that helps bring the fulfillment. A superficial wish brings only surface result. We must ask thousands and thousands of times, so that we can begin to hear the superficiality in our asking and perceive our lack of consistency. It is beyond comprehension how infinitely small the effort is that a man makes in really asking for what he wants. The Bible very simply states, "Ask and you shall receive." Like all simple things, it is extraordinarily difficult for people to understand the basic principle because of their tensions and complexities. You can be in the arms of somebody you love for three hours and they can suddenly turn to you and say, "Do you love me?" If somebody in that type of situation needs reassurance, can you imagine how much others need it in everyday living? There are people who have lived together for fifty years and are never sure that they are wanted. It is because of their inability to ask.
We all understand but still fail to give the reinforcement that others require for their security in the relationship. It is always the foolish person who says only when a situation is threatened, "Don’t you know I always loved you?" The answer usually is, "I don’t know what I don’t hear." In the same sense, God may be all-knowing, but to be on the safe side, it’s good to keep the connection flowing so that you feel it. If you really ask and keep asking, you are continually poking and prodding and reaching for reassurance. There can be no problem as far as annoying or provoking a higher power. People complain and lament endlessly. Asking for love should only bring a positive response in comparison.
When working toward spiritual development, the changes that take place are continual. They resemble the reconstruction of a great city. Planning for the future is essential so that as growth occurs, the projected potential and the present moment work harmoniously. It is impossible to tear up the streets every time you build a large apartment house. In large cities, there are planning committees to develop sewage lines, electrical power supply, and other essentials for future needs. The same type of foresight is necessary for people in spiritual life. The tendency toward expansion and consciousness always shows itself many years before the actual need is critical. For a human being to undertake reconstruction at the last possible second is totally impossible. You can’t rip up, physically or spiritually, the vast systems that feed the complexity of a city or a human being.
In life, there are two principles of energy. They are expressed by the need to kill the cow and eat its meat, or feed the cow and live from its milk. Most people do not have the capacity to sustain life, which can only occur as a conscious process. Forgetting to feed the cow results in the cow’s inability to give milk. It is the nature of people to want without commitment or depth, and the fact that they have the capacity to take and enrich themselves never allows them to realize that an alternative exists: namely, to nourish and add another cow and another cow until a herd exists that can support their own needs and eventually those of others. It is the herd principle upon which spiritual schools are based. Many schools following this approach fail to feed their herd, and so the amount of food or energy that is produced is kept at a level that reflects the teacher’s capacity to gather people, but does not provide enough nourishment to allow the people under him to grow.
People should understand that killing the only cow they have leaves a man without alternatives. But to raise a herd will make him a rich person, having milk as well as meat.
It is within the consciousness of nature to put so much milk into the tit of a cow. It is also within nature’s consciousness to put so much syrup in a maple tree. The nourishment that is available comes at certain periods and must be gathered or it spoils.
In the same sense, there are one-day people and there are six-month people and five- and fifty-year people. We do not have the sensitivity to consciously use these varied capacities and depths of people. If they were cows or maple trees, the person relating to them would determine their cycle and take what is available at the right time. One great error that we make is in thinking that human beings are consistent in the length of time that they can give, and in the nature of their depth. Their variance in productivity and capacity is very great, but is not different from the range in plant and animal life. There are insects that are born and die in one day. There are animals that live five hundred years, trees that live many thousands of years, and rocks that live almost forever. Within the human being are all of these capacities and energies. The richness of life is in the consciousness of our ability to take what is there and, when that quantity is used up, to be able to surrender, allowing for the source of the energy to be recycled in life and to give its gift and depth to other people and situations.
It is not that human beings lack the ability to go deeper and give more, but that many people are attached to their limitations and find the need to function like a mayfly. There are women who give themselves remarkably and beautifully one time and then die emotionally, but it is sufficient to attract to them a husband and child. They live from the one 24-hour flowering. It is not so much the dance of life as it is the enticement of death. The man is attracted to this energy, consumes it, and then waits unconsciously for it to be given again, becoming the victim of a one-day life, which must be paid for with twenty years of marriage.
There are men who can pursue a woman for thirty days. If the relationship is not consummated within that period, there is no chance for any real future connection. Their chemistry completely dissipates. It is ridiculous to analyze the person in order to understand why they have ceased being attentive or loving, for we are relating from ourselves and from the accepted "normal" potential of an average, which varies from one to a million.
It is only when we understand our own cycles that we can grow, not being bound to the illusion of a past capacity produced when someone gave to us in a particular situation. At the same time, it is within a human being’s consciousness to rise to greater and greater capacities if they are willing to call from within themselves sufficient energies and depths to fill the lack of the moment. A human being is in no way limited by their mayfly 24-hour capacity, but can relate to the ancient stone within themselves and break through this rock to open to the millions of years of energy that exist in the atmosphere. When we talk about surrender, we talk about digging and letting go endlessly. There is a vast difference between the delicacy of a mayfly and the stamina of a 500-year-old turtle and the density of a 50 million- year-old rock. Content is almost invariably related to the density of the material from which it is extracted. It is the depth in a human being, which he is capable of digging for endlessly, that creates the continual death and rebirth process that precedes enlightenment.
Spirituality allows a human being to stay detached and transcend himself again and again, so that he can keep a situation alive as the increase in energy flow changes its molecularity. It is this ability that gives the conscious person the ability to control the atmosphere around himself. Not only can the energy be increased, but the ability to give from one’s self to the situation also allows the atmosphere to change. If we are in a room with two people who are antagonistic to an idea that we have, and one is totally resistant, while the other is more flexible, we can consciously feed the person with less resistance. It is like acupuncture. Removing a block between us and a second party drains energy from the third party, to the second, to us. We can then incorporate that energy and use it to raise our own level. This initiates a process that will completely destroy the resistance, and also cause us to simultaneously see the situation on a higher level and to raise the other two people to this new consciousness. It is necessary for the person doing this to be free, so that as the situation evolves, he does not try to inflict his own will on the others but continues to permit the change to manifest again and again until it reaches a level that is acceptable to all the people involved.
A four-year-old child will spend an entire day trying to compose a letter to thank someone for a gift received. He is unable to cope with this simple task. Between the ages of six and eight, it becomes a relatively easy act. At the age of twenty, it is an after thought.
Our dealing with emotional situations is no different. Certain patterns are complex because the mind, emotions, and appetite that we are trying to feed must break through the blocks that have been put in us as children. It is not the simplicity of right or wrong, but our ability to reach for what we need that determines whether we grow.
It is like a tree far removed from a source of water. If it does not receive enough nourishment, then its roots will grow very long until it taps water. If a human being has a tremendous need, he must be able to survive his ordinary life until he can reach and develop the mechanism within himself that can find a permanent source of nourishment.
Growth in a human being is on the horizontal, physical level until there is enough capacity to force a human being to ascend to higher and still higher levels to reach the nourishment that is essential for his development. By relating to previous patterns and seeing whether we deal with the same situation in a better way, we have a measure of our progress. If we are growing, we are always involved in ascending and accelerated cycles of the refinement of our past.
It is possible to judge our growth only by the recycling of life-that is, the people who come back again and again in other forms. It is our maturity that allows us to pass by some of the things that we were deeply involved with in our youth. Our capacity and detachment should grow with the years.
A very real change that occurs as we mature spiritually is that we learn to be more patient before we commit ourselves to a course of action. Usually we react too soon. We are the victims of our tensions, instead of a controlled human being making decisions that will help us to go in a direction that we are trying to pursue.
People pay a tremendous price for their reactions. It is almost impossible for them to detach from what they do, as their conscious mind does not have within it the generosity that is required to claim responsibility for what has occurred. They have also not learned to apologize or to retract when they are wrong. The state of Buddha-hood, or enlightenment, is recognizable by the flow of energy, which gives the person the ability to alter their actions and reactions as the richness of the energy changes for them. When spiritual energy is stronger than the mind, what is said and done becomes the reflection of higher energy in time. The mind can be dissolved in the spirit so that it becomes only food for the spiritual expression of our life. At that point, the intellect speaks through the spirit instead of through the tensions of the mind.
This is what occurs in the Kundalini process when the energy of the mind is brought through the throat and the heart down to the sex organs, and then up the spine to the top of the head where the energy accumulates and matures. When it ripens sufficiently, the refined energy is secreted into the brain. At this stage, it is the spirit talking through a person, not a person talking spiritually. it is impossible for a starving man to look at a table of food and not have his chemistry react, until he transcends his need for food.
It is impossible for an emotionally starved person to see someone he thinks he could love and not react. In the same sense, it is our fulfillment that gives us enough detachment to be objective in our creative work with the people for whom we are responsible. Lack of success on one level is usually defended by a success on another level. This in no way produces a healthy flow of energy. It only makes for an imbalance that is detrimental to everyone involved. If a human being has excessive tensions and temper, then it is the expression of the energy not having transferred from one aspect of a person to all parts. That a person is capable of having a great deal of success, should only be indicative of a capacity for this creativity to be transferable to other areas of his life. It is usually the lack of demand upon people that keeps them from becoming totally rounded in their own development.