CULTIVATING SPIRITUAL MATURITY: The Courage to Practice

poetry.

INTRODUCTION

Cultivating Spiritual Maturity continues Lalitha’s exploration – begun in her first volume on spiritual practice titled Waking to Ordinary Life – of what it means to be engaged on a genuine Path, to be committed to personal transformation and to a life of service. As in her previous book, these pages are also taken directly from transcripts of talks and conversations recorded over the past several years, and so the style is somewhat conversational and direct. Lalitha is known for her humor and playfulness, as well as for her occasional rants and blunt manner of speaking, and these moods can be found herein (though sharp edges have all been rounded and personal names have been removed to protect the innocent).

Each chapter is constructed around a key question that a practitioner faces along the way to building a mature spiritual life. The chapters build, one atop the other, and yet each can also stand alone as a consideration, or question, unto itself. So, while there is some benefit to reading the chapters in order, you’re also invited to skip around if a particular chapter calls to you. Some will be more confrontational (if you’re in the mood for a particularly feisty feast, check out Chapter Four – What About My Vacation?), while others will touch upon the sublime, and perhaps even take your breath away. Lalitha’s aim here is to broaden the reader’s view of what being a mature spiritual practitioner might look and feel like, and what pitfalls to watch out for along the way to realizing that maturity.

Sometimes it may be challenging to see any difference between what Lalitha is referring to as spiritual maturity, and what might simply be called human maturity. That’s because, in a practical sense and from the point of view of a lay observer, there is no distinction. Kindness, generosity and compassion are attributes that are universally recognized as admirable in a mature adult, whether that adult is Mother Teresa tending to the destitute in Kolkata, or our grandmother whose unswerving dedication to family and community provides inspiration and a model for everyone to emulate.

Arnaud Desjardins, a revered spiritual master from France, and a dear friend of Lalitha’s own master, Lee Lozowick, used to convey a teaching about maturity that he learned from his master, Swami Prajnanpad. In an essay titled From the Child to the Sage, Desjardins wrote, Adults are more or less grown up, more or less childish, and the Sage is the perfect state of the adult, 100% adult.¹ Can it truly be that simple? As you’ll see in the following pages, fully maturing, in every aspect of ourselves, is no simple task even though we in the West may lull ourselves into believing that anything and everything is achievable if we just attend the right seminar, or read the right book (sorry, this book is no exception), or find the right therapist. In truth, the ingredients necessary to grow into full adulthood are not so easily bought and sold in the marketplace.

Lalitha agrees with Monsieur Desjardins, suggesting that it’s not uncommon to deceive ourselves, perpetually pursuing one unfulfilled childish desire or another, and so maintain weak links in the chain of our maturity. Even those of us who have advanced education and who enjoy successful, professional careers have these weak links – unexamined and untransformed aspects of the psyche that chain us to identification with our bodies, our personalities, and our wishes and dreams. In Swami Prajnanpad’s view, an adult is, by definition, free of the limited consciousness that makes such identification with body and mind part of the human condition. And this is where we approach a possible articulation of the distinction between psychological work and spiritual work.

For millennia, spiritual adepts and masters have proposed that human beings are capable of something that most scientists and psychologists today do not necessarily acknowledge as being either real or desirable. These masters and adepts propose that a state of being is possible in which a radical and permanent realization of what they call non-separation has been achieved. What does this mean? The language of many spiritual traditions includes references to states of consciousness wherein the realizer knows, beyond question, that he or she does not exist separately from all that exists, that Consciousness is One thing, and so I am not separate from…well, from anything. As Desjardins puts it, The one who felt he was a part of time, of becoming, of chains of cause and effect, of desire – the desire for success, the fear of failure – the one who felt he was the doer of an action, carrying the weight of his existence, the load of his responsibilities, that one is gone.²

We can easily see why such talk might be frightening to our psychologist friends, and how such concepts can be misapplied and abused since, if taken out of context, the same words that describe the liberated state can be used to describe someone who is clinically sociopathic. Sociopaths also feel free of the burden of being responsible for their actions, sometimes even claiming that an objective force outside of themselves makes their decisions for them. Others, who suffer similar mental imbalances, often experience states of floating in and out of time and space. From a clinical point of view, descriptions of so-called liberated states of consciousness simply sound like various stages of mental illness.

Adequately describing the ineffable state that spiritual realizers and seekers refer to as liberation, awakening or (dare we use the loaded term) enlightenment – and presenting evidence that this state somehow provides an underpinning for something more true or real than our normal state of awareness – has always been a great challenge. Liberation, in the spiritual context, does not make rational sense. So, why are so many convinced of the possibility of such an awakening? What is it we – skeptics and believers alike – are attracted to in those rare individuals who shine with the brilliance of what saints and sages have called illumined-mind? These are big questions, but questions that Lalitha chooses not to tackle head on.

In Cultivating Spiritual Maturity, Lalitha may occasionally touch upon the unspeakable, dropping clues and perhaps leaving a scent in the air that hints at the possibility of radical transformation and inherence in non-separation, but what she emphasizes is radical personal accountability. Growing up, plugging the leaks in the vessel of our adulthood, is what Lalitha sees and treats as priority one; not chasing after the fireworks of enlightenment. In this era of information overload, where everything ever written is a click away on the Internet and anyone with a large enough ego can upload and sell themselves to the masses, arrogance and ego-inflation often end up being rewarded. Those who may have experienced just a small taste of spiritual freedom can knock together a virtual soapbox and gather the attention of anyone who will listen. Lalitha makes a case that it is wiser to focus on profound self-awareness and integrity in our mind and actions than to place fascinated attention on insights and experiences, no matter how spiritual. She also suggests (although unpopular to do so in contemporary Western culture) that eventually aligning oneself with an established tradition, one with a living lineage, stands the best chance of leading to lasting transformation.

The message at the heart of these chapters is that, bottom line, regardless of what spiritual teachings we may have read or what spiritual authorities we may have listened to, we are responsible for implementing what we have learned. It’s up to us, as Lalitha would say, to act based on what we know. If our resources (time, money, attention) are humbly spent on engaging our spiritual practices, then we can relax our minds and trust that any radical shifts in context – shifts that lead to an enduring inherence in illumined mind, or in the Heart of our Beloved, as the Sufis and Bauls might say – will happen in their own good time and only if necessary for us to fulfill our role in the great play of the cosmos.

James Capellini

Rasa Creek Sanctuary

December 2017

Footnotes:

1    Arnaud Desjardins, From the Child to the Sage, TAWAGOTO, Chino Valley, AZ: Hohm Press, Vol. 22, No 1, 2009, 9.

2    Ibid., 23.

– Chapter 1 –

WHAT PATH AM I ON?

There are no short, simple answers to the

questions of transformation, because the answers

cannot happen in a flash; when people realize

things in a flash it does not last. We all have

realizations along the way, but to realize the fruits

of the Path takes twenty or thirty years of rigorous

practice with a teacher in a lineage.

– Lee Lozowick

Afriend of mine, who recently became keenly interested in traditional spiritual literature, once asked, Can you please speak about the difference between the student choosing a teacher, and the teacher choosing the student?

Obviously this friend had come across the popular notion in contemporary spiritual-speak that, Once you are ready, the teacher will appear! A sweet thought, quite magical and innocent in a way. However, while it’s fun to regard this whole affair (the affair between our heart’s desire and the human, or even the impersonal, tangent that will potentially bring us to realize that desire) in such magical ways, my experience and observation has left me feeling that it’s a bit more complicated than that . . . usually.

Yes, in retrospect it always seems like circumstances had to conspire just so in order to lead us to our particular spiritual Path, and because of this we may feel that forces beyond our control were at work, setting us up, fixing the date. We were Chosen, and it gives us goose bumps to consider the implications. But what then? We are still left holding the bag, so to speak. When it comes to practicing, to putting the teachings – which can at times be demanding and uncomfortable – into action on a consistent basis, we are the ones doing the choosing, or not. And, poof . . . the magical bubble may magically morph into an uneasy sense that somehow we’ve been manipulated. Goose bumps turn to raised hackles and our claws are revealed, ready to slash our way out of this predicament. A predicament that, after all, we certainly didn’t choose!

So, let’s go easy on the magical thinking as regards this teacher choosing the student business, though I admit and agree that aspects of magical thinking do have their place, as you’ll soon read. The most important thing to remember is that we must choose to act, to practice, to be kind when we feel like tearing out someone’s eyes, to give when our emotions scream at us to take, to step back and consider the big picture, subjecting our greed, self-hatred, lust, vanity, anger, shame and avalanche-like body of habits to a gentle and yet penetrating self-observation. The choice is ours, in the end.

This is a book filled with serious questions about what it takes to cultivate spiritual maturity. Sometimes the answers seem obvious, but I believe it’s useful to put them out there and have them answered. I’ll give you my answers to some of these questions, but the bottom line rests with your answers, not mine. Which raises a good question. Who is responsible for your life choices? My answer – you are, no matter how chosen you may think you are, by me or anyone, or anything, else.

Responsible people make the best students, the most mature practitioners, on any Path and my wish for you is to be supremely successful on whatever Path you’ve either chosen or happen to find yourself on. And my second wish for you is that if the Path you happen to find yourself on is not the one you want to be on, then wake up and figure it out. There’s really no time to waste. Perhaps this book will help make things more clear for you.

WHAT PATH?

You may have noticed that this chapter is titled, "What Path Am I On?" which grammatically presumes that you are already on a Path. I choose my language carefully, and that presumption is intentionally placed. You are on a Path, whether you know it or not. I don’t just mean that whatever group you belong to defines the Path that you’re on. My point is both more subtle and more in your face than that.

You may be a homemaker, an Olympic skier, a lab assistant, or a tax accountant. You may be a bum living on the beaches of Florida or the Bahamas, or a doctor helping AIDS patients in Africa, or a house-builder, or a professor of philosophy at Yale or the local community college. You may be a Christian who goes to church every day or once a year at Easter, or an atheist, or a Buddhist, or a tribal member from some as yet undiscovered culture. No matter what you do or what group you belong to (in fact often in spite of what group you belong to), you are on a Path and you make choices based on certain things that you believe because you are on that Path.

When you select which television shows to watch, or whether to watch television at all, your Path is at play. When you go shopping for food, for clothes, for vehicles and gifts, your Path is at play. Your Path was laid deep inside the subconscious mind, and directly informs your perception of what is real, and what is not. Your attention is drawn only to what your mind believes is real, and down that Path you stride. We all have a Path.

But, I get ahead of myself. For those who don’t yet identify with one Path, it might be useful to look at some different types of Paths and poke around for a while, seeing what’s out there and what we might be interested in.

SPIRITUAL PATHS WITH A TEACHER

Let’s get right to the meat of the matter. Spiritual schools that are organized around a central leader – one who is often, but not necessarily, charismatic – can be problematic. Egomaniacs and charlatans are a dime a dozen, and their spiritual communities can appear highly attractive to those of us who are looking for an environment in which to pursue our aim of practice, service, devotion, insight and clarity. Such communities are not limited to those modeled after Eastern cultural traditions. There are plenty of Christian, Jewish, Sufi and pseudo-tribal communities out there, as well as communities focused entirely on such social structures as sustainable farming, pot smoking and free sex (though I would hope that most readers would know by now that sex is rarely free).

Despite the dangers, we may feel that spiritual communities with a qualified, accountable teacher are perhaps the most potent arenas in which to pursue a serious spiritual practice. If the idea of such an environment attracts our attention, the issue becomes how do we go about finding, assessing and choosing a school that’s right for us? This is where a bit of what looks like magic comes in, but in reality is simply Psyche 101. The first question to ask is…

WHAT DO WE TRULY WANT?

Most commonly, if we are interested in a serious spiritual practice, we don’t know ahead of time how serious are we really. We merely have an idea that sounds intriguing, a dim intuition of there being something vitally important that’s just outside our view, and so we begin looking for sources that might shed some light on things: a book, a group, an elder whom we trust. Most of us were brought up with some kind of a religious idea, so maybe we begin there, and for the great majority of people the search also ends there, since our basic questions are satisfied and our attention gets caught up in daily life – making babies, making money, going on vacations, going to church once a week and hopefully being a basically kind human being. But for some, there is still something niggling. We know there’s more.

At first, we’re not thinking about finding a teacher. We’re simply exploring what’s out there. We read some books about meditation, philosophy, shamanism, or maybe an esoteric aspect of the religion we’re already familiar