One of my students recently told me that she had noticed something about herself while trying to make a decision. Whenever she didn’t know what to do, she tended to talk to a lot of people about it.
At first, that seemed sensible. We all talk things through. But she began to notice something underneath it. She wasn’t always looking for perspective. Sometimes she was looking for validation. She wanted someone else to confirm that what she wanted to do was okay. So this time she decided to make the decision herself, without running it by others.
That was a beautiful recognition - not because we should never ask anyone for advice, but because there is an enormous difference between using another person as a sounding board and handing that person authority over your life.
The point of a spiritual path is not to become dependent upon a teacher’s or anyone’s opinions. Quite the opposite. The point is to become increasingly capable of seeing clearly for yourself. When students bring their lives into sessions with me, I don’t want to tell them what to do. We put the situation on the table. We look at it from different angles. What are you afraid of? What are you attached to? What aren’t you seeing? What other possibilities exist? Where are you cycling inside your own mind?
Because that’s what human beings do. We cycle. We think about the same thing again and again until the thought begins to feel like reality. We create an internal loop and then make decisions from inside that loop. Part of spiritual practice is learning to bring those loops into the light and then loosen them. Eventually we see the looping mechanism that is ego and it begins to slow down until it’s gone.
Ego or Truth?
Eventually the student made her decision and took the trip she had been considering. And there she was. All of the consternation beforehand - Should I? Shouldn’t I? Is this right? Is this wrong? had disappeared into the simple fact of the present moment. She had gone on the trip.
That itself was something to learn from. Human beings ultimately tend to move toward what they want. Our minds may travel all over the universe beforehand, but eventually we act. For someone on a spiritual path, however, another question begins to arise: Where is the wanting coming from? Is it coming from ego, or is it coming from something deeper and truer?
In the beginning, you don’t necessarily know. And that’s okay. People sometimes imagine that once they begin meditating they should suddenly know exactly what is right, what is dharmic, what is ego, what is intuition, what is attachment and what is truth. You don’t. You learn.
You try something and watch. Did it bring greater clarity? Did your energy open? Did you become lighter, kinder, more awake? Or did you become cloudy, contracted, obsessive and drained? Then you learn from that. As the years go by, this discernment becomes increasingly refined. Sometimes you begin to recognize trouble before you walk into it. Other times trouble walks directly through your front door, but you’ve developed enough presence to meet it differently, gracefully, even humorously. That’s part of growing up spiritually.
There is a tricky part, though. You can move away from truth without realizing you’re doing it. Desire can be extraordinarily convincing. So can fear. So can attachment. So can the desire to be a good spiritual person. You can become so immersed in what you want that you lose the ability to see anything other than your own self reflection.
This is one of the reasons we meditate.
Meditation Creates Space
Meditation is the wild card. You sit down. You become still. The intensity begins to loosen. The thought that seemed absolutely compelling twenty minutes ago isn’t quite as solid. The fear isn’t quite as enormous. The desire isn’t quite as unquestionable. Space appears. And inside that space, sometimes you see.
Not always. But often enough.
Rather than continually asking, Is this good or bad? Is this right or wrong?, learn also to watch. Watch without fear. Watch without immediately turning what you see into another judgment about yourself. Eventually you begin to catch the ego red-handed.
I learned this one the hard way. As a student, I could be incredibly hard on myself. I wanted to get it right. I wanted clarity. I wanted realization. I wanted to be a good student. I would come down on myself for not being enlightened.
A whole new brand of ego was forming as I was progressing on the path. It had simply learned how to become spiritual. Instead of judging myself according to ordinary worldly standards, I had acquired an entirely new set of standards with which to torment myself. Am I conscious enough? Am I meditating well enough? Why am I confused? Why am I reacting? Why am I not in that beautiful state I experienced yesterday?
It took years to recognize how subtle this could become. Eventually something changed. I came to trust myself very deeply. And then something deeper changed: I began to trust life. That is a very different way of living.
The student described something she had begun noticing in meditation. She would watch a thought or feeling arise and recognize, I can see this. And if I can see it, she wondered, is it really me? Then something subtler would arise. She could see that too. And that would pass.
This is one of the extraordinary gifts of meditation. It creates spaciousness around the structures we ordinarily call ME. Our personality, fears, preferences, history, reactions, desires and self-images can feel like a straitjacket because we are usually living from inside them. We don’t recognize them as structures. We simply assume they are reality. Meditation loosens the straps. Suddenly there is enough space to observe.
Gradually another question becomes possible: What is transitory, and what is eternal?
Thoughts pass. Feelings pass. Relationships change. Bodies change. Circumstances change. Identities change. What doesn’t change? The spiritual journey eventually becomes an exploration of that question. Not intellectually, but directly. What were you before all these ideas about yourself? What remains when they become quiet?
You are the doorway into that investigation.
Impermanence Teaches Us to Love
The student had recently gone through a difficult experience involving people she loved. Something unexpected emerged from it. She realized that somewhere inside herself she had assumed certain relationships would always be there. That they would last forever.
She knew intellectually that everything changes. Of course she did. But she hadn’t known it. Then suddenly she did.
Nothing guarantees that a relationship will remain exactly as it is today. Strangely, that recognition didn’t make her love less. It allowed her to love more. Instead of asking, Will this person always understand me? Will they approve of my choices? Will this relationship remain the way I want it to be?, another possibility appeared: I can love them now.
I can love without requiring permanence. I can love without requiring agreement. I can love without requiring the other person to behave according to my expectations. I can cherish what is here because it is here.
That is a profound shift. Impermanence doesn’t diminish love. Impermanence teaches us to cherish. Love because you can. It is so much freer than spending your life worrying about whether love will last.
The Teacher Is a Signpost
This is also where the role of a teacher becomes clearer. A teacher cannot hand you realization. We can talk about impermanence a thousand times. You can read about it in books. You can hear Dharma talks about it. You can meditate on it. Those are signposts.
Imagine driving through a magnificent landscape. A sign says: Scenic Lookout: 2 Miles. You pass the sign. Maybe you pass it twenty times. Then one day something happens in your life and suddenly you make the turn. You arrive at the overlook, and you see.
Now it is no longer somebody else’s description. You know the view. The next time you travel that road, you recognize the turn yourself. That is how spiritual teaching works. The teacher doesn’t own the view. The teacher helps you discover the road to it.
There is another dimension to the teacher-student relationship as well. Sometimes, through meditation together, retreats, gatherings and simple proximity, a student experiences a state of consciousness that they don’t yet know how to access consistently on their own. Love becomes palpable. Stillness becomes palpable. Spaciousness becomes palpable. For a moment, you experience love not simply as an emotion directed toward somebody, but as a field of being.
That is part of transmission.
And then you go home. The next morning you wake up and think, Where did it go?
It didn’t go anywhere. You simply haven’t learned to live there yet.
Learning to Live There
The ego is powerful. You’ve spent your entire life building it. You’re not going to permanently dismantle it in one beautiful meditation. You may experience an extraordinary opening and think, This is it. Now I’m going to live here. And the next morning: Wait. What happened?
Nothing went wrong. Practice continues.
Moment by moment, through things you love and things you hate, through clarity and confusion, praise and criticism, getting what you want and losing what you thought you needed, you begin to recognize the architecture of your own ego.
And here is one of the great jokes of the path: Your particular ego becomes your particular road to enlightenment. It is what you’re going beyond, but it also gives you the exact material you need in order to go beyond it. Your attachments show you where you are attached. Your fears show you where you are afraid. Your judgments reveal your value system. Your reactions reveal where you are caught.
Your life keeps showing you yourself. So use it.
Meditate. Pay attention. Don’t demand perfection from yourself. Don’t turn spirituality into another elaborate system of self-judgment. Stay watchful. Stay curious. Learn to recognize what contracts you and what opens you.
Slowly, the state you once visited in meditation, at a workshop, with a teacher, or during some unexpected moment of grace begins appearing in ordinary life: walking down a street, looking at another human being, sitting quietly, falling in love, losing something, beginning again.
You discover that spaciousness was never somewhere else. Neither was love.
And neither were you.