While I am deeply grateful for the lessons I’ve learned and continue to learn through observation, and truly it is necessary for healing and knowing the self, I do feel we tend to get stuck in it.
Most of us want to improve our living circumstances and many wish for the world to be a happier, more harmonious place. But many a healing journey, particularly toward enlightenment, stops at observation. Of course this is not the case with all of them.
What becomes the purpose of self-transformation if it is only for the benefit of the self? Is this feat not, (in the desire to move away from our deeply masculine culture), just pushing the feminine principles which ultimately end up polarised in the opposite direction? This path is just as highly egocentric, as it closes its eyes to the action that can be taken to bring a healthier existence for all.
When do we move from observation to action? Even the intellect is shied away from almost aggressively. The notion of “being in the mind” is deemed a completely unnecessary and lower consciousness action. This seems to me just as imbalanced as operating solely from the mind. In this human existence, the mind is a necessary tool. The experiences are necessary to our human and soul evolution. To disregard them seems somewhat foolish, but certainly nonsensical. I believe through my own personal journey that there is a time for both.
Another idea that I feel needs examination is that of leaving others to their misery and should that misery spill onto me, it is my weakness for having a gap to be able to receive that spillage. Is this not again just as deeply unhealthy as the opposed masculine forces? Sometimes I may very well be well centred and balanced but still be affected by the actions of those around me who are not balanced and well centred. I may have done and continue to do the healing work, but many around me have not reached the same degree of conscious awareness. Can it truly be expected that I am simply to remain unaffected?
Balance is required for health in humanity. Haven’t we learned this yet? We need the masculine to bring transformation to humanity just as we need the feminine to ensure that it doesn’t become yet another destructive regime.
This is the role of the conscious co-creator. To know thyself and the universe and to use that knowledge for the betterment of all.
John Wellwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, introduced the term spiritual bypassing in the early 1980’s. This is the tendency to use spiritual ideas to bypass personal and social responsibility. The personal responsibility can be that of acknowledging the necessary healing of the past. How we may bypass it using spirituality is to insist on remaining in the present, particularly when pain from the past arises. In order for healing to occur, the acknowledgement of what needs healing must first be met. If it is not acknowledged and met, it simply remains buried beneath our presence. I believe it is necessary to step into the darkness of our past in order to transmute at subconscious and unconscious levels, the relationship we have with that past. If this is not acknowledged then it simply continues to drive our actions beyond our line of vision while we hide behind the illusion of freedom.
A common theme among many spiritual paths is that the experience of desire should be transcended. If it is not transcended, we are not enlightened. In other words if we desire to help others and heal the world, we are hiding from something within ourselves, we are using the desire to help, as a distraction from ourselves. To a degree, particularly when the healing journey has just begun, I believe it is necessary to move our attention off of all the distractions, no matter how noble they seem, and turn that attention inwards. As the famous saying by The Oracle at Delphi goes:
“Heed these words, you who wish to probe the depths of Nature: If you do not find within yourself that which you seek, neither will you find it outside. If you ignore the wonders of your own House, how do you expect to find other wonders? In you is hidden the Treasure of Treasures. Know Thyself and you will know the Universe and the Gods.”
The Oracle at Delphi
As I have dug deeper into myself, I have found there the universe. If we do not know ourselves, any healing we try to bring to the world may very well be tainted. We have seen this many times over the course of history. With the intention to protect, we cause more harm. But at what point are we healed enough to begin creating a space for the healing of others; to take a stand on child abductions and pedophilia; to speak out for the dignity of all races, cultures, genders and nationalities?
If something Can be done, it Must be done!
A Buddha will not sit and allow a child to cut off his toes for the curiosity or amusement of it, he will move his foot. I think somewhere along the path of spiritual healing, we have forgotten that it is not just the individual who creates our reality, it is the collective, but the collective through each individual. If we want to see change we really must BE it first, but we must not stop at “I”! “I” must become “we” at some point in order for true social transformation to occur.
Using the mind along with the heart is necessary for balance and transformation. As Mark Passio emphasises, it cannot stop there. For unity consciousness to occur, we must develop the heart or the element of care, the mind or the engagement of knowledge and intellect, and the guts for the element of action. Without all three of these elements, especially that of action, there is no transformation and we as spiritual seekers will simply continue to live in a state of delusion.