This talk is part two of a two-part series on the trap of self-improvement and awakening.
This talk is titled,
The Secret Is That There Is No Secret.
We frequently look at the present moment and see what we do not want to see.
It is all too common to look at what is here now and see pain,
Sadness,
Sorrow,
Malice,
Suffering.
When this is what is here,
We get a sense that things are wrong,
That this cannot be what we're looking for.
For whatever it is that we're looking for has to be blissful,
Joyful,
And ecstatic.
So when unpleasantness is here,
We get the sense that things are not okay,
And crucially,
That they could and should be better.
Believing that things are not right,
We turn to life hacks and spirituality,
Assuming that the sense that things are wrong will be banished forever upon self-improving enough or attaining awakening.
In our attempts to run away from our painful present,
We set our gaze on an imaginary future where we diet,
Exercise,
Meditate,
And mind hack our way to lasting well-being.
At the spiritual extremes,
We yearn for the day when we finally awaken to the true nature of reality,
Gaining enough insights to liberate ourselves fully from suffering.
The way out of this trap of self-improvement and spiritual awakening is to wake up to the fact that there is nothing to wake up to.
Only when we realize that there is no silver bullet,
That whether or not we improve is ultimately not up to us,
Can we really give ourselves permission to accept that that which is here now may actually be it.
What really needs to be changed then is not the present moment,
But our beliefs about the present moment.
The problem is not what is here now.
What is here now is what is here now,
And it will remain so,
Regardless of our wish that it not be so.
What needs to change is the nagging voice in our psyche that tells us that the grass is always greener on the other side.
If this voice is able to change its tune and instead convey to us that whatever is here now is enough,
Even when things feel unpleasant,
Then we will finally be able to avoid being ensnared by the seductive trap of self-improvement.
When we commit to not falling prey to the trap of self-improvement,
We get the sense that perhaps we should let go of waking up and instead focus our more limited energies on the project of growing up.
I think of growing up as the process of letting go of what I call childish things,
Such as belief in magical entities that interfere in our affairs,
Or in the possibility of ending suffering forever,
Or transcending death.
This process naturally includes letting go of the self-improvement and awakening projects,
For these too are based on incorrect and naive assumptions about how things are.
In order to let go of these endeavors,
One must come to see what meditation teacher Bob Sharples calls the subtle aggression of self-improvement,
Which is characterized by the ceaseless rounds of trying so hard that wrap so many people's lives in a knot.
In the spiritual context,
We begin this painful process of growing up by realizing,
As we just saw,
That the whole self-improvement project is based on the premise that there must be something about us or our lives that is not okay.
Having realized this,
We can contemplate the tragedy of these pursuits,
For they end up unwittingly reinforcing precisely the kinds of beliefs that get in the way of us feeling okay,
Such as the beliefs that we are not worthy,
That we are broken,
Or that life is pointless.
By labeling ourselves as beings who are in need of something that we currently do not have,
We end up seeing ourselves as flawed and incomplete.
Paradoxically,
Then,
The more we try and fail to self-improve or awaken,
The more persuaded we become that we are irredeemably flawed and broken.
Eventually,
And with a little luck,
Our awakening and self-improvement projects fail so spectacularly that we are finally disabused of the notion that we can better ourselves.
Having let go of these expectations,
We can finally begin to surrender to the unstoppable flow of life.
A key theme of what is offered in this talk is that as we traverse more and more of this pathless path that we call our spiritual journey,
We can come to see with increasing confidence that there was nothing to do in the first place.
That if you know how to look,
You find that there's actually nothing wrong with you,
And there never was.
We can thus come to see through the self-improvement project and come to finally look at it as a trap.
When you come to see the self-improvement project as a trap,
You finally get to see that you do not need to cut yourself off from your perceived flaws or defects in order to flourish.
Because your flaws are as much a part of you as your virtues.
Because what you are is the whole cosmic package all wrapped up into a single speck of matter.
And in much the same way as the universe and life are wholly indivisible packages that include everything,
From the most sublime and beautiful to the most profane and painful,
So too do each one of us include everything,
From the joy and the bliss to the depression and the meanness.
We cannot sever the joy from the sadness and the pain from the pleasure because we cannot make sense of one pair of polarities without the other.
So,
From this point of view,
Suffering and pain,
Sorrow and loss are not mistakes.
We learn to see ourselves as wabi-sabi,
Which is an aesthetic sensibility prized in Japanese culture that appreciates the beauty of that which is imperfect,
Incomplete,
And impermanent.
Pursuant to wabi-sabi,
The crack in the liberty bell makes it more beautiful,
Not less.
The fact that the Venus de Milo has no arms does not detract to her mystery,
It adds to it.
When we come to see ourselves as wabi-sabi,
We finally get what the cosmic joke is all about,
That there really was nothing to do,
Nowhere to go,
And no problem to solve.
That we go on this journey to find the cure to what ails us,
Only to find that there was no illness to treat in the first place.
And that's the secret.
The secret isn't the pot of gold that lies at the end of the rainbow that promises to deliver bliss,
Ecstasy,
Love,
And the end of suffering.
No,
The secret is that there is no secret,
That there is just this.
No pot of gold,
No rainbow,
No self-improvement,
Just raw,
Scary,
Unstoppable,
Beautiful life.
