Pilgrimage - Part II
Coming to Terms
The sun beat brightly on the snow-covered summits looming above Kedarnath Temple and the verdant valley framing it afar. Soon after the double death experience, maybe a quarter of the way up, a baba shared water, tea, and chillum with us in his dwelling on the side of the path.
It was a temporary respite and pick-me-up; predictably, the chillum sent my mind circling relentlessly on the plight of animals, the doggedness of the porters, the laziness of some of the humans and the malice of others.
I had seen animals treated similarly through my time in the Himalayas, only on a smaller scale. This is simply the way of life, how buildings are built, how supplies are delivered, I told myself then. Now the mass of mules and cruelty laid upon them made justification overwhelmingly difficult.
Same same, just less
The animals and humans kept us close company in the increasing heat of the climb. I sought relief from my mind's cacophony contemplating the suffering I perceived around me. Popping in earphones, I returned to a podcast I began at the start of the Yatra.
Charles Eisenstein's conversation with Orland Bishop layered wisdom so densely that it deserved a listen in its entirety — and more like several — to appreciate fully.
Go and give it a spin. I can wait...
Resonant as their message was at first, their words now struck synchronous chords playing off the clatter in my head. I dare say they enlightened me in pulling my head out of the darkness that dominated.
The two begin by addressing a transition happening in our society, which presently emphasizes individual, civil rights in relation to state power. This transition highlights the need for "civil rites of passage" currently lacking on a broad scale. Such rites would support a collective effort in the service of something sacred — the other’s well-being.
Their exaltation of these rites stuck out immediately. I’ve craved participating in such a rite, recently seeking them out. I wondered if any time on my trip — or in my life — met their criteria.
Two occasions, my Bar Mitzvah and pledging my college frat, came to mind. Considering Charles’ definition, these two came up lacking. The rigor during or transformation after the events didn’t pass muster.
Could I consider the body of my life so far— all the pain, pleasure, suffering and redemption — to add to such a rite? Probably not until my own judgement day.
Charles said rites of passage typically feature near-death experiences. Well, I had just encountered two deaths. And I’ve flirted with my own end a few times, taking risks consciously — and not. Still, the intention reaching those points was insufficient.
Two recent plant medicine ceremonies involved brushes with death, but of the ego. I imagine these felt as frightening as the real thing nonetheless. Beautifully, the breaks from baseline consciousness and the illusion of self allowed immense love to fill me unconditionally. There is more here to explore later.
Back on the path, it was difficult to see a collective effort for the benefit of others. I only saw miserable animals and profuse litter along the route, all in the name of spiritual tourism.
Charles remarked that pursuing one’s own happiness without consideration - or at the cost - of another’s is like allowing each member of a band to play whatever they wish and expecting the most beautiful harmony to arise.
I completed a course on Permaculture design in NYC before leaving my hometown in December, the third departure in my travels. I believe our current way of living threatens our society’s and species’ existence largely due to its rapacious exploitation of human and natural resources.
So, Permaculture‘s ethos and practice naturally attracted me to the course. It seeks to establish a way of living that allows humans to live comfortably — and thrive — while respecting our place in nature and enabling our survival.
Time for a break
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I’ve already prattled on about how you should listen to this installment of A New and Ancient Story. In exploring a few early minutes of Charles and Orland’s exchange, I want to illustrate their incisiveness and relevance on my recent reflections.
Charles' comments melded eloquently with Permaculture's and my mindset:
CE: We live in a time where we're deaf to the promptings of land, of place, that could coordinate us into a common endeavor, or aim, with agreements that situate each one of us in our gifts in contribution to that aim. We don't have ways to hear the land partly because of an ideology that holds nature as a bunch of random forces and also because of a commodity economy that forces everything from distant places and obliterates the uniqueness of things and keeps us indoors and in front of screens.
Charles then asked how we can take the next step to cohere as a people above place. Orland replied in his deft manner, reaching a higher view through an exploration of consciousness. He spoke of the gap between object and subject and asked the big questions about the human condition which I hadn't fully articulated or answered on my own.
Have I done good for the world? To a degree, I suppose, but certainly not enough to feel satisfied that I’m giving my fullest to it. I have much more to do and offer.
Back on the mountain path, my mind's obsession with suffering had reached an apex. I finally realized its futility, a conclusion I've reached before but still haven't learned from.
If I didn't agree with what I saw, I should work to find a solution or support others doing so. What good would this mind chatter — or an obscure blog post — bring? Action often trumps words.
Have I embraced beauty? I've always appreciated the surface aesthetic of my surroundings. More viscerally, I've been fortunate to experience the inner beauty of the many beings and emotions that have entered my life.
My travels accelerated such encounters with beauty in more forms than I could have dreamed at its outset. And yet, these still left me feeling empty.
Now on the path, I let machinations in my head blind me to the grandeur of Shiva’s home, the magnificent Himalayan peaks towering above me on a bright, spring day.
As my group mounted rocky shortcuts, the two master thinkers precisely diagnosed the condition that led me to seek purpose through my travels.
OB: Is this thing I'm acting on creative enough to transform my life?
If its only objective is that I get it done but I don't have an inner experience of goodness for it, then I've actually not done anything.
And so, society becomes mechanistic in the goals it sets because it can be done without consciousness.
CE: The feeling of just going through the motions.
OB: People end up feeling empty and defeated.
CE: Because they tried so hard. "I did all these things, there it is, look at them," the conscious mind is being told. Yes, you did something. But the feeling is of futility.
Here it was, the truth of my circumstances.
Either I hadn't fully recognized them or I did but didn't know how to face them.
I was leading a life of quiet desperation in New York, feeling empty and defeated after doing “all these things,” like I was going through the motions. I recognized my life becoming a routine of rinse and repeat, patterns frustratingly recurring.
Lauren Hill’s line from “How Many Mics” has played in my head since adolescence: “Seasons change, mad things rearrange, but it all stays the same...”
Like many who took a similar leap, I was seeking a creative action to transform my life when I left NYC. Action reared its head again.
Orland observed the need for one to become self-conscious. The search for oneself is a trope for good reason.
And yet, he encouragingly observed that "in the act of becoming self-conscious, I'm actually developing in this cultural age a new capacity to be able to observe by my consciousness without the content, without the things that have been possessing my will for so long."
My Vipassana sit in early 2017 provided a clearer understanding of this language and its vital implications. It brought to light the concept of the illusory “I, me, my” and it began my exploration of “self/Self” in earnest.
However, my focus waned and gained thereafter as I encountered variously helpful people and methods along my way. The pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of suffering quickly retook possession of my will, clouding my consciousness.
Nevertheless, the vital lesson to seek self-consciousness recurred emphatically as my path unfolded, most notably and recently during my time with Yogi Arwind.
Orland then spoke to the truth that became persistently apparent by the time his words reached my ears on that sacred path in India:
OB: I don't have to achieve anything other than self-consciousness in order to make the make the most radical breakthrough of our current age. I have to know that I could actually transform all the things I've inherited and move them out of the way so that a future can come in.
Two months prior, Yogi Arwind taught me along similar lines in the two weeks I spent at his ashram. To him, nothing mattered besides raising/expanding consciousness. Everything else is irrelevant.
As I understood it, supreme consciousness is the ability to consider all inputs, all variables, and all of their impacts. By this measure, my consciousness was quite low.
Similar to Orland, Swamiji said the past bears no relevance to the present moment. To live in the past is to live in a dead energy. This precious piece of wisdom — one of many I received at his ashram — clicked cleanly in mind, helping make sense of my life’s puzzle.
One must learn from the past, then move it out of the mind, out of the way, to make room for the present. As Alan Watts quipped, only those who can live fully in the moment are able to look to the future.
Like in my Vipassana retreat, at the ashram I made noted progress being more present in the moment. But my consistent practice of mantras and meditation soon sputtered upon returning to Rishikesh. I was prone to past- and future-living by the time I rejoined Swamiji on the Yatra.
Charles now interjected as we climbed closer to the temple:
CE: I'm imagining that you're not advising people to disengage from action in the world to heal racial and class inequities and just come to work on self-consciousness instead.
Shit! Just when I thought it was enough to focus on my own consciousness, Charles sounded eerily like a close friend whose mantra often echoes n my head. He holds that action, here and now, is the best solution to obstacles in life.
I am not here to debate it as I see the truth in it.
OB: It's not "either/or" anymore. It's both simultaneously.
Yes! A compromise, it appears!
In this final part of their exchange, light seemingly shined within me as if it were emanating from the holy temple village now within reach:
OB: So I call it Objective Subjectivity: I'm working on myself as I'm working on the world at the same time. There's no other way to do it, and this process requires a careful observation.
One of the poets put it: "I'm not a workman in the world. I'm a prophetic being. I can see into things and I can see into myself. So why not do both?"
CE: I figure there is no alternative. When you say "ok, I need to work on myself but how do I do that?" I think that it's through the things that become visible when one is in relationship to something in the world.
OB: The work and the world has become myself. There is no self because I am holding the world in it. My worldview is the world. So however I see things is really me and the world at the same time.
My perception is no longer separate from the world. It includes and holds the world in it. My cognition holds the world in it.
So every time I act, I am actually acting on myself and the world at the same time. It used to be I could only see one and then look at the other. But consciousness has evolved to be able to hold both simultaneously.
I felt bright with revelation in receiving Orland's words. They cut to the heart of my current situation. Poets often do that.
In one respect, I felt validated insomuch as embarking on my travels led me to the self work that the two gorgeously prescribed.
Could I have arrived at the same conclusion in New York? Perhaps, but the past has passed, and it led me to where I am now, back in Dharamshala to continue the work.
Sitting recently in daily drop-in meditations here at the venerated Tushita Meditation Center, the teacher consistently reminded us of something important. Our critics, inside or out, might judge our sitting on the mat as a wholly selfish act. In fact, this work to expand our consciousness and compassion is a selfless act for the benefit all living beings. That is, so long as we set this intention at the start. Swamiji taught similarly: intention is the highest form of communication.
So, if our worldview is our world, shaping reality as we experience it, then it is imperative to mold and improve it. Thus, we benefit not only ourselves but those around us. As long as ours is a negative view, we suffer personally and have a deleterious effect on the world around us.
My mission was now clear: if I want to change the world, I must fundamentally change my perceptions. With that mission came more questions. My life-long instinct to source “knowledge” and form opinion from without brought me to this current crossroad. Likewise for my actions.
How could I continue forward?
Where should I look to answer this ever-present calling?
What action must I take?
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