Transcribed Talk by J. Jaye Gold
I started a pursuit when I was about two years old, and I’m still pursuing it. The pursuit I’m talking about is trying to find the answer to the question, “How much can I get away with?” How can you get what’s possible, and how much can you get away with en route to getting what’s possible? Certainly, you don’t want to give up anything that you don’t have to give up. Of course, some of you are feeling really stumped because you recognize you don’t want to give up anything. You don’t want to give up your opinions, your possessions, your activities, your pace, and so on. You think, “This is impossible for me; I can’t do this because I can’t give these things up.”
I recognize this is a challenge for you because there are some things that you’re not going to be able to get away with. If you have an aspiration to travel the world, you’re not going to be able to take your house and possessions with you. Everybody knows that when you take a certain path, part of the challenge of that path is that it excludes certain other options. On the spiritual path, it’s the same way. There are some things that are just a little bit too much baggage, and they’re not going to go along.
Starting from a very young age, you were presented with certain challenges, and sometimes you avoided those challenges. As I was walking along the creek today, I saw a log that crossed the river. I imagined that some kids would see that log and easily walk across it, and other kids would search for a bridge because they’d think they’d fall in if they tried to cross on the log. In a similar way, sometimes you found a way to circumvent the challenges before you and you thought that you got away with it. Then when it came time to face a similar thing the next time, you had set a pattern that would continue for the rest of your life—a pattern of avoidance.
As a kid, falling off a log into a river with all your friends around was worth avoiding at any cost. Now, you are a candidate or an aspirant of a spiritual possibility, but you have this training of avoidance that started when you were very young. Many people are so confident that they can circumvent the small challenges that life presents that they study what it takes to control all the variables. What you discover in that study is that there is one element that seemingly can help you circumvent anything that makes you feel challenged or afraid, and that element is money. That’s why money has become so awesomely important to us. It represents the possibility of building a bridge on the river wherever we want it.
Having money presents the possibility of steering clear of every ordinary thing that might give us trouble. It may not shield us from war or violence, but it can surely help us avoid cooking something we haven’t cooked before, talking to someone we don’t want to talk to, or refraining from an activity we’re not sure we’re competent in.
In school, I was a mediocre student at best. I’d look at the kids who were studying and developing discipline, and it seemed foolish to me. Sometime later, I wanted to learn to play an instrument. I had some talent, but I couldn’t stick to it; I needed discipline, and I didn’t have it. It came back and bit me in the butt. I didn’t know, just as you don’t know, that everything you’ve avoided out of fear will come back and haunt you.
There is a basic misunderstanding that traveling the spiritual path is sweet. When it sometimes appears to be abrasive, people say, “This is not spiritual! This is not sweet!” Spiritual is sweet, but we’re not sweet. We’re really a compilation of our avoidances. We are like a pinball that has run into this bumper and gone this way, then run into that bumper and gone that way, and so on. Finally, we find ourselves here, not recognizing that our path has been a path of evasion.
We were afraid to be alone, so we hooked up with people. We were afraid of people, so we ended up alone. We didn’t like the concept of ourselves doing certain kinds of labor, so we followed intellectual pursuits. We didn’t like the concept of ourselves following intellectual pursuits, so we found other jobs. We didn’t seek out positive directions—we dodged what gave us trouble.
After so many years of avoidance, we then call out, “Okay, Creative Energy, God, accept me! Let me approach closer! Let me experience something of the purity of the Vibration that is You!” That Energy looks at you as if you were invited to a formal dinner party and says, “We’d be delighted to have you as a guest, but first you’re going to have to clean up your act.” Unfortunately, most people don’t look at the spiritual path as a path of cleaning up their act. But what if that’s what we’re called on to do—maybe all that we’re called on to do? The dinner party is prepared for us, we are welcomed guests, but there is shit on our shoes. Our host doesn’t want that on the carpet.
This whole creation is set up for us, but we’re too dense, too avoidance-oriented, too corrupt to enter. We’re not sensitive in the right ways; we’re only sensitive to our own needs. I know that this concept is not as attractive as the idea that we can directly walk into the party, but we’ve still got shit on our shoes, and we can’t get in like that. That’s why there are never many people involved in this pursuit. As attractive as the idea of the spiritual pursuit is, the efforts needed involve getting one’s act together, and most people don’t want to do that.
You’ve most likely spent years promoting yourself as you want to be seen and hiding from people and things that challenged your image. If you want to think that you’re kind and someone thinks you are unkind, you can eliminate that person from your life. After doing that for 20, 40, 60 years, you have a reliable unit you call your friends—people who accept the story you present and that you want to believe for yourself. Then you meet me, and we have the job of reexamining this package called “you.” We don’t examine this package so you can be a happier person. We examine what you’ve created only so you can enter that party.
There are obstacles between you and your spiritual possibility that you’re going to have to address. No matter how much you meditate or chant, no matter who you know, where you travel, how many shrines you’ve visited, or how many books you’ve read, it doesn’t matter. There is something in the way, and it’s you. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that there really is a party, and it’s worth all the effort. If you don’t have that feeling, then the first time that grit comes up, you’re going to start to question and doubt. You need a picture of what’s possible inside that party. You need to have a feeling and an intuition that the experience of reconnection to the Energy and life inside you is more than worth all the grittiness you have to face on the way.
All you have to do is diminish your level of fear, diminish your level of avoidance, diminish your level of feeling the necessity to control every moment and every action. You need to relax in an actual sense, not as a way to get rid of tension, but to know what’s inside yourself. You need to accept the frailty of the human condition. You need to decrease the amount of bullshit, manipulation, and deception you engage in. All you have to do is dress appropriately. Then the doors to the party will open and you’ll be sucked in.