Transcribed Talk by J. Jaye Gold
Most people who would listen to a spiritual talk or read a spiritual book have a value for taking a walk on the beach or hiking around in the mountains. Yet, you probably rarely do it. It’s an interesting phenomenon; you value the feeling of hiking around, yet you may rarely do it. My theory about this phenomenon is that our recognition of that experience isn’t strong enough to get us to do it more frequently because too much time elapses between the times we walk in nature.
With something like chocolate, it’s different. We renew our familiarity with chocolate frequently enough that we will go out of our way to get some if we don’t have any, but it’s really hard for us to get to the ocean or mountains because once a month or a few times a year isn’t enough for us to remember how wonderful it is. It’s not enough to keep our hunger kindled for that experience, even though each time we go we say, “Wow, why don’t I do this more often?” Each time we go backpacking we think, “This is incredible! How come it’s been so long?” It falls from our list of things to do because we no longer remember the taste of that experience.
I want to draw a parallel to the experience of working on consciousness. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see that you can’t consistently get yourself to do the things that would elevate you. The reason is because there’s only one motivator for working on consciousness—and that’s consciousness! The taste of chocolate evokes an interest and motivation for getting chocolate. Likewise, the taste of consciousness evokes an interest and releases an energy for you to pursue that consciousness.
I know that somewhere in you is a hunger for peace, but when it comes down to what you do in each moment, you put your hope someplace else. The reason for this is that it’s been too long between tastes of the peace within. One taste of something fine will hook you for a while, but like the beach and the mountains and the chocolate, it’ll only hook you for a time. You’ll have to revisit it and get re-hooked.
In order to get re-hooked, you don’t need an experience of deep meditation where you sense the presence of God. I’m talking about a very simple interaction with your own inner life, your own personal inner quiet, your own sense of presence. All you need is a moment of silence and tranquility that is right beneath all the activity. You can practice a method I’ve taught you and two seconds later you can have a feeling of another reality. I’m not talking about an experience that makes this reality disappear, but one that gives you a sense that there’s something behind there, that it’s not all chaos, not all frantic, not all activity. It’s not all accomplishment and impressing. It’s not all liking and disliking. There’s something beneath all that that is constant and sweet and beautiful.
A taste of that something intoxicates a person. If you visit it and revisit it frequently, you won’t get into a position where you’re unmotivated and wondering why you’re pursuing this. You won’t wonder why you’re altering your priorities. You won’t feel that you’re making sacrifices. Just as when you have a love and a remembrance for hiking in the mountains, it’s not a sacrifice to get in your car and drive there. It’s something you’re hungry to do.
If you were to describe your life as it is now, I think you’d say that things are basically all right, except for the things that aren’t all right, which are correctable via some changes with money, location, personnel, etc. That’s where you put your energy. But one taste of this simple peace—while you’re walking or talking or whatever—can hook you for a couple of hours. Then when you lose it, it will have been just a couple hours since your last experience, and you’ll remember how much you enjoyed that taste.
The lure of the work we do is the incredible proximity of the experience of calm. Have you ever scuba-dived or snorkeled and looked below the water? It’s so different just six inches below the surface. Have you ever looked half above the water and half below? It’s like two different worlds, especially if there are tropical fish under there. Just below the surface you see this beautiful swaying, and above the surface are boats and people shouting. That experience just a bit below the surface is what can keep you going.
Using methods you’ve been taught, you can separate just a little from the importance of externals. You don’t have to leave them behind or ignore them, just separate a little so you’re not so consumed by them, so you can feel what’s behind them. If you don’t do that, your course is set on fast-forward to the next job, the next relationship, the next financial success, the next good impression. You keep plunging forward when right in the present moment the experience of inner calm is available to you. It’s not peace, but another level of life that we can have in addition to the activities we engage in.
Few of us are interested in giving up the surface activity. It’s still attractive to us, and we’re not really being asked to do that. But the dependence on surface activity and changing the things we feel aren’t okay creates a franticness in us that doesn’t give us fulfillment in anything that we do, so that even the surface activities feel dry and unfulfilling. We still do them because we have no alternative, and we don’t know what else to do. When the richness of those activities falls away, we try to use quantity to replace quality, and we use pace and speed to replace depth. It need not be that way because right behind the activity—just like right within that first foot of ocean water—there’s a different world. That first foot of water is immune to the wind and rain and the people shouting your name. Right beneath the chaos of your problems, plans, and relationships is a place where you can go and experience a calm, an evenness. I know you don’t live there now, but you can get into the habit of visiting that place frequently.
Currently, the path that you walk is the path of remedies and answers, cures and solutions. It’s a closing path, not an opening path. Do you know the statue of the Hindu monkey deity, Hanuman? He uses both his hands to keep his heart open. His muscles are really straining to keep his heart open. So many of you have had that experience of the bigness of creation and the smallness of yourself. It takes an effort to keep that openness, to not look for remedies so much and instead, hold your heart open.
This is not my Sunday sermon. These are not my impractical, pretty words. This is a possibility for the experience of your life. Not boredom and repetition, but exploration and adventure. It is nearer than you think. Your concept of what’s needed, however, is an unending sequence of variety. You think you need to spend a tremendous amount of energy and money to bring about your fantasies of how a life should be. You think you need to have a constant replacement of the items and people in your life and the places you go. From my perspective, these are all just frantic attempts to dispel boredom. It’s a shame because the doors of wonder are forever open before our eyes, right where we are, but just a little bit below the surface. Instead of using the methods you depend on to achieve external salvation, such as money and entertainment, you need to use the methods you’ve learned to go beneath the turmoil of daily life. If you use those inner methods sincerely, you’ll feel the calm that I’m talking about, and that will inspire you to use them again five minutes later. You don’t need to be a disciplined person to use those methods. You don’t need to think of them as a discipline, as something adversarial. It’s not a discipline to swim in the ocean if you love how it makes you feel. Likewise, you can learn to love these methods, but in order to love them you have to depend on them a little. You have to see what they can do for you. It’s not a matter of cutting out anything in your life; it’s a matter of getting to know a certain experience and wanting to be with that experience. It’s like falling in love. The more you get to know the peace that is near, the more you’ll be attracted to it.