Without the understanding of ordinary perfection, spirituality can put us at odds with our life. The images we have been taught about perfection can be destructive to us. It is like the Eskimo hunter who asked the missionary, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I still go to Hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”
When I read that in Jack Kornfield’s book “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry,” I was taken aback.
First to see the application of Knowing and Unknowing, second to see the innocence gone, and third, the questioning of why.
I can visualize the child skipping along in the ‘adult’ world happy in their innocence, and we are the Missionary Priests that come along and offer a place called Hell.
There was another part that caught my attention….
We cannot know death. Death remains a mystery. When one Zen master was asked what happens when you die, he answered, “I don’t know.” “But aren’t you a Zen master?” continued the questioner. “Yes,” he responded, “but not a dead one.”
I love how honest that answer is, for how can any living person ever know for sure for sure, just what death is all about.
Eccentricity means uniqueness, finding the freedom to be utterly one’s own person. Even if outwardly we do not appear different, inwardly there is the fearless ability to be wholly the embodiment of yourself.
When the emotions are free and the heart can express itself without concern for the opinions of others, that freedom extends to every aspect of our character.
I was amazed to read that and to discover being eccentric isn’t odd at all, but rather being ones self.
The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness: It is here in the present. It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents us with a wise, respectful and kindly heart. We can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world. Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom. To bow to what is rather than to some ideal is not necessary easy, but however difficult, it is the most useful and honorable practices.
To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn how to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.
Those two paragraphs were in the introduction of this book. I love how we only have to bow to what is, to accept all that comes our way. And in doing so live a spiritual life and one with our hearts wide open, to accept the joys and the sorrows.
This book set out to show that even the Guru lives a life that is not stress free if they were to leave their ashrams and come and join us in mainstream life.
Pir Vilayat Khan, the seventy-five year old head of the Sufi Order in the West, confides his own belief:
Of so many great teachers I’ve met in India and Asia, if you were to bring them to America, get them a house, two cars, a spouse, three kids, a job, insurance, and taxes…..they too would all have a hard time.
In the end, we are all gurus in our own lives.
I am a perfect guru of me.
