You don’t need to have any special experience to be free. You just need to relate 100% fully with whatever you’re experiencing – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
– Andrew Holecek
I saw this quote on Tricycle’s Instagram account.
It’s one of many examples of pointers baffling to me.
I don’t know the context, so that may be one reason it’s baffling.
It’s also very possible that it’s meant to be baffling. It’s meant to not fully make sense and we are invited to explore it for ourselves.
WHY IT APPEARS BAFFLING
Why is it baffling to me?
There are several reasons.
It says: “You just need to relate 100% with whatever you are experiencing…”.
In my experience, that’s not something I can intentionally do. If it was something I, in theory, could do, it would be impossible to do it 100%. It’s doomed to failure.
Also, if it’s inherently impossible, why include the “just” implying that it’s easy?
The quote also implies that there is an inherent self with an other. How can there otherwise be a relating?
And what does it mean to be “free”? Why is that even an apparent goal?
MEDICINE FOR A CONDITION
Pointers are meant as medicine for a condition, and different pointers are helpful at different phases of the process of exploring our nature.
This pointer seems to be aimed at the very early phases of that exploration, and if we come from a sense of I and other.
I assume it can be helpful in that case, since aiming at being fully present with what’s here does release some of the sense of struggle. There is a kind of freedom from being strongly caught up in struggle.
In that context, the quote does make some sense.
HOW IT APPEARS TO ME
How does it appear to me? What would make more sense to me?
It would make more sense to notice that what’s here is already noticed and allowed. It’s already noticed by consciousness. It’s already allowed – by life, existence, consciousness, awake space.
Also, any sense of someone relating and something related to happens within the sense fields. It’s all happening within the content of experience. There is no inherent difference between this human self and whatever it’s relating to in that sense. It’s all happening within and as what I am. The consciousness I am forms itself into all of it.
Noticing this, there is a kind of freedom from (being caught up in) struggle. Otherwise, the word freedom doesn’t make so much sense.
WHY IT APPEARS BAFFLING II
There are a couple of other reasons I get confused by those kinds of pointers.
The oneness shift happened in my mid-teens and I had absolutely no interest in spirituality. I never went through the phase where that pointer may make sense.
For that reason, I am mostly familiar with pointers and explorations that make sense throughout the process, and that includes a focus on inviting more parts of our psyche onboard with our nature recognizing itself. I am more drawn to explorations like the Big Mind process, The Work of Byron Katie, Headless experiments, Kiloby Inquiries, basic meditation, tonglen, and so on.
ANOTHER WAY TO EXPLORE THAT TERRAIN
If I were to help people explore what the pointer seems to be about, I would take a different approach.
I would use the Big Mind process, Headless experiments, or some other form of inquiry.
I would explore befriending the experience and, more to the point, anything in us that is scared of befriending a particular experience.
If we had some years to work with, I would also include basic meditation.
I would help people explore it for themselves. I would not make it prescriptive with a “just need to” phrasing which seems confusing and which, in reality, is impossible.
DIFFERENT APPROACHES FOR DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES
I am also very aware that different pointers and approaches work in different circumstances.
Some resonate with that pointer and it’s perfect and helpful for them in their situation.
Others find other approaches that resonate with them.
That’s part of the richness of our collective exploration.
IS THIS ONE REASON WHY I HAVE NOT SETTLED WITH A GROUP OR TRADITION?
I wonder if this is one of the reasons I haven’t settled with one group, approach, or tradition.
I tend to get surprisingly confused by these kinds of pointers. I need to spend a lot of time exploring them to make sense of them. It’s also baffling to me why they don’t use a language that would work for more phases or approaches that seem more effective.
That said, I have found groups and teachers where the pointers make sense to me, including Jes Bertelsen, Genpo Roshi, Adyashanti, Byron Katie, and Douglas Harding.
So the reason is likely something else, perhaps a combination of…
Wanting to explore and find pointers and tools from anywhere that seems helpful in the exploration. There is often a spoken or unspoken expectation in a group to toe the party line and not go too far outside of it. (One small example at the Zen center is when people saw me reading Ken Wilber and putting pressure on me to not read books by him. A few years later, the main teacher and Wilber became buddies, and “everyone” at the center was suddenly into Ken Wilber.)
Life circumstances. Mainly going against a clear inner guidance on a major life decision which made me feel profoundly off track, and I still haven’t quite recovered.
My trauma response of wanting to hide and not be seen. If I stayed in a group or tradition for a while, I would be more visible.
A personal distaste for being expected to climb some kind of invented hierarchy often found in these kinds of groups. (Of course, I know there is an informal hierarchy in terms of experience, training, and so on. What I dislike is the more formal hierarchy which often is out of step with the more real one.)
A personal distaste for the inauthenticity of being expected to support or promote a certain tradition or set of teachings whether they make sense to me or not. It’s not in me to be loyal to a group or tradition in that particular way. (My loyalty is more in identifying and questioning unexamined assumptions in the group or tradition, and that’s less popular.)