I have had a kind of homework lately. I've been more curious about all sorts of spiritual groups and practices. I haven't even needed to really do much but it's more that I've been observing it with more interest lately how people go on with their spiritual paths. It's a big bundle to include all of those different ways. You could go into all sorts directions from very ascetic and puritanical old school disciplines to more intellectual metaphysical studies but the most prevalent theme I find in most of it is control.
I can understand control as a mean because we have all been deeply conditioned into believing our identity as a person and in that deep state of hypnosis one starts to feel the call of freedom for the first time. It's the being whispering from the inside, saying "haven't you been sleeping long enough now, it's time for change". At first of course one doesn't really see it that way. It just starts as a kind of boredom and need for something different. There might be a frustration to the way things have been or maybe a bid dramatic accident that swipes the comfortable old life away. It's the start of the journey. Then at this early stage of feeling the call of freedom one starts to act according to what they know from before, they start to force things to change. Control is basically the main driving factor of humanity and has been so throughout the history and we have all learned this as the basic life skill to have because that's what keeps societies together as they are now. So naturally one has to start from that place. We start with practices where we learn to control our breathing, our body, our thoughts just so that we give the mind something repetitive to do so it's not absolutely all over the place, so that it can be more in the present moment. We learn to discern and not allow our minds to wonder from a mantra or a practice. And up to a point this works wonders. It gives a discipline and trains the mind to behave a certain way in a certain situation so that there is some space to just be. It's a kind of contract with the noisy mind that it can still have it's noise but now there are some boundaries where it has some time off. It gets slowed down so that one can catch up with themselves.
This kind of control serves a purpose up to a point but this control has become more or less the basis and end to itself. Very strict disciplines are practiced in temples, ashrams and monasteries and control has been on the main seat of all the religions because that's still what we respond best as unconscious mass. We take comfort in the safety and familiarity of the disciplines and practices and it is not only in the major religions but also in the world of yoga, meditation, new age and all of the more modern streams of spirituality too. I just saw a post on fb saying how the breath needs to be controlled in order to control the mind and I just felt the question coming "Then who is the one who needs to control the mind by controlling the breath?" and the answer was obvious, it's the personal identity.
That reminded me of another post where there was a whole long list of activities, habits and attributes that were called (and I'm not even making this up) ENEMIES of meditation and that really made me stop and take a closer look in wonder. In one way it is true that some things can be hindrances and distractions to the process of controlling the mind (which apparently is what meditation refers to in this case) but then again we need to take a closer inspection into this issue. When I talk about meditation and what it really is I mean the ultimate awareness in which everything else is perceived so then naturally it raises the question of how small meditation must be if there is something outside of it that can obstruct it. Second question: who is the person who needs to control certain behaviours and urges and sees them as problems and obstacles on the path to meditation.. and how far is meditation from this one. Then when we contemplate this kind of questions there is an immediate seeing that there is something more because something observes all of the previous; the meditator, enemies/obstacles of meditation and meditation (control) itself. We see that all of these things are indeed phenomenons happening inside the space that is actually the self. Our essential awareness.. or meditation. Therefore it leaves the issue of needing to remove anything from the path of meditation redundant and irrelevant because for the true awareness it is of no interest. It is only of interest as much as attention is given to it. It also needs energy to stay alive so it's just a mere concept to be used as a stepping stone.
Spirituality has been known mostly as it's practices and they have been given so much attention because of our deep habit of identifying with our body and personality and need to overcome things. To move step by step closer to perfection but it has been just the human minds own idea of perfection. It has been chasing it's limited version of freedom and because it doesn't know anything else than doing and striving. Some have come to the most simple discovery that it has always been there, they have never been separate from enlightenment, it is their very nature. They have found it difficult to convey this simplicity to the seekers because the seeker is always seeking something, trying to get somewhere and it is not something that can be attained. That's why they have been given disciplines and practices to keep busy with so that they can purify their minds and while they are busy they forget to resist the moment and they allow what is already there.
Now I feel there is starting to be sufficient amount of people who are open to that kind of directness that for them the thousands of years of controlling and forcing is not needed, who are just ripe to let all of that go. Maybe you are one of them since you are reading this.
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