On The Path

 Like the Tide Coming In

You do something, you do a meditation, you get an effect. You do a Dynamic meditation and then you feel great afterwards; you do Soma meditation, the Mu meditation, whatever it might be, and you feel great afterwards. It’s cause and effect. So you can arrive, through certain activities, in a certain space. But you don’t create that space.

This is the thing to understand: you don’t create that space that you arrive at through the meditation, by means of the meditation. In a way you do; in a way you do certain things, breathing or whatever, and you arrive at a state of bliss. But that state that you’re in when you stop doing the action and you relax - and most of these meditations have a space after the active part where you are just sitting quietly - what you experience then is not just the effect, otherwise it would go in a minute. You have, through the meditation, through the action, arrived at a space inside you that is always there. The meditation has pushed you through the distance, or the obstacles, or the barrier between where you normally live and that place which is available. You push through that, and then you arrive there.

Where you are has a certain energy dimension, where you arrive at has a certain energy dimension, and where you next arrive at has a certain energy dimension; the state of enlightenment has a certain energy dimension. So through working with energy and getting resonance at levels that you’re not living on, you can experience your state of being during the time when that work is effective on you, when it has worked on you. Then you arrive at a certain place in you - and you can arrive at many different places in you, all of which are available - not by working from X to Y, but simply by changing the energy vibration from the vibration that goes with X, outside all the levels, to the vibration that goes with Y. And if you change your energy from the vibration of X to the vibration of Y, then when you’re in the vibration Y, that means that you will feel a certain way - you will feel peace, or bliss, or love, or silence, or stillness, or openness, and so on.

But then to remain in that space that the Energy Work has taken you to, the whole system has to shift. You can change the energy vibration, but the inertia of the level you’ve been living on will pull it back after the chemical reaction of mixing the energy as it is at one moment with the energy that’s here in the room.

So the Energy Work has a certain effect on people, and through it the energy is switched. But it can’t stay there, you can’t rest in that new vibration, unless you actually have changed the whole way that you see things, and the way that you live, in such a way that it fits with that level. And one has to really have been working with energy to realise this, otherwise you get into all sorts of trouble trying to hang on to experiences, trying to repeat experiences, trying to force experiences and longing for experiences you’ve had before, and this works against the whole process.

It is like a tide coming in on the seashore.

It is like the wave taking you, and then when the effect of the wave has gone you fall back. But the effect is not lost, because something in that momentum that pulls you forward has changed something in you.

By going there, something has changed, so when you come back you’re not the same as you were before you left. The whole process, the whole effect of going there and tasting, because we’re intelligent beings, we’re conscious beings, is such that we see something there. We either have actual intellectual insights if we’re mind-oriented, or even if we’re not mind-oriented we have insights about, “Ah, this is how it is!” Somehow the system is sensitive to where you arrive, and the system remembers that, even if you don’t remember it intellectually. You may not be able to say, “Well, I was in this place where I felt I was at one with everything,” but even if you’re not describing it in that way, the system remembers it. So the system, when it comes back, is not the same. It now has the awareness of that place, which acts as an incentive, but also it has changed, so you are not back to the beginning again. And that’s why you go forward again, because you’re already now moving forward from the effect of going there.

You’re not going to go back where you were again, and then go forward again to the same place. That’s not how it works. You get there, and then the next time maybe you don’t have the same momentum, or the openness is not there, or the path has got some blocks in it, so you scrape along through the gravel and you don’t get so far, and then you come back. But each time you move beyond the space that you’re living in, a memory is preserved, something gets engraved in you, impressed upon you about it, and that changes the impressions that are in you at the moment, and which make you live the way you are. Then you’ll never lose that connection, because it’s in your pores.

So the whole thing is constantly changing through the experience of the Energy Work, but on its own the Energy Work doesn’t just take you there and say, “Now you are there.”

Awaken in yourself a dynamic which says, “That’s the way to my truth. That’s the way to my fullness of being.”

And that is why it is said in spiritual circles that the first step is the last. That means the first real step, which is not just putting your foot in and saying, “Oh, that’s nice,” and bringing it out again, but the first real step forward intending that there should be another step. Taking that first step means that sooner or later it is inevitable that you will be taking the last step.

If you stay on the road, you’re going to arrive, there’s no question. But you have to stay on the road.

What some people do is they stay on the road and they find a nice pleasant area that they arrive at, with pastures, and cows, and sheep, and the sun shining, and a nice little house there, a bungalow, and they say, “Ah, this is great! Fantastic work! I’m going to move in there.” And then they stop there, and they set up home, and they have a nice time, they have a good life, and everything is flowing and easy. But they won’t get to the goal that way.

So you have to stay on the road. That means always being open to the new. So long as you never feel that you’ve reached the end until you know for certain that you’ve reached the end - and even when you think you know you’ve reached the end you probably haven’t and you’ll find out that you haven’t through somebody, as long as you say, “Well, okay, I thought I was there, but I’m not, so now I have to go on further,” as long as you keep in mind that you’re going to go on as long as there is further to go, then you will for sure reach there.

And even if you set up shop somewhere - if you do that that’s fine, as long as you keep in contact with the source. As long as you keep that strong connection, then the dynamic will continue.

If you’re connected to the source of the pull, or the goal, then the energy of that goal is stronger than anything in you that is resisting. If you break the connection with the source then the resistance is the strongest thing, but you don’t see any resistance, you just see it as your reality. The moment you reconnect with the source, or if you stay connected with the source, then the pull of that energy from the source is always going to win over any kind of resistance eventually, provided at least one part of you is an ally of that source energy. If you’re totally resistant then it doesn’t work like that, but if you’ve got even just a little line outside the walls of the fort to the energy outside it, then that is enough to pull down the walls of the fort.

From “With It”, 2003.