Learning to pay attention to reality is a fundamental skill if our goal is to become more enlightened....to live our lives out of our self-observing ego rather than our wounded, unconscious primitive ego. This article shares a well known Buddhist teaching story about learning to live with whatever life brings to you. When we fight reality, we create unnecessary pain and suffering for ourselves.
Have you ever wondered why many of the great books of literature such as Siddartha and Huck Finn are stories about rivers? Or why most of the great cities of the world are situated next to rivers? Have you noticed that the price of a house with a stream running through the property is always more expensive than a house without a stream? Why is that? Are rivers that mystical? Do they manifest a spiritual force that draws our souls to them? Some people think so.
I first became aware of the spiritual power of rivers while traveling through our western states. As I began to explore the wonders of the great State and National parks, the amazing vistas of the Rocky Mountain ranges, the beauty of the deserts, it wasn't long before my awareness of rivers began to grow. I became aware of how much of the history of our country is oriented around rivers. For example, most of the great wagon trains started west from St. Louis on the Mississippi, the Oregon Trail meandered along the Virgin River, and most of the adventures and journals of Lewis and Clark were stories about rivers.
The more I traveled, the more I tended to orient myself relative to the rivers around me…..such as the Colorado River, the Snake River, or the Virgin River. I began to pay attention to whether the near-by rivers were north or south or west of my current position. I searched the maps to see where they began and where they ended. I learned about the history and geology of rivers such as the Columbia and read about the great ice age floods that put walls of ice and water a thousand feet high through the Columbia River Gorge an estimated ten to twelve times. I was amazed to learn that the most recent giant flood happened only 10,000 years ago. They say the water was not only a thousand feet high, it traveled over 80 to 100 miles an hour through the Gorge! The magic and spirituality of rivers were slowly easing their way into my soul.
Traveling through Salt Lake City recently, I learned how, 15,000 years ago, Bonneville Lake, a deep prehistoric pluvial lake the size of Lake Michigan that covered much of North America's Great Basin region, suddenly broke thru its earthen dam draining it within a few days into the Snake River. Like the great floods of the ice age, the resulting flood of Bonneville Lake also ended up in the Columbia River Gorge. I couldn't help but wonder how high those flood waters might have been as they too raced through the Gorge………. what would it have been like to stand on the cliffs overlooking the Gorge as the thundering floods raced by below………...
As a volunteer host for a summer at Oregon's Rooster Rock State Park in the scenic Columbia River Gorge I recently had the opportunity to spend time each morning at dawn watching the sun come up over the river. Sunrise in the Gorge was spectacular. As I watched the sun burn the mist off the river each day I would reflect on the well known Buddhist story about the ancient spiritual master who meditated each day on the edge of such a river. One day he was approached by a student who asked him how meditating on the bank of a river could lead to enlightenment.
The master smiled and told the student that sitting on the bank of a river is the same as paying attention to one's life. Like a river, life simply flows. It can bring us pleasure but if we try to grasp or hang onto the pleasure too hard we will cause ourselves suffering, because like a river, life will eventually take the pleasure away.
Sometimes life will bring things that cause us pain and suffering. If we try to deny them or try to push them away from us, we will only cause ourselves more suffering because we have virtually no power to control what rivers or life choose bring to us.. But, just as it did with pleasure, life will eventually take pain and suffering away too.
Sitting with the master on the bank of a river taught the student that both grasping and aversion will ultimately lead to suffering. Life brings all things into our lives and it takes all things away. That is a reality that we cannot avoid. All we can do is sit with what the river of life brings us, and learn the lessons that we are meant to learn. After some time had passed, the student bowed to the teacher and continued on his journey toward enlightenment.
Each morning that summer, I watched things floating on the river…..barges, leaves, logs, bugs, dead fish, row boats with determined fishermen. I watched them come toward me…...I watched them float on by. It quietly reminded me not to grasp too tightly to those things that bring pleasure, or push too hard against those things that bring pain and suffering. Like the river, life will eventually take them all away. In the meantime, they all have lessons to teach me.
I don't know if I left the river that summer any more enlightened than when I arrived, but I did find that sitting by the river for a few minutes each morning lightened my day. When it was time to move on, I was aware that my soul would miss watching a new day begin each morning on the river.
GOALS OF THE STONYHILL NEWSLETTER
We live in a world filled with conflict and violence. Almost everyone agrees that something has to change. There is an urgent and growing need to develop a more compassionate global spirituality..
At Stonyhill, we believe it makes no sense to profess the values and morality of peace and compassion while continuing to manifest the primitive ego's paradigm of vertical power called survival of the fittest; a paradigm of power-over others, control, and violence.
We must learn how the unconscious judgments of the primitive ego bring the seeds of conflict, and a sense of "otherness" into the world. If our personal goal is to do no harm to others or the world, then our thinking must consciously evolve so-as-to become more conscious and self-aware of the ways we unconsciously create pain and suffering for others.
There is an old adage that says "we become what we think about". If our goal is to achieve authentic spiritual growth we must not only think about it, we must also be willing to intentionally grow in self-awareness. Authentic spiritual growth is directly proportional to growth in self-awareness; they are identical goals.
Traditional mainline religions are based on primitive pre-modern and violent tribal metaphors written during a time when our human consciousness was still very primitive. Until our mainline religions remove the violence contained in their scriptures and come to understand that most of the wisdom in their scriptures is metaphoric and should not be interpreted literally, they will be unable to offer the moral and ethical framework needed to create effective global solutions to the challenges facing us in the 21st century.
Rigid black and white beliefs are incapable of creating unconditional love or a compassionate human culture.
A compassionate global spirituality is no longer just an interesting philosophic idea; the future of the human species may very well depend upon our ability to create it. The danger that we could destroy ourselves as a species has never been greater. The Stonyhill Newsletter is dedicated to the belief that the creation of a compassionate global community is the most important goal of human consciousness in the 21st century. We will evolve as humans only as we become more self-aware and intentionally increase our ability to love unconditionally.
The Stonyhill Newsletter explores the insights and spiritual practices required to a) achieve the authentic spiritual growth that comes from deep self-awareness, b) understand the limited consciousness of the primitive ego that resides in each of us, and c) support the intentional evolution of our species consciousness.
It is written for counselors, therapists, clergy, and individuals interested in authentic spiritual growth and the formation of a compassionate, non-violent global community; a global community that openly embraces the radical inclusiveness and diversity of a truly enlightened middlepath spirituality.
Namaste
Dick Rauscher
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
This issue, and past Issues, of the Stonyhill Newsletter can also be read on the Stonyhill Newsletter Blog site at http://rausch3333.squarespace.com/journal/
The Stonyhill Newsletter is written and published by Dick Rauscher, M.Div.., Fellow AAPC. For past issues of the Stonyhill newsletter and other in depth articles on authentic spiritual growth and the Primitive Ego Theory of Human Development© written by Dick Rauscher go to www.stonyhill.com
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2007
There are many article on spiritual growth, the middlepath and the primitive ego on the Stonyhill web site at www.stonyhill.com. If you would like to read an in-depth article on The Primitive Ego Theory of Human Development© and the relationship between authentic spiritual growth and the growth in self-awareness that comes as we better understand the primitive ego that dwells inside each of us, you can go to article #26 on the web site or just click on this link: http://www.stonyhill.com/pdf/27_awakening_spiritual_growth.pdf
Visit the STONYHILL INSTITUTE website at http://www.stonyhill.com/articles.htm for additional articles on the integration of spirituality and psychotherapy.
QUOTES
"The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects"..........."We need a spirituality that emerges out of a reality deeper than ourselves, even deeper than life, a spirituality that is as deep as the earth process itself, a spirituality born out of the solar system and even out of the heavens beyond the solar system. There in the stars is where the primordial elements take shape in both their physical and psychic aspects. There is a certain triviality in any spiritual discipline that does not experience itself as supported by the spiritual as well as the physical dynamics of the entire cosmic-earth process.. A spirituality is a mode of being in which not only the divine and the human commune with each other, but we discover ourselves in the universe and the universe discovers itself in us."
By Thomas Berry (1914-2009), The Spirituality of the Earth (1990)
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