TRANSCENDENTAL DIALOGUES.
There are decisions that change life forever.
A question from a reader that seeks an answer:“Alberto, Good morning. I read your text about spiritual drifting. I understood much of what you said, but I felt that you didn’t tell us how you did it. How did that process unfold in you? I know experiences don’t repeat from one person to the next, and that everyone has their own path. Still, as you said in your text, I chose to adopt the role of seeker, and am trying to find out if it is possible to access the same perceptions as yours. How does one do it?”
Deborah
Hello Deborah:
For many years, I have avoided falling in the trap of telling people what or how to do anything. It used to be very tempting for me to hand out ready-made meals, but I came to realize that each and every one of us has the capacity to discover what to do and how to do it. I have trust in human sensitivity and intelligence to resolve issues, and that is why I don’t offer answers when they will completely nullify the person asking the question.
When a question begins with the word “how”, there is a hidden message to decipher in it so in order to realize the motive for that question. Discovering who is asking is much more useful than giving them the answer.
“How” can mean 3 things:
- That you see yourself as a machine or a mechanism and dismiss your own consciousness and intelligence capable of discovering the solution for yourself.
- That you are not ready to do it now and you want to leave it aside for another time. Sometimes questions hold the intention to procrastinate inside.
- That you want others to solve your situations because you don’t want to take responsibility for yourself and your decisions. By asking someone else, you are giving them power. If they respond and tell you what to do or how, they are helping you to avoid responsibility. Thus, if things go wrong, you are going to blame the person who answered your questions.
As far as my own process goes, until I stopped seeking (or, to put it another way, until my inner seeker died), .I have to say that many things happened in my life. If I had to share the secret of how I allowed it to happen, I would tell you that I didn’t resist whatever life sent my way. I faced each one of those things as if it came from my heart, understanding that the meaning of what was happening would be revealed in time. A seeker “wants” to find and that is the problem. That desire, that effort directed from our egos. The seeker wants to have total control of what they are going to find, but they don’t want to discover something that kills their search. Actually, a seeker is not designed to unearth anything useful for their soul, and that is why the search ends up being an escape. All seekers are cowards.
Neither controlling nor escaping are necessary, because what we seek arrives only when we are ready, when we trust, when we don’t fight the inevitable. When we stop doing things and thinking about how to do them, that is when magic happens… That is when life takes over.
It is true that situations never repeat from one person to the next, as you said. However, it is also true that only one attitude towards all situations we may encounter is going to transform our lives: TRUST.
I suggest you reformulate the question. Instead of asking: how do I do what I have to do? Or what do I have to do? Ask yourself: what should life do with me so that I relinquish control and start trusting?
If you open up your heart to life, love and feeling, unimaginable things are going to start happening. Only then will you know that all those things that arrive are the things you put so much effort into seeking.
Alberto José Varela