Living an Unreasonable Life vs. the Reasonable Life

Living an Unreasonable Life vs. the Reasonable Life

Swami Muktananda could not have described the mystical path better when he wrote in his spiritual autobiography Play of Consciousness, “The mystical path is best not taken. But once begun, there is no turning back.” Like discovering a truth one would rather not know, once the cat is out of the bag, you can’t get it back in. And yet, inevitably, the alert individual will also say, “And it feels good to be released from the prison of denial and falsehood.” Regardless of how much truth changes the content of a person’s life, truth is always the better companion than deceit. And like the mystical path, once the path of truth is taken, there is no turning back.

What exactly makes the mystical path so compelling and yet, at the same time, so ominous? Why would a great spiritual master caution his disciples that it is better not to walk the very path that brought him to his own enlightenment? The simple answer is that the mystical path is the path of the unreasonable life. All your life you have relied on your five senses and your base of intellectual and street knowledge to chart a reasonable course. That is to say, logic and order govern our choices, because none of us deliberately wants to throw our life into chaos by making decisions that ignore the fundamental rules of common sense. Our five senses combined with our trust of logic and rational thought seek to maintain a structure for the sake of physical survival, and that is appropriate, as we all need to find a comfort zone with survival. But let us penetrate a bit more deeply into how and why we cling so ardently to our love of our five sensory perceptual system and our adoration of reason and order, because there we find our first insight into why Swami Muktananda would warn the novice sojourner to be cautious about taking the mystical path.

Of the many characteristics and features of this force called life, such as the continual cycle of creation and destruction that expresses itself in hope emerging out of despair, love out of hatred, and the need to produce life after massive loss through wars and natural upheavals, we fear life’s chaos the most. We fear what we cannot control, and so, our lowest, irrational instincts, can drive us out of fear to destroy what threatens us, as in the invasion of Iraq. When we function from our lowest level of consciousness, it is nearly impossible to reason with us, much less to get us to grasp a greater symbolic portrait of what is unfolding in the cosmos. From that level of consciousness, when someone or something – an event such as 9/11 – has threatened us, all we can focus on is to gain control of what is out of control for the sake of survival.

Most people are not so intensely fearful as to think that in order to protect their physical world they have to destroy the life around them, so let us move up a notch on the spiral of the five senses to what we could consider ordinary life. (And yet, ordinary life for us must now include the fact that we are a nation at war, and the impact of that war is such a factor within our psychic field that it has to be included in this discussion.) You are not, however, driven by the chaos of war and the fears of those living on the streets of Iraq, (unless, of course, you have family serving there). You are driven by a subtler but no less real need to maintain order in your life, and this need is so strong that it can drive you to “destroy” that which you perceive to be a threat to your survival. We are going to explore this topic a bit more, because to grasp this is to pierce through Swami Muktananda’s mystic’s veil.

Your methods for destruction are, of course, appropriately subtle. They are, to say this in terms of the subject at hand, fully reasonable, at least as far as you are concerned. Criticizing someone you perceive as a threat, for example, is a “reasonable” act. Or, if you perceive that an individual has violated you in emotional, psychological, or financial ways, you are (still) free to file a lawsuit, which again is something we consider a completely rational thing to do if circumstances merit such action. (You realize I’m tempted to say that even if circumstances don’t merit a lawsuit, that doesn’t stop anyone these days….) Just consider how many divorces turn into courtroom war games in which both sides are participating in acts of destruction of which they would have never thought themselves capable prior to the division of the goods accumulated during their marriage, all of which represent how each party will survive without the other.

The list of the ways and means through which we behave when threatened, the extremes to which we will go to re-establish our sense of security, goes on indefinitely: letters we are capable of writing, threats we are capable of making, degrees of anger we can express when enraged, acts of manipulation we can engage in when we are determined to get our way. The common factor is that when it comes to battling the forces of chaos that threaten our survival, we will bargain with the powers of destruction and find ways to rationalize our actions, if only in the moment. “I didn’t know the gun was loaded,” said a woman who killed her husband. A young man who shot several students at a high school said in an interview recently, “I really thought the students would just get up again after I shot them, you know, like in the video games I played on my TV set at home.” These are extreme examples, but we can reach the extreme in our lives, each in our own way.

The operative questions appropriate to all of us are these: How much authority do your fears have over you when it comes to the decisions you make? And is it reasonable and appropriate to excuse our behavior by citing our fear? How often have we used fear as our method of explaining destructive behavior, expecting those around us to greet us with an embrace of compassion because we acted out of a fear that “possessed our reason”? The implication of this scenario is that we are not as responsible for destructive actions that spring from our fears, particularly those rooted in childhood, because the fears and our personal history associated with them have made us vulnerable to forces beyond our conscious, rational control. Given that rather dicey form of reasoning, we are then able to rationalize most destructive behaviors in our favor.

And, so, here’s the point: The power to destroy, no matter how subtly that power operates within us—and it very much operates within all of us—is viewed as a rational and reasonable force, because it is activated most often by the fear of survival. And that fear seems to grant us the right to act in ways that push edge of the social, moral, and ethical envelope that many keep sealed when not threatened – for the most part. Now let’s complicate this by adding the mystical perspective, or the unreasonable force.

THE PATH BEST NOT TAKEN – THE UNREASONABLE ONE

Let me say once again that our powers of reason along with well refined five sensory skills are essential to our survival—and survive we must. Make no mistake here, I am not opposed to creating a healthy and comfortable physical life. We are equipped with our five senses and powers of reason precisely to help us maneuver in the physical world. But beyond your five senses and your powers of reason are your mystical senses and your powers of interior perception. Your interior self – your soul – perceives the whole of your life through a lens that seeks the truth and meaning unfolding within every moment. Your soul calls you to transcend the gravitational voice of your fears rather than giving in to the illusions that they create. Your mystical senses seek to illuminate each moment, each mystery of your life, lest you be destroyed or destroy others by the force of panic, fear, and the confinement of your own vulnerability.

One woman told me that she is living in a seemingly endless dark night brought on by her destructive actions toward others. She has since come to see clearly the reasons why she acted as she did; yet that insight, no matter how personally transforming, can do nothing to change the past. Nevertheless, this is the sensation of awakening and the meaning of “the path is best not taken.” Waking up to your power to destroy, a power we celebrate continually in our society – in our athletes, in our soldiers, in any form of competition, in business, in entertainment – is one of the most pivotal choice moments in your life, from which, as this wise teaching of Muktananda continues, there is no going back. Once you consciously realize that you have the power to destroy others and that you consciously use that power, the realization emerges that you also have another and far more profound power within you – the power of love and compassion. I am not referring to the kind of personal love that you feel toward your family and friends. That is a love with which you are already familiar. I mean a level of love that is inherent in your mystical senses, a transcendent force that comes with the soul’s realization of its power of destruction versus its power of creation. This is the awakening to what the mystics call one’s true self, about which Muktananda and other great masters caution their students as they prepare to enter the path of illumination. Great spiritual teachers are not enthusiastic about their students’ walking the spiritual path. They do not turn to them and say, “Wonderful choice. Well done.” True masters warn their students and fill them with caution, because they know all too well that each student is destined to confront the crossroads of their own power of destruction and creation.

And here is a magnificent paradox. You would think – logically – that the more attractive choice, the more compelling and engaging choice would be that of your power to create, but it is not. The more seductive choice for most people is their power of destruction, because your fears would have you believe that it is better to destroy the unknown than to consider it a blessing in disguise. Fear comes long before the power of faith for most people. And, according to the realm of logic and reason, the power of love and compassion is an unreasonable choice, a fool’s choice that has no backbone and no immediate and forceful consequence in this physical world.

Yet, once you truly have an awakening to how destructive you can be, you also awaken to your potential as a channel for love and grace. I could tell you endless stories of the power of love and grace in terms of healing, and the changes that prayer and grace have brought about in the lives of others, but suffice to say at this point that until we truly face our compulsion to destroy, we cannot begin to comprehend our power to change this world through love and grace. For in recognizing how much you can destroy, you can then begin to imagine how much good you can do.

Swami Muktananda says that once you are awakened there is no going back, and that is the truth. Once you engage in the spiritual practice of withholding destruction and substituting compassion, you realize that you are perceiving your life from within. You are no longer relying on the limited scope of your five senses for input, but you have instead awakened the mystical senses from which you constantly draw guidance about meaning and purpose. Once attained, no one leaves that sweet interior Castle. Rather, you grow to count more and more on your mystical senses over the survival skills of your five senses, eventually recognizing that the five senses are for physical safety and your mystical senses for the acquisition of truth and meaning. You need both in order to thrive as a balanced human being.

One could say that giving up your power to destroy is among the most unreasonable choices you will ever make, as if you are turning off an instinct. But that is not so. Your instincts are to survive, not destroy. Recognizing this part of yourself, you are really acknowledging your profound relationship to creation and how that power expresses itself in every one of your actions. For if you have ever felt destroyed by the words or deeds of another person, imagine just for one moment how empowering that exchange could have been for you had those words been filled with love. Then recall words you have said and those on the receiving end of them, whether said in love or rage, and you can, even for one instant, imagine the power you hold within you. That is the force of creation itself in your soul.

Reflect on thoughts and actions that have been destructive in your life. What was said and what were the destructive consequences? Now consider just those words as a command of creation and measure the consequences in terms of your whole life. “You will never be able to learn….” and for the rest of your life you have not been able to study. How many people were “re-created” because someone uttered those words?
What words were said to you that created you anew?
When are you tempted to be destructive toward others and what are your methods?
How often do you excuse your own destructive behavior due to fear? Do you expect people to understand you if you use fear as an excuse? If you used anger, would you expect the same type of support?
Are you prepared to work with controlling that part of you that destroys when frightened or angry?
Reflect on these questions and consider once again the wise words of Swami Muktananda, “The mystical path is best not taken. But once begun, there is no turning back.”

I suspect most of you have already begun the journey.

Blessings,
Caroline Myss