Many have read something about the courage, dedication and ingenuity of the British during WWII and of those thousands who worked tirelessly to safeguard the Allied convoys crossing the Atlantic, attempting to deliver relief to Europe. The Nazis used a device to send encrypted code reconnaissance to the U-boats and fighter planes whose task it was to destroy any attempts to save Europe from total surrender. Alan Turing was credited with inventing the first computer, the Enigma machine, to break the code, thus saving the war efforts.
However there were also dozens of women employed who were not University-trained mathematicians and some had cognitive skills that enabled them to solve demanding crossword puzzles in minutes, a feat that even the most erudite Oxford scholars would need hours to complete. They used intuition over logic to gain access to a sense of the Nazi messenger’s mind rather than the message itself. They recognized patterns that most math geniuses couldn’t see, as if they could comprehend divine order in a rose petal or the constellations of the evening stars. It was as if they could walk sideways through their minds, a neural pathway unavailable to those more sophisticated, educated men in tweeds.
In Zen Buddhism we talk of Shikantaza or “Just Awareness”, the core practice of Zen meditation. There is no dogma to follow. A few simple guidelines are established regarding posture and breathing on the meditation cushion, but the mystery reveals itself by the dedication and enthusiasm to practice by the person energized, fueled by their own passion to encounter That Which Animates.
There is a school of Depth Psychology that teaches that the goal of any spiritual practice would be cracking the code of egocentric orientation. To have clarity, to see life unfold from a perspective perhaps wider than the prison of “what’s in it for me?” To relax into an experience broader than “me, my mine.” But the obstacles to break free from lifelong beliefs of who one takes him/her self to be, is not a path for the faint hearted.
Saint John of the Cross described the crisis of ego death he faced in his seminal work The Dark Night of The Soul.
And Karlfried Graf Durckheim, states in The Way of Transformation: “The man, who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages his old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it.”
Saint Teresa of Avila says: “To have courage for whatever comes in life, everything lies in that.”
But what does this mean? How can it be part of the task of cracking the code, the Enigma? We are conditioned from the start to “do good in school, get better grades, graduate and get a job and buy a house and…” All this doing, all this constant activity. But cracking the code requires an entirely different skill set. Sit still and let it all come. Intuition might be the highest wisdom to sprout, to germinate, to flower into a potential we never dreamed lay dormant in us.
A person doesn’t need to shave their head and enter an austere monastery to develop contact with the Spacious Mind which Zen devotees have discovered after decades of arduous practice.
It’s possible to rest in the openness of mind simply by asking multiple questions to oneself, a repeating question to challenge or investigate all our cherished opinions and beliefs:
“How do I know that?” “Who says I have to believe that?” “Where did that belief come from?” “Do I have to cling to it?” “Who would I be if I let all beliefs sit in the backseat for a while?”
An ongoing inquiry, a curiosity, an open investigation as to how I arrived at this moment in life with all the baggage of opinions, projections, prejudice, racial bias, gender discrimination ad nauseum…
How does one harness the longing, the inner knowing that there must be more to life than security and comfort? Not some cryptic, arcane secret held by sanctified elders, but a presence dwelling in our own hearts. But how do we trust “that still voice within?” How often have we trusted our attraction to someone only to have discovered that we’d been bamboozled by our own projections, disregarding early warning signs? Is there an inner guidance we can rely on? If cracking the code is the business that calls us, how do we go forward?
We begin, again and again, so say the Benedictines. Even if we have fallen for every imaginable delusion, we pick our self up, again and again, dust off the shame or belittling accusations rattling around our heads, sit quietly, and wait for inner guidance to arise.
The ring of truth has a distinctive timbre we learn to recognize, eventually. For those called to live a life of inquiry, to investigate how they’d arrived in their karmic predicament, as Ram Das once said, it becomes the best game in town.
After many failed attempts, in various traditions, if a person is quite fortunate, he/she might come across a teacher who presents a possible path that bears fruit. And what might that fruit look like? Eternal bliss with a smile of “I got it and don’t you wish you did?” Or stars in our eyes as we comprehend the Mystery? Or could it be more down to earth? With a compassion, a kindness to all we meet. A life lived with gratitude and well-being no matter what life presents…
In sickness and in health, in fair weather or storms, in wealth or just scraping by, we might taste a nectar, a fullness of each moment which puts to rest any hankering to be elsewhere, for things to be different. The ancients called it surrender to what is. And this might be indeed the Garden of Eden, if only we stop long enough to savor it.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
