[FairfieldLife] Tasting Your Way to Infinity: the myth that genuine spirituality involves getting rid of thoughts.

[Vaj]

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<x-tad-bigger> Tasting Your Way to Infinity. Part 1. The Feeling of Body, Mind, and Spirit.
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<x-tad-bigger>Sally Kempton</x-tad-bigger>
 

<x-tad-bigger>For twenty years, Sally Kempton was one of the foremost teaching monks of Siddha Yoga meditation, teaching under her monastic name of Swami Durgananda. She studied under Swami Muktananda for eight years and was a senior teacher under his successor, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. In 2002 she lay aside her monastic robes, with Gurumayi's blessing, to begin a new phase of her teaching work. Although still drawing on the many gifts of the Siddha Yoga tradition, Sally is creating a fresh perspective on the heart of the spiritual journey, as it exists on any path.

Consider, if you will, the following thought experiment: if spiritual practice involves going beyond thoughts, is the goal of meditation to actually "lose your mind?" And if "losing your mind," or the ability to suspend </x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger>thought</x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger>, is the hallmark of successful practice, then does that make whatever </x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger>feelings</x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger> remain somehow "spiritual?"

In this dialogue, Ken and Sally explore the anti-intellectual bias common to meditation practitioners (and teachers) and the myth that genuine spirituality involves getting rid of thoughts. They suggest that every thought has a feeling space and the real trouble is not thought itself, but the inability to </x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger>feel</x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger> thought as a direct, vibratory manifestation of pure Spirit.

Together, they refute the idea that simply feeling or "being in" the body is innately "spiritual," and instead suggest that there are at least two different kinds of feeling. Their conversation builds upon the notion that the body has feelings (or sensations), the mind has thoughts, and spirit has intuition. The real question—</x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger>what is it that actually feels feelings, as well as thoughts, intuition, and the texture of all that is arising, including the self-contraction?</x-tad-bigger><x-tad-bigger>—brings into fluorescence the critical distinction between feeling and Feeling, or that which is merely the object of awareness and Awareness itself.

The idea that we must somehow rid ourselves of the self-contraction is an impediment to deep spiritual practice, and Ken and Sally discuss Feeling (as contrasted with feeling) as the foundation for Liberation as an always-already present capacity. When it is recognized that that which Feels the ego, or the self-contraction, is actually egoless, the fundamental seeking impulse is undone. Feeling fully the texture of all that is arising without judgment or aversion, we simply and effortlessly taste our Self.

In closing, Ken and Sally discuss the role of Integral Spiritual Center and the opportunities for the "cross-pollination" between spiritual traditions it will provide and promote. Never before has a group of such diverse and accomplished spiritual teachers met together to "lock themselves up in a room for a weekend"—not as teachers teaching students, but as teachers teaching teachers—with the intent to share traditions, test one another's understanding, and sift the wheat from the chaff in order to arrive at a sense of an authentically Integral Spirituality, in any tradition.

We hope you enjoy this illuminating dialogue with one of the most deceptively profound teachers we have the privilege of calling friend....
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