And what was the point of it all again?

I’ve taken some time at the end of this part of my fellowship to reflect. I’m ensconced in a wooden cabin in Arizona, with just WiFi, deer and squirrels to distract me.

It's the spiritual aspect of 'wholeness' that has caught my attention in the last few days. The picture, by the way, is of the rocks at Sedona, which I visited on Wednesday. Sedona has all sorts of spiritual resonances.

I’m staying on the land of a very interesting gentleman called Bodhi, who has travelled a lot, and read a lot, exploring ideas about spirituality and human consciousness. A couple of nights ago, Bodhi pointed me in the direction of the text, ‘I Am That’, the Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. This text encourages the seeker to go beyond the mind and experience the self, to focus on the question, “Who am I”. I am summarising something I haven’t finished reading (and indeed something I don’t entirely understand. Though that, apparently, is the booby prize compared to awareness!), but let me have a go.

Maharaj says that pain and pleasure are just an endless source of either indolence or restlessness, a cycle where you cannot know your true self, which is joyful awareness of universal consciousness. If you come to the ‘now’ rather than the past (memory) or the future (desire based on memory), then you can hope to find pure joy. The sense of separateness between oneself and another is an illusion. Pain and pleasure come from the mind, rather than true awareness of consciousness. There is only oneself in the present moment, and “I” and “another” are actually the same thing. We are all one.

Eckhart Tolle seems to be getting at something similar in his book, The Power of Now. You surrender to the now - whether that be suffering or joy - and just be, rather than do.

Is the implication of all this, therefore, that you should just let the world ‘be’ as it is? That you can’t possibly assess the 'appropriateness' of someone else’s joy or suffering, and you shouldn’t try to influence it?

Although much of the advice in these texts I find very compelling (certainly release from fear is very attractive!) I find myself resisting as well. Where does helping another come in to this? Is that just dismissed as ‘doing’ as opposed to ‘being’? If someone is suffering, is their suffering an illusion, something for which one should not take responsibility? Is my yearning to improve the lot of those in the world an unnecessary and pointless ego trip? (I do wonder!)

I want the world to be a better place. I want children to have excellent education so that they can express themselves and be healthy and happy and care for each other. I want us to conserve energy to allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, that we can continue to enjoy our environment, deer and sq

uirrels included. In particular I want people at work to feel that their work is meaningful and they are free to do it well. We all desire autonomy (the desire to be self-directed), mastery (the urge to get better at stuff) and purpose ( see the RSA animated lecture for a compelling exposition of this). I so want to be an instrument of these things for others. To me, tackling these challenges require us to engage in a complex world, which in turn means they merit understanding, collaborative work, joint effort. Certainly all those I have interviewed are passionate, keen to change the world so that it is a better place. Is it worth it?

Maharaj says, possibly not:

Whatever work you have undertaken -- complete it. Do not take up new tasks. Unless it is called for by a concrete situation of suffering and relief from suffering. Find yourself first, and endless blessings will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits.... The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further help. Repeated help is no help at all. Do not talk of helping another, unless you can put him beyond all need of help.

I reflected with Bodhi about all this today. As I described various experiences I had had in the last year, he kept bringing me back to what that meant for my fellowship.

I started by saying, "I had an experience, earlier this year, of working on the question of self-love for a weekend," I said. "In the process, I realised I had to welcome and love all of me - even the bits I considered pathetic, unimpressive, weak, unpleasant, bitter, selfish. It was difficult."

Bodhi said, "Some people say that to criticise yourself is to criticise divine perfection! Now, from that space of self-love, what would that mean for collaboration?"

I thought for a second. I remembered being in that place of acceptance, of big-ness and lack of fear. "It's almost like, you wouldn't need to "collaborate". A formal effort at collaboration would be unnecessary. Everyone would just come and be whole, and offer their gifts. Things would change just because you were being at your most expanded."

Then my thoughts moved on. "I feel like I've been looking for something these last few weeks. A sort of holy grail. I want to find a partnership , or a constellation of organisations and people that exists like that, where people feel welcomed in their wholeness, and they in turn see from the whole. It doesn't have a guiding mind, it's sort of organic, although I'm guessing it may need some sort of container to make it safe. Service Ontario felt like it was the closest to 'nirvana', so to speak, but there was still a huge amount of change management effort going in. I'm looking for something more creative and less imposed. People know what to do inherently, and they feel like they're creating something bigger between them.The closest I've come is hearing about Tonya's model at Toronto's Centre for Social Innovation. But that's for nonprofits and even then it could verge on the 'guiding mind' bit if you weren't careful. It's too scary for a bureaucracy. You'd have to give up so much power."

Bodhi, 'Well that's the edge then. What is scary for a bureaucracy? Maybe that's what is worth doing? What would it like to be in a big organisation, 'being' rather than 'doing', noticing where those connections, those authentic exchanges between people were, and giving them attention? Following the joy?"

Now that made me think....