Pros And Cons Of My Eastern Spirituality (Nonduality) Path

When I was a kid, I focused on nothing but on getting my immediate needs met from my environment. At times I succeeded and at times I failed. When I succeeded I was happy, when I failed, I was hurt. And boy was I a sensitive and stubborn little one.

When I became a teenager, I focused on nothing more than on my list of endless disappointments through my childhood. All my happy memories had disappeared and all my unhappy ones had become the focal point of my angry teen-aged existence. I blamed people, I pointed fingers, I held grudges and I was eternally disappointed.

It was then when I decided "fuck them," I'm going to detach from everyone and make my own life the way I want it. I promised myself that I would become the next international super star, conquering both the Spanish and English speaking parts of the globe. I was the best singer in the world, so it wasn't going to be that difficult. All I had to do was believe hard enough and work on it until I got discovered. So I went to college for singing. LOL.

When I saw how little success I was having at getting all the leading roles in school, my confidence (or should I say arrogance) started to break. By the time I was in my junior year, the list of failures at being the star of a small private college was starting to show me that maybe I wasn't going to break through in the way I had previously envisioned.

That's when all my work at personal development (back then called self-help) was not the whole key to my liberation. And that's when I stumbled across eastern spirituality teachings that focused on living in the now and becoming enlightened.

"This whole being a super star that's going to conquer the whole world is not working out so well, let me give this spiritual enlightenment thing a shot" my ego thought.

And so I did. I gave the enlightenment thing a shot and pretty much ditched the whole personal development thing altogether. Now, my life wasn't about self-improvement, it was about spiritual enlightenment.

This switch confused everyone around me. "What happened? Gabriel was so driven and determined and now he's given up. What the heck is going on?"

I stopped going to the gym, I stopped going to therapy, I stopped caring about how I looked, I stopped working, I stopped tending to my relationships, I stopped setting and pursuing goals, I stopped everything.

All I focused on was on self-inquiry, spirituality and enlightenment.

I did it so hard that I precipitated an awakening experience that took place in my basement apartment in the summer of 2007. It went something like this:

I was laying in my bed and I was thinking to myself: "How do I know that I am thinking?" to which I answered, "Who just asked that question?" to which I answered "Who just asked who asked that question?" and so on.

Apparently, the intensity and depth of my self-inquiry triggered a cataclysmic experience in which awareness became aware of itself. And since this was seemingly my first time experiencing that consciously, my whole world shifted in an instant. Since then I have never been able to be anywhere near the guy I used to be.

As you could imagine, this awakening was another pivotal turning point for me. Now, I have "awakened." Now, I am "enlightened." And boy was this a trip. Ten years later, I sit here and am shocked at how intensely deluded I became after that life-changing experience.

I wish I could say that every day after that experience I was a much better person, but I am sad to say that this was not the case. If anything I became more arrogant, more deluded and more insane than I had ever been before.

It hasn’t been until 7 psychotic breaks later, multiple hospitalizations, years of therapy and a LOT of servings of humble pie that I have been able to catch up with the massive whirlwind that all of this transformation has put my poor psyche through.

And here's where I think I got super confused and why I think it took that long to get to some sanity since then...

Clearly stated, I fell for the trap of stubbornly and exclusively attaching myself with the notions and teachings offered by ancient eastern spirituality.

Things like: - You are not the body (so why exercise?) - You are not the mind (so why do therapy?) - You are not your emotions (so why apologize?) - You are not the self (so why work?) - There is only now (so why save?) - The past is an illusion (so why study?) - All is well (so why bother?)
On and on...

And here's what I was missing: These are merely pointers and teachings. They have their uses, origins, their reasons and their intents. But none of them are total truth. As the wise spiritual adage goes: “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

A lot of these teachings come from India, Japan and many other places. But let's look at India. In India, the country runs in a great state of chaos, the body isn't seen as sacred or holy. The sage Nisargadatta Maharaj, who was one of my favorites was a chain-smoking, body denying, screaming sage. Ramana Maharshi, who is credited a lot for popularizing the self-inquiry that I was engaging in, in my basement apartment, only wore a rag around his groin and lived on a mountain and refused to go to his father's funeral. These people have a different culture, a different set of conditioning and a different set of values than we do here. And that was precisely what I loved about their teaching. The "Neti Neti" (not this, not that) or “Via Negativa” (way of negating) approach to awakening. An approach based in denial of everything except consciousness.

In India, I probably would have been an enlightenment success story. I would have sat under a tree and became a sadhu. But I was in Long Island, New York. So that didn't go over too well.

About Japanese Zen, another one of the philosophies that I found extremely attractive (mostly because of the exotic appeal that it had to the heavily materialistic and insecure American boy that I was) contains these teachings of "Chop wood and carry water” and simple teachings like “When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re tired, sleep.” Which even though I understood to be metaphors, I still attempted to cram these pointers in my daily millennial existence by denying my talents, gifts and abilities as well as suppressing my western boy desires and overall humanness. All by living in an unconscious vow of poverty and dependence on credit cards, my Dad and banks that provided school loans. I was just trying to “keep it simple.”

Having a job, being engaged and being a dutiful and responsible citizen seemed ridiculous. Ridiculous being a code word for absolutely terrifying.

One of the things that helped loosen my denial was when my teacher of the time, Adyashanti said in many of his talks: "The spiritual personality type is more afraid of life than he is afraid of death" (I'm paraphrasing, but that was pretty much it.) When I heard that, something deep inside of me knew that what he was saying was true. Somehow I knew that I was only half awake.

What saved me and got me out of it? A LOT of grace. A LOT of grace in the form of help, perseverance, tenacity, sincerity and love.

Mostly what did it for me, where my voice teacher, Mark Baxter, my spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, and later in life my zen teacher, Cheri Huber and the sangha that she guides. Somehow, seeing these people doing what I want to do and seemingly having all of the things that I desire, gave me hope that it is possible to integrate all these things and actually have a life that I want to live. They're all teaching, writing, have homes that they love and are "in the world but not of it."

Which by the way reminds me of another thing that helped me greatly: embracing Christianity and the dualistic religions.

Non-duality gave me the distance through denial of myself, my family, my relationships, my heritage, my desires, my individuality and my humanity as a whole. And even though it gave me a ton of awareness and stability, in the end left me dry and bored.

Duality gave me the embrace, the love, the inclusion and the acceptance and compassion to admit myself, my family, my relationships, my heritage, my desires, my individuality and my humanity as a whole. And even though it can give me a lot of stress and overwhelm, I has also given me a lot of devotion, compassion, aliveness and a willingness to engage and participate.

Because of both of these approaches, along with an unbelievable amount of grace, I can say that I am proud to be who I am and I am happy to be alive and well today.

Today, the edge of my practice is to keep these two approaches in balance. I do that through ongoing spiritual practice and through ongoing engagement in life.

Thank you for reading my story and I hope it's of some use to you.

Gabriel

An Exercise In Transparent Vulnerability

Here's another long one. I've been going through it... again. I am recent out of getting really good care from a hospital in which I had to be admitted for psycho-emotional difficulties. If you know me intimately at all, you know that that has been one of the children that I've been given to tend to for most of my life. And as many of you know, this unsettled, hurt and crying inner child is not the easiest to learn to tend to.

Being a teacher and feeling the need to be a model of possibility, hope, light and love can come with a tremendous amount of challenge when the wounded child within is flaring up. Ironically, the very same model/mentor aspect of my being (a.k.a the "well adjusted adult") is both, the savior and the tormentor of this beautiful crying inner infant.

And as anybody who's signed up for the task of true healing will attest to, it is not easy. It is not for the faint of heart.

I post this to keep modeling what it is like to be open, honest and vulnerable as I have been doing for as long as I've been able to. And if you're wondering where such a cooky decision came from, I'll tell you that it comes from how alone and hurt I've personally felt due to a lifetime of lacking people in my immediate life that know how to consistently model what healthy, honest and undefended transparency and vulnerability look like. Truth be told, the culture of secrecy, shame and extreme emotional privacy (in conjunction with the idealization of putting out an image of indestructible happiness, success and pride) has not only not worked for me. And I can unequivocally state that it has sincerely been the single most painful aspect of society that I have had to experience as a human in this world we all share.

As someone who currently is and has been in a handful of intimate relationships and as someone who is serving in the roles of private voice teacher, acting coach and self-esteem mentor, I know full well that I am not alone in my feelings. I know that, although most of us are afraid to publicly open up about it, many of us are deeply crying inside. Sadly, we sensitive types feel like unlovable freaks for being the only ones openly hurting. All while many others are masterfully pretending to have a completely wound-free life. And even though I understand that being private is everyone's prerogative, I know how isolating and invalidating this chosen privacy can feel for us highly sensitive people. And even though I know people have their valid reasons to hide their pain, I feel that somebody's gotta do the dirty work and come forward. Let that fool be me.

Also, none of this is new, it seems it has always been this way. In fact, it is rumored that the Buddha (whom I deeply admire and love) stated thousands of years ago that life is suffering (the first noble truth). And I suppose that as humans we're each karmically hooked up to suffer more or less over different things. I in particular, have suffered a lot because of people's understandable tendency to project and present and image that is not consistent with their truth. I wasn't always as conscious about this as I am today, but this has truly been the bane of my relational existence.

As a child, what I always wanted more than anything else was for things to line up. I wanted English teachers to have good spelling and grammar, I wanted priests to be loving and compassionate, I wanted presidents to be wise and lead their countries with great sincerity, love and intelligence. I tightly associated what I saw that I heard people say they were with what their job description was. I anticipated no negative surprises. I expected consistency and honesty. Or at least honesty and transparency alone. Little did I know that I was in for the ride of my life. Little did I know, that I had incarnated in a dimension of reality where more than commonplace, hypocrisy happens to be absolutely normal and the standard of our social living.

In line with all of this, those of you who know me intimately are probably aware of my attribution to a lot of my inner conflict to the broken marriage that I was an offspring of. And again, I know I am not alone in that. In fact, I know so well that I am not alone in that, that I know for a fact that more people suffer for this very reason than people themselves are aware of. I grew up hearing my mom and my dad saying how much they loved each other, but although initially I was naive and buying it, it didn't take long before I ended up feeling deeply confused due to the fact that this love was not becoming manifest in a way that made sense to me. For most of my childhood my parents had a long distance relationship. A very long distance relationship, with an ocean and 1,553 miles of distance in between, to be more specific.

But love conquers everything, doesn't it? Well it does and it doesn't. Although my parents did have great love for each other, they had what I understand to be very little capacity to make their marriage work. And love didn't conquer that. Avoidance did. It took a long time for all of this to surface and become as clear as it is now, and a lot of difficult shit went down in between. I, for one feel quite traumatized and battered by it, and although my siblings claim to be over it, I am not.

I write this to reach for support as I have in the past, with good results. I don't ask for prayers because, at least for the time being, I'm not too hooked up to be a prayer type. But in spite of that, if a prayer is all you can offer, I will gladly take it.

I also write this because I don't want to be one more of the bunch that copes and bottles this stuff up inside. That has not worked for me at all in the past and it doesn't seem to be working for other people. No matter how much they pretend to be fine. But who knows, maybe it's more than I'm higher maintenance than most and have high standards. Funny, my original intent was to write something like: "Nothing angers me more than privileged people who take credit for their privilege by claiming that their privilege was something they created through their hard work." (Think Donald Trump who seems to believe everything he's ever accomplished is all due to HIM.) Instead, all this other stuff came out. And I'm glad it did.

Your words of empathy and support would be deeply appreciated. The retreat helped all of this beautiful expression of an honest crying heart to emerge. And I am so grateful for it.

I trust that you will handle this tenderly. And if you don't, it's your loss and not mine. That last line I just wrote for those who would be concerned about me for publishing my heart on this sleeve called Blogspot.

With great love, Gabriel