The Imposition of Ideology on Spiritual Practice

Our prior political/social/cultural/religious conditioning makes us think and feel Spiritual Practice is me The Imposition of Ideology on Spiritual Practice rely another ideology we must conform to. However, the Affectionate Heart-Felt Practice of surrendering (the egoic-self) into the acknowledgement and recognition that all manifest appearances (including the body/mind) are dependent on and arising out of the One Great Spirit, the One Source of Life, is not a matter of believing or following another ideology. In fact, the rigid attachment to any worldly ideology is an obstacle to a human being’s whole bodily affectionate enjoyment of the active Source and Power of her/his whole bodily Transformation. In other words, a Life in God the Real, not a life in an ideology. 

There is not a demand on Students who come to Tushita Heart Hermitage to embrace another ideology or set of behaviours or some such, but rather to begin to reflect on how many of our values, beliefs, opinions and desires, altogether our idea of self, is made up of political/social/cultural ideology.  

It is a cheap trick of the mind-self merely to criticise others’ belief systems, society, religions and cultures without being aware of how you yourself are immersed in all kinds of moral ideas and assumptions about what is right and what is wrong, about how the world should be and what others should be doing. Much easier to do that, because it is an excruciating effort (for most) to submit one’s own moral belief system and idea of self to reappraisal. 

Generally, we immerse ourselves uncritically in whatever social/cultural/religious context we were born into. There is little, if any acknowledgement that we all come out of Nature and are therefore vessels imprinted and alive with the Values of Nature, the Values of Life the Spirit. Perhaps the drug abuse, stress, anxiety and depression of every young human is a suffocated and confused plea to her or his human elders, “Please help me stay close to my Nature Given Values!” 

To our own disgrace, suffering and demise, the human species seems determined to impose its own worldly reactive ideology onto Nature and therefore onto the new born, rather than communicating the inherent Life Given Values to the young, the Values that already Live us and will guide us through every stage of human development. It seems we would rather impose worldly authoritarian demands and disciplines of an ideology on our young than the Profound Life Disciplines that help us conform to the Morals of Nature, where we are all One. When immersed in the Life-Given Values of the human body/mind, one will never feel irrelevant in this existence, no matter one’s age. 

Ordinarily or conventionally, we do not commune with and receive the Spirit at an emotional/visceral level, thereby regularly communicating Its active Living Force to one another in our ordinary daily conversation and functional life. Rather, it seems, we are too concerned about whether we and others are adhering to the rights and wrongs of one or other moral political/social/cultural ideology. 

The Life-Given ability to commune with the All-Pervading Spirit Reality exists in all of us; however, most of the time we are holding on to ourselves in the form of our social/cultural/egoic-self conditioning to such a degree that we feel if we let it go (transcend it) we will have nothing. In fact, rather than transcending it, we devote much disgruntled attention to trying to make others see and understand our personal ideology, thereby hoping they will make it all right for us. 

Yes, Spiritual Practice has its difficulties, its inconveniences, its incompatibilities with our way of life. It can be extremely disagreeable to our personal-self. The Practice of Affectionate Heart-Felt submission of the ego-self (acknowledging with positive emotional feeling recognition) into Union with the One Great Spiritual Reality of this bodily existence will provoke us, force us to ask ourselves some very uncomfortable questions about our values, our traditions, our belief systems, our habits of thinking. It will most certainly reveal our underlying casual, passively aggressive manipulation and exploitation of each other for our own personal satisfaction. 

You see, the Practice of the always present Spiritual Reality is (or requires) the redirection of attention from the personal mind emotional self to the Heart-Felt acknowledgement and Affectionate Companionship with and as the One Great Living Spirit that all manifestation arises out of and which is always One in the Same. 

The Essence of the Way of Life is the Transmission and Play of Spirit. We are all involved in the Great Play of Spirit no matter what our personal point of view, our colour, nationality, religion, beliefs, achievements or losses. Now, that can be a mind-knowledge bit of info, or it can be received and felt with whole-bodily Affection. In the first way, the mind way, it will only be received and felt to whatever degree the personal-self allows. The second way, the whole-bodily way, has nothing to do with the personal-self and its agenda and is therefore felt with Affection, Love, Wonder and Gratitude. These are all Qualities of Spirit or Life or Love, Qualities of the Nature Body, which must be allowed to pass through the mind’s ideological gatekeeper if we are to Realise the Truth Condition of our existence in a way that Transforms our state of Consciousness. 

When in relatedness to all manifest existence as the wonderful modifications of the One Spirit, one becomes intoxicated with the feelings of All-Inclusive Spirit or Life It Self or Love. It is not relative to someone or something, not because of some favourable conditional circumstance but because the whole affair is arising out of God-Essence or Spirit. And God the Real has no favourites, no special individual destiny, no attachment to Its forms whatsoever. One’s body is restored to an easy Affectionate embrace with Life that will then inform our actions, our conversations and ordinary everyday duties. 

In this conditional realm, it is so very easy to become lost to One’s Self - the Self being the Spirit that is the Source and Force of one’s Transformation through this existence. Yet, we have not been abandoned by That Truth, which is the essential and Truly Companionable Lover throughout our brief bodily existence. 

The Life Values, the Life Wisdom of the body is always with us; however, our Inherent Life Given Values are battered into submission by the relentless force of social/cultural conditioning. Before we have a chance to become Aware of our Inherent Wisdom, we are socialised into values that are functional for the society, the existing economic system, the class system, and we are penalised and punished for perspectives that are not. 

We must understand our conditioning, our unconscious belief systems, our own worldly ideological self. Our conditioning imposes a superficial relatedness to existence and each other that mostly results in an energy of heavy burden, an energy that dumbs us down. And, if we are not willing to examine and see our own worldly conditioning, we remain fixated in interests (or what we think is interesting) that are actually at odds, or more likely counter- productive to the Life Process of the body/mind. Old conditioned values are mostly useless in the engagement of new Values. 

If we do not genuinely enter into an understanding of our own ideological self, our own particular conditioning, on the basis of a self-critical Insight, our conditioned self, our egoic-self tends to penetrate and distort so much of our bodily experience and our efforts towards Self-Enquiry, rather than our Spiritual Identity penetrating and dissolving our ego tendencies. 

Life or the Spiritual Reality has Affectionately Given us all the Entire Body of Wisdom. We all have It, but are we available to It? The body itself is the Representative and Transmission of Nature’s Wisdom Pleasure. Are we available to It or are we caught up in trying to be a very serious (oh, and yet very cool) follower of one or other worldly ideology? It is hard for me now to imagine the conceit and deluded self-appointed superiority that humans assume in thinking Nature or Life is not quite the full Truth until we impose an ideology on it.  

What a great pity we are not held close to our True Self as we confront the conditional world. And yet, what a Great Gift Nature always Offers us, in the Form of those who have renounced following customary social/cultural beliefs and instead immersed their human existence in the Great Affectionate Embrace with the Source and Force that IS Life. 

Just so, but will the mind, the ideological gatekeeper, allow you to enter into the Spiritual Master’s All-Pervading Heart? 

There is the Spiritual Reality and there is the ideological reality. The Spiritual Reality has already Given us everything we need. It has Given us the Natural Beauty we all depend on. It has Given us the Wonder of our own Mystery. It has Given us the Natural Quality of Affection and Pleasure. 
Why is it so difficult for us humans to simply enjoy that already? No, it seems we have to create our own separate ideology, an ideology we insist on imposing on the Spiritual Reality. Not only that but also, if the adherents of the various ideologies could have it their own way, they would not be satisfied until they had a monopoly on ideology. And so we propose (or do we pretend?) to understand and Realise the Spiritual Truth Identity, while yet arguing the differences of our own particular ideology. We are far too much wanting the Undifferentiated Life-Force, the Universal Spirit, to fit comfortably and compatibly with our worldly inherited ideology. 

For example, every ideology has certain things - rituals, circumstances and words - that are sacred while others are not. Another ideology has very different ideas of what is sacred. And all this hyper-theorized spiritual drama jargon is not for the sake of Undifferentiated Communion with and as the Spiritual Reality that all people, all creatures and all world arise out of and have their form in. 
These differentiations of the One Great Spirit are more to do with maintaining the safety net of our own ideology. I am not saying many of these “sacred cows” we protect and defend are not worthy but which ones do we include and which ones do we disregard? 

Our fears create a contracted and false sense of self, others and world; in turn this sense of self creates all kinds of political/social/cultural/religious ideologies which we cling to and defend, very often violently. 

Spiritual Practice is to enter the Realm of existence that is beyond the limited personal, ideological self. Not merely the norms and morals of the personal-self preferences but the Morals of Nature, the Morals of the Spiritual Real. 

Spiritual Practice is not something you do to yourself. It is not another ideology you adopt and try to fulfill. It is not a doing Practice. It is essentially and always a being Practice. Spiritual Practice is not something you do to yourself that others can see. They may well see the outcome if it is Lived outwardly, but not the actual Practice. Now isn’t that the most wonderful, gorgeous, awesome thing? No one can see the Practice. 

You do not have to wear this or that, you do not have to talk spiritual mumbo jumbo, you do not have to do yoga with the right number of beads and body, you do not have to get it right according to your socialisation. You simply turn around and begin to honour what is True of the Self, the Spiritual Self. You are not so concerned about being right or wrong on the basis of socially-conditioned belonging, but far more profoundly devoted to Awakening to the Values that are True of the Life-Self, no matter what anyone else thinks or says. Yes, there most definitely will be outcomes in our disposition, our outward bodily life, our State of Being, but these are outcomes from the Actual Practice. 

Those who do not want to go beyond the egoic-self only try to know intellectually and talk about these outcomes, mimic these outcomes, which is all only a reflection of the mind - the seat of the egoic-self. 

If you come into the company of a Spiritual Adept, a Renunciate Being, you are not seeing the Practice, you are seeing the outcome of the Practice. You cannot merely observe the outer life of a Spiritual Realiser and then try to act in the same way or do what She or He does or does not do. To do this is merely the way of conventional mind, the way of comparison, competitiveness, getting it right, putting responsibility for your Life in the hands of another, hoping someone else has got it right for you and so forth. 

And now another happy thought until I see you again. 
Your destiny is self-transcendence. It is called death. 
So Be It.