The Status Quo Cannot Contain It

the status quo cannot contain it Q You’ve been speaking about a“leap beyond the known,” which you said means the death of personal history. Wouldn’t this create some serious problems in our human relationships? For example, you have awife; Ihave amother. What if Isay that Ican’t make this leap because Iwould still want to call my mother on Mother’s Day? A Do you think that when Jesus said to his disciples, “Leave everything behind and follow me,” their response was, “But can we call our mothers on Mother’s Day?” You’re asking agood question though. Even alot of very sophisticated people today don’t seem to understand how big enlightenment really is. They have somehow gotten the strange idea into their heads that the explosive implications of higher consciousness are something that they can fit neatly and safely into the unconscious and ego-driven lives that they are already living. The whole point is that the realization of enlightenment completely destroys the status quo. It blows it to pieces. If you are lucky enough to actually succeed in your quest for liberation in this life then you will become acom¬ pletely transformed human being and, believe me, you will be the status quo cannot contain it 23 seeing things very differently. You simply cannot squeeze the limitation-shattering perspective of enlightened con¬ sciousness into the way things have been in the past. It’s far too big for that. The status quo will never be able to contain it. If the idea of calling your mother on Mother’s Day is more important to you than your own liberation in this life, then you’re obviously not seriously interested in the extraordinary possibility that I’m pointing to. So are you saying that if 1want to be enlightened Ihave to liter¬ ally leave the world behind? In other words, just walk out of my house and leave my cat and my partner and shave my head and sit under atree? No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that genuine spiritual awakening absolutely threatens the status quo of aworld that is built upon the endless fears and desires of the ego. Enlight¬ enment is the biggest threat that there could possibly be to that world. But in the modern spiritual marketplace, this all- important fact too often seems to be overlooked. Indeed, in the name of spiritual transformation, many of us are devoting alot of our time and attention to improving ourselves, with¬ out questioning the ultimate validity of the self that’s being improved, or even beginning to question the entire world¬ view within which that self exists. How many of us have cultivated the courage or awakened interest to seriously ques¬ tion many of the accepted cultural injunctions that, for most of us, end up defining the way we choose to live our lives? The point is, how truly liberated is our own mind? How vast 24 living enlightenment is our perspective? Is our interest in enlightened conscious¬ ness so inspired that we always seek for away of seeing that is free from unexamined assumptions? You see, what I’m trying to say is that as much as we may believe we want to, we’ll never be able to truly evolve in hell. Do you know what hell is? Hell is not even knowing that we are lost. Hell is being unconscious, adrift in the inner world of isolation and suffocation that is created by aself that is enslaved by the separate ego. And unless we become aware of how bad it really is, we’ll never find the courage or the inspi¬ ration to do whatever is necessary to finally liberate ourselves here and now in this very life. Ican’t emphasize enough how urgent this is. So few of us take the possibility of our own liberation deadly seriously. And the main reason for this is, once again, that we just don’t know how bad things are. Andrew, to be honest, 1don’t think I’m at all in touch with the fact that I’m apparently so completely lost in the hell that you’ve just described. That’s because you have not yet reached that point in your own evolution where you want to be free more than anything else. You see, it is that interest in liberation alone that makes it possible for us to begin to see everything in acompletely different light. And that interest, if pursued with passion, commitment, and the willingness to take enormous risks, has the power to catapult us into aradically different relationship to the human experience—one in which we will no longer be merely trying to fit in. Endeavoring wholeheartedly to come the status quo cannot contain it 25 to terms with what it means to be truly alive, we will be actively pursuing the questions: Who am I? and How shall 1 live? as if our life depended on it. And my point is that the life-transforming, revolutionary perspective that is revealed through this kind of inspired questioning simply cannot be contained by the status quo. So do you think it’s not possible to get enlightened and still be a father or amother—to live an ordinary life and yet seek for enlightenment at the same time? Did you say in your spare time? Just kidding! No, being a father or amother in no way needs to be an obstacle to the state of consciousness I’m speaking about. But as long as the idea of being afather or the idea of being amother is more important to us than realizing this liberated state of sciousness, then the revolutionary perspective I’m describing will never be able to emerge in the field of our As long as we are blindly attached to and unconsciously enslaved by any idea that is the expression of the fears and desires of the individual or collective ego, which is the mind of the world that we’re living in, it will be impossible to live atruly liberated human life. As I’ve been saying, so many of us are just trying to fit in, trying to survive the best we can. We don’t know what else to do. At times, we desperately seek for away to give our lives a sense of meaning and purpose. But where do we look? And how deeply do we question? Usually not too high, and not too deeply, for fear that the very foundation of our worldview. c o n - o w n a w a r e n e s s . 26 living enlightenment the very ground under our feet, may fall away if we even momentarily see through the illusion of security, stability, and permanence that the ego strives at all costs to constantly create. So we end up doing more or less exactly what every¬ one else is doing: believing, in our collective ignorance, that we are doing the best we can and that life is hard enough as it is without having to assume the burden of our own (and ultimately everyone else’s) potential liberation. Ifind the passionate questioning that you have been describing very inspiring, but when you speak about the ground under my feet falling away this makes me feel insecure to say the least. It just seems like too much. The truth is too much—that’s the whole point. The truth that liberates is too much for this mundane world of compromise and superficiality. That’s just the way it is. That’s the way it always has been, and the way it always will be. That’s what is so powerful about direct spiritual experience. It literally has the power to destroy the world as we know it and reveal to us acompletely different picture of reality. And so what will our life look like then? What will our life look like? Well, it will look FREE—free and unencumbered in away that will shock and surprise most people. Our spirit, joy, and confidence in life will be irrepressible and uncontainable. Who we are, how we are, and the life that we live will embody and express the liberating the status quo cannot contain it Tl truth that we have found in the spiritual experience. Our very cells will shout out and declare that truth to the sleeping world around us. Do you get asense of what I’m pointing to? Yes, I’m beginning to, and it scares me! You shouldn’t be scared; you should be inspired. What I’m describing is true fulfillment. 28 living enlightenment