Spiritual Egos - Fred LaMotte

Spiritual egos make a distinction between "beginners techniques"
and "advanced techniques."  Their intellect wants something
difficult to do, a sense of accomplishment.  That is why so
many new age teachers speak of their spiritual "work."  Do
they ever speak of their spiritual "play"?

Ease is the cure for dis-ease.  The deepest, most healing
spiritual practice, we ease into.  In fact, we do not practice.
We let go of practice.

The goal is never an achievement done by "advanced" practice,
but the dissolution of the do-er.  It is known by un-knowing and
done by un-doing.  This can only happen to the effortless.  The
most powerful meditation is the simplest, the most natural.

When you really look at people who carry a bag of "advanced"
techniques, you often see a weariness behind the stiff mask of
their perpetual smile. Of they look tentative, because they are
always taking the next step, and never completely here.  Only
the beginner dwells in eternal freshness...  The beginner is never
 advanced because she is present.

In the deepest and most natural meditation, you never have to
leave your body.  Every atom of your body is already woven out
of swirling stars....  No wind can uproot the beginner.  No
wound can puncture the intergalactic stillness of the Beginner's
core.

Transcending your body is not an advanced practice. It is a practice
of disconnection. That is why, in the Anapanasati Sutra, the Buddha
said, "Awareness of body in the body."  He did not say,
"Transcend the body."  He said to grok the body from within the body,
for consciousness and matter are one energy,
every cell and photon trembling with the sap of awareness.

...be a beginner.  Always feel the freshness of the first day of creation.
Now is the beginning.  Now is the end of time.  How could "now" be
advanced?

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - MM 
the two faces of Pumpkin Head :)