Finding Autonomy, Part Two
Saturday, April 24th, 2010The Lesson Of Autonomy revolves around the practical application of these wisdom teachings. While they may appear somewhat abstract at first glance, their principles demand of us concrete changes in our behavior and attitudes. This is perhaps most evident in the way we think of ourselves: if I look through the eyes of the relative self, all I see is loss and death—but if I look through the eyes of the true self, all I see is communion and immortality.
In order to exercise the right to change things for the better, we must first allow ourselves to be changed for the better. This means allowing the relative self to be changed by the true self. Voluntarily submitting to the higher self’s purpose like this allows the relative self to awaken to the life within its life, to remember the life beyond its life—by becoming more than just the sum of our body’s experiences, we let go of the personal history that has conditioned our reactions and we begin acting without being constrained by precedents and preconceptions. Rather than acting only on our own interests, we become devoted to making things better for the people, animals, and nature around us. When we allow ourselves to be changed by the true self, in other words, we are no longer concerned with how circumstances affect us—what concerns us is how we affect the circumstances around us.
Undergoing this self-transformation leads us to the Fourth Paradox Of Wisdom: it is only by voluntarily submitting to the will of the true self that the relative self achieves Autonomy—it is only by recognizing its dependence on the true self that the relative self achieves real independence. But the will, ambition, and impatience of the relative self are not easily tamed and it requires sincere dedication to the true self’s purpose if we are to master the kind of self-control that carries us along the path of wisdom.
We may be devoted to changing things for the better, for example, but the interconnectedness of everything means our actions become part of a web of causes that is interwoven in increasingly complex ways, making it impossible to ever predict the ultimate effects of any single action. This is why one of the principal symptoms of wisdom is humility: we can act in good faith that our motive will guide our action to its intended effect, but we must not harbor the pretense of knowing its final outcome. To exercise creative power and the right to change things for the better without a firm grasp of the governing principles is the precise opposite of wisdom.
Humility, then, is the practical face of Autonomy: we can be devoted to changing things for the better, but we cannot be attached to the results of our efforts. Rather than imagining we can control all the potential ways our actions might interact with all other actions over time, we must free ourselves from the relative self’s perspective and adopt that of the true self: the successful fulfillment of the true self’s purpose cannot be understood as spanning a single lifetime but, rather, must be viewed as a long-term enterprise spanning many lifetimes.
Freedom, therefore, is the ideal face of Autonomy—the freedom to act and react without being unduly influenced by externals, the freedom to act and react without being controlled by past experiences, the freedom to act and react without being inhibited by fears and expectations of the future.
The freedom, in other words, of the untroubled spirit.
And herein lies the difference between freedom and imprisonment—for the untroubled spirit is untroubled no matter how difficult things get, whereas the troubled spirit is troubled no matter how good things get.
If we are to exercise the freedom of the untroubled spirit, we need to relinquish control of events and take control of the troubled spirit—yet because this is the precise opposite of how most people conduct themselves, we come across few people after whom we can model our behavior. Even though this makes finding our way in life more difficult, it does force us to find our own way. There was, of course, a first enlightened person. A first healer. A first shaman. A first artist. A first poet. A first storyteller. Autonomy forces us to live as if we were each the first person to see the world and respond to it in a wholly unpremeditated and original way.
Freedom is what happens when the relative self and the absolute self act as one.
Autonomy must not become just another kind of strength to be relied upon in our effort to overcome others in the competition for social resources. It needs to be the center from which we act and feel and remember. It needs to replace the sense of identity that has been unintentionally patched together by the relative self through its reactions to the body’s experiences. Just as the vulnerable caddis worm crawls along the streambed picking up bits of debris it passes and then attaching them to its body to make a protective shell, the relative self builds up a reassuring sense of identity by piecing together a personal history out of the random events to which the body has been exposed. Autonomy needs to become the sense of self from which all our actions and reactions arise without any ulterior motives. Once our only motive is the creation of constructive change, the only obstacle to success is our desire to succeed: by detaching our attention from any sense of success and failure, we have already succeeded in shifting our sense of personal purpose away from what is created and toward the act of creating.
Herein lies the short path to Autonomy. By experiencing the act of creating first-hand, we are led to recognize that all of creation stems from a single source. And by withdrawing our attention from the creation itself, we are subsequently led to experience the inexpressible purpose driving the act of creating itself. After that experience, it is no longer possible to create anything counter to the underlying purpose to the whole of creation: from that point on, our personal purpose is wholly aligned with the single purpose of the universal source. Taking an active part in the universal act of creating, in other words, leads us to discover our own personal purpose in the grand scheme of things and, thereby, the unique sense of identity that transcends our individual lifetimes. The short path to Autonomy runs straight through the quagmire of cultural conditioning without ever diverging into the quicksand of self-importance.
With this background in mind, let us turn to our training exercises and receive, in the experiences they engender, the answers that the Lesson Of Autonomy gives to our most stubborn questions.
Exercise One—Sit quietly with eyes closed, silently repeating to yourself, My Heart Is Another Sun. Concentrate your attention on the center of your chest, visualizing a grapefruit-sized sun there radiating light and warmth out into the world. Allow the visualization to sink into your emotions, so that the sun-heart within your chest emits unconditional loving-kindness and goodwill out into the world. After these first steps are accomplished, allow the emotional feelings to sink deeper yet into your material body, producing physical sensations of a corporeal sun from which emanate life-sustaining rays of golden light. After this stage of the training is mastered, carry the exercise out during all your daily activities until it becomes second nature. Keep in mind that no shadow can ever fall upon the sun as you silently repeat the catch-phrase, My Heart Is Another Sun.
Exercise Two—Sit quietly with eyes closed, visualizing a spider web upon whose every knot there gleams a dewdrop. Visualize further that each of these many dewdrops is reflecting every other dewdrop and, indeed, that each dewdrop is reflecting the whole of all the dewdrops together. Once you can sustain this image, place yourself in the visualization as one of the dewdrops and then place everyone and everything you know as the other dewdrops on the web. Allow yourself to feel how you are reflected in each of those dewdrops. Allow yourself to feel how everyone and everything you know is reflected in you. As you stabilize this image, allowing yourself to feel both how each dewdrop is reflected in the whole and the whole is reflected in each dewdrop, silently repeat the catch-phrase, All In One, One In All. When this stage of the exercise is mastered, extend the spider web to infinity and eternity, allowing everything in all places and in all times to become a dewdrop similarly fixed on the living web of creation, radiating All In One, One In All.
Ultimately Autonomy means to sense the omnipresent Act Of Creating and then aligning ourselves with it rather than going along with those who are not aware they are being motivated in large part by a mass hypnosis that has, over the generations, settled upon human nature. Strive to see the world the way it really is rather than allowing yourself to be unduly influenced by the received wisdom of civilization, since that world view is the one that has created the history of suffering we are trying to change. True Autonomy allows us to exercise freedom of perception and judgment, even as it draws us into a more passionate and compassionate involvement with the times in which we live. Similarly, true strength allows us to defeat the self-defeating habits of thought, feeling, and memory that make us confuse weakness for strength, failure for success, and folly for wisdom.
Of all the exercises in this training regimen, the Lesson Of Autonomy is the most trying, for it demands the most of us, prodding us on to climb heights we never imagined attempting. So take your time, re-read the background material regularly, and practice the exercises by steeping yourself in the feelings they evoke. Move from the abstract to the bodily, making your experiences ever more concrete. What we are searching for is not something that happens to us—it is something that we ourselves produce.
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The above is an excerpt from The Spiritual Basis of Good Fortune by William Douglas Horden.
If you’d like to learn more, visit the website: http://spiritualbasisofgoodfortune.com/
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The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams. Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.
Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.
