Everywhere Is the Middle and Urgency vs Appropriate Speed

STUDENT 1
Could you talk about being a beginner?

SHAMBHAVI
Being a beginner in this culture is very different, I think, than in the cultures where these traditions come from. Because we're so attached to being experts. [laughs]

It's very dangerous for us to say, "Oh, I've arrived at something. I've mastered something." That becomes this new refuge for us. This new personality brand. And that's not a good thing for us, right?

Being a beginner in spiritual life, we should basically just think of ourselves as always being in an infinite field with no measure. No matter how happy we are on any particular day about how our practice is going or something that we feel has improved. We should always think of ourselves as being in a vast, infinite field with no measure. I think that's best for us.

So let's just let go of the whole idea of beginning, middle, and end. Forget about it. Just let that dissolve.

One of the wonderful things about having any knowledge of or contact with someone like an Anandamayi Ma, my teacher, is that anything that you might say about your own accomplishment just becomes laughable. [laughs] Like, for myself, I don't have any idea how advanced or not I am in spiritual life. [laughs]

When I think of all the possibilities, I don't even I didn't know what some of them are, so how would I know where I fall? So I think she's taught me to stop measuring. And that doesn't mean to stop enjoying when we have some opening happen, for sure.

But we always want to be closer to the end than to the beginning. We should just drop that idea of beginnings, middles, and ends. And just figure that we're either always in the middle somewhere, and that we have no idea where we are. And just to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep going.

And that being said, of course, because of our culture–if you happen to be from a supremacist culture, basically. If we do have difficult times and we do feel we're not very accomplished or we're at the beginning of something, we find it shameful, a lot of us.

Just apply the idea that you have no idea where you are. And everything is just happening as it's unfolding. And you don't know where it's leading. And you're just putting one foot in front of the other. As I like to say, walk barefoot on the road.

Whatever you're doing, whether you're a highly realized person or not, you still don't know where you are. And I think that what Patrul Rinpoche said is really beautiful. He said, "The lowest seat is the seat of the master." And you can make of that what you will, but that's certainly an inspiration to me.

Only people who aren't highly accomplished care about being highly accomplished. [laughs] It's not because they're eschewing or trying to deny what is going on for them. You literally realize you don't know. Eventually, you realize you're just never going to know. And arrivals just don't even mean anything.

What means something, though? What is what we should be focusing on, if not whether we're a beginner or an intermediate or a master. Sri, Sri, Sri, Sri.

A wonderful Facebook friend of mine once—he's from India—he changed his Facebook page to Sri Sri Sri Sri Maha-whatever his actual name is. And then he took a profile picture of himself. You know those Christmas baubles? Those little beads that are really shiny and iridescent that you put on your Christmas tree? So he had like a bunch of those around his neck.

And he had this picture up for months. And I wrote to him and I said, "You better take that down because someone's going to start following you. [laughter] Someone's going to take this seriously, especially because you're Indian. Someone's going to think, 'Oh, they got something going on.'" [laughs]

But what do you think is what we should focus on?

STUDENT 2
Kindness.

SHAMBHAVI
Kindness. Opening our hearts. Being helpful. Having clarity. Taking things a little more lightly with more of a sense of humor. That's we should be focusing on. Those are the fruits of practice. Not mastery.

STUDENT 3
Isn't somebody who has more accomplishment relative to somebody else—I mean, can't you see that? Maybe you can be a resource to that other person. Or maybe you know enough to be able to show somebody else something, or help the world in some way. You know, relative to others, that you have more accomplishment.

SHAMBHAVI
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes someone just has to show up and look sort of serious and aloof, and then everyone thinks that they have spiritual accomplishment. [laughs]

So many times in my life as a teacher, one of you has come to me and said, "Oh, so and so's so advanced in their practice." I'm like, "No, actually." [laughter]

There's so many ways that we have ideas in our mind about who's accomplished, or who's not. And we project those onto other people. There's useful things about, you know a and somebody else doesn't. Yes, sure. But what I'm talking about is this attachment to measuring ourselves. Feeling pride that you're infinitesimally better than somebody else.

There's not a middle ground that's so wide. A middle ground that's this wide with some other margins, like, low and high. It's not like that.

It's—everywhere is the middle. If you're like a little more knowledgeable than somebody else in the vastness of space [laughs] it doesn't count for much.

All I'm saying is we can't be attached to that kind of measuring. But if you see someone who could use help with something, or you feel inspired by someone and you could learn from them, that's great.

But there doesn't have to be that attachment to these positions that we take up relative to other people. You know there are certain people who always want to be the teacher. They always want to be the one who knows more. This is a fixation. And one that causes a lot of trouble for people. Causes a large loss of intimacy.

STUDENT 4
That has me thinking, too, about like how I compare myself to like my past self. And I kinda like the idea of, if it's the big middle, then it feels kind of ridiculous for me to like turn around and like measure the inches.

SHAMBHAVI
Yeah, exactly. And because most of us have no clue what spiritual life is really offering us. No clue. Like all of the views of spiritual practice that we have in here and now—in this time and place—most of them are so impoverished compared to what's actually available that your scale is so way off anyway.

Really, you just keep going. And just be sincere. As sincere as you can. And that's really all that needs to happen. Everything else gets taken care of by wisdom.

Many times also, students come to me, of course, here in part, so people can discuss their practice with me. But many times it happens someone comes to me and says, "Well, this happened in my practice." And they're looking at me, waiting for me to say how fabulous that thing is, right?

And it's a good thing, but it's usually just something very minor. Then they're just crestfallen that I'm not anointing them in some way because of something.

And this is a product of the culture that we live in. Both that we don't understand what the actual possibilities are, right? And we just want to be admired, you know? We're admiration junkies.

And if you can't find a teacher who's going to admire you for your minor thing, you'll just figure out how to admire yourself. You'll tell yourself a big story about it. Or you'll find someone, lower down the food chain who you can convince. [laughs]

We should enjoy the things that happen, but then we need to just move along. Don't get stuck telling a story about yourself. Either denigrating or elevating, either one.

STUDENT 5
I would love to ask if you could talk about urgency.

SHAMBHAVI
Many people like the feeling of urgency. First of all, the experience of urgency is an energetically alive experience. And when people are lacking in subtlety in their sensorium, then urgency can be something that is very palpable for them. Something very concrete. And very enjoyable.

When we narrate things as being very urgent and we feel that sense of urgency, it's basically equal to saying they're very important. People who are always rushing around and every appointment they have is urgent and everything they're doing is urgent, and every situation they're in is urgent.

They're basically just announcing over and over again, "I'm important, I'm important, I'm important."

This culture, or our cultures here at this time, equate urgency with importance. So there's that attachment that many, many people have to urgency.

And I would say that when you are more in touch with the natural state, even when things seem like they should be urgent—like life or death situations—you don't feel urgency inside.

Urgency takes up a lot of energy. If I'm all wrapped up in a feeling of urgency, I'm not going to be as skillful as I would be if I weren't feeling that and I were just acting with appropriate speed.

So what I'm saying is we can act with appropriate speed without that feeling of urgency that's tying up all of our energy. We can have all of the energy going out instead of getting wrapped up in this feeling of urgency.

Urgency is, in a way it's a kind of an imbalance. And then we have all these concepts attached to it. Of course, anybody who's in Titan realm who likes to accomplish things and wants to—

First and foremost, what does Titan realm want? To be important. To be chosen. To be number one. To be the best. This is what it's all about for Titan realm. To be unassailable. To be so good at things no one can criticize you. And to be recognized for that. To have this overweening sense of importance.

So urgency is very much associated with Titan realm for that reason. Because it lends a sense of importance to what you're doing.

I got in a car accident a few days ago. I didn't cause it. A school bus plowed into me. And I realized after it happened that I hadn't felt anything. Like I hadn't felt afraid. I hadn't felt any sense of upset. And that was kind of interesting, right?

And then there was like people saying to me, "Oh, that was so frightful. That must have been so scary. Are you okay? Are you shook up?" And see, those things all would make it seem very important, right?

If I were shook up, and scared, and feeling a sense of fright, then that would galvanize people to take care of me in some way. I think, anyway. [laughs] Maybe I'm wrong about that. But it would definitely add more importance to what happened.

Instead of how I actually felt about it was, "Oh, no, my day is gonna get waylaid." That's what I felt about it. "Now I'm going to have to do all these other things instead of what I was planning to do." But I didn't feel any fear.

And in fact, the person that was driving the bus was an older man. Just a few years younger than I am. And the minute he got out of the bus, he came over to the car, and I saw how crestfallen he looked. I mean, my heart just went out to him.

If I were all bound up in my own sense of fear, that probably wouldn't have been able to happen. Because I wouldn't have had enough attention or energy to notice what he was feeling and what was going on for him, right?

I got hit. My car got damaged. But I wasn't hurt. And it was much worse for him than it was for me. He actually lost his job. Which is heartbreaking in a sense because at that age it's really hard to get another job, right? And he was just absolutely crestfallen.

So when we're not so tied up in our own urgencies, then we can take care of other people better.

And as Abhinavagupta said, "As we get more awake, more becomes about taking care of others and less becomes about ourselves." And he defined the realized state as being all for others.

I don't mean this as trying to make myself seem anyway, but I got out of my car and the fellow was coming toward me and I saw him. And the first thing I did just spontaneously was put my hand on his arm to comfort him. And if I were in a different condition, if I were feeling very afraid, I wouldn't have been able to comfort him.

And I think that's really what it's about. It's about those moments. Those moments mean more to me than anything. You know, those moments when I have an opportunity to comfort somebody or care for somebody spontaneously like that.