Existential FOMO

STUDENT 1
Sometimes we, as practitioners, can link up the fact that we are practicing to our past lives or to the past. But then again, you teach that there is no linear time and things don't have that kind of cause-effect relationship if we trace them far enough. So what is it that inspires us to practice?

SHAMBHAVI
Well, just because we don't know when something happened or just because there might not be a when, ultimately, doesn't mean that we're not motivated or informed by or shaped by the experiences that come into a particular incarnation.

So there's many things we come in with, and then that doesn't mean they're unimportant just because we don't know if they're a past life or not. They're still with us. And it's okay to narrate things in an ordinary way as long as we keep in mind that that is very provisional.

I've said, well, in a past life, this and that happened, or someone else's past life, this was something like that. But in my mind, I'm also thinking, well that's not really an absolute. I don't really know for sure 100% that it was somebody's past life or my past life, but I just say that for convenience' sake.

But it doesn't make it unsignificant. It's still informing something about this incarnation. If there's a pattern in this that is a pattern of doing a lot of sadhana and wanting to do sadhana, then that's going to be creating momentum in this lifetime.

If we want to think of patterns as not cause and effect, but things that have momentum that can carry us, that might be a better way of thinking about it.

And then the reason that we want to do practice, if indeed we do, is because that desire to answer the question, who am I and what is going on here, is built into us.

That is the great, cosmic, existential game that's being played here-that we come in and we, in a relative sense, experience limitation. And that limitation takes the form of- we don't have access to a lot of understanding of things or knowledge of things.

And yet because that thing that we want to have more knowledge about is our real nature, it's how things actually are, there's an inbuilt desire to discover that.

And the general template, the general pattern that's happening for almost everyone, unless they're just incredibly out of it, is that we all have some sense in our lives of a journey.

It doesn't necessarily mean a spiritual journey, but it's astoundingly in every culture, for almost every person, there's some sense that we're on a journey. This journeying quality of human life. Maybe other kinds of lives, too.

That sense of a journey, It's not necessary. It's imprinted in us somehow. But it's not like we have to have a sense of a journey. We could just be here. It would be very boring. I say that from the perspective of someone who has a strong sense of a journey.

But it could be, if we imagine it otherwise, it could be that we don't have any sense of a journey. We're just here, we eat some things, we create some things, we grow some things, and then we mess some things up, and then we die[laughs].

And that's it, and there's no idea of a path or a story about anything. What would that be like? I don't know. But imagining that otherwise sort of makes us see how it isn't a necessity to have a story of a journey. But it is fun.

So at some point, the essence of that journey, which should answer the question, who am I and what is happening here, what is really going on, becomes clear to us when our perceptions are more open.

So human beings are here in many, many different forms and many different states of openness or lack thereof. But when we get to a certain situation or circumstance of openness in our perceptions, that question, who am I and what is going on here, becomes more pressing.

And we start to realize that the answer doesn't necessarily lie in ordinary things, that there might be a much bigger question that has a different kind of answer. And that's when people really want to practice. That's when we really want to apply ourselves to something that's going to help us to discover that.

And maybe it's science. Scientists are asking those same kind of existential questions very, very often. But of course, the best scientists are firmly entrenched in mysticism and spirituality. That's always been true.

So I think there's just a natural evolution that's built into us as we continue to wonder and we continue to have this sense of a path or a journey, that it moves from just like, my path is to save up money to get a Tesla, or have a better job, or have this kind of family, or this kind of house.

Eventually, we realize through dissatisfaction, basically, that the question is bigger than that, and we turn toward things like spiritual practice.

And when that becomes a really deep question, we just want to be included, as Abhinavagupta says, as players in life. Rather than just kind of bumbling around, knocking into things and hoping it all goes well.

It would be really nice to have more clarity and to actually sometimes know what we're doing and sometimes be more skillful. And it's also wonderful to be able to really be effective in supporting other people. That's a great pleasure, a great joy to be able to do that.

So the reason we want to do practice, if we want to do it, is because we were built to discover that desire through this sense of journeying somewhere and discovering something, and maybe gaining something.

And eventually it just opens out into a desire to do practice, or a desire to engage in something that's going to give us those answers in a more existential way.

And the desire to be of use and to be of service is also part of that, because devotion is part of reality. It's built into the fabric of reality. The more our perception is open, the more we're open to that devotional longing to be of use in some way.

This is why the answer to the question, who am I and what's going on here could ultimately be found in engineering. I don't mean like software. I just said, in something that is more mechanical or it's going to produce something useful.

Ultimately, we want to do something more nuanced and subtle than that. We want to be able to interact in certain ways. And this is just how reality is. It has this devotional, caring quality. The more our perception is open, the more we want to be that.

So it's all just It's happening naturally. It's like a natural unfolding over eons and eons, if we want to talk about linear time.

But the more that we are open to the nature of things, the more we experience grace. And I would use that word shaktipat because Abhinavagupta said really beautifully that the desire to do spiritual practice is shaktipat. It's evidence of grace.

And what does that mean? It means that our hearts are more open. You may not think so. You may think, oh, my heart's a little shriveled thing, or whatever you think about yourself.

But if you want to do practice, that's not true, because practice itself- we're never just doing it for ourselves. There's always some little motivation in there to be of use, which just gets stronger and stronger and stronger as we go along.

I just always knew there was more here than I could see, more here than I knew. And I was just so frustrated by that when I was younger, and I just really, really wanted to know what was going on.

And I was thinking the other day that since I was literally three years old, the only thing I really want to tell people is you are so much more than you think you are. I just knew that in my bones.

You are so much more than you think you are. That's like my entire teaching. It's like everything to me. Discover that.

You have so much more capacity than you've been taught that you have. And that includes things like caring and concern for others.

I would say, if anything that I said right now moves you, try to feel that in yourself, that desire to discover the more that you are.

I don't know, for me, maybe it's just my constitution, but I'm like, I want to discover as much as I can in this life. I don't want to be left out. I have FOMO. I have existential FOMO. [laughs] I don't want to be left out of the great game, you know?

But the thing is also just to know that you are just so much more than you are led to believe you are. You can be having such a better experience.

And then you I have to think, why not? Why not go for that? Why be satisfied with all of these constraints and strictures that we've taught are natural and normal?

STUDENT 2
I'm becoming more aware of so many ways I'm limited. At times I find that motivating, but at other times I find it discouraging. I was wondering if you could talk about how that...

SHAMBHAVI
I think that's the same for everybody, you know.

I think what has characterized my relationship to that, seeing my limitations and seeing other people's limitations, and this isn't true of everything that I've experienced with my limitations and other people's, but with a lot of it, I really have always had the feeling they were imposed on us.

So part of my revolutionary zeal is just feeling like we've been sold a bill of goods and we should rebel. [laughter]

I've felt that forever, right? I think that's my whole relationship to the story of the psychological self. It's a bill of goods, and we should rebel.

So even though we have things that are going on that could be called psychological issues, they're things that we've been taught. We've been taught to not feel good about ourselves. And I would say, to whatever extent you can muster it, join the rebel alliance. [laughter]

Because the other thing we've been taught in this time and place is to fold everything back into ourselves and take the blame for everything.

How convenient! All these people running around feeling disempowered and badly about themselves, and feeling like everything that's wrong with them is their own fault. That is incredibly convenient. That is making corporations money.

So it's not just what you think is wrong or a limitation, it's how you relate to it emotionally, too. I related to it sort of like someone trying to fight their way out of a paper bag. But some people are like, I want a little smaller bag so I can hide. [laughter]

STUDENT 2
I think even when you call it a bill of goods we've been sold, it's like part of me feels culpable. Like, yeah, I'm the sucker. I bought the bill of goods.

SHAMBHAVI
See, but that is the habit of self-blame. You've been taught that. That's not natural. It's normative. I'm going to make it seem as distasteful as possible to you.

STUDENT 2
I appreciate that.

SHAMBHAVI
[Laughs] I spent a lot of my childhood being angry, but I think that it served me, because I didn't feel that sense of blame toward myself.

SHAMBHAVI
And I had to work with that anger. That wasn't something I wanted to keep around in the form that it was in, but it was sort of protective.

So this is why I encourage people to get angry. Instead of blaming yourself, get angry that you were put in this position. And that's not the destination. The destination isn't to be angry. But I think it's an important step as we get our energy back and disassociate from the habit patterns of blaming ourselves.

One time I said very exasperatedly to one of my teachers, I'm tired of sitting on the bench. I want to get in the game. That feeling like, I just want to be able to play more fully.

There's all this stuff here that's happening, and I can't even see it. Before I knew about spiritual practice, I felt that way about other planets when I was a little kid. I was very pissed off that I only got to see one planet.

So this idea that there's just so much more, more, more, more to experience in yourself, more skill that you can have in participating in things and having just way more fun.

But see, you already have all that stuff in you. It's not like you have to get it from somewhere else. It's all the things you think and believe about yourself that are in your way.

Nothing has been damaged, in terms of this creativity and intelligence and skill and lovingness and compassion and devotion, nothing's been damaged. It's all there. It's just that you have all these limiting concepts that are keeping it caged.

And I'm not saying it's easy to set yourself free. I'm not totally free either. But it's so worth going that direction, even if we only do it very partially. It's just so worth it.

STUDENT 3
I just popped in when you were talking to somebody about the bill of goods that we've been sold and blaming ourselves, and I think the opposite of that, blaming other people too, or the circumstance...

SHAMBHAVI
Even though we're not the cause of anything, and we're not bad, ever, we're just unaware and very inept sometimes. But even though we're not to blame, ever, there is no blame to go around, ever, we are responsible.

I mean, the thing, whatever it is, showed up in our train station [laughs]. We've got it on our plate or in our lap or in our train station or whatever you want to say. Something you know, it came with, came with us, came along with us.

And no one else is going to deal with it. It's ours to deal with. So either we don't deal with it and we just like, bumble along suffering. We can make that choice, or we can decide we are going to deal with it somehow.

But we can't actually make anyone else deal with it. It's not in their train station. So there is responsibility even though there's no blame.

And that's what spiritual life is, giving you tools so that you can take the opportunity of working with whatever is there that you didn't cause and that you're not to blame for.

So we can say you're not to blame on certain levels because, wow, there's just a lot of bigger systems and structures that we're subject to, all kinds of different concepts and cultures that are part of our karma.

Our karmas are not individual most of the time. There's nothing about us that is not dependent on the world. There's nothing about us that's separate and only our fault. That's just not even ontologically possible or existentially possible. Just not.

Everything that we are is connected to other stuff. And the fact is, we really don't know what causes anything. But that story that we make up about what caused something can only be told if we basically chop off 99.99999% of life and just focus on some minuscule little portion of it.

That's the only way we can tell a coherent narrative about why something is the way it is or why it's our fault or something.

But everything about us is connected to the whole mandala of life, and it comes from somewhere, but we don't know where.

Once I had a dream that was very instructive about a student that was showing me her past life, and I realized that some of the things going on in her life now were very related to this past life. And in In that past life, I was also her helper, which was just so sweet.

I wasn't her teacher. She was in a very harsh and mean environment, and I was like someone who was showing her tenderness and gentleness. It was really sweet. And I realized that things had been worse.

I was being shown this evolutionary process where karmas were getting worked out over multiple lifetimes and becoming more attenuated, becoming weaker, and that what she was dealing with now wasn't as bad as what that person had been dealing with in some other life.

So, who knows? Stuff that you're suffering from could have come from a 19th century peasant in a farm in Germany who was having a rough time. [Laughter]

And was completely unrelated to you ancestrally. And just like some fragment of their shit got caught up in this.

I mean, you just really don't know. So for you to take blame for that stuff, it's absurd. It's just not real. I mean, it's a real feeling, a powerful feeling. But it doesn't relate to how things actually work.

So everything, all our karmas are all collective in a sense, or at least collaborative and shared. Let me help you dig your grave [laughter]. The only thing we can do is work with what we notice in a lifetime.

For those of you that have been around for a while, you know that we have various kinds of karma. We have something called prarabdha karma, and we have something called sanchita karma.

Sanchita karma is the whole tangled yarn ball of everything that's connected to this incarnation, most of which we're never even going to be aware of in this lifetime.

And prarabdha karma is what we're actually going to become aware of in this lifetime. So it's like a very small subset of our sanchita karma.

So that's what we're responsible for, that and that alone. The only things we can work with are the things that we notice.

So when you notice something, even though you might feel beset or heavy about it, you could also entertain the feeling of, oh, good! I see this now. Maybe I have a chance of making it weaker, of ameliorating it or attenuating it in some way.