Spiritual Urgency

I wanted to start a thread on that sense of spiritual urgency that we sometimes get during our "careers" as meditators. I've noticed it's not unique to this discipline, but you can also see it when people get deep into yoga or martial arts or meditation or wilderness survival or even video games. It's that intense desire to move onward, to get into the thick of things. It's that feeling that there isn't enough time, life as it is will make progress to slow, that we're cut off from what we really need.

In meditation, I've noticed it happens when we start to actually develop real skills. We can actually sit a retreat. We can actually work through some heavy shit on the cushion. Our body is being wrung out by releases. Our mind is being cracked open by insights. Our life is being questioned by a much broader viewpoint than we have ever had before.

If we want to get mappy about it, it's definitely post A&P --- usually several glimpses of the jagged edge of reality by strong A&P. It's also after moving though the dark night a few times. It's also after kissing EQ a few times... Basically the whole range of experiences are there, but it's still a mystery about how they all connect together to make progress and "attainment".

Overtly, there is the strong desire and will to push on. To make sacrifices. To do the time, to pay the price. More subtly as a sort of shadow side... there is usually a decent amount of confusion.

(Ugh, I really hated reading stuff like what I'm about to write when I was really spiritually ambitious, but here it goes...)

The urgency itself needs to be looked at.

It feels so right, but it hurts so bad.

It seems like the answer, but it doesn't satisfy because the solution is a "grand plan" that's off in the distance.

It seems to answer all our spiritual questions, but when we really look at it... it's really just hoping and rushing ahead. It isn't that we have a deep understanding of the meditation territory.

Usually the cliché at this point in writing like this is to say in a calm Buddha chilled out voice, "the answer is here and now, no need to run a million miles to find what is right before you, it is closer than close but you do not see..." which is frankly very patronizing. Man I hate that smarmy stuff. All of that is basically true, but kinda bypasses the reality of the situation with platitudes.

It is true that insight comes from just seeing how things are right now, that will always be true. But the skillful approach during spiritual urgency is to give ourselves credit for the ambition without getting lost in it.

Rather than developing the "questing mind" its much better to build the faith that insight is possible without the quest. It is possible during just about any life condition. But it also involves the slow teasing away of all of our spiritual "needs", which doesn't happen overnight. And even after any insight or path, even 4th path, there is still stuff to work on. So it's important to deeply feel that this is a lifetime practice and it always starts with what is at hand, right now.

Sometimes the body is so amplified that you need to treat symptoms. As Jackson said in a practice thread:

I had an upsurge of kriyas when I was practicing zhan zhuang for moderate periods and then practicing while lying on my back. It got really, REALLY interesting there for a while. I kind of got caught up in all of the weird imagery and seemingly prophetic stuff that was happening in and through my body. My mentor in this area told me to chill out, and to take some good long walks - the kind that get the legs really tired out.

Slowing practice down, even to the point of taking deliberate breaks for several days, can be really helpful. During those times, do something with your hands, like gardening or cooking. You'll go back to the practice more refreshed, and your subconscious mind will have sorted out lots of the stuff your conscious mind has been working over time to fix.

During spiritual urgency we kinda forget that we are a body and a mind, because the mind's "quest" is so stimulating and the body excitement or desperation is so motivating. We forget the basic holiness of the body-mind and rush off to find a external "temple" to practice in. So we have to come back to the conditions of the body and mind and take skillful approaches to creating a meditation temple in the body.

The closest "state" to awakening is equanimity, radically being okay with how things are arising right now, without being sent down a chain of mental and behavioral reactions. Although it feels so right, spiritual urgency is a reaction. It's a very useful one that can help us turn our life into the conditions we need for continuing practice... but it rarely requires the full extent of what we think we need. Usually it's much simpler, usually just dedicated daily sits, a good exercise plan, and good sleep.

The wisdom of spiritual urgency is that it focuses our intention. The limitation of spiritual urgency is that it is idealistic and pretty humorless and it tends to split the universe into spiritual and mundane.

Ironically, that feeling of split is what we're trying to overcome through practice. So it can suck when teachers or other meditators recommend something other than following our spiritual urgency quest... but it really is good advice. Much better to deal with all of the idealism associated with "spiritual". Much better to look into all the reactivity associated with the "urgency". Sometimes it takes bleeding off a lot of energy or sleep off a lot of fatigue, which seem so un spiritual and off point, but that's what's needed. Sometimes it takes practicing less, but actually that's the smart move. Much better to practice smart than practice hard. This is the fastest path to discovering those insights which allow us to really live our lives and be useful to ourselves and others.

Good thread and good read. I'm thinking a lot about surrender these days, surrender to the life and circumstances that are one's own, rising to the task, doing what's necessary. Resistance leads to frustration and constriction.

Just as there is such a thing as not enough motivation and effort, there can also be too much. Right effort is the middle way.

I dare say the most fundamental assumptions are the most useful to investigate. Taking things for granted is the antithesis to being awake.