Spiritual Practice for Dummies

I just talked to a potential client who wants a website designed. He wrote a couple of books about Zen implemented into the real life, along the lines of “Zen in the art of …” books, or so I understand from his description. As I thought about the project all of a sudden it hit me – why would we try to make Zen “practical”, make it “useable” in the “real life”? In fact, I realized, this is what I was trying to do for nearly all my years of being a “spiritual practitioner” of one sort or another. This was actually quite a big issue for me: I would have the wonderful practice, whether it was Zen or my work with Brooks, I would grow and develop … and my life still wouldn’t work! Why didn’t my life work? Why was I a total disaster in relationships? Why was I always in need of money? What was the use of being a Goddess or passing another koan if it had no effect on my life? Fixing my life is what I was expecting from my practice. Having the existence that I have, this body, this mind – only perfect, without problems, without pain, without fear – this is what I expected from my practice. And it hit me today: the purpose of spiritual practice is not to fix anything. The purpose of spiritual practice is for me to become who I am. Only who I am. Completely who I am. Become God. And it hit me today: God is not a better, improved version of mind. God is not the mind given all that it needs and wants. God is a totally different story. God is God. What happens when I stop identifying with my mind and am only who I am? I am everything. There are no boundaries, no separations. Everything is me and I am everything. There is no need, there is no want. There is no conflict cause there is nothing else to be in conflict with, there is no fear cause there is no one else to be afraid of. There is no reason to be defensive. There is no reason to navigate, plan, organize – there is nothing to do. There is only being. There is also no one and nothing else that’s responsible, there is no one and nothing else to be blamed, there is no one and nothing else that can save me, keep me safe. There is me, with full and complete responsibility for every aspect of my life. Always. There is no separation between me and reality. I am the reality. I am my life. When I am Me, only and completely, mind’s needs, problems and worries disappear and dissolve. Everything that I thought needs improving and fixing becomes irrelevant. There is no need to make more and more money. Why would God need money? What is there that God needs? God is everything already. There is no reason to have, buy, gather, collect anything. There is no need to strive, fight, sacrifice. There are no problems in relationships. There is only love. There is only bliss. There is nothing to do. When one realizes one’s real nature, when one becomes oneself truly and completely – reality changes completely. Values, perceptions, relationship to who one is, to what life is, changes completely. The reality of God cannot be understood by mind, mind is a defensive orientation to it. Mind is what happens when we can’t stay present with it. Spiritual practice allows us to become present again. It doesn’t fix our mind, it doesn’t make our mind-created life better and easier. It takes us outside of our mind all together. It spins the reality around and brings us back to paradise, where we belong.