May 25, Monday

Sometimes when we are walking through the woods Liza will disappear for a few minutes. Then just when I notice that she's gone, she appears again, high-stepping, with what can only be seen as a big grin on her face. She has found a prize, something so good she can't quite believe it. Usually it is a giant bone like the foreleg of a deer sometimes complete with hair and hoof as well as an odor that clearly enhances its value to Liza. She prances around for a while with it sticking out a foot on each side of her mouth, stops to gnaw on it a bit and then goes off to bury it, treasure for another day.

Today the concept that I unearthed in the thicket of my mind seems something like one of Liza's deer bones. When I found it I recognized it right away as an extraordinary idea for me - a big deal. I've been strutting around with it for a while now. This essay is part of that I am sure. I'll gnaw on it a bit, enjoy it but then I suspect I'll need to let it be, even bury it awhile hoping to come back to it often. Liza probably will never get much sustenance from her deer bones. I realize too that an idea cannot give me spiritual nourishment. I know I have to eat of the mystery of God, not just chew on the bones of ideas. Partaking of God's mystery in meditation, prayer and contemplation is my bread. But every once in a while God seems to leave me a bone.

As always this idea is not one that is new. It has been around for a very long time. Like Liza and her bone, it is just new to me. My current revelation is that transforming the ego is not transcending it. And it is good not to get them confused. The former is the goal of psychotherapy; the later is a gift from God. After reading Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault where she discusses why transcendence gets confused with transformation, I want to prance around and shout, "I get it! I get it!" Developing a more healthy ego, transformation, seems to put us in a better position to be open to the mystery that is a new way of being, transcendence. But there have been plenty of very "good" and egoically balanced people who have not transcended their ego to a place of spiritual awakening. Likewise there have been many saints and spiritual masters who's ordinary self remained a bit crazy.

I have so often been stymied by the apparent contradictions of a life like that of the late Tibetan Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Some called his excesses of drink and bodily pleasures part of his "crazy wisdom". But I could never quite buy that. What I can buy is that the "little self" or ego of Trungpa Rinpoche or anyone for that matter, does not have to be perfected for him to live from a place where he knows without a doubt that the "little self" is not who he is. We hear so often that it now seems trite the understanding that "We are All One". I believe Trungpa Rinpoche lived in this place. It seems like a contradiction but it is not unless we confuse transcendence with transformation.

If it doesn't mean being a near-perfect human being, then what does it mean to transcend the ego, to be enlightened? It certainly doesn't mean to have no "small self" since we could not live a human life without some identification with ourselves as a separate individual -that's ego. I guess that transcendence means, as it sounds , being "above it all", being able to look from another place, from a higher vantage point and see that the small self is not who we really are, in fact that we are really so much more. From that time on the transcended person will never again misread the picture. This is not a person who had a glimpse of Oneness as many have, but a person who lives in that place all the time.

This new way of seeing things could be compared to the experience of a person who lived on the space station for several months. She would probably never again mistake this small planet for the Universe as we on the ground so often do. She would understand on a cellular level that her spot on the Earth is turning toward the sun each morning , that the Earth is circling the sun and that the sky is not above her at all, in fact there is no above and below. She would know unequivocally that "up, "down", "night", "day" and other basic "facts" are not reality. She would have the bigger picture as her deep understanding of the physical Universe. Transcending the ego, going beyond the small self, must be like this, a life altering change in the way we see not just the physical Universe but in our ground of being, in the way we perceive all that is, on every level of existence. The person who sees from this higher view point is as Jesus is said to have taught his followers, "in this world but not of it".

From reading of the lives of spiritual seekers and from my own limited experience, it seems to me that we can do a lot to transform our small self. Thich Nhat Hanh calls this work "tending the garden". We can water the seeds of happiness, kindness and compassion and not water the seeds of anger, hatred and greed. This is our psychological work done through psychotherapy or self-help. But doesn't that just make for a healthier garden or ego? It's necessary work but not what ultimately pushes us over the cliff into permanent forever transcendence - that push comes from God. Or at least that is how it looks to me right now. Now I need to remember that I am just chewing on an old bone, no matter how tasty. It is definitely time to bury it for another day. Like Liza I will probably forget where I buried it. Then one day I will find it again and chew some more.