I’ve been sitting with paradoxes lately.
The spiritual path, and life generally when we really look, are full of paradoxes.
The 4th Hermetic Principle, one of Hermes’ fundamental laws of the universe, is The Principle Of Polarity. This tells us the universe both is and isn’t. This is the wavy truth we must learn to surf. A thin balance beam exists between these two views, and our work is to walk it. The middle way. To actively live in this world, yet stay in the watcher, unattached to its dance. This is the ultimate divine paradox that sits under the other more practical ones I’ve been sitting with:
Should I passively surrender or should I actively manifest?
Is life happening to me or am I creating it?
Can enlightenment coincide with professional achievement?
Hermes may be one of the most time-tested influential beings yet widely unknown. Born during Ancient Egyptian times and legendary in both the divine and the material realms, he’s known as the Greek god Hermes and Egyptian god Thoth as well as the father of alchemy, astrology, and psychology. Pieces of his teachings have been handed down mouth to ear through millennia, after much of it was likely lost in the burning of the Alexandria library.
The Kybalion, and its 7 Hermetic Principles, is one of these teachings. And it’s been a fun philosophy for me and my mind that enjoys the occasional intellectual approach to this path.
Back to the 6th principle: The universe is both real and it is a dream. How can that be possible? Sit with it.
Zen teachers are known for this, giving their students an existential paradox like this to meditate on. The idea is that there is no answer. The contemplation of it is what holds the wisdom we seek. Its irreconcilability holds the key to the great mystery that our limited consciousness is not meant to understand, but to experience.
In Ram Dass’ words, “Unknowable, unseeable, only be-able.”
So I suppose this is just my own little Zen experiment. I know the answer to this paradox, in the limited way I can know it—as a portal towards what I’m actually meant to do which is to feel it.
It’s more of a wobbly dance than a feeling though, often an uncomfortable one which brings me to teachings like this trying to seek signposts back to center. Back to that balance beam that rests steady between the two.
There are so many routes to awakening. So many different teachings and teachers for guiding the path. Many steer more to one side of this paradox or the other—presenting the world as real or the world as a dream.
What we do with these teachings depends more on how we perceive them than the teaching itself, as all are meant to bring us to the same destination but our egos often get in the way—hearing what serves it and leaving what doesn’t.
On the side that sees the universe as a dream—the quantum or nondualist perspective—we’re taught to manifest. Here, we’re told that the universe is a projection of our consciousness, and as steerers of our conscious awareness we can control it through intentional visualization, positive thinking, and the like in order to manifest what we want. This is the root of the teachings of Abraham Hicks, Joe Dispenza, Vadim Zeland, Deepak Chopra, and Napoleon Hill. I’ll call this the active view.
On the side that sees the universe as real—the materialist or dualist perspective—we’re taught to surrender. It’s all just happening, with many many external forces beyond your control that determine the experience you’re having in this moment. Here, we’re taught to respond to all situations with acceptance, equanimity and grace, staying in the nonattached observer as the law-abiding, karmic universe does what it does. This is the root of the teachings of Hinduism, Ramana Maharshi, Maharaj, Thich Nhat Hanh, Michael Singer, Alan Watts, and Lao Tzu. I’ll call this the passive view.
I’ve read and explored many teachings from both views and the confusion in attempting to reconcile it all is what brought me to this Zen moment—and its inevitably disappointing irreconcilability. Alas, “Enlightenment is the ego’s ultimate disappointment” - Chögyam Trungpa. But here we are and I find the contemplation fascinating so I’ll continue.
I tend to immerse myself in books and their teachings. Really become it for a while after reading. Sometimes consciously, sometimes less so. Still scarred from the Twilight book series relationship programming in high school.
I’m also an extremist, when I do things I do them fully. Sometimes it’s helpful, I learn and test things quickly. Though for the spiritual path, these things are nuanced and subtle and inherently call for temperance. I’m learning this trial by fire.
So when I read Transurfing, Becoming Supernatural, Ask and It Is Given, 7 Spiritual Laws of Success, The Secret, all books from the active view, I became entranced with these teachers’ promised power of our minds. In our boundless ability to manifest all that we desire by tuning our energetic frequency and directing our thoughts towards what it is we’re calling in.
I got really pulled into the concept and practices of manifestation. Attached you might say. And there’s the catch. There’s the ego twisting the teachings to serve its will.
I began to notice a progressive gripping. After my years of studying the passive view through stoicism, Vipassana, and Eastern philosophy, the idea that having desires and making them reality could be a part of my spiritual path was like candy to my starved ego and I ate it up. I became hyperfocused on wants for the future. Impatience has been a big theme in my learnings…and of course came in here as well. I want it and I want it now. Visualize stronger, intend harder.
I lost my center, forgot the paradox, fell off the balance beam and clung to the illusory security of my ego on the way down.
So, I went back to the other side. I returned to Alan Watts, Ram Dass, and Eckhart Tolle. Remembered peace comes from nonattachment, suffering comes from desire. Then the confusion came. My teachings from the active view came in—if I don’t actively intend, I’ll manifest what I don’t want. So which one is it? Which path do I take?
Both views have their shadows when we lean in too far and the ego starts to drive. The active view can lead to attachments and greed. The passive view can lead to apathy and inaction. Hence, finding the middle way, letting one wisdom balance the other and vice versa. For me, that’s been leaning on the passive view when I’m in a lower state, and the active view when I feel clear and centered—this prevents manifesting from ego.
From the masters,
Jesus, “be in the world, but not of the world”
Eckhart Tolle, “ask, then let go”
Richard Rudd, “Water is one of the greatest symbols of wisdom because its nature is paradoxical — it is empty yet full, weak yet strong, resistant yet yielding. One who is truly wise is like water in all these ways — you are wise because you do not know you are wise, you are powerful because you do not care about power, you are fearless because you do not really exist.”
To rest unattached in the supreme state of being, while at the same time participating in the adventure of our evolution is possibly the greatest task we’re here to learn and embody.