Trusting a Pathless Path
When practiced with dedication and devotion many methods can relieve us of a sense of limitation and inadequacy because they improve the quality of our experience of life when practiced with faith and devotion. Meditation, mindfulness, experience-oriented gurus, the eightfold path of ashtanga yoga, nutrition, selfless service, bodywork modalities, plant medicine, New Age practices, native ritual, psychedelic therapies and many more, for example. These transformative endeavors increase happiness in direct proportion to the depth of one’s commitment to them.
But sadly, the removal of inadequacy and dissatisfaction only engenders a temporary “sense” of freedom. To keep oneself happy one needs to maintain constant vigilance, increase one’s dedication and/or constantly seek new practices. Is freedom gained by action actually free then?
What if the self whose life we are seeking to improve is whole and complete and immune to the ravages of time? What if the feeling of limitation and incompleteness that seems to dog me throughout my life doesn’t belong to me? What if I am born free but don’t know it?
Vedanta is a means of self knowledge that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the freedom that I seek is my innermost nature, which relieves me of the burden of continually having to produce a sense of transient freedom with tiresome actions as my body slowly deteriorates. It establishes the identity of our seemingly limited self as identical with the eternal self, existence shining as blissful consciousness, that is the basis of life itself. If this sounds like another one of the impermanent modalities listed above, the difference lies in a few characteristics that may not be obvious at first glance:
1. Vedanta contends that you are whole and complete, indivisible, immortal fullness, shining as your own ordinary ever-present consciousness.
2. It is a time tested, scripture-based means of self-knowledge. It has been setting people free since it was revealed thousands of years ago.
3. It is a compassionate philosophy because it doesn’t expect us to immediately accept its counterintuitive point of view as eternal existence/consciousness but provisionally accepts our status as individuals, which allows us to gradually grow to our full potential as spiritual beings. Rather than denying the reality of ignorance, it scientifically and patiently eliminates the existential doubts that produce inner conflict as it leads us through the five stages of liberation.
4. It is a pathless path. Unlike other traditions, once Vedanta has done its job and liberated us from incorrect notions about our true nature, it discards itself, like one discards a thorn that removes a thorn, leaving us to experiences reality purely and simply as it is.
6. It does not make you more conscious but seems to do so as it surgically carves away erroneous notions about who you are, leaving you more and more confident in your real identity.
7. Vedanta neither demands belief nor proclaims itself to be the only way. Rather, it only requires a temporary suspension of disbelief so you can listen and contemplate its logic, pending confirmation in your OWN experience.
This foundation course exists because freedom and perfect contentment IS possible. It bridges the gap that seems to exist between the knowledge of what you truly are and the “reality“ of your identity as an insecure person in a binary, vast, complex, ever-changing matrix of factors that is impossible to control.
We do not say that this investigation into one’s self is not challenging paradox. Unwanted thoughts and emotions, habits, jobs, bills and loved ones will not miraculously disappear once your knowledge of who you really are is firm. A defanged snake is still a snake. But looking at one’s small self from beyond it, makes the journey to the freedom that we are workable and enjoyable.
