Where is this Path Leading Me?
Margaret Schenkman, July 6, 2021
The third principle of Heartfulness says “Fix your goal which should be complete oneness with God. Rest not till the ideal is achieved”. Fixing up your goal makes a lot of sense. After all, if I am not clear about where I am going, how can I get there? But there is an interesting problem with this principle, namely – What on earth is ‘oneness with God’? That’s pretty unknowable, no matter what is one’s religious or spiritual orientation. I found that this goal was a paradox. I needed to be clear about where I was going, and work at it until I got there, but there was no way to know where I was going.
Early in my journey, one of my friends and I talked a lot about this principle and how we would make it our own. Every day I ‘practiced’ fixing up my goal even though I couldn’t really conceive of what was meant by ‘complete oneness with God’. I did recognize that absorbing myself in the elements of the meditation practice was important, although I wasn’t very good at that either in those days; I didn’t practice with discipline or regularity. But one thing I was meticulous about was being with Chariji, my spiritual teacher at that time, whenever he came to the US. Previous experience had convinced me of the importance of being in a meditative environment, absorbed in meditation and related activities, especially on the day of the birth of important spiritual teachers. Surely this was an important part of ‘fixing my goal …’. So I planned in advance and arranged for a full week away from work at the time of Chariji’s birth to be at the large meditation center which is in Molena, GA, not far from Atlanta.
One evening, a few weeks before I was to leave for Molena, I received a call from my brother who told me that he had arranged for our sister to come to the States from Europe where she had lived for many years with her husband and five young daughters. Coming to the US was not easy for her, nor did she come frequently. My brother then told me that he had purchased a ticket for her to spend a week with me in my home. He wasn’t asking; he was simply informing me that he had done it. I was quite taken aback that he would invite her to my home without first asking whether it was OK — whether the timing was for good for me …. Worst of all, it turned out that that week was when I had planned to be in Molena, GA, absorbed in ‘fixing my goal’. I was outraged!
That evening, I called my friend to commiserate, to vent, to try to get back my balance. Fortunately, she helped me to see another side of the situation, namely my brother’s generosity in bringing our sister to the US; she helped me to see his good intentions. I called my brother back, thanked him for bringing our sister to the US, and said I would welcome her visit.
My sister particularly wanted to spend time in Washington DC. She, another sister and I took a road trip there and I spent Chariji’s birthday being a tourist in the nation’s capital. I don’t think I even meditated that day, or indeed any other day during the trip. This was early in my spiritual journey, before I figured out the necessity of regular practice, even if traveling and even if I was with others.
Over the next few years I realized several things about that week with my sister. First, that time with my sister was instrumental in reestablishing a close relationship that we had once had and had lost. Our time together began a healing of old wounds in much of my family, wounds that started at the time of my father’s sudden and untimely death. Had we not spent that week together who knows when, or whether, that change would have occurred. Second, I couldn’t help but realize that the timing was such that I actually had the whole week free to be with my sister, because I had planned – long before – to be away from work that week. This brought to my attention that sometimes Nature arranges for what is necessary, even if it is not what I ‘wanted’. Third, the biggest lesson that I learned that summer was the realization that I had confused the goal of ‘being in Molena’ with the goal of ‘oneness with God’. I had become distracted by something that I thought would lead me to my goal, namely being at the meditation center in Molena. I had a plan that had become so large as to become ‘The Goal’. And then I had become furious over being kept from something that wasn’t really my true goal. If my friend hadn’t ‘talked me down from my ledge’ when I was so angry at my brother, I might have missed a really important opportunity for spiritual growth that came through that week in Washington, DC with my two sisters.
Over the past 30 some years since the week, I have experienced much and learned some. One lesson that is patently clear is that the goal must be fixed, but I can’t guess how the path will unfold to take me there. As long as I hold onto my plans, my wants, my own little goals – my attention is away from the real Goal. And I can quickly find myself tangled up in byways and cul de sacs that lead nowhere except to self-gratification. More often than not, that self-gratification leads ultimately to discontent, disappointment, and unhappiness. I have learned to be wary of ‘little goals’ in every realm of my life. When I obsess about my health, what I eat, the person at work that is confrontational, the person that I think I am attracted to, the person that irritates during group meditations, job problems, job successes, problems in the neighborhood – When I turn my attention to any of these, it is no longer focused on my true Goal. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have goals – goals related to family, work, friends. It does mean that I have to be alert and flexible so that I know when to hang onto a goal, when to modify it, and when to drop it.
The key to staying on the path is a willingness to let go of any preconceived notions about what the experience will entail. If I have truly fixed my goal, I will be willing to do what is necessary, I will cooperate with all of the indications that are there for me, if only I pay attention. And I will be willing to accept whatever comes as a gift for my spiritual development (which is the topic of the 5th and 7th principles of Heartfulness). And I will add one more ingredient – It is really helpful to have a good sense of humor about the whole thing!
Even understanding all this, I still faced my original dilemma: What is this goal of complete oneness with God? My relationship with this paradox has evolved throughout my spiritual journey. In some ways, I am no further in understanding than I was 30 years ago. After all, until I experience that state, how can I possibly know what it is? But in some fundamental way, I know in a deep part of myself that the condition is possible and the way to that condition has become much clearer. To get there requires vigilance to my hopes, wants, desires, and an honest appraisal of want versus need. It is increasingly clear that I need to be focused on this somewhat ethereal goal, even if I don’t know exactly what that means, and also must use my will in the right direction. It is equally clear that careful observation and honest appraisal are critical. To traverse a path to a place that I can’t imagine but still want to arrive at, I need to be able to appraise whether I am changing in ways that are meaningful to me. After all, I don’t want to end up in some ‘crazy place’ because I blindly followed something that someone told me, without my own evaluation. From careful evaluation – day by day and year by year – it is clear to me that this journey is taking me toward an increasingly more authentic version of ‘myself’.
Needless to say, as with every lesson that I have learned on this path, it’s one thing to grasp the concept and quite another to put that concept into practice. That has been a lifelong journey. But at least I have begun to understand what I need to do to reach my goal.