"...You can't act on your desires alone. You have to contemplate the details of what needs to be removed and what needs to be cultivated." -- from Great Eastern Sun by Chogyam Trungpa.I found this statement terrifying. I felt immediately that if I attended to this idea, it would require that I give up things that I valued. That I would have to sacrifice some part of myself to achieve -- what? I was filled with resistance and determination to give up nothing. I resented that this dead guy's words gave me pause for even one moment.
I sought comfort in other words, but instead encountered this passage, also by Chogyam Trungpa in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism:
"The problem is that we tend to seek an easy and painless answer. But this kind of solution does not apply to the spiritual path, which many of us should not have begun at all. Once we commit ourselves to the spiritual path, it is very painful and we are in for it. We have committed ourselves to the pain of exposing ourselves, of taking off our clothes, our skin, nerves, heart, brains until we are exposed to the universe. Nothing will be left. It will be terrible, excruciating, but that is the way it is."I brooded. I buried myself in the things that I did not want to renounce.Yet, I continued to think about the idea, and a question "if I were to live my life in alignment with my beliefs and values what would I let go of, what would I cultivate?
Now, something in my mind has shifted. I have discovered there is a strange strength in seeking this alignment. I do not understand it, but I sense it there, waiting for me to decide and to act.
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