Clarity...

There are these 2 aspects of retreat. One is satsang we do where we're questioning and looking deeply and inquiring. And it's not just satsang. That's just the outer manifestation. This deep looking at things, at the true nature of things. It's always available to you. We just kick-start it here. The rest is up to you. That requires some energy, some risk-taking, some courage, some willingness to look at something very clearly as, something suggested to you as to actually get clear on what your question may be. You'd be amazed, once you get really clear on your question, really clear on your issue, 9 times out of 10 becoming clear about it solves it. It disappears.

So even getting very clear what's happening. There's a question, what is it, what is it really?



I had a teacher when I was in college. Great guy! He taught many classes but I took some class on Greek literature. What I was doing in a Greek literature class I'll never know. But I loved it. Mostly because I liked the teacher. And I liked what we studied. But from the very beginning he'd have us do this very challenging thing. He would have us read these Greek plays, epics...you know the Greek epics are monstrous and difficult. And he'd have us read huge sections, 200 pages or a whole play and he'd go 'Okay now tell me exactly what that was about and do it in 1 hand-written page. No fair cheating by using the back of the page.' And of course we all did what we did which was insisted it was impossible. How could you possibly put down such complicated literature? And what it's saying an what its aiming at, the underlying theme and the point, how could you possibly do that in one handwritten page, it's impossible.

He'd say, "Nonsense! You can do it."



And so the first pages we did, almost all of us cheated, we like turned in front and back even though he said we couldn't do it. Eh, he'll let us. You know front and half of the back. Every time he's hand it back. He's say simply, "Do you want a real grade or do you want to have a fail? This isn't good enough, come back tomorrow. One side of 1 page, I wasn't joking. I wasn't kidding. You can do it, give it another shot."



I'll tell you some thing, this taught me a very very valuable lesson. It taught me what it means to get clear about something. That it's actually possible. To summarize something or say something very succinctly. But I had to really digest what I was reading. I had to understand it completely. Otherwise there was no possibility I was going to have to write, you ever notice what you write about something, the longer you write, shows you the less you know about it? The longer it takes you to explain something, the less you actually know about it. And this was proven in this class amazingly clearly. But I realized It wasn't about learning how to write very concisely. That was a very minor thing. It was actually I had to understand what was being said.



Now this was very useful spiritually as well, cause it taught me there's a difference between looking at something and LOOKING at something. There's a difference between understanding and UNDERSTANDING. There's a difference between looking into yourself at what's happening and really looking into yourself at what's happening. And I would never have known the difference unless I was forced to know the difference by this teacher. It is possible and how to do it. He didn't tell us how to do it, he just said, "Do it." And we all figured it out. But it had alot of spillover effect. It taught many of us how to get clear. It taught us to not be lazy. To not take (accept) unclarity. 'Oh, I'm a little fuzzy on this point.' Wasn't good enough. Came in very very handy. When I learned that and took it into the spiritual, into the inner seeing, I realized it was completely different. All I had to do was to commit to it. That what seems internally hazy, foggy or not so clear is often unclear because we are not actually committing to seeing it clearly.



So I just share that with you because I think it's very important to, I know this is sort of a hip modern phrase but its very important to empower people so that all of us realize the gifts and the abilities that we actually have. That we do have these abilities to look into ourselves very clearly. To look at something very simply until it becomes very clear. And if there's a question to actually know what it is.



Adyashanti... Mount Madonna Retreat 5-29 to 6-3 2007