The most beneficial method is simple, “go slow and practice.” Read the material slowly. Don’t risk missing something by hurrying.
I suggest you get a practice book to write in. Write in your own words what you face. Use what you face to create your own set of instructions to place your mind above the frayed threads.
It works like this, stop here and get your practice book. Don’t go any further. This suggestion is your practice tip.
It’s completely up to you. You are your own guide, writing your own guide book. Everything serves to awaken you. So, it might be useful for you to be able to recall what breathes life into awakening: study, silence, solitude, sitting and stillness. All of it is internal work.
Help
Help is available. Help comes in the form of books, audios, conversations, journals, letters, pictures, retreats, lectures, your mother, father, lover, boss, work, music, and everything else.
You decide what to use.
I suggest you use what shows up.
It generally requires a dogged attention. Dogs are alert and use every opportunity. Be dogged.
I offer tips. I am available to engage in spiritual conversations via mail, email, ZOOM or in person. But you must ask for help. It requires that you provide a clear question or description of where you are and what is happening. This requirement shows you have gone as far as you are able to go without some explanation or help.
In other words, when you know you are stuck, ask for help. And don’t hesitate.
Design Tip
It’s your design. You create it with everything available to you. It requires your effort. For some time, you may need to imitate someone else’s design, it’s natural to do so. At some point, the design reveals itself without a plan. It forms by your actions one after the other much like everything in life.
A solid approach right from the beginning is to attend to what shows up right in front of you, within arm’s length. Most other things are a pipedream of some sort.
Responsibility & Direction
This work is completely up to you. You decide the direction. It’s the equivalent of being in a row boat out in the ocean. You can’t see land and the row boat is taking water. A carrier pigeon flutters onto your head with a message, what does the message say? That is your direction.
Everything serves that direction. Let me dispel the wrongheaded notion that this direction can be taught. It cannot be taught. But you know it when it perches in your mind. You can learn to see and hear and know where you are in relation to it. That’s quite a bit. All it requires is a “glimpse.”
My Offering
Sometimes it boils down to a suggestion. And sometimes I don’t know. But…when the direction is mutual, it is imperceptible assistance.
Opening Tip
Trust the dirt. It will fly up into your eye and instruct you. It comes together with a feeling that cannot be ignored much like a speck of dirt lodged in the eye. You can’t see well and it irritates. It may require a dirt storm for you to know the quality of that which is hidden there. In time, you may grow able enough that you know the treasure of the dirt. Dirt is bountiful. Everything comes from the dirt.
Cost
The cost of spiritual awakening is everything. There is no way to learn this from someone else. You must learn it yourself through everything in your life. Nothing is hidden from it and nothing is left out. You do not know this truth when you start. Starting sometimes feels like threading a needle with gloves on. It is frustrating and seems impossible.
Check to see if you are ready to start. Did you get your practice book?
If you are ready, trust the dirt. Everything in your life is dirt. Everything you come in contact with flies up into one of your sense doors and you either learn from it or complain about it.
Remember, go slow. Practice with care.
Author: Fashi Lao Yue
A Single Thread is not a blog.
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