2.4
June 23, 2011

Non-Theism? It’s “Decentralized Energy.”

It is the experience of egolessness…

“Self-Existing energy takes place continuously. Although the source of such energy is difficult to track down, it is universal and all-pervasive. It happens by itself, naturally. It is based on enthusiasm as well as freedom: enthusiasm in the sense that we trust what we are doing, and freedom in the sense that we are completely certain that we are not going to be imprisoned by our own energy, but instead, freed constantly.

According to the tantric tradition of nontheism, energy is vital and important. From that point of view, working with energy, or developing siddhi, means that we relate directly to our domestic world, our enemies, our friends, our relatives, business partners, policemen, the government, or whatever happens in our life. We relate directly with energy as much as possible.

We are not talking about centralizing energy within ourselves. Working with energy in a tantric sense is a decentralized process. We are talking about energy as all and everywhere. In Buddhist tantra, energy is openness and all pervasive. It is constantly expanding. It is decentralized energy, a sense of flood, ocean, outer space, the light of the sun and moon.”  ~ from Ocean of Dharmaby Chogyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian

Selflessness and luminosity are two sides of the same coin— openness and energy. It is the play of emptiness and form. The realization of selflessness is not some doom and gloom event. On the contrary, it is a total immersion in the waters of reality, a type of baptism. Ego is a conceptual levy, a wall that keeps reality at bay. Through the practice of meditation this wall is dismantled. Eventually, the levy is breached and the immediacy of our experience begins to pour in. At this point, life no longer revolves around some fixed point, as all notions of self and other are washed away in a great flood. Therefore, aggression dissolves. Chaos is seen as order, because the authority which established the system of measurement that attempted to re-create the world as it ‘should be’ was realized to be a false authority.

The realization of selflessness is very similar to those brief moments or examples of love, which emerge when we are with someone whom we care deeply about. For a second, we see no faults in them. There is no-thing which is missing. There is just the realization that the experience is whole; nothing need be added nor taken away. It is complete…  It is as it should be.. It is “self-existing energy.”

True meditation is an invitation to step through hesitation and impulse into a direct relationship with self-existing energy. Such a relationship is spontaneous.  Spirituality invites us to move beyond the stale and expired atmosphere of the past, and the dry and lifeless realm of the future. Through meditation our true nature is discovered in the present moment. This moment is always vibrant or energetic. Life is tantric; it is a continuum. Furthermore, we are no less than a dimension of this tantric moment—we are energy set in motion, momentum. Our practice takes flight when it is set in motion. The spiritual warrior is the practitioner who makes an altar of the earth upon which the ego is sacrificed.

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