Everything is Spiritual, by Jan Frazier

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Everything Is Spiritual

By Jan Frazier

It is always there, always within, always theoretically accessible, able to be felt, given air.

It is pure and delicious, the sensation of consciousness without an object, its plain self, its electric self. Always there, always there, but so seldom felt, known, so seldom allowed to take over, fill the bones, the skin, the lungs.

It can't be gone after. It needn't be gotten, needn't be earned, or given. But people live their whole lives and never feel it within. Those who do experience it, and know that they are experiencing something remarkable, and remarkably unlike ordinary life – those who do, seldom do, and they remember it. Oh, they remember it. They know just where they were when it happened. They will look you in the eye and tell you of it, try to describe what it felt like, and say why it has stayed with them, and how they long to get it back. What a wistful expression is on that face, how moist are those eyes.

It is the only thing that is real. It is the only thing that has no end.

I think all we can do is be receptive. It isn't an animal to be hunted, trapped. It can't be figured out by the mind, studied, finessed. It is gotten to by a trapdoor covered in leaves. It asks of us a falling, a leaning, a letting go. An undoing. Whatever is held onto like grim death would do well to be released, the fingers softened, the muscles relaxed. Lie down.

Let the rain fall on you. Open your mouth. Let the tears come.

I want sometimes to say - get rid of your books, your workshops, your learnedness. Spend the day playing with a young child, a dog. Go swimming. Dance. Sing.

It is in there all the time. What a shame to live an entire life and not know that. I don't mean "know" with the mind, but with the heart, with the body.

All the pain in a life - it is to get us there. It is all suffering is for.

I want to say, don't try so hard, don't work, don't meditate, don't study. Learn how to laugh. Laugh at your self. Don't be so serious. There is nothing to take seriously. Oh, what heresy that sounds like. I once would have thought so myself, had I heard anyone else say it. What? I took everything seriously - above all myself.

Stand out in the wind. Let it blow your hair, blow against your eyeballs until they are dry, and then against your eyelids. Smell the world. God, how can you miss it - how can you possibly not feel this thing?

But they say to me - "I feel it, but then I get my head full of this and that, my work, my relationship, the phone ringing." The spiritual becomes a time of day, a slot in the week, fifteen minutes in the morning, a time that has to be cleared out.

No, no, no. The spiritual is all day. It is the phone ringing. I answer the phone, notice how I react to whoever it is, the story I am telling myself about this person as she is speaking. I notice I am fidgety, judgmental, insincere. It's all spiritual, constantly. Everything all day long is spiritual, is practice, is maybe even meditation. The trapdoors are everywhere. We lie constantly to ourselves. We lie when we don't notice what we're doing, when we believe so thoroughly in the importance of everything we are doing, every belief, every self-identification - when we believe so entirely in how much it all matters that we can't feel the underneath of ourselves, that sweet electric humming sensation of consciousness without an object.

All the stuff of life is there to get us to this. The stuff of life is not for itself. It is to trip us up, to show us over and over again, as many times as it takes, that nothing lasts, nothing is everlastingly going to do it, fill the need, the void, wipe out the dread, make the sleep one hundred per cent restful, cleansing, renewing. Wake up in the middle of the night and feel purely ecstatic, for no reason. Only one thing will ever do that, and it isn't a single thing in regular life, not one single thing will ever do it, not love or possession or respect or achievement. Nothing will do it everlastingly.

It turns out that life is here to trip us up, to make us lose our footing, lie down, let ourselves be held, seduced by our own original joy. We hide from ourselves all our lives. Heaven isn't later. It's here and now, or never at all. Once you've got heaven, you cease to care when death will come, or how, or if getting there will hurt.

But if you go around all day, all week, all year, all your life as though this thing isn't there, isn't in you, isn't real - as though what will justify your life is out there - if you do that, you could miss it. All day every day is spiritual. If waiting in line at the grocery store isn't spiritual, then I don't know what is. Telemarketers are spiritual teachers, and so is your ex, and so is the barking dog next door, and so is the cold that's got you down, and your aching back, and the mess in your kitchen. I don't mean a growth opportunity. I don't mean that. Growth opportunities are useless. I just mean when a thing is going on, there are really two things going on, always. There is the thing, and there is your inner orientation to it. The inner part is the spiritual. Just look at it: that's all. Don't judge it or try to change it. Don't try to grow from it. Purely look. Don't miss it. One fine day you'll step on a pile of leaves, and your

weight will drop, and the world will have changed, and then you won't need telemarketers anymore, or lines to wait in. You'll be in heaven, only you'll still be alive.

Footnote: Jan Frazier is the author of When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening (Weiser Books, 2007). Her life is devoted to teaching that the awake state lives in us all. She lives in southern Vermont. For more information, visit

www.whenfearfallsaway.com