There is a certain energy in me.
Sometimes I sense it; sometimes I don't.
If I am available, if I make efforts, perhaps the energy will become more available. Perhaps it can even always be available. There is a current in me that must awaken.
Then, I can follow it. I think I am a leader; and yet I am not the leader. The force, the energy within me is the leader; it has an intelligence I don't have. It already knows what is necessary in a way that my ordinary mind can't know. It is informed — inwardly formed, and whole. So no matter what my opinions are about how the energy should move, what it should do, the effects it should produce, this doesn't matter. The energy itself is sufficient.
In the Surangama sutra, Buddha referred to it as "the true essence of mind and its self-purifying brightness." The energy is pure, and even at this low level of myself where I first encounter it, already, it has all the qualities necessary for inner work — the qualities I generally lack. Yet I want to be the authority instead of following the energy.
The energy must be allowed its independence. It understands exactly what is necessary in a way that I don't; and if I relax and just come into relationship with it, it will produce what is necessary. It won't produce a repetitive series of events I am familiar with; it may not do what I want it to, or what feels good. But it will do what is necessary; and this is what I need to learn to follow. I must follow what is necessary.
Because I am always committed to my own will, I don't want to be a follower. Yet in this, I need to be a follower. It's only in the depths of the surrender, the participation, the relationship, and the intimacy that I begin to understand the kind of work that is necessary. The work is not a work I direct; it is not a work I initiate. It is a work that arises naturally from the consequences of the energy. And if I come into relationship with the energy correctly, the consequences will also be correct.
Forcing, manipulation, and agendas all lead to relationships with energy — at least they can. The difficulty is that the consequences don't form themselves properly. In right relationship, the energy conforms to the difficulties, the deficiencies, of the body, the mind, and the emotional Being and begins slowly and gently to adjust each one of these things so that a harmonious relationship begins to arrive.
But if I try to decide what the deficiencies are, and what needs to be corrected — or if I decide I just want what I enjoy, what I am already familiar with, or what others have told me I ought to have — the energy cannot act according to its own intelligence. A tension prevents this.
In this case, I lose something. I always think I'm gaining something in these situations, because I don't want to allow the movement to be natural; I want to be in charge of it. But there is no gain here, because the movement becomes unnatural. In this case, I obtain only what I think I know, instead of what is necessary.
And it is certain, isn't it? I don't know what is necessary.
So the action of this energy needs to become a process of discovery, and the discovery isn't my discovery. It belongs to the movement of the energy, and its action. I stay behind it; I follow it.
So I am here, I am present, but first, the energy moves, the influence moves, and then, I go with it as it leads.
I respectfully hope you will take good care.