Can I let go and if I do what might happen, will I lose myself? Ram knew this was a common question for the developing seeker for a person can’t let go unless they sense some security in the heart of themselves.
“Do you feel safe Amelia?” said Ram
I didn’t reply and continued to look out at the wilderness before us, the white vastness feeling small and vulnerable.
“When your security and belonging is wholly dependent on the activities of the world, the continuation of your habits and your current ways, then you will want to defend it and wilderness will be a threat. If by contrast you sense security radiating from your own nature even to a small degree then you sense that the wilderness is the source of that and exploring it is a compelling joy. It must be apparent to you now that spiritual security in the way I am speaking of it is not found in people, activities and things going your way. It is only found in God for which the deep wilderness is another name. Human companionship is wonderful; life, activity and things in all its lustre and beauty but depending upon it for your security is severely limiting because it will continuously change and be ultimately unfulfilling. The wise enjoy a much deeper companionship from a much deeper truth; the aloneness of being. That is found in the intimacy of the wilderness because the wilderness is divine.”
His words, aloneness of Being, moved me deeply and seemed to reflect the nature of this place but it was disturbing, I wasn’t experiencing it as beautiful at this moment but devoid of comfort, a place that gave no quarter to the needs of my mind.
“Do I need to be a hermit Ram?” I burst out.
“Definitely not and nor should you wish for it, such rejection and isolation would be an indulgence and a torment but solitude, that is something different, that is a delight because in it there is a peace in which you are never actually alone. This snowfield is solitude of place, but the higher solitude is of the mind or more eloquently, of the heart. You are not here to be a hermit but to become hermetic, in other words impervious to the temporary risings in your mind that bring you trouble and cloud the landscape. There are two principle strands of teaching in response to those rising waves.
The first is tactical, taking the mind and the seeker at face value, accepting its ways as real and meaningful, giving specific guidance to the intelligence of that mind so that it can see how it is behaving and can choose to alter those habits. The second strand denies that you are the mind or that there is a seeker at all, points out that you are other than the objects of the mind and brings you release from conditioning. You have been exposed to both teachings and you are where you are because of it but now there is somewhere else to go for you a new subtlety between the two and we are here for that, a superior mode of mind, a wilderness of mind, where the snow falls and is unsullied.”
“Are we going to meet someone?” I asked.
“We are going to meet Shiva.” he replied, “Let’s go”