“You’re pretty judgmental for an enlightened guy.”

The words dart from nowhere jolting me from a semi-absorbed fog of concentration. I look up from my laptop to find a pair of tattered, dreadlocked Joes, twenty-somethings I’d guess, standing over me, though looming might be a better way to put it.

I shake my head in exasperation, though motionlessly, and dredge up a forced smile. I am, after all, at a trade show.

I’m manning a friend’s booth in the exhibit hall at one of modern man’s most impotent contributions to the evolution of spirituality: the mega yoga conference. Aisle upon aisle of exhibitors hawking every kind of spiritual program, trinket, and snake oil imaginable; it’s a smorgasbord of every kind of distraction from the real work of spiritual practice. Here you’ll find a phalanx of spiritual soldiers, hunkered down in 10’ x 10’ trade show booths, each and every one ready to selflessly and compassionately accept your cash, check, or credit card, (Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, no Discover please), and send you on your way with a wave, and a smile, and a vacuous ‘Namaste’ you with your new spiritual placebo tucked safely under your arm. A sacred army marching to the beat of, well, let’s be honest, capitalism. Apparently if you dress it up in enough beads and hemp clothing even greed becomes a spiritual cause.

Joe #1 stands awash in a river of meandering seekers and shoppers flowing by with a kind of hypnotic cadence. He gazes absently down the sprawling boulevard of trade-show booths, banners, and displays. A fire plug of a guy, topped with a crimson and loosely-fit ‘yoga rocks’ baseball cap cocked to the side in what could only be construed as an attempt to shield his left ear from melanoma, he wears a blousey paisley shirt, ragged bell-bottoms with the cuffs worn away to a ratty collection of dirt-colored threads, and a beard, or at least a random patchwork of confused hairs posing as one. He’s dressed as if he just strolled out of the Salvation Army’s fall fashion catalog, page 16, Haute Couture for the Young Urban Spiritual Prig (YUSP). Though he leans heavily on my table, one hand propping him upright in his canted stance, he’s thankfully, from my perspective anyway, unaware of my existence. With the other guy, however, I’m not so lucky.

Joe #2 stands with hands on his hips, eyes locked on mine, while corner-mouthed, bendy-straw-sipping a $7 organic, anti-oxidant packed, super-juice imported from some old-growth rainforest in South America by donkey, truck, aircraft, train, ship, train, and truck at a cost of two and a half tons of greenhouse emissions per six pack. He wears a Greenpeace tee-shirt.

I restrain myself from rolling my eyes, pitching a nasty comment, or otherwise bouncing these two bozos from my consciousness and instead struggle with how to best greet my new friends. I extend a hand. “Hi, I’m E.” I smile.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do understand that this leviathan of a conference with its yogic balms and salves and hundreds of attendees walking around draped in spiritual ornaments like yogic Christmas trees isn’t completely without worth. There is a certain segment of practitioners for whom this is indeed a helpful, and even necessary, experience.

While the endgame of yoga is the realization of one’s true essence, beyond the body/mind or what’s referred to as the false self, it seems that for most, it begins with a foray into sprucing up the very body/mind that the process seeks to transcend. A complete false-self make-over of sorts, including the construction of a shiny, new, spiritualized identity complete with a new library, flowing wardrobe, a few statues, a couple of packets of incense, and maybe even a new spiritual name. I’ve been there, I know.

While it’s true the building of a new-spiritual-you has nothing to do with the process of awakening (at least not directly), after years of helping literally thousands of students negotiate their own personal spiritual journeys, I’ll have to admit that this self-improvement phase seems anything but an extraneous distraction. As superfluous as it may at first seem from one perspective, it appears to be an integral part of loosening the beliefs and opinions that keep us imprisoned in separateness. Not to mention it tends to deepen people’s devotion to their practice; inarguably a good thing. To a degree.

Let’s forget for a moment that this effort to become more “spiritual” is the evolutionary equivalent of postponing the prison break until the new Pottery Barn curtains can be hung over the cell’s windows. Forget that the focus on selecting our cell’s new wall paper and throw rug and bedspread distracts us from the real work of escaping. Forget even that the massive barred-iron door that stands between us and everlasting freedom isn’t even locked. The truth of the matter seems to be that people need to exhaust every effort to become comfortable in their prison cells before they’ll even try the door. Maybe a new spiritual motif will make this place livable, the logic goes.

It won’t, but that’s something you have to discover for yourself. “Unless you make tremendous effort, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere.” is how the great sage Nisargadatta Maharaj put it.

So then, if this is the case, if this whole spiritual hullabaloo is necessary, why my ire? What’s with all the fuss and sarcasm and derision? Huh, E, what gives?

The basic fact is this: people are distracted by spirituality along with the attendant quest to perfect their false selves (which are either already perfect, or can never be perfected, depending upon your point of view). As a result, their authentic intentions for liberation, salvation, enlightenment or whatever you want to call it, are derailed.

Worse yet, virtually none of these poor lost souls is aware that their spiritually-dutiful marching is carrying them in the wrong direction; for most of the spiritual teachers, gurus, shamans, and guides, who are cheering them along at every step, are part of the mechanism of distraction itself. They’re cogs in the mammoth Spiritual-Industrial Complex (S.I.C.) that seeks not to further the interests of the seekers, but to further its own interest; not to foster awakening and freedom, but to recruit followers and devotees. This conference, and indeed the entire S.I.C., is about redecorating, not escaping.

It’s no surprise then that this S.I.C.-sponsored event is devoted to marketing, not liberation: a lap or two around this conference center will leave no doubt of that. Everything from housewares to sexy underwear to sacred cow beef jerky (word of honor) is hawked under the guise of spiritual transformation. While it may be true in most quarters that if you put lipstick on a pig it’s still a pig, around here it seems that if you douse it with patchouli and decorate it with some henna it’s instantly transformed into Sri Swami Porkananda, Guru to the Stars.

Nisargadatta again: “Spirituality is as discardable as dishwater.” And to tell you the truth, from where I’m sitting, it looks like he owes dishwater an apology.

Thus in the face of all this hoopla and posturing, bending and bowing, my intention is to provide guidance and encouragement—to set you free, not keep you stuck. And as part of my services, if I’ve noticed that you’ve become confused, distracted, or otherwise stalled, you’ll receive, at no additional charge, a swift kick in the rear to get you going again. You’re welcome.

“We know who you are.” says Mr. Greenpeace; he strikes an awkward balance between the effeminate and macho. The ‘we’ in his statement lands hollow as his fire-plug friend remains conspicuously distracted.

“Oh,” I smile, “were you in the session this morning?” I had taught a two-hour workshop on Authentic Spiritual Practices of the East as part of the early-bird, pre-conference sessions.

“We were.” Mr. G confirms with a nod, though it’s clear he wasn’t too keen on the whole thing.

“Great.” I say, still not sure what to do with all of this, “Enjoying the conference?” I ask hiding behind my strained smile, but mostly just hoping that they’ll both go away.

Mr. G pauses; Fire-Plug remains mesmerized by something down the aisle.

“Judge not, lest ye be judged.” says Mr. G.

“Pardon?”

“Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Mr. G says again, this time with a bit more verve and an upturned index finger serving as a kind of somatic punctuation. He turns to his partner, “Right Stu?” and pops Fire-Plug in the chest with the back of his hand.

“Huh?! Why’d you hit me?” Fire-Plug shoots Mr G. a blunt look, before his attention snaps back to the aisle; his head now bobs from side-to-side as if he lost someone in the crowd. “Dude, did you see that chick in the macramé halter, she was frigging hot!” he says, with a genuine ebullience that only now, in contrast, seemed lacking in Mr. G’s proclamation of scripture.

Mr. G sighs, turns away from Fire-Plug, and looks to me, nettled.

Unfortunately, I know full-well what’s coming next, and I’m still more than a bit jet-lagged and really not in the mood. And truthfully, there’s nothing more annoying than an amateur with a pocketful of scripture. Though, I realize that I’m the one manning a booth at a spiritual conference, so I’ve kind of asked for it. I play along.

“Judge not lest ye be judged?” I lob back at him in the form of a question.

“Yeah. That’s what Jesus THE CHRIST, said.” He strangely emphasizes the words “THE CHRIST”; evidently so I don’t confuse him with Jesus the Nobel Prize-winning Astrophysicist of Poquipsee, New York. I don’t.

I nod. “Uh-huh.” And wait for his next volley.

“You’re pretty judgmental for an enlightened guy.” He says again. We’re back at the top of the page it seems, and I begin to wonder if maybe he’s only programmed with three-phrases. But no such luck.

“And that makes me and Stu” he motions to Fire-Plug, “wonder if maybe you’re a phony.”

“Is that right?” I glance at Fire-Plug and find it hard to believe that he’s wondering about anything other than how to untie macramé knots. Though, I have to admit, the word phony lands pretty hard. I can feel myself bristle.

It’s here that E gets angry. It’s here that E gets infuriated. It’s here that E lets these two towheaded boobs have it, with both barrels, blazing, reducing them to a smoking hole in the ground with the only tangible evidence of their existence being a few shards of smoldering, disembodied dreadlocks and the odd, off-putting scent of burned patchouli. Fade to black. Roll credits.

Surprisingly, no.

Instead, it’s here that E, that I, began to develop a certain fondness and appreciation for Mr. G, for it is in this moment that it becomes clear that what stands before me is a refreshing oddity.

For it is here in this sea of desultory seekers, this flock of lemmings, of all places here, where delusional drones from far and wide wander in a kind of fatuous fog, slurping down spiritual snake-oil like crack-laced coca-cola; it is here, amidst all of this, that an actual, bona fide, thinking person has been deposited in front of me like a gift from God, manna from heaven. Hallelujah.

Mr. G, it seems, has won me over, for the moment at least, though his friend, maybe not so much. It’s not that Fire-Plug isn’t an authentic seeker; it’s just that it seems like the only thing he’s authentically seeking is a happy ending—and that’s a bit outside my area of expertise. Though, I have to give him points for being honest about his intentions.

I consider Mr G’s wonderings out loud. “A phony, huh? And what would make you think that?” I ask.

“Well, like I said, you seem awfully judgmental for an enlightened guy.”

With this, I find myself at a crossroads: a three-pronged fork in the road to be exact. It’s obvious from his question that my young G is confused, and on at least three fronts: Firstly, who I am; second, what enlightenment is, and lastly, how judgment fits into spiritual practice. I nod silently and look over at Fire-Plug, he seems to have lost his macramé beauty and is now ogling a pair of breasts attached to a girl in the next booth. I look back to Mr G.

“Have you ever heard me claim that I am enlightened?”

“Well, uh, no.”

“So why would you believe that I was?”

“Um, I don’t know, I guess that’s what I’ve heard…”

“From whom?” I persist.

“Well, uh…” he rambles a few semi-coherent phrases about the usual culprits: them and they and you know. It’s for the most part nonsensical.

“Want some advice?” I ask.

Mr. G shrugs.

“Don’t believe everything that you hear, particularly…” and here I go to lengths to emphasize particularly, “when you’re talking about enlightenment.”

“Why’s that?”

“For the simple reason that there’s more confusion about this topic than just about any other in this game, and unfortunately most of that confusion resides with those who have positioned themselves as experts on the subject.”

“Like who?”

“Like priests, rabbis, and all manner of clergy, like yoga teachers and meditation instructors, and pandits and gurus. It’s endemic.” I say, “This is the thing G: if you meet anyone who says they’re enlightened, they’re either confused, a liar, or a terrible communicator.”

“What?” Mr. G looks like he just bit into a lemon.

“There’s no such thing as a liberated person.” I say, “Enlightenment, at least in the way that you are thinking about it, doesn’t exist. It’s a pipe dream.”

Speaking of pipe dreams, Fire-Plug is now looking down at his hands as he waves them from side to side with the effluence of a water ballet. He’s spellbound.

“He okay?” I flip a thumb toward Fire-Plug.

Mr. G looks over, “Oh yeah, he’s cool.” He says, “Right Stu?”

Fire-Plug bobs back to the surface of the here and now. “Huh?”

“You cool?” Mr. G asks again.

“Yeah dude. Cool.” Fire-Plug turns and locks his gaze on me. He leans in, “Meat is murder, man.” His eyes wander again to land on the pair of neighborly boobs next door.

I look to Mr. G, “That was weird.”

“Yeah, don’t pay him no mind.”

“Don’t worry.”

Back on task, Mr. G asks: “So, you say enlightenment doesn’t exist in the way that I’m thinking of it. How do you know how I’m thinking about it?”

“Well, your little indictment about judgment is one; your accusation of me being an ‘enlightened guy’ is another. That’s enough for me to know you’re off track.”

Fire-Plug’s face scrunches, eyes tight shut, and his index finger jumps to attention before his face. “So you’re saying that liberation, enlightenment doesn’t exist?” he’s suddenly taking interest in the conversation. Frankly, I’m surprised that he’s even heard a word that’s been said. “Dude, liberation is where it’s at,” he continues, “I’ve been to India, and man I’ll tell you there’s all kinds of cats over there that are like totally blown open, I mean, they got the shit over there man.”

I shake my head, not in reaction to Fire-Plug’s enthusiastic support of liberation or even the herbally-influenced flavor of his display, rather, it’s the go nowhere tenor of the conversation that has me chafed. What we’ve got going here is more an exchange of pre-recorded sound bites than any kind of thoughtful and mature exchange of ideas. It’s a bit like watching the Republicans and the Democrats on TV, ideology that’s impervious to facts is how one pundit recently put it, and I’ve about had my fill of that.

Talking, people like; listening, not nearly as much. In fact, what usually passes for listening, if we’re honest, involves little if any listening at all; it’s more like acting—and waiting. The acting entails feigning interest while pretending like you’re not at all caught up in your own thinking about what it is that you’re going to say in response once the words that are being lobbed at you finally stop. And waiting. Waiting your turn to return your own volley of words in the other direction.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: if you don’t listen, you can’t be exposed to new ideas, and if you’re not exposed to new ideas, you’ll just spin round and round in the same old rut you’ve been spinning in ad infinitum. People say that they’re interested in growth and transformation, but mainly their interested in collecting evidence that supports them in their current ideology. We latch on to every faint notion that supports our world view and conveniently reject everything else. Snug as a bug in our self-righteous certainty, and as we all know (I hope), certainty leaves no room for truth. It’s no wonder we’re all sinking deeper into the same old quag that been stoking the world’s religio-spiritual imbroglio for centuries.

“Again guys, listen carefully to what I’m saying.” I’m practically begging them to listen, really listen, “I’m not saying that liberation doesn’t exist, I’m saying that there is no such thing as a liberated person.”

“Dude, that’s just like saying the same thing” Fire-Plug says.

I shake my head.

“What like only Chihuahua’s get liberated or something?” Mr. G asks with more than a hint of sarcasm.

I smile about his choice of examples; my boy Hanuman would be proud.

“Man, I just saw this movie about talking Chihuahua’s in Brentwood…” Fire-Plug interrupts.

“Beverly Hills.” I correct.

“Yeah man, that’s it, Beverly Hills. Those little dogs were dope.”

“Right.” I turn back to Mr. G, “So…”

“So when you say that there’s no such thing as a liberated person…”

Fire-Plug jumps in, “Dude, did I tell you about those crazy little f–kers in the ashrams in India? I know some of those cats are like so living on Nirvana Street, U.S.A.”

“U.S.A.?”

“Oh, yeah right, I mean India…either way, those dudes got to be liberated.”

It’s clear that we’re going round and round on this one. I try one last time.

“It’s not liberation of, it’s liberation from.” I say to my meat-headed vegan friend. “It’s not that a person becomes liberated—no such thing; it’s that which you really are gets liberated from the person who you think you are.”

“Heavy, man.”

A tall-leggy blonde in $500 worth of skin-tight, Lululemon garb makes off with Fire-Plug’s gaze.

Mr. G scratches his head. “So you’re saying that the person doesn’t get liberated, but there is something else that gets liberated from the person.”

“Exactly.”

“Like the soul?”

“I suppose you could use that.” I say, thinking we’re about as close as we’re going to get given the impromptu nature of our conversation.

“But why would you say that a person who claims enlightenment is either…how did you put it?”

“…confused, a liar or a terrible communicator, I think.”

“Yeah, why that?”

Though it’s against my better judgment, I launch into a necessarily circuitous explanation of the false self, true self, the psychosomatic organism, the field of awareness, the process of awakening, the techniques of yoga, and various other vagaries central to the spiritual game. I end with this: “The one who speaks can never be; the one who is can never speak.”

Blank stares. Not surprisingly. And I say this without any hint of condescension or derision about my friends. If this stuff was easily grasped someone would have long ago written a how-to book that would have clarified all of the misunderstandings, resolved all the apparent conflicts; and the Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and all the rest would be sitting around in a big circle singing Kumbaya. This simple understanding would render religious persecution, jihad, the religious right, and all the other nonsensical mumbo-jumbo that’s going on in the world today, obsolete in an instant. Alas, that would require listening, real listening, free from the filters of our sacred belief systems.

Perhaps one day…

I take one last stab: “The confusion we’re discussing involves the difference between enlightenment and self-improvement; enlightenment isn’t about self-improvement, it’s about self-transcendence.”

“So you’re saying that enlightenment doesn’t have anything to do with my body or mind?” Mr. G confirms.

“The recognition of one’s true nature, that which we call liberation or enlightenment, is an occurrence that is independent of body/mind.” I say.

“But if the change isn’t about the body/mind, why all of these practices and techniques to heal the body and quiet the mind?” Mr. G asks.

“Practice and all is coming.” Fire-Plug interjects a quote a famous Indian teacher.

“He’s kind of random, huh?” I say.

Mr. G rolls his eyes, “Tell me about it.”

I continue: “It’s a simple matter of minimizing distractions so that you can better recognize that which you have always been.” I say, “What you perceive distracts you from what you are. You’re ignoring your essence, that’s why it’s called spiritual ignore-ance.” I intentionally mispronounce the word.

Mr. G nods, appearing almost satisfied. “So this is why the enlightened saints and sages through the ages seemed so…”

“Human?” I interrupt.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right…human.”

“Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharshi, Nityananda, Buddha, even Christ had good days and bad days, they had happy moments and angry moments—you can ask the money changers about that one.” I say.

Mr. G smiles and Fire-Plug locks onto another target; this one a short, top-heavy brunette wearing a teddy-bear shaped backpack. Fire-Plug turns and wanders after her like a moth to flame.

“Thanks for dropping by our booth.” I shout after him.

He raises is right hand without so much as a gaze over his shoulder and is swallowed by the crowd.

I have to smile.

I turn back to G. “It’s not so important that you understand the nuance here—there’s time for that later, the main thing is to understand that the character, the person, this body/mind thing, the false self doesn’t, can’t, never will, get enlightened. Think of the person as something that gets transcended, left behind like a butterfly’s chrysalis—but don’t take that too literally either.”

The light bulb goes on, shining brightly in G’s eyes: “So that’s why being judgmental has nothing to do with being enlightened.”

“Because…” I prompt.

“Because the one who judges, the body/mind, isn’t subject to enlightenment.” G says, “The one who is judging is that which is left behind—so to speak.”

And it’s here that Mr. G hits it out of the park. He’s shaken off a popular and considerably off-base belief that enlightenment can be measured by evaluating behavior, knowledge, or understanding. Those are all properties of the body/mind, the ego, the false self, whatever you’d like to call it. They have nothing to do with the so-called enlightenment.

“I think I get it.” He grins. “So you’re not enlightened…”

“No, E is not enlightened.”

“Nobody’s enlightened.” He says.

“Right. No body is, ever was, or can be, enlightened.”

Just then Fire-Plug emerges from out of the crowd. “Dude.” He throws his arm around Mr. G’s neck; one part hug, one part headlock, “I need your help, man. She’s got a friend.”

“Who?” G asks.

“Blossom.” He says as if we should know who that is.

Blank stare.

“Blossom,” he says again more vehemently, then adds: “…that chick with the backpack.”

“Oh yeah…” G nods, “So?”

“So she won’t go to the Trance Dance with me unless her friend can go along; and her friend doesn’t want to go if it’s just us three. She said something about a third wheel or something. I need you, man.”

“When?”

“Now, dude! They’re sitting over there at the tofu dog stand.” He motions toward the far side of the auditorium.

“Alright.” Mr. G accedes and turns back my way, “Well, hey thanks for your time E, and sorry for the confrontation.”

“No worries, I get it a lot.” I say.

“Well, duty calls.” G says.

Fire-Plug grabs him by both shoulders and, with a shake, looks him intently in the eyes. “No dude, it’s not duty that’s callin’, it’s booty that’s callin’.”

“Duuude!” G grins.

“Well, have fun boys.” I say, ushering them on their way.

And as quickly as they materialized, they’re swept away by the quiet flow of the crowd and I’m left alone to marvel at the utter strangeness of my profession.

Many blessings,

E

Copyright 2008, Eric Walrabenstein, all rights reserved.