Where Can I Take Refuge?

In Buddhism - and in Shamanism as I have learned it - the first teaching is that life is “full of unsatisfactoriness.” The word “suffering” is most often used, but I think words like jacked, bollix, fubar, and GMFU (Got Me Fk*d Up) are descriptive on a day-to-day level. The Christians call it sin, which, in its original definition, was a term from archery, meaning “to miss what you’re aiming for.”

“Missing the target” comes from not being centered in our power. In archery, a calm, still breath is critical. Every spiritual tradition tells us that it is “grasping” that causes all the trouble. Grasping takes over when we don’t trust Spirit. Spirit is the most expansive and elegant thing we can comprehend, and when we trust it, we, too, become expansive and elegant. When we don’t trust it, we shrink, we lose our expansive and connecting breath, we become clumsy, tight and inelegant, and our aim goes awry.

And we grasp for new knowledge, for old happiness, for solid security and gleaming love, for pleasure, acceptance and worthiness. Every tradition says clearly: the more you grasp, the more you push it away. And yet, here we are, reaching all the time, with our “gimmee gimmee gimmee” hands.

There is a difference between joyful growth and desperate growth; it’s the difference between how Spirit works and how our smaller self works; it’s the difference between culminating in a wondrous harvest or in cancer. It’s not the desire for growth that matters, but the grasping, which is borne of fear, which is borne from lack of trust in Spirit.

A common phrase for Buddhists is, “I take refuge in the three jewels: the Buddha, the teachings, and the community.” The shamanic translation of this may be: “I take refuge in Spirit, the practices, and relationships (with everything).” Spirit, as it is seen through the shamanic lens, is always changing, exploring, creating, growing, shifting, dissolving, flowing. But with Spirit, there is no fear, anywhere. The single best practice we can do is 1) remember that each of us is that also. And 2) approach everything like Spirit does: exploring without fear. Is this easy? Fk*k no. That's why we have 10,000 lifetimes. But when it GMFU, it helps to return to that simple knowing and breathe.

Try this: Imagine yourself standing on the edge of a cliff so high that you cannot see the bottom. You gaze over, look down, and see nothing but blackness. You drop a rock down, see it vanish into the dark, never hearing it hit bottom. You understand that it’s not just beyond your sight, it is, in fact, bottomless. Now, turn around so that the very tips of your heels are on the edge, in fact, the heels are over the edge, and you are only held onto the lip of the cliff by half of your feet and toes. How do you feel? Isn’t this how we all feel, inside, all the time?

Now, let yourself fall backwards over the cliff, and keep falling. There is no end. Keep falling. Keep falling. Keep falling. Keep Falling. Keep Falling. See what happens.