The present moment provides the gateway to enter into all the realms of consciousness that are beyond the everyday level. – Jack Kornfield

In spirituality, no matter what gate we enter or what form we practice, sooner or later obstacles arise. The first arise because when we stop our distractions and bring meditative attention to our inner experience, we will encounter the unfinished business we carry, the untended longings, love, fears and hurts. And as we get even quieter and more vulnerable, we will face the mystery of our own mortality, of death. In all of the great spiritual traditions attention is given to these problems and pitfalls in spiritual practice, for it is through these that the path often unfolds.

In the Christian mystical tradition one of the great texts is The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, in which he talks about the periods of loneliness, fear, and doubt that one goes through after the initial awakenings into the light. Evagrius, a fourth-century Christian monk who lived in the Egyptian desert with the Christian Desert Fathers wrote a text on the demons that come to people who go into the desert as hermits and undertake a meditation practice. These include the demons of pride, the demons of fear, the demons of lust, the noonday demon who is the demon of sleep, and so forth.

In Buddhist traditions there are descriptions of similar kinds of obstacles. In Zen, practitioners might experience makyo (“diabolic or disturbing phenomena”) during meditation. These are hallucinations involving vision, hearing, smell, or other senses. Though everyday life is often referred to as illusory or dreamlike in Zen, makyo are a kind of super-illusion, above and beyond ordinary illusion.

How does one begin to understand and work with the pitfalls and the difficulties? The basic Buddhist teachings on the obstacles one encounters in spiritual practice begins with how to approach the common hindrances such as physical pain and restlessness. Then the instructions move on to explore the more extreme, delightful, and terrifying kinds of visions, mental states, and difficulties that can arise for people in more intensive or advanced spiritual practice.

Buddhist meditation and other systematic disciplines, train awareness and concentration, which bring us into the present. This is the first task of the spiritual path, to focus and steady the fluctuating, frenetic mind. The present moment is the entry into spiritual realms, because the past is just memory, and the future is just imagination. The present moment provides the gateway to enter into all the realms of consciousness that are beyond the everyday level. To be here fully requires a steadying of the mind, a concentration, and attention. It is like that sign in a Las Vegas casino, “You must be present to win.” You have to be present to awaken.

This is an excerpt from ‘Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are‘

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