Seeker and Finders

Get Out the Raid

Seekers feel there is something missing, and they have to find it to be complete. They look around for the best club or movement or fashion, or teaching, to join. They get a contact high from being around the teacher and they are always looking backwards to that time. They hear about grades and levels and initiations, and hope to climb the ladder into whatever it is they imagine inchoately this “success” or achievement will be. Yet if they knew what it looked like, how it felt, they would already be there.

So most of us have been striving to something our ego cannot identify.

When a Seeker is disappointed over time with the rewards and experiences that didn’t come, they go thru phases of doubling down and intensive ego planned-out spurts, alternating with reluctant acceptance that “heaven” is far off for them. Maybe next lifetime.

But they don’t give up and let go. They cling jealously to their notions and “position” on the ladder, whatever that might be imagined to be. And if they have risen into a bureaucratic managerial position in an organization, like on a Board, they cling to their little scrap of turf  like a barnacle on a ship.

After all, they reason in the hidden corners of their hearts, I have served for a long time. I am of the “faithful” and therefore, I must not be bumped from my position. It’s all that I have after all this time.

It is like some sort of analogy to standing in a movie line, or bank line, or serving line at the soup kitchen.  If they get bumped they will miss “their turn”  which they imagine is based upon time spent in office.

But it’s not.

Finders by comparison have graduated from being Seekers. I will be so bold as to claim to finally be a Finder, but in all honesty, it wasn’t my egoic plans that pulled this off. In fact it doesn’t seem like one can take much credit from the aspect of being a personality. In general by hook or by crook, by accident, fate, luck, it so happens that one has an experience of the mind “stopping” and finding that there is “someone” still there who is conscious of this event, yet not identified. In fact, possibly terrified at the loss of familiar identities and being tossed about on the white water rapids of the Tao, you only cautiously re-approach such experiences. But you also know, THIS is the Way.

But despite the scare, there is also the thrill. New vistas open. You decide it is worth the ass-kicking and undoing to get another taste of THAT. Or, we come to see, is there really a “me” who “decided” anything at all? (Like a politician who gets out in front of the parade and acts like he is leading, the ego keeps rewriting our personal story to make it look like “we” were in charge!) 

Or could it be that IT comes into the temple on Its own schedule, and as Vitvan says, “Go along or be dragged along.” “When the Fire is lit, who can put it out?”  But if this is what the Purificatory Process really is, surrendering to the ass-beating, you less and less grudgingly go along with it, until you stop making plans and just say, “What do I need to do today Lord?”

And if the answer that comes that day is “Go kick the ass of some mealy-mouthed Seeker who is clogging up the pipes and backing up the Flow of the Tao,” that’s what you do. In real life we deal with clogs as well as happy flows. If you can’t take doing the dirty work in the basement, better stay in a bubble on your couch watching Happy Days.

When one takes the teaching of someone like Vitvan whose essential message was “You already have the answer in yourself. You are an expression of the I AM. Find yourself and let IT flow”, when a Seeker bureaucrat type takes this kind of teaching and imposes their personal values on how the Tao may flow, and is a literalist fundamentalist who objectifies a teaching into “it’s not in the printed material so it’s not allowed” and they throw around words like “Official site” and so on, you know you have a person who doesn’t get it.

If this sounds like Marj Coffman and her posse to you, I won’t disagree.  

 Imagine Vitvan as mountaineer who wanted to inspire YOU to climb mountains too. He might even leave behind a map of his ascent. He might offer shortcuts, warn you of pitfalls, but still encourage you to GO ON THE ADVENTURE.

But do you really think he would be saying, “Climb ONLY the mountain I did? ONLY go by the path I used?” Or would he say “GO. Explore. Be courageous!”

How does one deal with a Seeker and their glommy little hands on the Teachings who sit on their asses in their easy chairs, pencil out and correcting spelling errors in the Climber’s Guide, and then they have the nerve to pronounce:

“Well, MY Vitvan didn’t do it that way. He didn’t approve of other routes. WE can only slavishly cling to his outline. NO other exploration is allowed around here.”

Honestly, no one would take such an attitude seriously in Mountaineering. How is it this great Guide and his work has fallen into the hands of such uninspired penny-ante narrow-minded schoolmarms? And their coffee-roasting doily-arranging  Hell-circle of people who don’t pursue their own Purificatory Process with any enthusiasm?

I was trained as a Roto-Rooter man. You get over being delicate and PC and going all squeaky-googly in front of a germ or two like Wet-her-pants does.  You look at a clog and say “This turd has to go.”

When the Augean stables need cleaning, who ya gonna call? Miss Eek-a-germ, or Ghostbusters?

People who have to be “nice” are generally tools and dupes, easily manipulated by the more cynical forces of the status-quo. Just roll over and be "humble." That's the "spiritual" thing to do.“Nice” people will never stand up to the  entrenched whose rule just seems to go on, and on, with them telling you that ONLY they are the “guardians” or know enough. That they will never surrender their offices to "anarchists."  (But then, it’s understandable why they can't let go. All they have to show after all these years are the gold stars they have awarded themselves)

These foot-dragging featherbedders are named Marj Coffman, Pat and Jane Murray, and Susan Wetmore. They keep trying to clone themselves and we can only hope that the latest recruits to their good-ole-boy club Board will wake up soon before everyone with any spirited enthusiasm is gone. Before the smouldering embers are doused forever.

It’s beyond sad and unfortunate.

It’s Perversion and Paralysis by Parasite. Get out the Raid!