Laughter and Tears

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest... for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
(Gospel of Matthew 11:28)

 

"Give up all religious duties and just surrender your life to me: I will deliver you from all your sins, don't worry."
(Bhagavad Gita 18:66)



The Spiritual Placebo
For both the weary of heart and the spiritual seeker, the world is full of placebos. Not only is most medicine a placebo. Wealth is a placebo. Fame is a placebo. Food is a placebo. Sex is a placebo. Knowledge is a placebo. "Spiritual practice" is a placebo. "Selfless service to humanity" is a placebo.  "I" am a placebo.

The "placebo effect" occurs when an "inert" sugar pill appears to produce relief from disease, but the relief has no actual cause-and-effect relationship with the pill. This placebo effect explains a great deal about our spiritual life as well.

Every material or mental phenomena that we depend on for fulfillment is a placebo. A wave of happiness rises from deep within the core of our heart and breaks momentarily on the shores of our mental or sensory experience. At that moment we may be doing some work of service, singing a chant, reading a book, or practicing a ritual. We may be eating a certain health food or gazing into the eyes of a revered teacher. Whatever the phenomenon may be, it becomes a placebo because we associate it with our happiness, as if that external action caused our inner joy. We assume that this produced that because they occurred at the same time.

But waves of happiness arise constantly from the silent Source within. We just don't notice or acknowledge them. We have simply forgotten how to attune our attention and our breath to this inner pulsation of joy that is the natural energy of the heart. Only under certain clearly-defined and usually "religious" conditions do we permit ourselves to turn within and experience our true nature.

We forget that we are always bathed in the inner Radiance. It is not necessary to assume an external cause for the bliss that arises indefatigably from the heart.

Lacking faith in ourselves, we keep taking placebos: religious, aesthetic and sensual. We repeat the same acts which we associated with brief moments of bliss, desperately hoping to recover the inner experience through an outward achievement. It is now time to learn one of the hardest but most liberating lessons of life:

Happiness is never the effect of an external action, or the outcome of a thought process. Happiness is already here. Luminous waves of bliss-bestowing love rise spontaneously from the ocean of stillness in the core of your heart. THAT is your divine nature, your causeless birthright of Ananda: therefor nothing you do can create or destroy it in yourself or another. Radiance percolates out of your core, ever independent of thoughts or actions. This is the truth. You don't need anything from the outside world to make you more full: yet the world needs your light for its illumination. With humility you may accept this gracious gift of Light, this abundant upsurge of Joy, but you can never do anything to cause it. Understanding this, all that is left is celebration. Let your Radiance overflow. Bless all the people.

Laughter and Tears
Only two phenomena in human life are not placebos. Only two outward events may be organically related to the bliss within. They are the innocent childlike phenomena of laughter and tears.

These organic responses of the body-soul indicate that we have touched, however briefly, our Source. Laughter without apparent cause, or mysterious unfathomable tears, are true intimations of a heart in touch.

Those few precious moments when we laugh or weep are the moments when we are fully present, fully open, to Being. We are not looking anywhere else. We simple are. Laughter and tears are not placebos for something we seek, but flowers of awakening now.

Most human lives are long journeys between brief moments of laughter and tears. Time is only "time" when we are pilgrims between these moments, which are moments in eternity. Yet by relaxing into Grace, we can widen vibrations of laughter and tears to encompass all the moments in our life.