Review · The Consciousness Path

Review

On and off for the past 35 years, Cheng Hsin has been my clean, well-lighted space for inquiry. That was my neighborhood bookstore, where I found distraction and answers, "A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books." The name is borrowed from Hemingway’s short story about two waiters at a café where the older one reflects on the constant need for comfort in the face of existential nothingness. I have been lucky enough to find myself questioning the truth of this loneliness and existential dread, and to muster some rare courage at times to look into it. With even more luck, I found Cheng Hsin, never a place where I would be rescued, or asked to strive to become special enough or worthy of being given all the answers. Answers are never given. Skillful questions are. It is challenging, I come from a culture of faith and beliefs, and being graded on how right I am. It is lucky that brokenness brought me in, like a frantic cat searching for a catnip ball under the refrigerator. I was given the possibility to stop searching for the answer out there. Workshops are an immense gift; they provide tools and structure for anyone to settle in with trust that all that is needed already exists: focused attention, contemplation, honesty and openness. There is nothing else in my life that skillfully supports consciousness work without demanding rituals, or selling techniques and systems.

As a result, assumptions and fantasies that feed my need for comfort seem to be the casualties. I worried what the work would do to me, how much it would disrupt my life. The challenges are real. So are the benefits. I always come as I am, and I always leave with some more transparency and freedom in this "me." And I see the same, time after time, in those who have the luck to find this place while following their own evasive catnip balls.

0 comments