Lately I’ve had some powerful insights that are related to what I called the Great Mystery. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts here.

I started spontaneously experiencing that state of heightened awareness a few weeks ago. It has persisted, off and on, though it’s easily obliterated by stress and diluted by my many responsibilities. I have, up until now, tried to cultivate it directly.

It has felt world- and mind-expanding. It has allowed me a glimpse into a different world, one that is more vibrant, magical, and alive. The energy in my body flows more openly sometimes; I feel like there is more space between my joints than I am accustomed to. I think that these experiences are windows into the world, allowing me to see it more as it really is, as a place where there is much beauty, much subtle and intimate power.

But there was a dark side to that. I also see that the subtle, sensitive world is constantly overwhelmed by the violence that we civilized humans, in our uncaring blindness to the consequences of our own actions, inflict on the world. During those experiences I felt raw, sensitive, wide open to the world, which meant I was far more easily affected by it. Noise. Cars. People. Lighting. It was too much stimulation. I often felt like crying a lot without a clear reason why. It was impossible to talk to most people about my experience, so I felt kind of isolated — the world is a deeper and more mysterious place, and it can be lonely to see into that when few other people do. But all of this was certainly not a sign of being in balance.

So I wondered, what’s going on?

I began to recognize my responsibility in my experience. I realized that I’ve been actively pursuing an openness to life, but doing so in a way that has been imbalanced: I’ve sought to open myself directly to the world, to rip away all mediation and let the world come in and inhabit me, thinking that such a direct living experience is the goal.

I learned otherwise.

I have already written about the attempted theft of my moped which occurred last month. Yesterday I also became the victim of credit card fraud. I’ve just gotten a new cell phone and had been setting up various things online yesterday while I was using the wireless network at school, and kept getting error messages. When I came home from school, there was a fraud alert from my credit card company on the answering machine; it turned out that someone had charged my card for 9.99 to buy a Razr, whatever that is, from my cell phone company. I had to swing into action, calling the phone company, the credit card company, and the police. It was a bit scary, and exciting.

And in the midst of it, as my subconscious was whirring trying to figure out why I was the victim of two crimes in one month — and I don’t recall ever being the victim of a crime — it hit me.

You get what you ask for.

I had asked to open myself to the world. Raw, direct experience, without mediation. I had opened my senses and asked to be filled by what was in the world. And the world responded. Not an ideal world, but the world as it actually is — the one that not only contains beauty but also ugliness. I had experienced, bodily, the beauty in the world. Now I was given a bodily experience of ugliness. Not once, but twice, because I had not learned my lesson the first time.

These crimes were illustrations of the dark side of my lofty, mystical ideals. Beware of what you ask for, you just might get it.

This was an important karmic lesson to learn.

I realize now that I fell into a common trap. For instance, there are some schools of Buddhist thought who believe that the world and all of its phenomena are illusions and must be ignored. I recall reading a Buddhist (or perhaps it was Hindu) story about a wise sage. One day this sage was teaching to a crowd atop a hill overlooking their city, when all of a sudden he pointed and yelled that a fire was raging in the city. Everyone turned and ran to help put out the fire, except for the prince, his prize student. At that, the sage announced that the prince, having truly demonstrated his transcendence of earthly things, had attained a higher level of enlightenment than anyone else.

There is something deeply wrong with that; I don’t think I need to explain why.

The point is that one can focus so deeply and strongly on the hidden, mysterious, mystical states of consciousness, and even reach high attainments and glimpse vast magical realities. But the point of living in this world is to learn what it means to be fully human. And being fully human means the whole gamut, from the highest ecstatic state to getting a pebble out of your shoe.

So my goal of opening my senses was a good one; but it was also lacking in something. It was lacking in a structure that allowed me to live harmoniously in the world, accepting it as it is, warts and all. I wanted to discard the internal structure of consciousness — the distracting thoughts and ideas — because they blocked me from feeling. But the goal is not to discard the structure, because it’s also what buffers me from the powerful, dangerous energies in the world. Opening the senses without having a strong framework to hold the incoming information only leads to an experience of overwhelming chaos. No, the goal is to transform the structure, build and strengthen it, clean out those aspects of it that aren’t working and discipline it to work better.

My consciousness is like a very dirty lens in a spyglass. I wanted to get rid of the lens because it was obscuring my view; but that would ultimately do me more harm. I have to work to polish the lens.

Now I need to consider how to change the way I structure my relationship with the world.

I think that much of my life has been an attempt to trudge through the mire and muck that has blocked me from directly experiencing the joy of life, using forcefulness and tension and violence. I have structured myself and my experience in a way that reflects static integrity. I think of this as the fortress in the wasteland, built with thick stone walls to buffer out the chaos and darkness that threaten me. The problem is that thick walls can also be a prison. And it is exhausting to maintain.

I’m learning to let go of that. But that’s only half the answer; that’s the yin aspect of it. The other half, the yang aspect, is to learn dynamic integrity: to utilize myself more effectively, to be in the world in an active, mobile, dynamic way, without being overwhelmed or trampled by the world. That’s a lot more complex than simply being the fortress in the wasteland.

The key characteristic of dynamic integrity is relationship. Not just with people, but with everything. With static integrity, you don’t need to relate to anything. The threats just come at you and bounce off, so who cares? It is completely the opposite with dynamic integrity.

Here’s another analogy: when you’re a tank, you can pretty much run over anything you see without care if you wanted to, but when you’re a mouse, you have to watch out for everything, because the least misstep could kill you. So it would seem that the mouse is weaker … but guess which there are more of in the world.

When I think back, that is what so impressed me about wing chun kung fu and tai chi. It was the feeling that every difference in the way I held my body, even the slightest one, mattered. So every part of my body had to be in relation to everything else. And when I think about why the martial aspect of martial arts bothered me, it was because, not having had much experience in learning right relationship to the world, I was then orienting myself to the world in a primarily combative way.

When I dropped out of martial arts and went to live in the woods, I began to learn right relationship with nature. But even in that case, I left something crucial out: My awareness of my body, and my feelings, to some degree.

So over the past few years, I have come back to square one. I’ve begun to develop a more harmonious relationship with my mind and my feelings, as well as my body in the past year. It has not been particularly easy, but the more I work on it, the more fulfilling it is.

I thought that the next step was to plug into the world directly. I now realize that that is folly. The next step is to learn how to dance with the world, in a state of dynamic integrity with the ever-shifting elements of life that swirl around me. It’s a more complex and subtle thing to stay balanced when dancing naked in the middle of a hurricane than when huddled in a solid underground shelter letting the storm rage far above you.

But if I can master the dance, then I won’t need a strong shelter. Then I will be my own shelter. Then the world is my home, and I am truly free.