It may sound paradoxical, but finding is not always the end of seeking. If we are talking about seeking for a lost set of car keys that is one thing, but when we talk about spiritual seeking that is something else entirely. In the case of keys I admit that finding definitely means the end of seeking. We seek for our keys, but once we see them we stop seeking immediately. You would be a little strange to keep looking for keys after you found them.
Many of us who follow a spiritual path know that the same is not necessarily the case in the more subtle domain of spiritual experience. In fact many of us seem to find what we are looking for in a powerful experience of realization or insight and then, when the experience fades, continue seeking for another experience. Isn’t that like continuing to look for your keys once you have found them?
“No.” you may complain, “You cannot compare keys to spiritual revelation. If you find your keys you have them in hand and it would be crazy to keep looking for them. Spiritual experiences are more fleeting they come and go and you can never hold them in hand like a set of keys.”
Let’s think about this. If you are looking for lost keys and you see them on a shelf you may leave them there if you don’t need them right away and walk into another room. You don’t have them in hand, but you know where they are. If someone asks “Are your keys lost?” You will say, “No, they are on the shelf.” You don’t have to hold them in your hand to stop searching for them. You found them and so you are no longer concerned with seeking for them.
What if this were true for our spiritual experiences as well? If we had a powerful experience of revelation yesterday; do we need to have again today? When do we decide that we have already found what we were looking for?
One way to think about this is to consider the idea of ‘object permanence’. The great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget explained that ‘object permanence’ is one of the most important achievements that babies make during their first two years of life. When an infant realizes object permanence what they realize is that physical objects exist whether they are looking at them or not. Before this stage a baby will relate to an object as existing only while they are seeing it, once you hide it behind your back, as far as the baby is concerned, it is just gone. That is why the game peek-a-boo is endlessly enthralling to babies.
So we all attained object permanence in relation to physical objects when we were babies. We never doubt any more that our car keys continue to exist even when we don’t see them. We don’t necessarily seem to have achieved this same level of attainment in the spiritual realm. We haven’t learned that the truth revealed in our spiritual experiences is true even when the experiences fade. We could say that we haven’t attained “Spiritual Object Permanence.” When we do attain Spiritual Object Permanence we won’t need to keep seeking spiritual experiences over and over again because we will know beyond doubt that the truth they have already revealed to us continues to be true even after our experience fades. Then, and only then, can we truly end our seeking.
Jeff Carreira
Finding again and again and again perhaps gives us the spiritual confidence to stop finding ?
Wonderful post Jeff
It appears to me that when doubt is removed from what was initially found beyond the mind no further seeking is needed. That does not mean that we do not seek to find out what it means to give full expression to that which we now know & love. I see this as a seeking from a position of abundance rather than a position of lack.
That’s quite beautiful Jeff. Thank you!
This is really great, Jeff. It made me think that realizing ‘object permanence’ or maybe actually ‘subject-permanence’, because we are looking at who we really are, is more subtle though not fundamentally different and an evolutionary step in itself.
I just love this post Jeff! You bring this with such a simplicity that my mind stops and
I experience total wholeness. Since I said to myself that I do not need any proof anymore at all, life has never been so deep and intens than before…..Spiritual confindence is growing. Thank you.