Transparency

It is said that spiritual purity opens the way into the sacred. But the meaning and understanding of purity is elusive, and the way toward it even more so. There does not seem to be a simple, in-the-moment indicator of our purity or lack thereof. We could say that our self-centered egoism is the polluter of our inner waters. Yet our wily ego is difficult to catch in action.

One way out of this dilemma consists of the inner stillness that relaxes our very self, lulling our ego into temporary abeyance. This too can be confusing. Is inner quiet the essential requirement? What about when we need to think, to ponder, to plan, to formulate, to respond, cases where our inner world is not silent?

Thoughts and emotions need not disturb our inner peace. If that stillness and peace are deep enough, robust enough, stable enough, thoughts, emotions, and attitudes occur at a different level, one compatible with peace.

This is the state of transparency. The flow of action, response, and necessity are unimpeded. Presence is simple. I am here. And the Real can see and act by means of me. The key hallmark of transparency is simplicity, in the form of non-holding, non-clinging, non-rejecting, allowing all to be as it is, while also allowing our responsive actions as needed to change what needs changing. It is like a steady glass of muddy water that allows all the muck to settle, leaving a clear view behind. It is the Tao. Our being just flows, even as we walk through life.

Something transparent is something you can and do see through. If you are in a state of transparency, you see through yourself to the reality, both inward and external, without distortions from your own conditioning, reactions, attitudes, thoughts, and the rest.

This means being transparent to yourself, in yourself. It is not necessarily about being transparent externally, for example, in the sense of inappropriate emotional sincerity. Being transparent to yourself means seeing clearly and objectively the thoughts, emotions, and impulses arising in you, without identifying with them, without feeling or thinking that these thoughts, these emotions are you. You see it all and you let it be as it is, while you abide in the clear reality underlying all that you are, all that is. That kind of transparency communicates itself to those around you as peace.

Transparency requires having someone, your core self, who is transparent, someone who sees clearly and abides in that simplicity. However, being relaxed or transparent does not mean being passive. There is a difference between presence and awareness, a subject we will take up next time. For now, we simply note that being transparent means that you are present and transparent, that you are here and see clearly, that your being is clear and that you see from that unmuddied clarity.

The way toward transparency begins with noticing the fog of thoughts, emotions, attitudes and impulses being produced in us, a fog that catches our attention and holds us within its narrow confines. Just noticing some of that begins to clear the fog. The more steadily we stay with that noticing, the more the fog dissipates, and the more we can see through it, past our personality and its incessant grasping for our attention, for our identity. We become ourselves rather than our conditioning. We can be.

For this week, please take up the practice of inner transparency.

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