Upaya: Skilful Means

Upaya… skilful means… can so easily be misunderstood from the outside.

It can sound like a strategy. A method. A kind of spiritual tailoring, as though something is being adjusted, refined, delivered in the right shape so it can be received.

But from the inside, it doesn’t feel like that at all.

There is no one here deciding what to say next, no quiet calculation about what will land, what will move someone forward, what will keep them engaged. It’s far more immediate than that. More intimate. More alive.

It begins in listening.

Not just to the words being spoken, but the field in which they arise. The subtle atmosphere of a room, the texture of attention, the energy available, the places where something is softening, or bracing, or quietly opening without yet knowing itself as such.

The satsang field is not passive. It is not a backdrop. It is a living intelligence.

Something in me attunes to that… or perhaps more truthfully, something here is already not separate from it. And from within that shared space, a response begins to form. Not as a thought constructed and delivered, but as something drawn out, almost before it is known.

I never know what will come.

Even now, writing this, there is no sense of moving toward a predetermined understanding. It unfolds as it is needed. As it is called. One letter, one word, one sentence at a time.

That calling does not come from the surface. It comes from where the meeting is real. In Being.

Sometimes what’s offered is simple, almost obvious. A gentle reflection, a small shift in perspective that meets someone exactly where they are, without asking them to leap beyond what’s available. These are provisional pointings. They may seem small, even incomplete… but they are precise.

Because they belong to that moment.

But other times, something much more direct comes through. A deeper truth spoken without cushioning, without gradual introduction. And yet even that is not random. It is not imposed. It appears when there is a readiness, ripeness… or at least a crack in the structure that is enough.

Upaya, from the inside, is not about choosing between these.
It is about sensing what can be met, and when.
Not what should be said in some ideal sense, but what is actually receivable.
What the nervous system can hold.
What the heart can recognise without turning away.

And this is not a limitation.
It is a form of love.

Because truth forced is not truth received. It becomes noise, or defence, or something distorted and missed. But truth that meets the opening, however small, has a way of working its way through. It lingers. It deepens. It reveals itself over time.

So the breadcrumbs are not lesser truths.

They are living ones.

They carry within them the same depth, but in a form that can be taken in, digested, lived.

And over time, something shifts.

The one who was following the breadcrumbs begins to taste what they point to. Not conceptually, but directly. And in that tasting, the sense of any distance between what is known and what is spoken begins to fall away. The deeper truths no longer feel distant or abstract. They are recognised as already here.

This is the quiet movement of upaya.

Not a teacher guiding a student along a path, but life meeting itself, precisely where it appears to be, and gently revealing its own depth.

From the outside, it might look like adaptation.
From the inside, it is intimacy.

An intimacy so complete that what is spoken cannot be separated from the moment it arises in. The words belong to the meeting. They are shaped by it, drawn from it, and dissolve back into it.

Nothing is carried over.
Nothing is stored.
Each meeting begins empty.

And from that emptiness… everything can be given. Not as something prepared, but as something true.

Here.
Now.
Exactly as it is needed.

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Join Imogen for Weekly Zoom Groups, Sunday Satsang Gatherings, Retreats and other events. Book a 1-1 Session or explore Imogen’s other offerings at beyondimogen.com.

You’re also warmly invited to explore her two other Substack spaces — Imogen’s Satsang: video recordings from live gatherings, and The End of Seeking: a podcast Imogen co-hosts with her husband, Martyn.

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Thank you for walking alongside me ~ Imogen