GOOD MORNING!
Thank you
Thank you for bearing me
in the way of whole being
understanding more than that
feeling not only
dancing playing singing
more
meet other people
joining the patterns
and
opening the shells up
really being with you
yes
that
Thank you for bearing me: for carrying and ferrying me; for setting my compass; for putting up with me; for giving birth to me; for wearing my identity; and for baring me, stripping off my facade.
The basic purpose of this book, and of this struggling world, is to help us learn to recenter ourselves and abide in spiritual awareness, so that we let the one Life live out as us all, in ever Greater Love.
You who are led to these pages have already known the divine reality which is your hidden Self. Everyone experiences this now and again. And some people are made into a dwelling place, a living room for this Presence. Each of us is born to attain such times, within the rhythm of God. We will, when by grace we make this our end and our means.
The Suffering Servant
Our human state is a vision of life cut off from God, withering branches sliced from the Tree. Since we’ve lost awareness of our great identity, we seem to be a million miles away from it. Our ego is the acting out of our separated mind, fearful, desirous, lacking, self-promoting, self-protecting, self-loathing, while serving great purposes unknown to itself. Whether we are “good” people or “bad” people, we remain just as much exiled; indeed the sinner in us is often apt to be nearer to turning.
Every perception we have alters itself in accordance with world beliefs. Our surroundings take on sinister threatening qualities, including our own bodies. The happy pictures we catch in the fun house mirror can be just as distorted; when rewards are anchored in material belief they feed our loneliness.
It’s tremendously ironic that we dodge the very throne of all our sovereignty and invulnerability. As isolated mortals, we imagine ourselves bound by every constraint and attempt to consign our power to idols, to systems, to leaders, dismembering the Body of Christ, the Buddha Body by ripping out our heart and placing it on an awesome podium.
Yet all our problems, sufferings and faults are transmuted, and reveal their hidden nature as a golden footpath through our selfsame heart, as we take the return journey.
Our armored self runs away scared as fast as it can in order to “stay the same as ever.” But only this hiding from our real Self can bring us all back to conscious spirituality.
How we flee from love and freedom each us spends a life in hide and seek
and our nations cast huge shadows of arms and false security war and fear
Each dithyramb of the heart echoes the same thirsting We must distract ourselves all waking moments
with work food TV reading household chores and bury deep our dreams For if we feel our longing
then long ago and stars away are found filling the room the whole time Our house of cards
snaps under a swinging wrecker’s ball We know our old enemy and are known
defenseless clear and musical becoming streams
888
Haven’t you seen miracles taking place? Coincidences that we know happen purposefully, everything falling into place effortlessly, crucial events that occur impossibly. Momentarily we acknowledge a vast outer realm, then slip back into our constricted routines, without saying thank you, forgetting again.
This universe is spiritual and divinely ordered.
We need breath, gravity, the sun, all sorts of giving that is Faithfulness, not a matter of course. The giving Source exceeds our unbelief---we see miracles occur even when we’ve written things off.
If the world were material, we’d always be skating on thin ice. Everything’s problematic: jobs or food supply could vanish, relations could splinter, we could face a disease or accidents, unjust imprisonment, insanity or death. Or these could hit our loved ones. Or World War III.
With divided intent, we grope about for complete forgiveness and loyalty, gentleness and fortitude, or clarity of understanding. We’re mended, our wholeness is unveiled, only when we step onto the spiritual level.
We are like the caliph in the story of Aladdin, whose wealth was inadequate to fashion the one brocaded window, which was purposefully left half-done in the palace the genie created. We cannot handle one problem, whether of supply, health, or psychology. Yet instead of feeling awe at the perfection of our palace, we feel anxiety, pain and anger over that unfinished window.
“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” We build beautiful homes, but always in the doubt, apprehension and dread of a mortal awareness. We fear it’s all a tissue of lies that could evaporate in our hands, until we feel the presence of God appearing as us and as everything, which is Peace that passeth understanding. Only then is the house built, the past all redeemed and realized, like electricity running instantly down a line from the beginning, and then happily we sit together in the kitchen warm and light.
888
God is questing, not quested for.
We become Who We Are when we devote ourselves in every way we can, with our attention, our intention, our time, our resources, tapping our sources. Lifting our awareness is priority A to Z. When we commit to finding our path, the course of a life is just enough time. In taking this route, we need no special ability or will power; and faults don’t impede us, they covertly impel us. Every ant, every pebble is born to be Itself.
Beloved, the over-arching considerations are the critical ones: Everyone can do things well, so what are we doing, what are we longing for?
Seek and seek and seek and ye shall find.
Rumi says: You thirst; seek water, no matter what, and you will find the source.
Add: We only start searching after it hits us that we’re thirsty.
If we maintain a divine discontent, we will not settle down with only a measure of raised Consciousness. Let’s not be satisfied and yet be satisfied.
The Clever Man
A clever man once wandered into a poor provincial village. He took up goldsmithing and lightning-quick acquired advanced skills. The realism and delicacy of his figures, the exquisite intricacy of his designs, began to attract buyers from the nearby towns. Then he became bored with his work and just gave it up.
Next the clever man took up the violin. Soon, on market days, astounded throngs started flocking to his virtuoso concerts. Yet again he grew tired of practicing and finally quit performing altogether.
The clever man lived high on the hog and ran through all his money. Eventually he found himself in such straitened circumstances that he had to beg shelter from the only one who would take him in, whom they called the simple man. This man and his wife lived in a rude hut, wore burlap sacks and subsisted mainly on bread and turnips. But they would say that in their castle they sat down in their robes to feast. Exasperated, the clever man told the simple one, “You could never ever become as clever as me.”
Soon the clever man grew restless and lit out on foot to the closest city. He became a physician of note, overworked, dropped that and left. And so he studied the range of difficult and abstruse subjects, always abandoning them and moving away.
At last he arrived in the capital. He was standing on a street where many carriages were drawing up, and people were streaming in and out of someone’s home. He asked a passerby what was happening, and was told that everybody was visiting a righteous one. He started grabbing people, yelling, “There’s no such thing as a righteous one! I’ve proven in my research, they cannot heal! They’re only trying to rob you blind. Get away from that charlatan!”
A policeman was called to stop the assaults, and he cried, “I arrest you in the name of the King!” Now the clever man really blew his top. “King! What King? Are you such a credulous fool that you believe in this King! The powerful noblemen try to trick you, so they can control every move you make. Have you ever actually seen this King that you supposedly serve?”
The policeman, who had never seen the King, was at a complete loss, so he brought the clever man to see the judge. Then he put the judge in a tizzy too, since he had never seen the King either, so the magistrate ordered, “Take him to the prime minister; he’ll know what to do!”
So he was brought to the center of the city, where an enormous bejeweled palace stood, with many smaller palaces stuck into its sides like candied cherries in the icing of a cake. They were ushered into the prime minister’s home and met him in his office.
The clever man ranted away, about the invisible King.
“Let me tell you how I was appointed,” came the minister’s warm reply. “When the King wanted a prime minister, everyone who applied was self-serving and out to manipulate things. So he dispersed his messengers to the furthermost frontiers to ferret out a proper candidate. They knew they’d come to the right place when they heard what people called me.
“Don’t you recognize me yet? I am the simple man.
“Once you told me that I could never ever become as clever as you. Now you’ve already entered the edge of the palace, and some day soon, Beloved, you will fill with delight, and become as simple as I am.
“I see the face of the King every day.”
(After the oral tradition of Nachman of Bratslav, Poland)
888
As soon as Adam and Eve eat the fruit, they think “the eyes of them both were opened,” when they were closed. Since then, we’ve been dreaming that we’ve awakened, and that God has angrily chased us out of the garden, and we flee in terror and guilt. We envision an Archangel, Michael, stationed at the gate to ward us off, waving his flaming sword eternally. Yet when we truly awaken, then we see, our dream image is all the time a fiery beacon to guide us round back Home.
A horse with blinders kept focused on a dusty, pebbly rut that stayed always in front of its face, burning its eyes. Today the blinders fell away, and the horse found itself surrounded by a joyous abundant world. When it saw the enormous glory, tears bathed its opened eyes.
We’re locomotives. When we’re still, no effort will budge us an inch. Then when we move, we pull the whole train.
Yes we are here again
it happens for moments in the years
then the years are the moments