When the mind leaves Love (the Divine), obstacles appear.

The illusion is that I somehow “am” this body and this mind, somehow separate in my sense of ownership.  Yet, in truth, I have no idea about who I was before entering this body or what/who I’ll be when this body wears out.  As my awareness deepens to the illusion of thoughts, I can see how they are just mental formations that can carry me further and further from the reality of the next arising moment.  Yet, there’s a truth that forever keeps feeding this consciousness, a command to Love in the face of the delusive separating mind.  At the end of the day we seem to find the journey wasn’t about some spiritual linear achievement but about our capacity to choose Love.  At the end of our occupation of this body we all surrender it, we all experience the body’s wearing out, we all say good bye to our friends/family/stuff, and we all have the wake of actions taken while inhabiting this body.  At some point we come to see the journey wasn’t about what we have, what we’ve achieved, or how much people seem to like us.  Our peace or misery comes from a review of how dedicated we’ve been in dropping our obstacles to Love.

A spiritual practice dedicated to dropping the illusion of a separated ego seems essential.  Some have referred to this process as ‘self settling into Self’.  Actions directed from Self are without exception driven from Love.  Any notion of ownership appears absurd and there’s a sense of radical humility in the less obstructed journeyman.  The lower vibration of the separated mind more frequently moves from fear.  Caught in perceptions of ‘right’, the wake of these actions is usually turbulent, disharmonious, and out of rhythm to the beauty of the Divine.  Interestingly, those choosing Love (Oneness) by definition must drop their obstacles to those choosing Fear (Twoness).  There can be no exception to One just as there can be no exception to choosing Love.

So where does violence begin; where is opportunity robbed; where is harm done?  Without exception, harm occurs when actions move from a sense of separation.  Violence begins where the sense of belonging stops.  The practice is to forever deepen the sense of interconnection.  The perception of helping or hurting another vanishes as we deepen the felt sense of Oneness, helping or hurting self as Self.  In choosing Love, the choice seems to be full acceptance of the moment, no matter what.  Instead of ‘my’ body, it’s ‘this’ body, gifted to me, meeting ‘this’ moment, gifted to me.  The mind’s work is to dig for the gift of what’s given.  The will is needed to make space for drilling into the mystery of what ‘is’.  Meditation/prayer seem to be the best process.

The aim is to drop obstacles to Love, to live in appreciation for what’s been given, to meet others’ restlessness as our own, to forgive mistakes, to have the courage to openly meet new arising moments free from judgment, yet forever motivated from Love and our sense of interconnection.

The journey…..to drop our obstacles to Love.

The gift…the opportunity to participate.

The result…sustainable joy and a rhythmic/harmonious wake.

The way we language our response to these questions can determine the degree of peace or restlessness we carry through our day.  It influences our degree of joy or suffering.  I’ve personally found the first step is to eliminate my sense of possession or ownership of a body.  It’s been difficult, but productive to move from attachments to what I “have” and what I’ve “achieved”.  With some awareness, it’s quite easy to see that’s not who I am.  For sure, I carry a wake of my life, but that’s not what pushes the boat forward.  What’s happened before had to happen for my awareness of this moment to be where it is.  A great practice is to give thanks for all of it because from those experiences, painful and joyful, my awareness has arrived to where I am, now.

So how do I move from a defined sense of identity, from an attachment to my story, my body and my mind?  Again, here’s where language is tremendously helpful.  General Semantics instructs us to strike the verb “to be” from our language, recognizing the individual nature of perception (i.e. instead of saying ‘the banana is yellow’, say ‘the banana appears yellow’).  This respect and honor to our individual experience fosters peace over war and softens our journey to grow.  On the contrary, the degree to which we attach to our notions of ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’, to our fixed belief systems, determines our slowed journey as we become entangled in conflict.  I’m not sure who said it, but I resonate with it: We can choose to be right or choose to honest. In honesty, we’re curious and open to explore with intention to what’s best for all with harm to none.  In honesty, we realize we have no idea who we were or where we’ll be when these bodies wear out.  In honesty, we know there’s no awareness of creating our bodies.  In honesty, we see the value to saying ‘the body’ and ‘the mind’, rather than attaching possession through use of ‘my body’ and ‘my mind’.  I don’t know who I was before the body carried me (nobody).  I don’t know who I am in this body (somebody).  I know my journey is to turn awareness over to what’s bigger than me, but what’s still connected to me, in unobstructed love (somebody else), and I’m at peace knowing I can’t end when the body drops off (nobody/somebody, emptiness is form and form is emptiness).  With an attitude of no gain, but one of depth, love and respect, filled with wonder and humility, the separated illusion of ego drops away.  I am All and I am Nothing.  I am simply my moment to moment Awareness, deepening in my intentions to remove obstacles to Love, deepening the felt sense of our interconnection with all beings and non-beings.  Within the realm of One Love we treasure divinity.  We can see how our problems all stem from the belief we’re separate from God.

In Love, when the earthquake comes, we’re solid in our felt sense of One.  The relief to the transitory nature of each moment comes in knowing we can never be separate.  Bodies come and go. Flowers bloom and wither.  Entropy and energy dissipation happen.  The mind creates thoughts that come and go.  Yet, separateness is an illusion.  It may be time to ban the use of ‘birth’ and ‘death’.  It implies a beginning and an end.  We can’t prove an absolute end, so why not just be more semantically correct and say ‘changed’ or ‘transformed’?  No thing is nothing.  As science advances we’re just beginning to better understand how emptiness is fullness and fullness is emptiness.

So why are we here?  Most great spiritual teachers would say we’re here to ‘wake up’.  Wake up to what?  To Love and our resistance to it.  While we’re tempted to think our salvation lies in our good deeds, perhaps the greater message is that it’s not at all related to some linear progression of spiritual achievement, but rather to our deeper exploration of our created obstacles to Love.  Recognizing this gift of life, could we be here to keep from taking anything for granted, to steer from complaint, to cultivate our relationship to ‘this arising moment’, and to forever dig deeper into what our heart calls us to?

A regular meditation/prayer practice seems most helpful in listening to the heart’s (Divine) call.  This work of cultivating depth through stewardship and awareness helps slow energy dissipation so we can deepen along the way in this body, ‘being/doing’ to the fullest.  It seems good to cultivate a higher vibration that smashes our restlessness.  It seems helpful to take a pause, to not loose our sense of Unity.