How about I give it too yall one more time.. Imagine what life would be like if we didnt know how to use our arms or hands; I they hung limply at our sides. How limited and clumsy out daily lives would be, how much we would be missing, for no good reason at all! Yet its even more so with our Spirit. We may live, breathe, walk, and talk, but most of the time we dont use more than a fraction of our spiritual power that would make life feel infinitely more natural and more worth living. Its not that were bad or wicked or anything like that. Were just spiritually clumsy; were way out of balance because we usually see life from the view of the mouse-worrying endlessly about the terribly limited world at the tips of out whiskers. Wisdom and joy come only from learning how to see a wider, much more wondrous world; and power comes only from the Spirit within. This is why most of us end up feeling weak, lifeless, weary to the bone; we drag ourselves around just trying to make it through each day, often pausing to wonder whether the good times in life are worth all the effort and pain. Changing out vision is what it is about, and the change begins with a look at two worlds we inhabit at the same time: The outer world if appearances, and the inner world of Spirit. From the world of appearances, life may look very different from one minute to the next, one person to the next, or one age of the world to the next; but from the Big View- from the world of Spirit- theres only one process going on: We get born, we have good times and bad times, we experience a wide range of emotions such as desire, love, anger, and fear, we face various problems and challenges that make us feel good or bad about ourselves, we learn some things and forever wonder about other things, and then we move on into the unknown. Life is truly just this one story, and it fits Joan of Arc as well as Adolf Hitler; primitive tribesmen as well as Harvard professors. Whether we get from place to place on foot, or oxcart, or in a Ferrari; whether we carve our message into a stone, or type them up on a computer; whether we live in caves, hunts, or three-bedroom brick ranchers, does it really change that basic Spiritual storyline? When our central aim is to find this inner kingdom, then we discover how it is that everything comes to us: We see that every person, place, and event in our lives is perfectly designed to teach us something we need to learn in order to get free.. So we get hit by a truck or elected to office, we get sent to prison or win a million dollars, we get terminal cancer or become rich and famous-we learn spiritual lessons from all of it equally. We use every situation, every moment of our lives to get looser, wiser, and freer. This is what Jesus called being in the world but not of it, and what in the East is known as Zen, Karma Yoga and Tantra Yoga. We just have to stay open and wide awake, being students-rather than victims- of our lives. It helps a lot if we can remember this: Life, like any other exciting story, is bound to have painful and scary parts, boring and depressing parts, but its a brilliant story, and its up to us how it will turn out in the end. The Spiritual Mystery of our true inner nature is what makes sense of it all, but it cant be found in words, books, philosophies, or even religions. We have to solve it for ourselves by being sharp and noticing all the clues. And we have to calm down quite a bit in order to do that. It may take a very long time and a great deal of effort, but as many of us have noticed by now, life makes no sense at all without diving into the wonder and challenge of that Great Mystery. From the moment were born, something deep inside pushes us to cry out for our mothers breast, a loving touch, a strong arm to rock us and soothe us. Were always seeking. We seek to feel safe, loved, warm- in a word we seek a state of peace. At first, our mother is enough for us, but lasting peace is part of the Mystery; it can never be found in the world of appearances. Soon we come upon toys, games, friends, new kinds of food, and on and on. Everybody just wants to feel good, and we keep reaching for anything that might do the trick. Yet more things we discover, the hungrier we seem to be for still more. Every joint smoked, every drink drunk, every pill popped, every crime committed, is just to get some relief- just to feel good, to feel safe or powerful. Its like going crazy from a toothache without knowing what to do about it, we blindly grope around in pain, and some people do it more violently than others. Perhaps the most important realization of our whole lives is when it finally hits us that.. Nothing we ever get, see, taste, smell, touch, hear, or think about, is going to bring us the peace we really seek.. The truth is, life everywhere is very hard, because were holding so much pain from being out of balance. Like it or not, the BIG Truth has to be approached from all the smallest truths about ourselves; the journey into the Great Mystery has to begin by solving all the dull, practical mysteries of our lives, like why we keep making the same kinds of choices which hurt us time after time.. Every thought, word, and deed is a seed which we plant in the world. All our lives, we harvest the fruits of those seeds. If we plant desire, greed, fear, anger and doubt, then thats what will fill our lives. Plant love, courage, understanding, good humor, and thats what we get back. This isnt negotiable; its a law of energy, just like gravity. For example, lets say I make fun of somebody whos crippled, the only way I could do that is if I felt no connection between us. So at some time in the future, my karma might be to become crippled, or to marry or give birth to someone crippled-not as punishment, but simply to allow me to open my heart to someone in a crippled body; to allow me to undo the separateness I created in the first place. Its as if I ran an ad in the Teaching Wanted section of the Spiritual Classifieds for an experience to show me that were all just us; theres no them. Because Karma works this way to help each of us gain wisdom and compassion, it looks a lot like punishment reward, but is really isnt. Its more like magnetism- its just the way energy works. The Golden Rule- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you- gets to be more of a scientific truth than a moral preaching. When Christ says, Love thy neighbor as thyself, Hes simply telling it like it is: Were all connected, and He can see the glue. The world we live in is really not very big; its a closed space. Just as our pollution doesnt disappear or go away, neither do our actions or even our thoughts, whether good or bad. Each moment counts. Each of us has total responsibility for lightening the Karmic load of this sweet, pretty little planet. And each of us has the power to do so, every moment of every day. Everything that happens to us in life has two purposes at once. For example, going to prison is paying Karmic dues for things we came here to learn or things weve done in the past (not necessarily the crime itself). But going to prison is also one more opportunity to come closer to Truth, God, Self, Freedom- whatever we want to call it. Prison life is so negative and intense, prisoners sometime get the chance to work out karma and build strength in a period of months that would might have taken fifty years on the streets, if they could have done it at all. What a blessing! The bottom line is that we create our own curses or blessings. Every experience comes to us spiritually neutral, no matter what it looks like from the mouses view. If we can accept our karma without shame, pride, bitterness, or regret, then some old dues get paid, and at the very same time weve been given a chance to increase our strength, love, and wisdom. Its not important to waste our time trying to analyze the karmic causes and effects of things that happen to us; too many of the wires and switches and alarms are hidden. If I get a big package in the mail from some company thousands of miles away, and I have no idea how they got my name or what theyre all about, the only sensible thing to do is to open the package and do whatever feels right at the time. Same thing with karma. No need to look into a crystal ball or go to a psychic to see why such-and-such happened and then such-and-such, and so on. We just have to look through every days mail- all the experiences of our lives- and handle it all without getting lost in speculation over the past. Once we understand karma, we begin to have more understanding and compassion for others peoples trips. We see that were all just beautiful children of God who have developed these stash-bags of karma by the choices weve made, and were all working through our karma as best we can. Our stash bags are each unique- no two people have exactly the same karma. Yet the journey (working it all out) is basically the same for us all. As we become more aware, or conscious, of the whole process, we tend to cooperate more and more with the law of Karma, and our stash-bags get noticeably lighter. We become conscious beings- people who act in harmony with the truth in everything we do, from brushing our teeth to planning our lives. We do what feels right rather than what feels easiest. Its quiet a relief! The very end of our karmic journey- when weve completely lightened the burdens in our karmic stash- is called enlightenment. We become like God walking around in a body. Every thought, word and deed is in Truth, and creates no sense of separateness in the world. Christ, Buddha, and many others reached this state. They became so untied with Truth, they ceased to create any karma at all- they were 100% part of nature with no resistance to the way life works best. But the punch line of it all is that we all must become enlightened. Saint or murderer, president or bank robber, each of us is on the same journey, the same process of wholeness, and we will eventually go all the way to the end. Whether today, next year, or a hundred thousand lifetimes from now, each of us will come to a point where were tired of exploiting and being exploited, tired of looking out for number one, slipping on banana peels, setting alarms; tired of constantly creating more karma. At that point, help magically arrives. It may come through spiritual practices like yoga and meditation, or by meeting friends-on-the-path, or seeing an inspiring sunset, or just reading something like this. But in whatever form it comes, help does come. (It may not be help for what we Want, but itll help bring us the tools and experiences we Need.) From that moment on, our lives may seem much the same as ever, yet theres an added feeling of peace or security that comes from playing with the house advantage. We may still have fears and lusts and toothaches and hemorrhoids and all the stuff of this world, but theres a tiny part of us that knows its all right, and that makes all the difference. Amidst all the old stuff and craziness of our normal lives, we begin to focus our energy on the things that help to lighten our karma- quieting our minds, serving others, remembering not to get so lost, having faith in the way life works.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 05:45:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015