The Ancient Wisdom tells us that the 'Truth is the Truth, whatever we may call it'.
Why suffer from being who we think we are? Why suffer from being who we know we are? Thinking and knowing are, and always will be, incomplete. They can only provide us with a useful but partial perspective of the absolute truth of reality. A tiny touch.
We develop a sense of individual self, as we think and know it. Yet the truth of reality is beyond the possibilities of personal thinking and knowing. The truth is simply too much for the limitations of human learning and knowledge.
Wisdom is here, there, everywhere. Wisdom is experienced and fully active in the now. Learn to unlearn. Know that you don't know. Be what you really are ... and forget the rest?
It occured to me that many of us, especially in the western world, often say we must 'fight another day'. I certainly did, and often, and that's because many of us are too conditioned to strive to succeed.
I woke up today not to fight but to 'love another day'.
Just one different word and a whole different world, and an entirely different attitude.
So, every day now, I continue to love to live so that I can live to love.
It works for me.
I am so fortunate to live next to a small medieval village, surrounded by vineyards, and next to the Pyrenees, in the south of france.
This week, although it's still late march/early april, the sun and the blue skies have been glorious and so hot.
After a long walk, and following my meditation, I was reminded again just how much nature teaches us about who we really are. In walking, we can feel nature so easily. In driving a car, we are more likely to just see nature. Yet I have learned that nature has a tangible force that permeates the entire universe.
In that force, we can commune. In that force, we can feel our total connectedness to all of life. In that force we clearly see the continuous cycles of growth and transformation and feel the underlying infinity of it all. It's so natural. It helps us realise that we are a part of a higher force that guides us. It helps us realise the power and the wisdom of nature's laws. In nature we can see, hear, feel, smell, touch and taste our reality and truth. I find my walks, in beautiful and natural surroundings anywhere in the world, fill me with spirit, gratitude and awe.
Yet we sometimes think we know more. How many of us are so busy with our own thoughts and busy lives that we don't recognise or forget the guiding truth that nature offers?
If we could simply 'be in the zone' then everything would seem to flow more naturally and effortlessly.
But because we have associated success with effort we have made ourselves feel guilty whenever we take a naturally relaxed approach to life. I think we have missed the point.
What we need to do is become 'totally aware' or mindful, which is another way of saying that we need to be fully in the here and now. We can only do this if we are in a 'naturally relaxed state'. Beyond thinking and even beyond feeling. The paradox is that it takes effort to become effortless.
More at www.in-love-with-wisdom.com
I realised today that it can be very painful to realise and fully accept some of your beliefs and behaviours about yourself. I have always understood that masks were a psychological device for presenting to others the image you prefer to give to them, but I realised that I have been presenting a mask to myself for a long time. Today, I took it off.
Ancient Sages tell us that, in an enlightened state, we are blissful and happy, with a deep inner peace. Today I felt much more awake to the reality of who I am. By taking the mask off I felt really really awake. But the feelings I experienced were the opposite of bliss, happiness and inner peace! There was a kind of inner peace, but quite different to the peaceful moments I have often experienced.
Hopefully, I am travelling somewhere?
Much of life is about finding ways to lift the limiting beliefs that we have chosen to accept earlier on in life, in our culture, education and experience, and which prevent us from achieving our full potential, or at worst, may even destroy us.
Young children, without such beliefs formed, are happily enlightened without knowing it. That's why we can learn so much from the wisdom of children.
Whatever path we take, whatever spiritual disciplines we practice, the key is to remove negative and limiting beliefs and replace them with positive and creative beliefs. It is these positive and creative beliefs that are our natural innate state.
Eventually, we become more positive and creative than negative and limiting and, eventually, these better beliefs will be understood to be more than beliefs, but will be understood to be the reality of who and what we are. Enlightenment.
But the most important and enlightened realisation is that we are all naturally connected, at a higher level, as one, and one enlightened part of the whole is really enlightenment of the whole.
I like the notion that if there are a sufficient and a critical mass of people on the planet who are living in a more enlighted state most of the time, that this will trigger a more enlightened state naturally for others. So we work to help others and ourselves as one humanity.
In moments of laughter we go way beyond the rational mind.
For an instant, we seem to lose control. We freewheel. Fear and judgement simply disappear. We glow. We become our natural selves.
It's great to laugh, but too much laughing seems to then cause pain.
Yet the only thing to do in pain and suffering is to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
What's extraordinary is that life seems to be a dance between opposites, until we laugh. And then we remember, momentarily?
We are told that there are at least three key phases to a successful and fulfilled spiritual life:
1. Blissful Ignorance - 2. Painful Knowledge - 3. Blissful Wisdom
1. Blissful Ignorance - a new born baby seems to be the nearest to this first phase of perfection, and connection with One and All.
2. Painful Knowledge - when a child learns, for the first time, about life and death and develops an incorrect belief in a 'seperate' self. Then, as a result, we develop our egos and our sense of fear, scarcity and need for competitiveness.
3. Blissful Wisdom - when we realise who we truly are. When we realise that we are part of a highly interconnected One and All. We are not seperated at this higher level. We are not ego's. This Oneness of life, the essence of which is eternal, continues beyond the mere birth and death of the physical body. There is no death only continual life and transformation! This Oneness of life is abundant and full. There is no need to compete - only to openly communicate, collaborate, learn, share, serve, create, and, most importantly, enjoy! .
The Ancient Sages talk of many different paths, but that they all ultimately lead to the same one Truth. It's impossible to do otherwise. The Truth is the Truth.
Each path can be likened to a raft to help us cross a river to the other side.
Once we have crossed, we are then supposed to leave the raft and continue on our way. It has done its job.
The trouble is, we can become too attached to our raft and want to keep carrying it on our back, as a burden. Even worst is when we never start our crossing at all but build a beautiful dwelling on our raft to stay. Some even measure the raft and know exactly all its dimensions and like to spend all their time painting it pretty colours and going nowhere.
I like the other analogy of 'pointing a finger to the moon'. Here the problem is getting too distracted and fixed on the finger, and not even seeing the moon.
But it is not that easy, as it can be very comforting to have a good raft sometimes, and letting go can sometimes be scary?
The mystic seeks the experience of unity with a Higher Self.
The sage seeks understanding of the Higher Self
The saint seeks to work through the Higher Self for the good of others
The non-seeker probably seeks something else.
The Highers Self seeks mystics, sages, saints and non-seekers?
Why seek?
The Ancient Hindu sages in their 'forest academies' in India would claim that a student who is ready would take 12 years to achieve the enlightened state of Samadhi.
The Zen Buddhists teach that we can shake off the errors of wrong learning and realise the 'Buddha within', our natural state of enlightenment, instantly.
The first method is concerned with 'one to one' teaching and demonstration from a guru with plenty of time for the student to reflect, contemplate, meditate, assimilate and realise the Truth.
The second method is concerned with shaking us out of our incorrect beliefs into the natural state of Truth.
If we are all each others students and teachers, in all that we do, maybe we can, both, shake each other into glimpses of Truth moments, when we can, and, also gradually help each other realise the underlying Truth at the same time?
The Ancient Sages from the East ask us to simplify our lives and not become attached to material wealth and, also, to become detached from the results of our work, good or bad.
The Modern Guru's from the West ask us to better manage our complex lives, focus on goals and their results, and create wealth, so that we may then be in a better position to help ourselves and others.
Diametrically opposed views from opposite hemispheres of the planet, ancient and modern!
Rather like the brain, two hemispheres. One hemisphere concerned with detailed logical 'bottom line results in time' and the other hemisphere concerned with a holistic view, feelings 'beyond the bottom line' in the here and now.
The Ancient Greeks taught 'as above so below'. Maybe the two hemispheres of Planet Earth are a reflection of the two hemispheres of our brain?
