A wish for enlightenment

 “You must wish for enlightenment,” Suzhen Liu said in one of her talks. “That’s strange,” I thought to myself, “isn’t the wish for enlightenment another desire, just a more refined one than all the materialistic ones?”

There is a space at our disposal—and it takes an alert, open and equanimous mindset to be in it—that is Home. Sure, we may be out of equilibrium from time to time but we can always return.

It’s not a reaching for, it’s not a running away from—it’s a letting go, an insight, a return to Original Mind. Just as the instinctive jumping from the rope in the dark relaxes as we realize it’s not a snake, the space just opens up.

The Prodigal Son remembered one fine day and so can we. All it takes is the sudden realization, “be still and know I am God” and the quest is over. The wish for enlightenment is just the remembrance of Home-coming.

Desire is thought producing feelings

 Desire is thought producing feelings.

David Bohm

The insight for anyone traveling the Way is simply this: nothing that our thinking process comes up with beats the creation arising from the “Field of Infinite Possibilities.” Feelings are the gateway to what lies beyond our conditioning. Along the Way our feelings beget action. Any occasion where thoughts produce feelings which in turn drive action is inferior. The opportunity is to observe when psychological thought tries to interfere with “life as is.” That’s when we are invited to pause and take another look at what is in front of us.

Meanwhile the “Field of Infinite Possibilities” creates

 Am I being or am I being manifested?

I drive to the bakery and I am silent and content.

Am I the body that is driving?

Am I the sensation of the foot on the accelerator?

Am I the perception of traffic? 

Or the volition to put bread on the table?

Am I the consciousness of this experience?

Meanwhile the “Field of Infinite Possibilities” creates.

Maybe it’s an unfolding revolution in Russia, or

perhaps a spiritual breakthrough a friend has.

Am I being or am I being manifested?

You may say buying bread is mundane,

but being content and still is magical.

Taking the elevator to heaven

 The quest up the illusionary enlightenment mountain can be compared with a traffic analogy. You are stuck in traffic and you see the lights changing but no car is moving. You get out of the car and you go to the first floor of a nearby building and see that traffic is even stopped as far down as the second set of lights but that is as far as you can see. You take the elevator to the roof top and you are finally able to see the accident. A towing truck is already approaching so you conclude that shortly traffic should be moving again. 

It feels good to be reminded that we are “That”, but if we spend our time at the bottom of the imaginary mountain projecting into the masters, frustration will grow just like the poor guy who is caught in traffic seemingly without end. Everyone has access to the “I Am” moment here and now. There is no point in the future when the energy pull of the “I Am” is any stronger than right now, but our conditioning might be less of an interference. Looking at our self-induced interference is something we can do right now and here. 

Life as is—with all its beauty and its challenges—always encourages us to arise from the conditioned slumber. God gave us two eyes to spot life’s miracle as well as the self-induced interference along the Way.

#awakening #spirituality #mindfulness #powerofnow 

Beyond good and bad

 Prior to Awakening there are good days and there are bad days, with some normal ones in-between.

With Awakening there come the “connected” moments and the “disconnected” days, with some moments that are not registered either way in-between. Even though it doesn’t make much sense, our conditioned mind classifies the “connected” days as good and the “disconnected ones” as work in progress.

When the completion to the new mode of living is complete we may not necessarily become superhuman beings. There are still sense experiences, and some are more pleasurable than others. Even the guru has to go to the dentist now and then so to speak. What changes is that the classifications into “good” and “bad” lose all meaning. 

Draw from the “Field of Infinite Possibilities”

 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

(Mark 5:25–34)

The “Field of Infinite Possibilities” is available to all of us. It’s in our power to spot this usage of energy that Jesus talked about. Conditioned energy is much weaker than the Power of Now and once we take notice of this fact, we have already risen out of the slumber. There are always two ways to proceed, see the miracle of living on the outside or spot the interference on the inside. Either way, the workings of the “Field of Infinite Possibilities” appear.

Indifferent to pleasure and pain

 Only the man who is unmoved 

by any sensations; the wise man

indifferent to pleasure, to pain,

is fit for becoming deathless.

Bhagavad Gita 

Say we fall in love again, and after a brief and stormy romance things settle just as they were before in the relationship we outgrew. Errands have to be run; children have to be taken care of and two lives grow into one once again. 

Or take a promotion at work. After some initial excitement the job becomes routine again. Employees have to be hired, trained and let go of. Upper management becomes our new constituent. Yes, the paycheck is higher, but the work is more or less the same. If anything, the stress is probably going up with the higher pay.

Our modern brain has a very simple happiness formula proportional to the desires fulfilled. You might say a measure of unhappiness is the ratio of unfulfilled desires to the fulfilled ones. True spiritual living in contrast happens outside of the world of desires. We are content with what comes by itself!

Many spiritual seekers are lost for a while because they don’t understand that they have a foot in each world and are not totally committed to either. We have a desire to be enlightened and we seek a life full of love and outside the established responsibilities. It’s a fantasy! Everything we need and want awaits right in front of us. The desired twin flame connection is also just a relationship between two people like before and the desired light worker role will have the same annoying commitments as our current job. This does not mean that our life will not receive a big upgrade along a spiritual quest. As our vibrations change, so does the environment we attract. 

Make the orientation to the here and now complete and step out of the world of desires without repressing and without jumping on some spiritual ideals. Just look through the illusionary nature of desires. Pleasure and pain come and go. Stay in the “be content with whatever comes and goes” when it feels natural and inquire into the reasons why when it feels unnatural.