Dance with the Bandage Torn Off

Yesterday, when I was at the post office mailing out some late Christmas presents, I got talking with the postal worker who was helping me mail out my gifts.  I told her how much I love this post office - how the people who work here are always so friendly and you rarely find this at other post offices. It's just plain refreshing. She said that it's the energy of the people that live here. She told me that she works at another post office near by and it's nothing like this one. Folks are always in a hurry and nobody smiles at one another. She hates going to that post office and is always left feeling depleted at the end of the day.  She then went on to tell me a story that I was very moved by. She said that one night during the Christmas chaos with lines out the doors in Takoma Park - she was starting to feel exhausted and overwhelmed by the crowds. She found herself just going through the motions of the job, not really feeling the customers she was assisting. Then suddenl...

Each one of us is on a unique journey that is inviting us to awaken into our fullest potential.  Some of us experience tremendous difficulty in our lives, while others may have success - but in either case, the events in our lives are offerings to look deeper into the root of all experience.  There is an undeniable peace that exists in every single being.  This peace is always there, whether you are aware of it or not.  There is no method or formula that can put you in touch with it - you must find your own way. My advice is to stay the course - let your heart be felt, no matter how painful the situation - trust and let go.  Peace is always there - it is the source of who you are.

Kabir says, 'Friend, Listen, This is what I have to say: The Guest I love is inside me!' Friend, Hope for the Guest while you are alive. Jump into experience while you are alive. Think and think while you are alive. What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death. If you don't break your ropes while you are alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? The idea that the soul will join with the Estatic just because the body is rotten -- That is all fantasy. What is found now is found then. If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death And if you make love with the Divine now, In the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire. Then plunge into the Truth, Find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound!

The wonder is not whether we will be together, me with those I am loving, on some other side. The wonder is that we've met and been together, loving here, in this half-made world where love is yet to take it's hold. ~Adi Da

I think it is so easy to get caught up in trying to rid yourself of states that don't seem God like.  But the truth is, all that is ever happening is God - the good, the bad and the ugly - it's all the Divine.  Trying to free yourself from the things you don't like is just an avoidance of being here fully.  There is nothing to run from - no matter how bad you might feel about yourself or the world - Love is the Source of all of it and you are only bound by the core belief that this shouldn't be happening.  When you relax into what simply Is, you begin to embrace what you don't like with love instead of working towards achieving some state of freedom that is only imagined by the mind. Freedom is being right here, allowing all to simply be.  Threat dissolves and there is only Dancing with what Is.  This is where Infinite possibilties live and Love becomes your guiding force.

My spiritual quest was all about getting to a place where I would no longer have to feel the pain of separation.  I wanted to be free of feeling the horror of this world where death and separation are inevitable.  But what I discovered is that in my wanting it to be something other than what it is, I was turning away from what is real and always present in the moment.  That which is the world and breathes my very being is never separate from any of us.  It's impossible.  The same unknowable Source that lives you, is living me.  We are That which is always present.  But even so, realizing this to be true does not relieve me from experiencing the pain of separation and the fragility of our humanness.   If anything, I feel it more as the realization deepens.  I am much more aware of my simple humanness and am able to feel the rawness of life without turning away from it.  Where the burning pain for connection is freely allowe...