Dance with the Bandage Torn Off

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...

Any motion towards trying to change anything in ourselves or others is just perpetuating our tendency to seek outwardly for the perfect experience that will end our suffering.  I used to think that one day I would reach a certain state and then I would be free.  I believed that the divine could only look a certain way.  So I kept trying to let go of the states that didn't feel like god and work towards the ones that did in order to free myself.  Needless to say, I failed miserably at the whole thing.  Thank God!  The things I used to think weren't god all boiled down to a core belief that this isn't supposed to be happening.  The motion to seek is so deeply routed and hard to identify until you completely fail at spiritual life. And in that failing, you finally get that there is nothing missing from your experience.  Everything is right here, as it always has been and always will be. ...

Die! Die! Die in this love! If you die in this love your soul will be renewed Die! Die! Doen't fear the death of that which is known If you die to the temporal you will become timeless Die! Die! Cut off those chains that hold you prisoner to the world of attachment Die! Die! Die to the deathless and you will be eternal Die! Die! and come out of this cloud When you leave the cloud you will be the effulgent moon Die! Die! Die to the din and the noise of mundane concerns In the silence of love you will find the spark of life ~Rumi

Everything is the Divine.  All of it.  If we turn away from the slightest of things, we are not embracing our fullness.  I have struggled over the past two years in a fight with my Guru.  My attention kept being pulled into how she did me wrong.  So much bad blood between us and feelings of betrayal.  I couldn't put it to rest for the life of me.  Then one morning, very spontaneously, I woke up and could not believe the perfection of the whole damn thing.  Still marveling - what a wonder, indeed!  Every single thing that happened between us was absolute perfection.  It couldn't have been any other way. When we push away any part of us, whether it is something that we dislike in ourselves or in another, it creates the feeling of being separate. Any being that triggers you is just the Beloved with a mask on.  Don't turn away from it.  Invite whoever that one is that gets you to your core ...

From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face but today I have seen it Today I have seen the charm, the beauty, the unfathomable grace of the face that I was looking for Today I have found you and those who laughed and scorned me yesterday are sorry that they were not looking as I did I am bewhildered by the magnificience of your beauty and wish to see you with a hundred eyes My heart has burned with passion and has searched forever for this wondrous beauty that I now behold I am ashamed to call this love human and afraid of God to call it divine Your fragrant breath like the morning breeze has come to the stillness of the garden You have breathed new life into me I have become your sunshine and also your shadow My soul is screaming in ecstasy Every fiber of my being is in love with you Your effulgence has lit a fire in my heart and you have made radiant for me the earth and sky My arrow of love has arrived at the target ...

I met my Guru in September 2001.   Up until then, I had been running scared; terrified of the vastness that I felt within.   I felt as if I would be swallowed up into it, never to return if I stopped running.   My Guru was the first person who ever told me that I was actually waking up and that every single person on this planet experienced that same existential fear, but I was just in touch with it.   She assured me that it was a good thing, so I trusted her and continued to let go.   During my time with her, I came to realize that I was actually creating the terror that I felt by running and holding on.    I got to see that fear was simply arising and when I allowed it without tensing or pushing it away, it dissolved.   Just like sorrow, anger and all emotions.   I came to understand that it mattered what I did with my attention.   If my attention was drawn into mind/emotions, I suffered; if I relaxed and allowed whatever was arising ...