Dance with the Bandage Torn Off

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 ...