Rejection Revelation Resurrection
As human beings we tend to find people with whom we resonant who are like us and do not rock the boat of our shared beliefs and ways of seeing. This is in a way natural and brings a feeling of belonging, love, a joy in being together. We love to feel we are kind of in the same boat and we are cherished in our sense of family.
Of course our immediate family often can be our first container in which we hopefully flourish and feel loved and where we belong although obviously this is also not always the case. Sometimes one can feel rather alienated within the family group and eventually find friends or communities later in life who we really do feel more a kin with.
But sometimes when we start to deepen spiritually and find ourselves drawn powerfully in a way that seems to be literally changing the way we see ourselves, others and the world, this can be deeply challenging to our family or friendship group. This can be not just disapproved of but mightily opposed. Although of course not necessarily. True friends who love freedom will support this ‘inner engineering’ work.
This has been evident in this unfolding play as I observe. Some friends have just not known how to respond and some have backed away or felt uneasy. Others have been inspired and encouraged. I also have not been drawn to the old personal conversations as it can seem to be reinforcing the position of ego and therefore perpetuating unrest and instability, rather than a deeper rootedness in being and non-dual seeing. I have been drawn to Retreat. However at the same time it seems easier to just naturally be with people without needing to say anything much at all. Also some unfolding conversations have been life giving and deeply nourishing and full of love and blessed by grace.
Some friends who I felt privileged and honoured to be sharing with who do have depth and great wisdom actually and whom I love dearly. When I have spoken about this love affair with this divine light, that has pulled my heart mysteriously inward into both no thing and every thing. When I speak of a sense of transcendence, loving detachment, non duality and cessation of desires for things from this world the response has oftentimes been words of embodiment, attachments, longing, going deeper into expressing the suffering and duality. Of course both movements are valid and not mutually exclusive. It is beautiful to share with such depth and raw honesty together. I genuinely feel there comes a blessed time when our apparent suffering really does begin to transform us in the heart if we are open to it and we have the opportunity at least, to turn to peace, to grace, to our own deepest heart and to wake up out of the delusion of these realms of samsara. To shift identity, as Mooji often says from ‘person to presence’. Best to keep quiet. Be still.
‘We are not just spirit – we are human!’ I hear the cry! Yes, of course.
It is not ‘either or’ – but ‘both and’. Can’t we be both spirit and human? Isn’t this what all the sages are actually pointing to? Of course we are embodied and incarnated, but what is here, living in us is not really separate from any other apparent person or thing and is imperishable, unconquerable, ineffable isn’t it?
On one level of course it is painful when friends appear to fall away, but I also understand deeply what is going on and it is actually a joy to not take things personally. Why? Because essentially, in my deepest nature I am not the ‘person’. To be released from such a tight grip of limited identity neutralises shame and guilt and brings tremendous healing and balance and harmony to the being. But when we identify with ego It feels like. ‘I me’ the personal identity, the self image of myself is rejected, spurned and turned away from.
Ouch! BUT to look deeper, this crisis moment is the greatest opportunity to transcend the personal realms of you and me and us and them. To transcend even the one who is perceiving all this.
The cross also is a metaphor for dying to the ‘I me’ personal self identity that is so restricted and tight. We discover life in the realisation of a much more universal consciousness and sense of spaciousness. Not as an idea but as real experience. I once had a vision of Christ during satsang literally using his hands to push my mind down into my heart.
Let’s look deeper into what I mean by this because misunderstanding here can cause much pain and torment and confusion.
Firstly I love the work of René Girard and James Alison on scapegoating. Richard Rohr has written about this in great detail this week in his daily meditations in this Holy week. Here is a meditation on the scapegoating mechanism. I recommend reading this whole week of meditations. The cross is such a powerful call to non violence and forgiveness. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34
All pain is transformed to love.
‘Thank you for this suffering that pushes me deeper into your embrace Lord’. Our deepest true self is consciousness. It is not the ego!’ But without this bite from our clinging to egoic identity we would not seek to find the release and the joy and the freedom of the True Self.
The most crippling belief that grips us and holds us hostage though is our own egoic mind if we hold as true our false identity. This belief appears to separate us from God. Our own psychological identity believed in can fill us with shame and self rejection and we can also believe it is the fault of others who seem to turn away from us when actually they are simply mirroring our belief in who we think we are as the false egoic self. The ego is still consciousness, but in a very constricted form. If we follow the personal thoughts and worship the images that say we are separate, isolated, not lovable or not able to love we weave a web of deceit around ourselves and soon find the light of the truth is apparently covered by delusion and doubt and self loathing. But all along, beneath this delusive state freedom and peace is our own nature.
The Invitation from Mooji is the most brilliant tool to discover the naturalness of our true nature. To overcome these painful personal states and discover the ‘isness’, the pure beingness, the living formless awareness that we are when we simply put aside all thoughts, all memories, all self images, for a moment. We also put aside intentions for the future, ideas of what kind of person we would like to be in the imagined future. All this including the desire for enlightenment right now is simply swept aside in the invitation to reveal what? To reveal what is left that cannot ever be taken away, such a peace and a freedom from mental suffering, such a spaciousness that is boundless and effortless, such a natural openness that is beyond words, beyond time and beyond definition. What an antidote. Buddhist meditation also can reveal such a blissful discovery of the same peace.
Listen to The Invitation – it will take you home!
Through drinking in these pointings of Mooji in this auspicious gift from grace It has been revealed that from this pure true position personal suffering can actually come to an end. What ‘is’ does not actually have needs or desires, it does not require belief, it is without attachments fears or conflicts because it is formless awareness. As Mooji says ‘all conflicts are between forms’
That in itself was such a revelation! ‘All conflicts are between forms’ I am actually consciousness, ‘like space’. Therefore from this true position and identity, how can ‘I’ experience conflict? In fact how can ‘I’ experience life? I don’t experience life – I AM life! Isn’t this what Jesus said?
But the paradox is I cannot overcome rejection as an ego and remain the someone who has been judged. Rejection is overcome by the revelation of Truth.
In other words if someone is left saying ‘I did it – I am free!’ Right there the downfall is immanent. Pride before the fall.
Only through death or dissolution of the separate apparent self image is true freedom found, but by whom? The answer cannot be expressed, no thing remains to express it!
Yet the paradox is we have always been the peace and silence ‘behind’ the small self, we have always been and will always be this awareness.
Nothing has ever really happened to us in the way we imagine for the one that we think we are is actually not our True Self! To fully realise our true position in harmony with the divine light of revelation is resurrection life! Alleluia! Wake up! Rise up, it is Easter day!
Happy Easter beloved friends.
Matthew 10:39 (YLT) `He who found his life shall lose it, and he who lost his life for my sake shall find it. Jesus
test comment – peace to you!