The Greatest Gift – Rejected or Accepted?

It is extraordinary how beings can react to transformation in the heart.  

When Paul says ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me’.  Galatians 2:20 the power of this touches my heart deeply

 ‘I’ have come to see ‘I’ am really not a thing, not an object, non phenomenal, in essence.  By grace, I would say – not by ‘my’ own efforts!  The thing or object I thought I was is seen by the light of truth to be unreal.  So what is left?  Good question – that cannot really be answered with words or concepts 

Ego, the small constructed psychological self who strives to be something is sacrificed and burnt on this altar as an offering to the divine and a surrender that says ‘yes, yes, this life is for freedom’.  ‘I know not where you lead me Father and only you are my guide and my rod and my staff as I walk through the valley of the shadows of death.’  But this burning is only of the false.  This is the fire of Self discovery.  Our True Self is imperishable!  This is a refiners fire of liberation.

Loss as opportunity 

This is powerful – being pulled by grace somehow, into the heart of being.   And yet it is amazing that so many can appear to turn away from this, perhaps because something feels threatened somehow.  Something feels uncomfortable.  This gift can be overlooked.

We tend to understandably want to maintain the status quo.  Insisting perhaps on the old identity to relate to – and this is in a way totally understandable.  We can appear to be creatures of habit.  But we have a chance to wake up to the realisation that habit is not necessarily in service to our freedom!  

In this enquiry into our true nature we can of course still function in this phenomenal realm and move into roles but somehow with more light and less neediness or attachment.  But this identity fundamentally begins to shift position somehow and beings begin to discover that we can’t find the one that we want to relate to!  ‘I’ cannot find myself in the same old way.  Ultimately the person cannot be found as it doesn’t really exist – only in thought and memory and in the dream of the false identity.  

This can appear like loss in the personal realm but actually it is a wonderful opportunity to wake up ever more deeply to who we truly are!  It is all grist to the mill.  Everything can be used as fuel for awakening, especially pain and apparent loss.  

 I am not memory.  What is past has passed.  Now is fresh and alive.  I am not who ‘they’ think I am – or who ‘I’ think I am come to that! 

 And yet paradoxically we make the world into what we think and imagine and believe it is also!  But, I cannot speak as I used to speak.  I do not see what I used to see only.  I actually do not exist as anything other than the unknowable mystery of life!  

Enjoy Life from the True Place 

That is NOT to deny the phenomenal realm and the physical existence at all!  In fact this can be enjoyed more fully from the true place.  This is a common misconception from the dualistic mind.  It’s ‘either/or mentality’  Rather ‘both, and’.  ‘Include and transcend’ as Ken Wilbur says.  This form and name is here to.  A body is here, this is a temple, this is a beautiful extraordinary unfolding that encompasses both duality and non duality and beyond.  But the body passes eventually.  Something here, this witnessing presence does not pass!  This is not just ideas, it is direct experience in the heart, and there is a depth of silence and immensity here.  

This infinite ‘I’ essentially replaces (or transforms) the ‘I’ that is bound to time and even if personal identity rears its head (which it appears to from time to time) it is witnessed so it does not have the power that it used to wield.  And as interest is lost in its existence and as attention is diverted from the false constructed mental self to the True Self, the poison is neutralised, the delusion is dissolved, the long dream of separation is seen as untrue and unreal.  But who for?  

Surely there must be someone shouting ‘Alleluia!?’

Is that true?  Who would be celebrating anyway?  THE DUALISTIC MIND STILL HYPNOTISED BY THE REALM OF SEPARATION EXPECTS A PERSON TO CLAIM VICTORY for awakening.

But victory as a separate person would only be for some false egoic identity that is claiming to have ‘seen the light’ and wants some recognition for this!   The seeker is swallowed up by it’s own source!  Happily so.  ‘What we are looking for IS what is looking’  St Francis of Assisi

If some spiritual attainment is claimed by ego – once again immediately arrogance creeps in, followed quickly by suffering, samsara and delusion right there!  Why does the ego want to attain enlightenment and live to tell the tale?  Because we believe and are SO convinced that we are all separate persons essentially!  

We don’t see any other way of perceiving reality!  We tend to believe into existence duality and the divided world, ie ‘me ‘ and ‘other’.  Or me and God.  Is this not the fall from grace in the garden of Eden?  When we bite the fruit from the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil (duality) we bite into shame guilt and personal identity.   Me, myself, I 

We see this personal ‘reality’ as fact but actually it is the fiction as Mooji so beautifully expresses here.  

Before all thought we are at peace and one with God in our natural state  – Sahaja 

What does Jesus say?  

We tend to deny the fact of heaven here and now within us that Jesus actually pointed to!  ‘They can’t say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ You see, the kingdom of God is within you.”  Luke 17:21

All is consciousness in essence.  All forms come and go in the awareness we are!  We are one with the source of all life.  How can we not be if God is omnipresent?  If God is the spirit that pervades ALL LIFE, including you!  

Jesus says God is spirit.

and ‘God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”  John 4:24

Because of the fall from grace our eyes are deluded and only the sages and prophets seen to awaken from this ‘samsara’, from this living hell that keeps our souls hostage in a dense and shadowy place of time and death and suffering and striving and hurt and disappointments and problems.  Bless these problems though because they come also from the source to wake us up!  

But generally we jump to the conclusion, as the Pharisees did with Jesus, that this kind of talk is blasphemy, you cannot claim to be one with God!  This must be arrogance and delusion mustn’t it?   Who DO you think you are?

But this is the tragic irony.  The world so often rejects illuminating light!  

‘It shines on every man, and divides the race: those who hate the light respond as the world does (1:10): they flee lest their deeds should be exposed by this light (3:19-21). But some receive this revelation (1:12-13), and thereby testify that their deeds have been done through God (3:21).’ 

What does Buddhism say?  

What does Buddhism say about this turning away from truth and the pull of worldly desires attachments and cravings that lead to suffering?

This Truth that I have realised is profound, hard to see, hard to realize, harmless, sophisticated, more than just speculation, subtle, only really understood by the wise. But this present generation takes delight in attachment, is excited by it, enjoys it. For a generation like this, it’s really hard to understand how things arise in dependence on each other. It’s also really hard to understand the calming of all fabrications, the rejection of all attachments to rebirth, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, nirvana.Ayacana Sutta ‘The Request’ (SN 6.1)

Dead to sin and ALIVE as truth 

All thought is simply that – thought, not real, a phantom, a passing cloud.  So any thought about claiming some sort of new identity is seen as false, a passing cloud in the infinite sky of awareness.  Or if there is thought about this new identity or true position – it can be ignored and seen through as fantasy, imagination and unreal.  Remain as the limitless Self.  Abide here in peace.  

This fire of truth burns all delusion and no thing remains.  Only truth 

Only true freedom is enjoyed as The Self in one who is so humble pure and empty that they willing surrender all including their own falsehood and egoic identity.  That’s what it means isn’t it to lay down your life.   ‘Jesus made himself nothing‘   

Dead to the false, dead to ‘sin’ and ALIVE as the truth of infinite imperishable unconquerable spirit.  

Nothing compares with this Love 

All sorts of conclusions can be jumped to though, all sorts of judgements can be made and justified and decided and laid down as so called ‘reality’.  All within the personal realm of ‘you’ and ‘me’ and ‘us’ and ‘them’ – duality and phenomenality.  

There is nothing wrong with it but there comes a point when we are all called to transcend this realm.  As beloved Mooji says, this is a game of ‘delusion and transcendence’.   But attraction to those suffering states of being are diminishing gradually as the dawn of awakening breaks through.  

Somehow there has been a time of metamorphosis and as this emerging occurs in the heart – not as someone, more like as no – thing actually, all appears quite different and there is a light in my heart that feels like a kiss from within.  This apparent emergence seems to occur within the changeful realm against a background of unchanging silence.  When we realise that our true position is untouched by Maya altogether  – we are free timelessly and peace and love prevail.  NOTHING compares with this love.  

This love can be SO misunderstood.  The ego often does not like it at all!  It can feel deeply threatened and very uncomfortable.  This is to be expected.  Those who are drawn to the discovery of truth and the removal of sorrow, these are the ones who are drawn powerfully by grace to this vortex of transformation, death and resurrection.  They will somehow be touched or drawn.  This is natural.  All is good.  

It is not for everyone – not yet!   Yet it is so ridiculously simple and it IS every one.  This is the paradox!  

So easy and natural and yet so overlooked.   It is extraordinary.  

Who wants nothing?  ‘I’ want passion excitement and experiencing!  

There are forces at work that say  ‘It can’t be THAT easy.  Anyway – who wants no thing?  Who wants ‘formlessness’?  No thanks!  I WANT passion excitement and experiencing.  I LOVE life with all its joys sorrows and ups and downs.  I am in love with my dreams, intentions, achievements, I want recognition, I want to be seen, I want to be some – one!’  I want to enjoy MY life!  Sure – This is also fine and beautiful.  All valuable learning.  I love it when Bentinho Massaro speaks of following ‘the breadcrumb trail of excitement‘.  We have to follow our intuition and experience life as a person of course.

But at some point if what we are chasing is phenomenal it will not ultimately bring soul satisfaction.  Some dreams are revealed as a kind of chasing after things, dreams and attainments for selfish gain and ego recognition.  At some point these dreams start to crash!  This is all a valuable part of the whole play of existence.  We all must be conditioned and follow our dreams!   But -to wake up – this is the most high and true aspiration.  

Ego – through the voice of a friend may say…..‘ I feel like I am losing you’,   ‘Get a grip in REAL life’.  But what is REAL Life?  

What is REAL?  Reality itself looks very different from the position of the person in comparison to the position of presence itself.  Conscious presence and even from the placeless place of the absolute.  Of pure awareness.  Yet – THIS WE ARE simply and naturally.  

‘Immortal Diamond’ – valuing the most high – as YOU 

This is the ‘immortal diamond’ of being, the eternal elixir of life and yet it is so easily dismissed, overlooked and shut out.   It appears humanity tends to devalue what sages and prophets value most highly – this universal truth that sets us free

It is incredible that what saves us is SO deeply misunderstood, missed, rejected.  “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’ Matthew 21:42

This divine light comes to the world through so many beautiful channels and paths.  Called so many different names over the ages.  So many fingers are pointing to the formless limitless abundant truth – but is He now totally misunderstood and rejected AGAIN? – or embraced, listened to, assimilated, swallowed, digested and proved – in YOU?   as YOU  

Rumi