The search for God

The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In the search from God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you’ve given up. Every religion in the world operates on the same common understandings of what if means to be a good disciple – get up early and pray to your God, hone your virtues, be a good neighbor, respect yourself and others, master your cravings. We all agree that it would be easier to sleep in, and many of us do, but for millennia there have been others who choose instead to get up before the sun and wash their faces and go to their prayers. And then fiercely try to hold on to their devotional convictions throughout the lunacy of another day.

The devout of this world perform their rituals without guarantee that anything good will ever come of it. Of course there are plenty of scriptures and plenty of priests who make plenty of promises as to what your good works will yield (or threats as to the punishments awaiting you if you lapse), but to even believe all this is a act of faith, because nobody amongst us is shown the endgame. Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, “Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.” There’s a reason we refer to “leaps of faith” – because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don’t care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn’t. If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be – by definition – faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be … a prudent insurance policy.

I’m not interested in the insurance industry. I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

Elizabeth Gilbert from the book - Eat, pray, love

In peace ...

The privilege of a lifetime

We must be willing to give up
the life we'd planned,
so as to have the life
that is waiting for us.

What we are really living for
is the experience of life,
both the pain,
and the pleasure.

Say "yes" to life:
"yea" to it all.
Participate joyfully
in the sorrows of the world.

The privilege of a lifetime
is being who you are.

~~ Joseph Campbell

Suffering Consciously

I just read a passage in A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

"The man on the cross is an archetypal image. He is every man and every woman. As long as you resist suffering, it is slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously."

As I read this I was reminded of a pamphlet on relaxation techniques for people with anxiety. The first step is to acknowledge the anxiety. Whether it be anxiety or any other form of suffering the experience is not pleasant and therefore, we, humans, tend to avoid, run away, take pills, drink, seek solace outside of ourselves. We are reinforced that these actions are okay since our suffering is temporarily relieved. In the long term, however, it intensifies and changes our suffering and draws out the experience.

This is not the first time I have heard "what you resist persists." Neale Donald Walsch also teaches this. And Buddhism acknowledges suffering as part of the human experience. But to be conscious enough to embrace my suffering, to breathe with it, that is a teaching I had not allowed myself to fully process until now.

in peace ...

quote from Heaven's Coast

Desire, I think has less to do with possession than with participation, the will to involve oneself in the body of the world, in the principle of things expressing itself in splendid specificity, a handful of images: a lover's irreplaceable body, the roil and shimmer of sea overshot with sunlight, a handful of cherries, the texture and weight of a word. The word that seems most apt is partake; it comes from the Middle English, literally from the notion of being a part-taker, one who participates. We can say we take a part of something but we may just as accurately say we take part in something; we are implicated in another being, which is always the beginning of wisdom, isn't it -- that involvement which enlarges us, which engages the heart, which takes us out of the routine limitations of self?
The codes and laws fall away, useless, foolish, finally, hollow little husks of vanity.
The images sustain.
The images allow for desire, allow room for us -- even require us -- to complete them, to dream our way into them. I believe with all my heart that when the chariot came for Wally, green and gold and rose, a band of angels swung wide out over the great flanks of the sea, bearing him up over the path of light the sun makes on the face of the waters.
I believe my love is in the Jordan, which is deep and wide and welcoming, though it scours us oh so deeply. And when he gets to the other side, I know he will be dressed in the robes of comfort and gladness, his forehead anointed with spices, and he will sing -- joyful -- into the future, and back toward the darkness of this world.

from Mark Doty's book "Heaven's Coast"

faith

That faith, according to the Buddha comes from our wisdom, prajna, our looking deeply. Faith comes from our having seen, our having experienced, not because we have heard about something. It is not true faith when we believe in something we have heard about. We have to bring it into our lives, practice it, and see it clearly. It's not enough to hear a teaching about walking meditation and think that sounds very good. We have to go out and do it to see how it really is. We hear about a recipe for making a cake and we say, that looks like a good recipe. But we have to really make the cake to see if it is good. And when we have heard about something and we put it into practice, we try it out and it works, then we really have faith.
~~ Thich Nhat Hanh

i am here

it has been a while...

in a recent conversation with a dear friend, an idea developed that not only i, but all, desire in some form a discernment process. all are seeking (happiness, peace, harmony, less pain) even if that knowledge is not part of their awareness. we all seek clarity in our own lives.

this blog is for all of us seekers. for breath, for learning, for Truth.

in peace...

if you look deeply into a tree...

If you look deeply into a tree, you will discover that a tree is not only a tree. It is also a person. It is a cloud. It is the sunshine. It is the Earth. It is the animals and the minerals. The practice of looking deeply reveals to us that one thing is made up of all other things. One thing contains the whole cosmos.

~~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Where is God in my life?

In my daily life I spend many more hours thinking of what I should be doing in celebration of my Life, my Love, my Passion, than actually celebrating. I spend countless amounts of time worrying about the future instead of seeing the perfect moment in front of me. I have to remind myself to see the beauty in the tress, in the mountains, in the shrill bark of a dog.

And then a patient brings up God in a conversation. I wake up and look at the amazing number of different shades of green outside my bedroom door. I sit in a creek on a warm gorgeous day with birds overhead, a gentle breeze and good friends and the perfect moment is with me, briefly.

I seem to want to ask a lot of Whys. Why do I need this struggle? Why when I know that God is in everything and everyone do I not feel her presence always? There is no Why. Why not? Let go and breathe. I spend my life getting caught up in life but I am reminded and that in itself is a blessing and the glimpses I receive brief though they may be are perfect. I am honored and grateful.

in peace ...

Forget your life ...

This is one of my current favorite poems. I have kept it posted in my work space for a couple of years now to remind me. The truth in it brings tears to my eyes.

in peace ...

Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.

You think you know what time it is. It's time to pray.

You've carved so many little figurines, too many.

Don't knock on any random door like a beggar.

Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where

you go on the street, the street

where everyone says, "How are you?"

and no one says, "How aren't you?"

Tomorrow you'll see what you've broken and torn tonight,

thrashing in the dark. Inside you

there's an artist you don't know about.

He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us,

you're causing terrible damage.

If you've opened your loving to God's love,

you're helping people you don't know

and have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,

if you know, if you've known it

from before the beginning of the universe.

~~Rumi