What is the opportunity here? What is the benefit of this difficulty? What is the gift? ~ Marc Allen It's strange--behind the terror and confusion of the world, behind the frustration of things not working out for us or anyone else, and behind the unending battles of struggle--there is an inner joy, a radiance that shines in the heart, an awareness that exists forever. One day, when we have all packed up our toys and gone home, we will look back on these days of earth as a marvelous adventure. It is our pleasure to unravel the mystery of God. How can one even begin to describe the adventure of being on earth? It is such a vast and overwhelming stage, where billions of life stories advance simultaneously, where anything can happen at any time. Always, it is about a scramble for resources. The mind, programmed for centuries to believe in scarcity, is always struggling. There is just never enough of everything, and sometimes it seems that there isnt enough of anything. Then somehow, out of curiosity, out of fatigue with desperation, we stumble upon the spiritual path. We find that what we had mistaken for God, for truth, and for liberation from travail was also an illusion. After we have shed our false gurus, our self-centered prophets, and our hopelessly confused texts, we find something else: stillness in silence. Yes, in the absence of motion and sound, somehow what is unreal starts to fall away from us and what is false starts to lose its fascination. We find, to our surprise, that our only error was our insistent dismissal of our own significance. Beyond words, beyond images, beyond soundsin the depths of silencein the discipline of stillnesssomething emerges. At first, in shock, we see it only as a void, emptiness, or a vast nothingness. Then, as we watch, we see that the void is full, copious, overflowing. The quantum field of infinite potentiality awakens to our inner vision. We hear the music of the spheres. We travel between the vast spaces between worlds. We realize that somehow, beyond the solid proof of this heavy body and this insistent mind, and even beyond the certainty of our identitywe are this non-stuff that is the fabric from which all stuff emerges. When the mind is silent, then, and only then, will divinity emerge. This is the only spiritual path. There are many ways to reach it, many paths to the one path; but it is the only path. For those who catch a glimpse of the divine, there awakens a new hungerto be constantly in the presence of this emerging joy, this blissful rhapsody, this careless abandon of all that once frightened, thrilled, and agitated the soul. Someday you and I will get therebecause we will never stop until we do. We will find that emptiness is the source of all beauty and of all miracles. Without an absence, the notes of music would not be heard. Without space, the eternal grace of form would not emerge. And without time, the singular moment that links all events would not be comprehensible. Out of the void of creation, creation emerges. And from the resignation of searching, the truth will find you. And we will see that behind the distraction of our illusions, we knew everything all along and never lacked for anything, anything at all. The eternal riddle will be before us and we will be amazed at how we could not find something so simple despite thousands, perhaps millions, of incarnations. |
