There are many paths

winding down rocky shorelines,

leading to a vast lake

called Awareness.

Quiet coves weave along its banks,

touching the calm and soothing waters

of understanding.

I have met a lot of people who have shared that they have something burning within them. “I don’t know what it is, but I am just constantly driven in my spiritual path. As I’ve grown older I’ve gotten more perspective on it, but I still don’t understand what it is. I don’t understand why it is there, and why it is so strong.”

This powerful drive is not limited to spiritual pursuits. We can feel the same burning, the same obsession, in art, music, poetry and more. So what is this thing?

At the far end of Lake Awareness is a waterfall. It channels eternity, and cascades downward in a silver stream, dropping a million miles to Earth. Far below, the power of that immense sliver of awareness thunders into our bodies, a pulsating presence, steady and relentless.

There are a thousand things we are aware of in our normal, everyday lives, things we take for granted. But on the other side of everyday awareness lies eternal awareness. In this realm we are much less familiar with the territory. We are so unfamiliar with the eternal dimensions that many of us wander around in the dark, bumping into walls saying, who am I, why am I here, is there a light switch, a door?

In normal life we effortlessly engage in routines that establish a facile approach to living. In the eternal realms, however, we are ignorant and clumsy hikers, stumbling and scrambling to find a foothold, scurrying around blindly, looking for some way to become oriented. Which way is true north in eternity, we ask, clawing in the darkness.

It’s an inner north. We don’t associate that steady inner presence with what it truly is - an umbilical, forever tethering us to forever. It is the fire of awareness, burning her eternal, unquenchable flame. Do you feel it?

read comments (10)

Water wears down the stone

Sometimes it takes a thousand years to change the mind and improve the heart of a single man.

read comments (4)

Within surrender is found the greatest and most relentless of strengths, culled from the immovable pliability of life’s deepest inner power.

Surrender

Descending, sinking into surrender, plummeting through fears, past anxieties, spiraling yet further into darkness.

And in that darkness stopping - and there, suspended, between breaths - floating in the still pool of eternal flow.

Aware, and quietly, respectfully, bathing in the deep, dark river of great and ancient harmony - sustained and merged, submerged, as liquid warmth and life permeates and infuses every cell, ever molecule, every atom, with sustaining embrace, cleansing and caressing everything existing inside and outside of forever.

read comments (19)

How many people are planning for their next life?

The superior perspective - which would be mine, of course, just in case I haven’t mentioned it - is to think in terms of our next incarnation, but we are poor planners when you get right down to it. Most people, if they think about this, usually ponder in terms of life after death, leaving their physical body behind and going to “heaven”.

We need to think about our eternal nature in terms of a continuum, something that is happening now, has been happening and continues to happen. We are eternal beings, now.

I wonder if monks consider their next life more than the rest of us? Perhaps they only think of it when their teacher lectures about it, or when it comes up in rote meditations and prayers.

I recall two past lives when my teacher said, “You need to understand that it doesn’t stop with this one life, that we’ll be back.” I may have mulled that over a bit in one of those lives.

In another life, I recall someone saying, “You think this is the end? You actually believe that? Well, you’ll see, and you’ll see me too! I’ll look you right in the eyes.” He kept his promise. Are you familiar with the phrase “being shook right down to your core?” I wasn’t prepared for that.

I find myself thinking more and more about my next life. Is that because I am getting closer to death? Perhaps I am simply using sound project management planning skills.

Painting: Fransico Goya, Time

read comments (6)