Authentic Self

I look forward to my e-mail newsletter from Soul Flares partly because of the wonderful quotes at the beginning. This one reminds me Joseph Campbell’s statement that the “privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” That journey we’re taking is, in reality, measured more by time and thought rather than miles.

“But whats wrong? What is this sadness we cannot name? Here is a question that deserves loving meditation. Perhaps the heart of our melancholy is that we miss the person we were meant to be. We miss our authentic selves. But the good news is that even if you have ignored its overtures for decades, your authentic self has not abandoned you. Instead it has been waiting patiently for you to recognize it and reconnect. Turn away from the world this year and begin to listen. Listen to the whispers of your heart. Look within.” Sarah Ban Breathnach, from Simple Abundance

Treasure

The greatest treasure you are seeking may be found in the last place you want to look.

Looking is your journey, your alchemical process of transformation from who you have been to who you will be once the treasure is found.

As the journey unfolds, you will–for a while, perhaps several lifetimes–refuse to look in the last place you want to look because there are dangers there and because you can’t believe the universe would be so cruel as to hide the Holy Grail in such a place.

As the journey unfolds, you will hear that you will not be allowed to view, much less hold, your greatest treasure if you’re planning to approach it as you are rather than as who you must be.

If you had already found yourself, you would have already found the treasure and the journey is complete.

Yet, as long as you are who you are now, you will not hold the treasure. As with any other love, you must give your all for it and your life for it and throw away the “you” that you have been carrying around all these years from place to place.

Transformation is total change, not change with your fingers crossed, not change with one foot still firmly anchored in the status quo.

Treasure is a demanding goal. It calls to you always and expects you to bury your old self completely before you embrace the shining wonders in the last place you’re planning to look.

Second Birth

In The Book of Secrets, Deepak Chopra laments the fact that “enlightenment is no longer a goal in life, not even in India.”

Why?

Noticeably, enlightment doesn’t appear on many lists of New Year’s resolutions. It wasn’t highlighted in The Secret as a state one might enter via the Law of Attraction.

Perhaps it’s viewed as impossible. Perhaps people worry that they might come across as full of themselves by even suggesting they seek enlightenment.

No doubt, those who attain it don’t call a press conference and announce it.  Perhaps more people find it than Chopra suspects.

What do you think?

Theft

“What seems different in yourself; that’s the rare thing you possess. The one thing that gives each of us our worth, and that’s just what we try to suppress. And we claim to love life.” –André Gide

When a writer steals from another writer, s/he is said to be guilty of  plagiarism. While the Internet makes this easy to do and while a lot of people justify it, the practise is still frowned upon.

While others knowingly or unknowingly reflect back our best and worst traits, we need not take from them their styles and their beliefs. Perhaps theft is too strong a word for drinking too heavily from the glass of needless conformity.

We can, I think, determine who we are and where we’re going without taking the personalities of others as whole cloth and wearing them like an illusory cocoon.

Entanglement

“All things are free-flowing, untrammeled. What bondage is there, what entanglement? You create your own difficulty and ease therein. The mind source pervades the ten directions with one continuity; those of the most excellent faculties understand naturally.” -- Tzu-hu (800-880)

What is it that holds each of back from a passionate commitment to our individual journeys? Or to trust? Or even transformation?

The chains can be broken in a blink of the eye once we recognize them and determine to be free.

Warriors

“The warrior who feels the great mystery of existence is marked by a profound humility. Such new warriors will not see themselves as titans standing astride the universe demanding dominion over the earth. Instead, they will be like the vision-questing Indian who stares at the stars in the black sky and feels humility before nature’s power and awesome beauty.” –Jan Hartke, in the foreword to Ed McGaa’s Mother Earth Spirituality.

As we watch urban sprawl and the “development” activities near (or even in) parks and wilderness areas, it appears we have too few warriors and too many exploiters.

The Grail

Some say the Holy Grail is that which cannot be found, a perfection or treasure that is forever beyond our reach.

Would it surprise you to know just how close it is?

Arrivals

When we apply for a job, we ask what kind of work is needed.

Why ask anything less when we arrive into the world!