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Let Go and Let Love
Let Go and Let Love
I guess we all come to the recognition of Truth in our own way and in
our own time, and that's good. My way seems very strange though. I
was one of the so called lucky ones - I had my very own 'burning bush'
experience.. but what I did with that beggars belief. I very, very subtly
(so that I wouldn't even notice I was doing it) turned and walked away
from it.
.
The burning bush
Some years ago, after a lifetime of being determined to find out 'how
things really worked', and having studying A Course in Miracles for a
year or so, I was out walking my Labrador on the hill behind my
home. After I had gotten tired of throwing sticks for Ben I sat down
on a stile to watch the world go by for a while, and the dog curled up
under my feet. In the next few minutes I came to see my whole life in a
completely new light, totally reframed and everything fitting perfectly
together - like adding the last few lines to a 'join the dots' picture
where suddenly you see what it is all about for the very first time. I
thought I had been building businesses, raising my children, trying to
be all the things I wanted to be. I had no idea that totally unbeknown
to me, life had had a completely different agenda.
This 'secret' agenda had been working through everything I had ever
thought, spoken and done, through every so called failure and success
and through every traumatic or blissful moment in my life. I saw so
clearly that everything that had happened since the day I popped onto
this planet had been orchestrated to bring me to this place where I was
now sat and was able to see the perfection and beauty of it all. It all
was suddenly so clear, every single part of my life fitted together
faultlessly, with not one piece missing or to spare. Enlightenment had
been going on all the time.... perfectly.
Here's what I now knew: After all my efforts to understand, to 'get it'
and then to walk the path, the path has been walking through me all
along. We had always been the vehicle for enlightenment, we just
didn't see ourselves as doing that, and certainly didn't see ourselves as
being in the driving seat. There was one beautiful purpose to life and
my expression of that had been played perfectly by me all along, and
this was true for everyone. Suddenly all concept of right and wrong
and guilt and doubt disappeared completely. And there was no place
for regrets anymore, only this one vast, all encompassing Love.....
and it had only been my desire to find happiness in this life that had
blinded me to seeing it was already here.
.
Good intentions gone wrong
I knew from that moment on that my life was changed because there
could be no forgetting this. By some form of grace I had glimpsed
Reality and all I wanted or needed to do was find a way of helping the
rest of the world see the same thing. And that's where I started to lose
the plot again.
The more I tried to explain this, to myself or others, the more distant
it seemed to become. All I wanted do was to help and yet the more I
tried, the more this epiphany turned into a distant memory. What I
didn't see then was that the very act of trying to understand was the
act of denial of what I had so clearly seen. By trying to understand
I was separating the one who was trying to understand from
that which he was trying to understand. By attempting to
reconcile God and Life and Love and Enlightenment and 'Who I am', I
was denying that they are all the same thing..... this Oneness that I had
been so fortunate to experience.
It's only when I imagine there is more than one thing, like when I put
the little word 'my' in front of the word 'life', that there arises the
concept of an under-stander and an under-stood and then the need to
understand. Oneness can only ever be experiential because it is all
inclusive. Reality can only be known, because there is no-one separate
to understand it. It's only the mind that obfuscates this feeling of Love
and connection that we already exists in. And anything I can imagine
to do to come to this realisation, can also only be part of my denial of
this feeling of Love that is constantly trying to seep into our conscious
awareness. As Thomas Aquinas one said:
Awakening was life's role not mine. I had forgotten that our part is
only to allow it to happen.
.
Wising up
So little by little I've come to accept there is nothing I can do to
awaken because life itself is the process of awakening. It's a process of
accepting what already is and that requires no doing and no effort, just
a surrender to what is already here in this moment. Life delights to
set us free, to make us happy.. and everything we need to fulfill that
purpose comes to us, perfectly. When we really accept that we don't
know how to wake up then a miracle happens. Instead of not-knowing
being the problem, not-knowing becomes the answer - our whole way,
because 'not-knowing' is the clean and empty slate on which Love will
write a different story through our lives. It is in the invitation and the
opening to grace.
The power of this very simple, yet unshakable intention and absolute
stand to be liberated in this lifetime propelled him to awaken to the
simple fact that he and all beings are liberated—that all beings are
freedom itself. Pure awakeness.
There's a huge freedom in this tiny change of intent because now there
is no cause for stress or concern. When we replaces all the reasons
'why' we do things (especially all those spiritual or do-goody reasons)
for this single 'why' of allowing Truth/Love/Life/Joy/*your own term
here* to express itself through me, then there are no worries any
more. Life makes no mistakes..... 'mistakes', 'problems' - that's all
mind stuff. Success in this is always certain, but now we come
to know it is so.
To let go and let Love......Why did no-one tell me it's this simple?
So to me, our greatest role models and teachers are not the obvious
ones. Not the ones that lecture or hold retreats, but those who know
how to squeeze the juice out of life and then invite you to dine with
them.