“The world will never be good unless you are willing
to see its goodness. What you experience depends on how you look at things.
When you look with judgment, life is twisted and empty. When you look with an
open heart and mind, life is poignant and meaningful…
The only thing that can successfully address your fear is to hold it with love. As soon as you look with love, you see a different world.”
Paul Ferrini: Everyday Wisdom www.paulferrini.com
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| Arwen Barr |
Our current practice at The
Light Tree has brought us to some stunning conclusions. We had been labouring
under the false impression that we were sincerely seeking a change in awareness
in order to live from an authentic experience of ourselves.
Continued reading and
meditation practice has revealed how longingly we cling to the false self with
all its illusions. How we love the life we seem to have created and how
reluctant we are to surrender our attachments! Like Gollum in Tolkein’s Lord of The Rings we guard our creations
possessively. We don’t really want to experience the peace of our True Nature
because we are too busy accumulating and guarding our precious treasures.
This kind of commitment to
distraction leads us to suffering. Each time we think we are unhappy,
uncomfortable, or in some kind of distress, we are ferociously hanging on to
our own definition of reality. Instead, we can choose to surrender to something
altogether more delicious. Instead we love to wallow. Self pity, blame and
projection are our favourite tools for diversion.
We can only sit back and
giggle when we sense the game is up. How crazy are we anyway??? Our Mighty
Companions are helpful at this point as we sit and laugh together at how easily
we can be fooled…
This kind of awareness can
only come from ruthless honesty with our selves. We have to be willing to give
up the game. Guilt tends to arise telling us that the lie is necessary for our
well-being, but really this just keeps the blame-shame game going a bit longer.
If we can sit patiently with the story as it spins its tale of woe, we can
begin to sense there is something else there.
At this point only Spirit,
our True Self, can point the way. If we don’t ask our Higher Self for direction
we can end up spinning the tale out even further, lost in space, lost in mind,
lost in ego-land. When we don’t know how to get out of our drama, it’s probably
time to stop and surrender to our inner wisdom.
How we do this is up to us.
Maybe a walking meditation, yoga session or another favourite grounding
practice. Whatever it is, do it now, do it often and do it regularly. The
results are worth it.