"Serving the Truth becomes our life instead of just an isolated event. It takes the abstractness out of spirituality. That’s the opportunity of real spirituality: to be in service to the silence of the heart."
~ Adyashanti
Dear , Come and join us for the next Coming Home Together online gathering on Wednesday, October 5. Our topic is: The Sacred Return: Awareness as a Way of Life. Please click here for details and to register. ~~~~~~ “Spirituality” is a tricky
word, even though it’s commonly used in our culture. To me, it’s a vague term that leaves me wondering what it actually means.
And if a word is open to interpretation, there is room for the mind to chew endlessly on its meaning. “What do you think spirituality means?” “What do you believe?” “Are you a spiritual person?”
These are fine questions for conversation, but they don’t help us to actually understand the magnificent and all-encompassing nature of life itself. And they don’t free us from the prison of the belief that we’re limited and separate.
For me, spirituality refers to our natural state that we experience directly and not through constricting mental beliefs or concepts. Knowing the endless
peace beyond peace, it’s our natural state to be happy, relaxed, and at ease. It’s natural to feel whole and calm—and to experience an expanded sense of well-being beyond any learned ideas about ourselves. No longer trapped in the contents of a stressful mind, we realize we’re free of the pain of feeling separate from life.
What is the spiritual path? It’s an ongoing invitation to come home to the truth of ourselves. Over and over, we let go of our interest in the content of the mind and deepen into
the realization of boundless presence here and now.
Someone recently asked me how to stop disturbing thoughts about a painful past. And the truth is that we can’t stop thoughts from appearing.
But the essence of this question is really, “How
can I be happy?” Isn’t that the question we all have? Don’t we all want to be happy?
Happiness isn’t “out there” and available at some future time. The path from suffering to peace opens into our present moment experience to see what may be masking the realization of the truth of who we are.
This path takes us into the stories we
take to be true about ourselves, other people, our past, and the world—and to the realization that they are a false description of the reality of things.
It takes us into our judgments, expectations, and ways that we resist—and shows us how these arbitrary thought patterns that define the personal self are what make us suffer.
And
it takes us into the murky stew of our emotions to liberate the life force from its trap of anxiety and lack.
We make the stunning and utterly remarkable discovery that the happiness/peace/sense of being okay we’ve been longing for has been buried within us all along. It comes to light once the structures that make up our personal identities fall apart...like a house of cards in the
wind.
What we might call the spiritual path is an expansion beyond all objects of the material world. We live in the world, but we take it lightly because we know it’s not the absolute truth of who we are.
Who we are is the formless open space that’s infinitely alive and aware. And knowing this, we have the amazing
insight that we can actually live according to this truth—surrendered, getting out of the way and letting things unfold, intimate with all things, noticing love everywhere.
Call it spirituality, happiness, consciousness, the ultimate reality—words only point to what can only be known in direct experience. And this is the invitation: to turn toward ourselves, to be utterly still, and to know that we’re one with
the vibration of life.
Much love to you... Gail Note: You're most welcome to join our next online gathering on Wednesday, October 5, as we explore The Sacred Return: Awareness as a Way of Life. It's a beautiful healing community... Please click here for details and to register. |
|
|
