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LOTUS OF THE HEART
Living in Love beyond Beliefs
One reason we need solitude is to remember who we are, to see ourselves again, truly, not through the collective mental portraits drawn from the roles we have assumed. We easily lose ourselves among others, forgetting ourselves to survive and hopefully thrive, we were told, in the real world. This is the sole way most of us have been taught. We can become one in a collective benumbed muddle of faceless faces. We gradually, apart from what others have known about us and think they know us, come to believe there is something more to us than we have been led to believe. More than a socialized self unconsciously relating with other socialized unconscious selves, objects with objects walking around in pragmatic slumber. So, who is really there? Who is relating to whom? In conscious solitude, we decide to come face-to-face with this false self, we cannot escape. There is a death needing to occur, a good death. There is no one present to mirror to us approval of our denial of our true face. If we enter solitude enough, and engage a wisdom path that keeps pushing us, sometimes despite our resistance, beyond the conditioning, we come to see ourselves as we are, always have been, and to see others with the same insight, for up to now we had been engaging in outsight, not insight. And, what do we see? Then, how do we see? There is no how. That drops, no more how. What do we see? - well, let us proceed to that...
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Stopping to fill my truck with gas, I began walking toward the front doors of the curb store. About 20 feet away, to my right, a woman stepped out of her truck. I saw dirt. The woman was dirty. I looked at her truck. Dirt. The truck was dirty, all over, as she was, all over. Her skin ~ I sensed she was much younger than her appearance ~, was dry and wrinkled, as though she had abused her body for years. She walked toward the door, I walked behind keeping a distance, not wanting to get close. At the entrance, she took the handle of the door, opened it, and she stood aside welcoming me in. I looked at this dirty woman, smiling at me a kind, glowing smile. I expressed appreciation and returned the smile. Relief came over me. Her sweet, beautiful kindness came to awareness as a contrast with how I had seen her as a body, only an appearance. Inside the store, as we both were in the snack area, she initiated conversation, again smiling and enjoying sharing with me. We shared not only words, but fellowship ~ and fellowship never arises from the body, only through the body. When checking out, she came to stand behind me. Leaving, we spoke well-wishes. I walked out and toward my truck, somewhat changed and seeing differently, and knowing her differently. Now, days later, I recall her often, and all I see is the most beautiful person I have ever seen, dirty, yes, but so much More. This is Love, dirt, and all. Love is Beauty.
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The above reminded me of a surprising encounter years prior ~ with myself. I looked into a mirror. What was looking back? I saw what I had never seen, then over age 40. I had no memory of ever seeing this face in the mirror. I saw, as though long-forgotten, this my face, pure, untainted, without any sense of guilt or wrongness that had conditioned seeing. Indeed, guilt had been linked with a fundamentalist religious upbringing that communicated the body was a problem, the prime cause of sin and "God's" judgment, much more than a blessing. I, now, saw myself as the Holy, not in a religious sense, in the sense of wholeness, wholeness pure and lovely, untouched by the past. This was the same beauty seen when I met the lovely dirty woman at the curb store.
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The eye of flesh sees conditioned by the past, so, in a sense is incapable of truly seeing anyone or anything. The eye of Spirit is a seeing unconditioned, so untouched by preference based on memory. This seeing is direct, so unfiltered, so true. This seeing is not in denial of anything, such as dirt, yet it transforms even the seeing of such as dirt on someone. This seeing is an intuition of the essence of the other and, finally, becomes totally subjective in the manner of the other no longer being an object seen. What one sees, always, when seeing through body, not other as body, is loveliness. Then, the luminosity of body itself appears in all its glory. Possibly, for most of us, this seeing will be rare. Still, we are reminded in those moments of the truth of who we each truly are ~ spirit, not appearance. So much More.
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Love, seeing all,
sees Love ~
lovely loveliness, only.
Grace and Peace to All
Lotus of the Heart is an interspiritual offering of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, who lives in Florida USA. Feel free to submit a query to Lotus of the Heart...
*Move cursor over pictures for creator of photo and title.
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