Saying For Today: Still, you are human, and the Truth seen must be lived and the deepening process of conversion, or integration, is now the opportunity and partly the motive of spiritual practice.
LOTUS OF THE HEART
Living in Love beyond Beliefs
EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE
*Aling_, Rose, Flickr
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We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.
*Thich Nhat Hanh
We must see, now, that we are being consumed in a consumeristic society. We are becoming a product among other products. We are moving about quickly, but are forgetting how to live, to enjoy being alive, to enjoy Life.
*Arem Nahariim-Samadhi
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A Zen story tells of a man riding a horse hurriedly along the road. A man standing by the road, called out, "Where are you going in such a hurry?" The man on the horse called back, "I don't know, ask the horse?"
I have written before of what I call the tyranny of busyness. We are Being with a body. Habits get ingrained in the body, even like messages get imprinted on a hard drive. The horse in the story can represent what we could call habit energy. Here, the energy represents what Hindu Advaitists refer to as rajas: somewhat, like our word mania in English.
The society in which I live is increasingly becoming manic: such addiction to hurrying-about includes aggression - like the habit-energy leading us impolitely to bounce off each other, without even noticing how impolite we are treating the other person. After all, what has oft become of first importance, it appears, is where we are trying to get to as soon as possible, not persons we meet along the way. This way of living is not necessarily wrong, yet, manic living - having the horse speed us along without our living in awareness and presence, in Grace - therefore, graciousness - is self-destructive and society-destructive. This becomes like a plane without a pilot, or a ship without a captain. I am reminded of these words from Jesus, in the Gospels, "Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9.36, NASB).
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The odd logic is that I am really doing something, I am becoming more important, I am being loyal and dutiful by hurrying around. Then, I can feel good about myself - even holding up my accomplishment trophies to others. Then, too, I can climb the ladder of success and demand others be approved by engaging in the same non-sense.
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This is a reason we need some type of spiritual practice that disciplines us to set time apart in quietness and stillness, oddly speaking, to practice just being. Even a person who has realized Oneness, may still need this. Why? The Universal Soul is integrated, by organic process, into the lived particularity of ourselves as parts of that Wholeness.
If I smell the Beauty of the Rose, that is the invitation to an intimacy with the Rose that only deepens with time and attention - to know the Rose, I must live with the Rose, and the memory of that first imbibing of Her scent lives in me, inspiring me into a deeper Love for Her. Her scent clothes me, more than I know, or will know, for knowing leads to knowing, as Grace to Grace.
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I could affirm, if I chose, that I do not need spiritual practice to realize Oneness. In fact, one could say after such realization, that spiritual practice becomes not a journey to that Oneness, but a celebration of It. If you see you have crossed the River, even that there was not a River to cross, why would you keep trying to cross the River? Still, you are human, and the Truth seen must be lived and the deepening process of conversion, or integration, is now the opportunity and partly the motive of spiritual practice. Now, the process is wedding the Soul with the full humanness we are being, also.
