"Sir, I feel like I'm a spiritual failure," she said. "No matter how hard I try, I can't get it right." "Very good," replied the Sage." "Why?" "Grace arises in your incapacity to succeed. That, paradoxically, is success. Spiritual practice is just this: breaking down your efforts to get it right. The ego wants to succeed, spirit wants to surrender. In surrender, Love dissolves both success and failure."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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We invent ourselves that we might know who we are and what we are to be. But the consistency we seek in these inventions can’t be maintained against the fabulous inconsistency of actuality. Sensing this, we clutch at cherished constants ever more urgently. The builder of the house of ego can never rest, for he is ever at work to control outcome and limit alternatives. His structure makes its appeal to our longing for the familiar and the safe, but in the end, he delivers only diminishment. I am weary of maintenance.
*Lin Jensen. Bad Dog!: A Memoir of Love, Beauty, and Redemption in Dark Places.
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Coming back upon Jensen's words, "I am weary of maintenance," I was gladdened to revisit the "Ah ha!" felt at that first reading. Why the relief? Why would one feel joy in the very acknowledgment of failure to arrange my life ~ as though one could have a my life ~ in one little, neat package ~ safe and sound, as many say? Why the pleasant feeling at such failure to do so?
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Exhaustion... lit., "being drained out".
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I feel, this day, the day of this writing, the closeness of exhaustion, like sweat hugging the skin. I feel like a bucket, drinking glass, cup, cloud drained and being drained out. I slowly feel into this, beyond its apparently threatening borders ignoring the caution 'beware! entering enemy territory' ignoring the ominous sense 'keep out' ignoring the promise 'intruders will be prosecuted' and approach and allow myself to be approached, and see no signs, no foe, only friend. I am here, open-hearted, thankful for this nearness. I have crossed this border many times, you too, and possibly you too are with me here now: if so, welcome, thankful to share this blessed space with you. We can relax together smile together cry together trust together feel what is asking to be felt together and receive here the joy of being reminded Life is for us, not against us, Grace welcomes us and our vulnerability as the soil in which It plants the seeds of Its immaculate Love. Grace leads us here, so we can become more compassionate and caring for others who find themselves here also. Here, there is nothing to fear, we need be nothing or become something, we can be weak and find that in that weakness is, also, strength.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
