Thought remembers the last drop, and anticipates the next drop. This is how suffering is created.
Remembering the last drop, and the many drops before that, adds the heaviness of “my painful and burdensome past” to the present drop.
Remembering yesterday’s absence of rain, yesterday’s dryness, even yesterday’s blissful sunshine, adds the pain of longing and regret to the present drop.
Dreaming of the next drop, and the many drops to come, projecting a future downpour, adds the anxiety of “my painful and heavy future” to the present drop.
But in actuality, without history, and without dreams of the future, there is only the present drop, this fresh new drop. And whether the present pain-drop is huge and intense, or soft and gentle, it is always happening Now, and we are always spared from the ravages of time.
The rain does not fall all at once. Splish splash.
ASCENSION
Awakening. Enlightenment. Higher and higher levels of consciousness. Seeking the light. Becoming the light. Being the light. Going beyond the light. Receiving transmission. Giving transmission. Sitting at the feet of the guru. Excitement. The guru must know. Burning incense. Reading spiritual books. Chanting. Meditating. Doing yoga. Liberating the inner child. Getting there, getting there. Discovering the true self. Transcending the ego. Going beyond mind. Ascending. Descending. Ascending again. Opening chakras. Attaining unimaginable powers. Miracles. Inexplicable feats. Mysterious happenings. Insight upon insight. Being human. Non-human. Trans-human. Meta-human. Going beyond duality. Going beyond going beyond duality. Going beyond “going beyond going beyond”. Who goes beyond? Seeing the non-existence of the ‘I’. The source of Self. Who sees? Who asks?
Stop, friend. Breathe.
Your elderly father’s hand brushes against yours as you walk together through the park. Never to be repeated, a moment.
Contact. An insurrection.
Be here, it whispers. You get this only once. Be here.
A PRAYER FOR THE DYING
Life,
Let them struggle to understand until there is only confusion,
and in the centre of that confusion show them their inherent clarity.
Make them courageous by taking away all of their hope,
and let them weep until their stomachs hurt,
until their tears melt into laughter.
Love them by destroying them.
And when they are more alone than ever,
show them an intimacy they cannot imagine.
Make them suffer until they are exhausted from fighting You,
make their pain great enough so that all their concepts turn to dust and ash.
Let them never know what they are looking for,
but make them keep looking anyway,
as if their lives depended on it.
Give them time to read their books and listen to their teachers,
give them time to build up mountains of knowledge,
give them certainty and pride and a sense of security.
And then let their books rot,
and turn their teachers into hypocrites,
and make them doubt and forget everything they’ve learned.
Everything.
And make them stand alone, facing You,
naked and without protection,
and let them tremble,
let them wet themselves with fear,
let all masks and pretensions fall away.
And then let them into the great secret,
that they are loved beyond words,
in their nakedness, in their failure, in their brokenness,
in everything they were running away from.
That they are you.
That your face is their face.
That nothing ever happened at all.
NOTHING TO LOSE
Do it – or let it be done – the thing for which your heart has always been waiting.
What is the risk? Losing everything? Then lose everything. The experience of failure? Then experience failure, taste it, find a new kind of success within it. Rejection? Then open up to the glory of rejection, open your heart wide to the ones who reject you, see their pain and forgive them for it. Ridicule? Then fall in love with those voices of ridicule, seeing them as your beloved new-borns, your own voices in need of kind attention.
Life is too precious to waste, and too immediate to postpone, and the ‘worst’ that could happen is a broken body or a shattered image, neither of which are really who you are. Nothing to lose, except perhaps your imaginary pride, your frightened ego which secretly longs to burn in the furnace of living anyway…
RUBY SLIPPERS
There are no ordinary moments. We have always known this, deep down, for we were young once, and we still are. We just pretended to be ‘grown ups’, that’s all. Life is still the cosmic adventure it always was. You are perfect exactly as you are.
It is not the ‘me’ that awakens. Awakening cannot enter the story, for it is beyond time and space and cannot be some kind of conclusion for a ‘person’. The awakening is from the mirage of ‘me’, with its myriad projects, its plans, its conclusions, its incessant seeking for more, and its never-ending holding up of the image, including the image of itself as some kind of Wizard of Oz, some superhuman, Christ-like figure, some hyper-awakened being sent down from heaven to save the mortals.
For some, awakening is sudden. For many, it is gradual, over a lifetime. For all, it is timeless, and for all, the destination is the same – Kansas, Source, Presence, Home – and the destination is the origin, and it all points to this moment exactly as it is, right now. Stunningly ordinary, yet as vast as the universe, as rich and as full as the Ganges at sunrise, as precious as that look in your child’s eyes, so easily forgotten, so easily remembered.
There’s no place like Home. Click your heels together three times and say it. Nothing to lose.
GRATITUDE
Despite the sorrow and the despair, despite the times when I thought I’d never make it, despite the days when the mind seemed like a torture chamber and the body a prison, despite the years of pain and profound alienation from my true nature, it has been a blessed life, a life of unspeakable riches, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, and it couldn’t have been any other way.
And if it all ends tomorrow, if the curtain falls, I will be reduced to a word, there will be only a single word left, and that word will be the word that started it all, and that word will be Gratitude.
Thank you. For everything – the light and the darkness, the gain and the loss, the success and the failure, the pleasure and the pain, the joy and the sorrow, and for the unspeakable awareness in which it all came and went like birdsong.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With thanks to Nic Higham (www.nichigham.com) for your generous help with the text and cover design, and Matt Licata for your endless encouragement and beautiful foreword. Mum, thanks for the feedback and the friendship, and for the birth. Julian and Catherine, it’s good to be home. Robin, Barry, Sid, John, Yoko, Menno, Jeannine and Mike, gratitude for your friendship and encouragement over the years. And to all you other shining stars, countless in number, who made everything possible, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Index of First Lines
Foreword by Matt Licata Ph.D
Author’s Note
Friend, from the very beginning
I will always listen deeply to you
On every page of a book, behind the words
Okay. So you feel peaceful, blissed out
You’ll never reach a point in your life
Saying yes to this
moment
Be mindful about what you say after you say “I Am…”
Today is not some insignificant stepping stone
I don’t want to hear what you believe
There is no fixed path to enlightenment.
You get tired of half-truths, don’t you?
I love being in the present moment. It is my true Home.
There are two core fears: losing what you have
You will lose everything
We never rehearsed this
Right here, right now, in this moment
One thing we all eventually learn, the hard way
What happens when the ground beneath your feet
Regret is thought’s futile attempt to alter the past.
You are a King, a Queen, watching over
In this presence beyond presence
Don’t become a spiritual zombie
I often get excited when someone reports uncaused
Nobody you have loved has ever left you
Here is an ancient invitation to love the struggle of life
Waking up doesn’t mean ‘being okay’ with everything
Forget trying to get it “right” all of the time.
In my father’s field I stood
Before I am born
I was speaking with a friend
What’s worse, the falling rain
On your deathbed, will you still care
No matter what happens in a movie
Speak your deepest truth
Life does not always go ‘my way’
I find truth in anything anyone ever says about me
Stop, just for a moment, and consider this
What happens when, even when we feel like leaving
Life will eventually bring you to your knees.
They say to look upon God’s face
Awakening is not a goal
Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to ‘fix’ the one
You receive some unexpected news
Your life situation doesn’t need to be perfect.
I was talking to a dying friend.
What’s wrong with falling apart?
You don’t really want what you think you want
For you, every day is the end of the world
Whatever is happening in the circumstances of your life
Who has been wearing these shoes?
There is no such thing as a thought from the past.
Perhaps your imperfections
Dying to all you think you know
Many spiritual teachers say there is no death.
They used to say, “chase your dreams”
It’s about coming alive. It’s about waking up to grace.
Cherish your doubts. They are the seeds of Mystery
We seek some kind of permanence
The death of a beloved parent.
It is devastation. It takes no prisoners.
I dived into the ocean of my own loneliness
I would never say that I am ‘awakened’.
Fall apart completely
When there is fear, pain, confusion
You are a unique flower, with your own irreplaceable scent
Loss contains within itself a beautiful yet painful reminder
“I held you in my arms as you passed from this world”
Everybody is doing their absolute best
Sadness: “Sorry, awareness, I know I shouldn’t be here.
Friend, when you feel broken, lost, far away from home
The things I should have said
We are encouraged to ‘be in the Now’ and ‘be present’
One of the most divine, sacred, deeply religious
Existence can feel overwhelming sometimes
Don’t hide your wounds, friend
All over the world, and in the news every day
Our wounds, when they are ignored, denied, repressed
You want the perfect partner?
Rest as the great storm nears.
We live in a time of great change.
We label everything and everyone
If you can be In the Now
If we run away from our sadness,
We will sit for hours together
When you sit with a deeply troubled friend
Face it. Your life is never going to work out.
I do not believe in anything.
The most brutally honest, loving and freeing sentiment
When a loved one sheds their physical form
Sweet, un-tetherable bird
Everything you have ever longed for is already present
There is only one day you will ever live
You are a vast room
Who are you? What sees out of your eyes?
We tend to see our present experience
Love will nibble and gnaw at your bones
We are brainwashed into believing
If our love is dependent on looks
The voice of addiction
Trying to allow this moment?
Can it be okay, right now
Can we meet beyond the story of us
I have never met anyone who simply “woke up”
This moment, whatever shape it takes, has no opposite.
Just one instant of naked contact
Humans have always thought in terms of abstract
Suddenly, at home, at work or at play, a crisis happens
Stop looking for your ‘other half’, your ‘soul mate’
The worst thing you’ll ever have to face in life
Stress is the tension between ‘what is’ in this moment
“I feel lonely.”
With each of our breaths
The touch of a loved one’s hand.
You can tell all kinds of stories about yourself.
It’s exhausting, trying or pretending to be ‘up’
I was speaking to a young man who was dealing with severe anxiety.
How can you allow this moment?
Loneliness is the memory or imagination
When we die, we do not become infinite.
It emerges from the Womb with you.
Who is willing to stare life in the face?
There is no such thing as a miracle from God
So many spiritual teachers. So many teachings.
The essential understanding at the heart
To dream, yes, to dream!
The sun rises and sets in the sky
Scientists now know what mystics realised long ago
Spiritual awakening is not a linear path
A sip of tea. The gentle, last touch of a loved one’s hand.
Admit it. You’ve already completely failed
The healthiest relationships
Walking alone in the rain, bathed in consciousness
There is a locked vault containing everything
While working as a home carer
Love, knowing that the one you love may not be here
So much of our suffering comes down to fear
Next time a wave of sadness, or anger, or doubt, or fear
Natural peace and contentment means knowing yourself as the wide open space
And so we make this radical commitment
The rain does not fall all at once.
Awakening. Enlightenment. Higher and higher levels
Life
Do it – or let it be done – the thing for which your heart
There are no ordinary moments.
Despite the sorrow and the despair
Acknowledgements
is-inline-share-buttons">share</div>