The Invitation
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. |
And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings. |
Love wants our attention
The Sacred Dance Partner is persistent. Love will keep knocking at our door until we open up and let Her in. There are, two ways, it seems, Life’s invitation comes to us: crisis and intention. Usually it takes an unexpected and unwanted jarring of our habitual ways to awaken us to the gifts of Life. Sometimes it is a faint whisper. Other times the urgent pounding at our heart’s door is loud enough to wake the dead. The Universe knows that without an invitation strong enough to penetrate the ego or small self, few of us open willingly to the spiritual journey. The plug has to be pulled out from our “game,” so we that begin to rethink what it is all about. There is a “necessary suffering” to human life, and if we keep putting it off, we remain perpetually stuck in the ordinary life.
Crisis A great truth of Buddhism is: "Life is difficult". With every challenge comes an opportunity for transformation. Instead of pushing away that which we find hard, or grasping onto that which we find pleasant, we learn to pause to take a "backward step" to allow what is to just be, holding experience with a posture of compassion.
Awakenings often begin with a “crisis of legitimacy” where the old rules and old maps no longer make sense. People begin to doubt the systems and institutions that they once thought were solid and trustworthy as they search about for "new gods," new ways to perceive and comprehend the power that guides the universe. The focus here is on maintaining patterns of the past: familiar emotions, old habits and settled judgments. C. Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer at MIT, uses a computer metaphor of... “downloading: reenacting habitual patterns of action, conversation, and thought” to describe the state of being from which the journey of transformation leads. Buddhist teacher Tara Brach calls this way of living “a trance of separation.” Don’t take this personally. Living in this place of exile or in a trance is a very normal way of being human. However, it is the degree of exile or the depth of our trance that can lead to suffering, our’s and the world’s. |
IntentionHere, at the beginning of the Journey, we pause to attend to the vernacular of fear. Words and feelings, barbed with sharp thorns of discouragement, anxiety, and impatience, seem to stick in the throat. Yet, it is when we attend to these words with gentle compassion, we begin to see the potential they hold.
The invitation might come in a dream or in a chance encounter with a friend. Somehow, someway, along the way, we all stumble upon grace. Through a crisis or intentional practice, the universe is determined to invite us to notice, to wake up to life. Somehow, in ways beyond knowing, a crack opens in our consciousness through which the invitation to wake up is heard. It is time to begin what Joesph Campbell called "The Hero's Journey". Now is our time. Gather your resources. Muster your courage. Lean into the adventure of a lifetime. Know, you are not alone. "The hero cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. 'Live,' Nietzsche says, “as though the day were here.' It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse." Joesph Campbell |
LOVE also allured you out of distress into a broad place where there was no constraint, and what was set on your table was full of fatness.” Job 36:16
Challenge: Refusal - taking "false" refuge in attachment to things that keep us small
Practice: Saying heartfelt YES to the possibilities of transformation
Practice: Saying heartfelt YES to the possibilities of transformation