Suffering

I don't think I have to tell you - but I'll strengthen the idea - that there's nothing in the universe, not one thing, that doesn't have meaning. I can look out the window on a gorgeous Spring day here in Southern Oregon and see all the bounty, the burgeoning green - it has a meaning that words can't give to it but that the experience itself delivers...

If the nature of this world, if its reality is as we have been led to believe by our society at large, then one's daily dose of suffering is sure to be seen as undesirable and, above all, unnecessary; a thing to avoid at all costs, that with ample fortune or favor we may hope to escape altogether. But if the Reality of our individual lives, its True Measure of Success is not to be determined...

To know, To will... To dare to see. To strive, To live... To die to Be.

Linger in the great mystery of moments untold. Wait there for the unspeakable invitation to live there.

Doing the right thing, in the right way, begins with seeing the right order of things. All of life's lessons point us toward this simple, celestial truth. Through the pain of missteps and mistakes, we are gradually awakened to discover what has always been right before our eyes: whenever things are out of order within us, our choices and actions must follow -- and sorrow is the inevitable result.

The end of suffering is not found in the pursuit of freedom from suffering, but in seeing through the very nature of desire that generates the suffering to begin with. The problem is not what we desire, but the identification with desire itself, and the endless cycle of division it creates.

The more we allow our mind to drift where -- and will -- as it pleases, the more likely will we find ourselves having fallen into some form of unexpected suffering. Being in full command of ourselves is inseparable from being in command of our attention; there is no other order, and no other freedom.

No unwanted experience of life will ever be "over" for us until we're inwardly awake enough...to get over wishing that it was.

The mind asleep to itself doesn't realize that it created the problem that it can't stop trying to resolve; and that the more it struggles to try and think through a solution to its self-induced conflict, the greater grows its struggle to escape that suffering.