Special Lessons

There is so much that goes unexplained in human life. And that isn't to say that you and I don't have explanations, but over and over again our explanations prove to be lies. And the way we are able to justify this way of getting around a problem (or a person), and stand momentarily on some ground as if we've conquered the world, is that we believe we have understood the situation and risen above it...

Our eyes and ears, thoughts and feelings, empower us to move freely through the extraordinary web of life of which we're a part. But these gifts of perception, as considerable as they may be, are more like a looking glass than they are the keys to that secret kingdom of freedom we seek. With their aid, we can almost see into, and so confirm, that innermost realm where our heart senses we belong.

Whenever we find ourselves running after something -- anything -- to complete us, what is the real nature of this force within us that compels us in this way? We are pushed along in these pursuits by a very subtle, but solid sense of feeling as though we are somehow incomplete.

In one respect, at the heart of our predicament as a species of beings -- because it negatively impacts our possibilities -- is that we do not see the big picture. For most of us, the big picture is our problem, our heavy heart, our irritation with somebody else, or our own sense of inadequacy. The big picture is the weight of our past. And that's not the big picture at all. That is a self-pitying picture. It has nothing to do with what it is that we need to understand.

If our intuition can perceive that the peace we long for is inherent in this perfectly present moment we call the "Now," what is it that keep us from knowing the fulfillment of its promise within us? Let's look.

Whenever our world changes for the better, it does so for only one reason: somewhere, in some place, someone (just like you and me) is suddenly "changed." Like ripples radiating out from the center of a pond into which a stone has been thrown, the force of the awakened new perception -- this realization of what has always been one's higher possibility -- establishes a new reality. Everything is changed, forever.

Can we agree that our fearful conclusions about our life experiences are born of an incomplete perception? That when I see something wholly, there is a different quality to the event than when I look at something and it formulates for me my sense of identity? And then the next thing I know, I feel isolated. And when I'm isolated, strangely enough, I'm still overwhelmed with fear!

How many of us have had moments in our lives where we have tried to escape certain qualities of ourselves by doing different things, only to find ourselves unable to escape the condition, unable to escape our present nature, so that finally the day comes where there's no escaping it, but there's no living with it either? And in the moment, we can no longer resist our own character based on the assumption that we ought not be that kind of human being.

Occasionally, for all of us, we accidentally enter into the flow of the Now. We could be skiing, skating, doing yoga, playing golf, and suddenly our activity aligns us with the flow of that moment. Emotionally we can enter accidentally into the Now when we look out and see the sun breaking through the clouds or we catch the evening light as it shades trees differently. Intellectually we can enter into the Now when we have an insight and an epiphany comes.

In nature, hurricanes occur when walls of thunderstorms are driven up the center, producing a vortex -- an "eye" -- where, while everything else is total turmoil in and around it, there is complete silence and stillness in the center.

When this sensory mind of ours perceives life, it mistakenly sees things as happening to it from the outside in. How does this error in perception affect us? It means that we perceive life as a series of things coming at us. Everything about us is oriented outwardly, and it appears to us that our lives are being determined from the outside in.

Nearly all of humanity is asleep to itself; six-and-a-half billion "sleep-walkers" who -- even as they move through life -- are all but oblivious to the reality of the invisible worlds within them shaping their lives.