Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

It is a fallacy to think that any form of life is necessarily more spiritual than any other.

Our personal story becomes a spiritual journey, our ego-centric universe becomes a particle in an infinite field of light.

Pain and suffering awaken us more, because the only reason we experience pain or suffering is because we are clinging to something or other.

But the predicament is that enlightenment is not an achievement; enlightenment is a transformation of being. And the achiever goes as well as the achievement.

Be right here, aware of sitting here, aware of the self-definition that you’re creating in your own mind. Aware of your ears listening. Aware of me speaking. Aware of the traffic outside. Aware of the feelings in your body. Aware of your mind grabbing at this and that. Just sit with me in this awareness. There is nothing we have to do; just come in

By letting go of even the thought I, what is left? There is nowhere to stand and no one to stand there. No separation anywhere. Pure awareness. Neither this, nor that. Just clarity and being.

But it turns out that Christ was right when he said, “Lay not up your treasures where moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break in.” Buddha was right when he said, “The cause of suffering is craving,” craving after things that are not permanent, and nothing is permanent.

We love without clinging; we help without identifying ourselves as helpers; we protest without getting lost in our protests; we care for our children remembering that, behind it all, here we are: the truth, the caring. We honor our bodies; we honor our society; we honor our whole game; we change it in the way it needs to be changed. We listen to he

Some of the confusion came because we kept trying to make the outside different as a reflection of the fact that the inside was changing.