Focused Inquiry/Contemplation #1

Part 1

Inviting the struggle to tea

All of us are familiar with struggle.  Whether it be emotional, mental, relational, spiritual, collective, etc. etc.  We know the feeling of struggle.    Some of the definitions of struggle are :  to contend with an opposing force; to make one’s way with violent effort; a war, fight or conflict.  Some synonyms are: oppose, contest, fight, argue with.  Essentially, the areas of struggle within our lives are doorways into discovering, and finally letting go of,  our deeply conditioned responses of opposition.  And the layers of subconscious beliefs that comprise the existential “no!” that is held deep within the fear of death.  

The kind, gentle attention that we have been practicing can be brought to bear on these areas of struggle within our consciousness. When we are able to open-up in a careful, kind way to these areas of pain and fear, staying present in a gentle manner, they begin to reveal deeper layers of division.  That then can be healed, released and dissolved back into Source.  Its like scooping our struggles up onto our laps and saying “Here Sweetheart, tell me all about it.  Let me kiss that owie.”  The kiss is Presence itself. True Nature, Seeingness.  We invite the struggle over to have tea.  We sense into these areas gently and allow the deeper layers of the struggle to naturally unravel and let go.  

Choose an area of struggle that you would like to understand.  Stay simple.  We all have story upon story to describe our struggles.  Just try to limit it to one sentence.  Such as "I am struggling with……".  Then, with a gentle and kind attention bring the struggle into consciousness.  Feel the body.  Listen, listen, listen.  Let the thoughts, whatever they may be, come.  Allow the emotional body to let loose. Allow, allow, allow.  Remain alert, gentle and present.  Imagine that you are listening to the struggle the way you would listen to a friend or a child in your care.  What lies underneath the experience of struggle?  What thoughts?  What feelings? What beliefs? What conditioning?  What does the struggle reveal and have to say?  Can we allow the struggle to speak without creating a story upon the story?  

Practice participating, with gentleness, in the natural process of the struggle playing itself out, cracking open and transmuting.  Inhabit the struggle with courage and curiosity.

I go among trees and sit still.

All my stirring becomes quiet

Around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places

Where I left them, asleep like cattle……..

Then what I am afraid of comes.

I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

And the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

—-Wendell Berry

Part 2

Now that we have become more familiar and intimate with the process of struggle, we can move forward with a deeper inquiry.  As always, we begin by making ourselves openly and compassionately available to the deeper dimensions of our being.  Coming into inquiry with a sense of discovery.  Understanding that our "answers" lie within our hearts and souls.  And that by becoming available in a willing way we are more able to discover and reveal the innate wisdom.

As we did in part 1, begin by coming into struggle.  Feel it directly.  Let go of its story.  

Look deeply and intimately.  Allow.  

Beyond the historical narrative, at the core, what is the foundation of strugglingness?  

What are the key elements?  

What does struggle need in order to exist?  

Who or what, exactly, is struggling?

Surrendering the Appearance   

 First of all remember the infinite nature of your own being as the very I AM of GOD.  And secondly, , the absolute nothingness of sin, disease, and death, realized through your ability to impersonalize these errors and to see that they do not exist as persons, conditions or places but only as belief, illusion and suggestion.  

Joel Goldsmith

The I AM of GOD in the above quote is not a personal selfhood claiming to be God.  This differentiation is extremely important.  We are not trading in one version of ego for a shinier, superior, or metally constructed version of me.  Direct, empty, impersonal and totally intimate infinite nature of Being is not the same experience as knowing through a sense of self.  

Part 1

No matter what problem, challenge, or difficulty is appearing, bringing the attention to Fundamental Presence is the most important thing in that moment.  Inhabit the moment deeply and purely through/from and AS Presence Itself.  Reminding oneself that we can't conceptually know what anything actually means.  We are habitually seeing the reflection as it is shaped through conditioned history and belief.  The mind is either a tool of conditioning, forming appearance through belief.  Or it is at home with Itself AS an avenue of fundamental Awareness,Love,Peace.

 What beliefs are you at the mercy of today and can you look differently? If you think you have absolutely no problems or struggles I suggest you look at what you are believing about the world right now, the news right now, the state of things right now, your health right now, the shoulds right now, the opposite side right now.

Relax and see what happens when we move in a way of not knowing.  "I don't know what is truly happening or what it means" and then shift the focus, the attention ( down, back and in) ,to the still, silent ground.  "Grace give me eyes to see this as Love sees.  The one Power KNOWS, I, as a me do not."   Become vitally available through attentive Listeningness.  Open field, one place, quiet sensing.  As we practice surrendering the appearance, surprising responses, actions and paths naturally begin to show up.  

This is not the same as petitioning to a rewarding and punishing source outside of oneself.  Feel the difference between "please god make this go away or be different" and "of my own self I know nothing, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you".  

Surrendering the belief in good and bad is a deep devotion.   Surrendering the appearance of division in order to live from/AS Love and Peace without opposite takes courage and heart. There IS Goodness unopposed, despite the appearance of division. 

 Let's practice together. Where two or more are gathered, Love is amplified and intensified.   God give us eyes to see.  

Part 2  

What is the experience of language when it is perceived beyond historical referencing and is rather received as a transmission of Silence itself?  We are almost always hearing words through the filter of referencing.  Memory and belief.  We hear the word and we instantly compare it to all the knowing of that word we have stored in the memory to decide what the word represents. 

Drop the word Love into the silent abyss deep within the heart.  Just see if you can sense and feel the word rather than mentally anchor it in conceptual knowing.  If the word is not given to memory and belief it will land someplace deeper.

 Now Peace.   Experience this word beyond the memory and concept.  Freshly.  Deep in the heart.  Just let the references flow on by without engaging with them.  And rather, sink deeper into the felt sense of right here as one IS PEACE.   

We are interrupting a deeply held habit with this exercise.  Be gentle.  Look freshly.  Play.

Love and Peace. We can only Be As That.  There is no way to intellectually come to original, uncaused Love and Peace.

And so it is, we go from state of consciousness to state of consciousness until eventually there must dawn the realization "I" in the midst of me is mighty. "I" and the Father are One, not two. I and the Father are One. I and The Cause are One. Thou seest me, thou seest The Cause that sent me. And when we say but the Father is greater than I, we're talking about the invisible "I" that I AM, which is Cause. 

Joel Goldsmith. 

Who can tell what miracles Love has in store for us

If only we have the courage to become AS it is?

Everything we think we know now is only the beginning

Of another knowing that itself has no end,

And everything we now can accomplish will seem negligible to us.  

When the powers of our divine nature flower in glory and act through us. 

Iqbal, sufi mystic