There are some things in life I learned on my own.
Most have to do with organic bodily processes. The reptilian brain responses to external stimuli. “Built-in” stuff. Innate stuff. Fear, hunger, survival programs. Turning grunts and groans into meaningful – or in some cases, meaningless – dialogue.
With regard to growth, maturity, propelling ones self ahead in life, communication, livelihood, relationships, ownership… all this had to be learned. The learning process was as prone to fault as the marriage between teacher and student. Many questionable teachers, often a reluctant student. Many trials and tests. Many cyclical loops of learning new ways to break things, versus old ways to fix things. And the School of Life goes on.
We come here to perform certain feats. Most of us know this innately. Sometimes it takes evolution, decades, seasons, trauma, transformation… to get this knowledge to the surface, to the interface where it becomes tangible for us. Some of us perform the predictable, the mundane, the safely-approved activities to the end of our days. No fault in this: life isa package of ordained stuggle and compromised victory… and then you die. Why question the premise of education, job, family, golf-game, old-age home when it is cozier and easier to go along with the game?
Others question. Innately, intuitively – at the guts, substance and core level of our being -we know there is more. We know the inherent character of life is magic. We know somewhere deep in us that the callings of love, thirst, fulfillment, sweetness, joy are the truest and most sacred activities of life. We know this without saying it, without reading it, without being told.
And life becomes the fulfillment of all these recipes.
And what is special?To each of us, to all of us. To the emporer, to the janitor. In the moments that pass, the moments gone by, the ones left to come.
We talk of this thing called “heart”. Books are written, it’s on greeting cards. It surfaces in romance, parenting, loss, solitude, ecstasy, revelation. It visits in quiet moments with self, friends, lovers. What even it really is, we may not know. It hides under many garments, it inhabits many meetings, it greets us around certain street-corners in life. All we really know is, IT IS. We also know, that this elusive and inescapable dimension is urgently important, extremely vital, indispensible, and central to the core of our very life.
How important is it to know and feel this in life?
As time passes, everything comes and goes. Things show their true nature. Something sits and waits inside; something witnesses all this, sees all this, knows all this, understands all this. Doesn’t judge it. Isn’t insulted or even intrigued by it, simply knows it.
For those who know, who understand, who have had the calling in life to find this place, to know this subtle dimension of being; for those, this place of “heart” becomes the single most important thing in life. Again, not because of protocol, teachings, innuendo, fear or need… but because of knowing, because of knowledge. This silent self that witnesses, that waits, that remains in joy, that sits in the most central, the most protected, the most stable position in existence. When the nature of things that pass by is known, as well as the nature of the permanent, no judgement, argument or positionneed be engaged. The answer simply looks outward into the world of question-marks.
It is so important to know that answer, to stay with that answer, to understand that answer, to be that answer. Not for “them out there” but for “me in here”. Them out there have to find their own answer, hopefully in the place where answers dwell. The place where questions are generated is not necessarily the place where answers dwell.
To know that answer, engage in that answer, stay with that answer, is the crossing of the threshold to inner peace.
In my life, many things have cost me money. I have paid many teachers to teach a gamut of lessons with a variety of outcomes. The teachings of inner peace is a gesture of love, a gift of consciousness from a true teacher to a sincere student. No price can ever be put on this, and no payment can be made in return, except for love and consciousness itself.
Life has many games, and games have many rules.
This is one game whose rules have not changed since the begining of time.
