Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3486, Sunday, March 29, 2009, Editor: Mark
Stand tall at the edges of tomorrow
for there is no danger there.
The voice of love that called you here to planet Earth
will not leave you to darkness. Your purpose
is vaster than the imaginings of the human mind.
Listen to me. Love is all there is.
Nothing more is needed to be known.
So open your heart and, in the name of that love,
welcome every bit of life that awaits you.
Your purpose is to be present, minute by minute,
breath by breath, tomorrow after tomorrow,
to the end of time itself.
- Emmanuel
Love has nothing to do with another person. Love is your
individual and collective soul. Love is God. Love is Truth. Love
is Beauty. Love is Self. To know yourself, to surrender to the
truth of yourself, is to surrender to love.
- Gangaji
If we meet this world unprotected, our heart gets broken over and
over and over. This is actually a gift. You let the world touch
you, it shatters you open, and it shatters you open, and it
shatters you open. And here you are, shining. After our heart is
broken open a thousand times and all of the contents emptied out,
there's just this shining left.
- Jeannie Zandi
Sorrow has been a constant companion for many of us, and yet we
are content with the mind's interpretation of what it is. What if
sorrow is not what it appears to be?
What if it is a deep invitation to return to authenticity and
naturalness? What if, in your heart, you know that sorrow is a
sane response to the human condition of confusion and suffering?
Everything in nature has a function, and depression's function is
to dissolve the sense of isolation and the unnecessary defenses.
We all know that when sorrow fills us, there is no escape. The
depths of sorrow each one of us has experienced is so great. For
some of us, there are circumstances that appear to cause sorrow
and sustain it. And yet for others, we cannot trace it back to an
event.
In both cases, if we feel it deeply, it is too large to be ours
alone.
For a moment, don't touch the narrative of sorrow and notice its
fathomless depths. What does this reveal?
Have you ever wondered how we have the capaciy to feel so deeply?
How is it that we can experience the loss and disappointments of
the human heart? There is so much about us that remains unseen.
In our innocence, we listen to thought's interpretation of who we
are and what is happening in our life. And yet in the background,
there is a presence of such intelligence and wisdom that is
already carrying the life we call ours. This is our natural Self.
We all have played so many roles in our lives, variously leading
to joy and sorrow. The only thing that has remained a constant is
this presence: that which is aware of the daily ups and downs,
that which feels the emotions and all the body's sensations - and
even listens to thoughts.
Have you ever noticed that whatever the age of your body, you
often felt much younger? What if you weren't defined by your
birth date, or how others view you, or even how you view
yourself? What if you were so much greater and simpler than any
idea of yourself? And what if sorrow was pointing to that?
At the heart of sorrow there is longing, an unquenchable hunger
that we try to fill with experiences, food, love affairs and
material acquisitions.
Longing, when felt directly, is the invitation back to what is
Real - to who we are behind our roles and personality.
In the West, the focus is on fixing the personality so it can
function better and feel complete. This can be a lifetime process
because the personality itself is imagined: it is not who we are.
Like a piece of fabric, it cloaks our innocence and attempts to
protect the openness within.
Just check, are you really your role?
As you look inside, are you aware of an aliveness that is
naturally open? Right now, all the sensations and emotions have
free movement through us. One of the functions of this constant
flow of emotions and thoughts is to awaken tis alive intelligence
to its innate capacity to soothe emotion and clarify the mind.
This is when the natural Self starts to know itSelf - to
recognize that it simply is.
There is no need for the Self to change or improve; it is
complete and perfect just as it is. This is true rest.
- Pamela Wilson, from Soul's Code
Love and joy are inseparable from your natural state of inner
connectedness with Being. Glimpses of love and joy or brief
moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the
stream of thought.
For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally,
in moments when the mind is rendered "speechless,"
sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion,
or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And
within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is
love, there is peace.
Usually, such moments are short-lived, as the mind quickly
resumes its noise-making activity that we call thinking. Love,
joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from
mind dominance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They
lie beyond the emotions, on a much deeper level. So you need to
become fully conscious of your emotions and be able to feel them
before you can feel that which lies beyond them. Emotion
literally means "disturbance. The word comes from the Latin
emovere, meaning "to disturb."
Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being, or rather three
aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being. As such,
they have no opposite. This is because they arise from beyond the
mind. Emotions, on the other hand, being part of the dualistic
mind, are subject to the law of opposites. This simply means that
you cannot have good without bad. So in the unenlightened,
mind-identified condition, what is sometimes wrongly called joy
is the usually short-lived pleasure side of the continuously
alternating pain/pleasure cycle. Pleasure is always derived from
something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. The very
thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow,
or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain. And what
is often referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for
a while, but it is an addictive clinging, an extremely needy
condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a
witch. Many "love" relationships, after the initial
euphoria has passed, actually oscillate between "love"
and hate, attraction and attack.
Real love doesn't make you suffer. How could it? It doesn't
suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain. As I
said, even before you are enlightened - before you have freed
yourself from your mind - you may get glimpses of true joy, true
love, or of a deep inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These
are aspects of your true nature, which is usually obscured by the
mind. Even within a "normal" addictive relationship,
there can be moments when the presence of something more genuine,
something incorruptible, can be felt. But they will only be
glimpses, soon to be covered up again through mind interference.
It may then seem that you had something very precious and lost
it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion
anyway. The truth is that it wasn't an illusion, and you cannot
lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscred
but can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is
heavily overcast, the sun hasn't disappeared. It's still there on
the other side of the clouds.
- Eckhart Tolle, from The Power of Now