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The following is from
http://advaita-academy.org/Extracts/I-Once-Worried.ashx
The following is an
extract from Orva Schrock's book ‘Grandpa's
Notebooks: The Evolution of an Amish Soul’.
When I was a little kid I worried about if I would grow tall,
have a happy home, be independent, find an appropriate career,
have my own family, find out what truth is and on and on I
worried.
I did grow tall enough, I found out how to support myself, I had
my own family and I learned something about truth. I read what
others wrote of it. I heard what others said of it. I prayed that
God would show it to me. I searched within and without.
In spite of my searching and efforts, truth made its appearance
now and then, seemingly randomly. It often wasn't what I expected
or thought I needed. But in the nick of time, light came, this,
that and the other appeared just when most needed and least
expected.
I did survive and get away from my oppressive home of origin. I
did have wonderful children to love. I did find an interesting
and successful career in business. A great light did finally dawn
on me. Every worry was for naught, because there was always a
greater hand guiding mine. A greater purpose seemed to surge
ahead of my own feeble reasoning and efforts.
I looked for God in religion and found Him instead within my own
heart. I looked for God in church and found Him instead in the
laughter of children, in summer breezes, and in the sound of
water trickling over rocks.
Now I see finally that always and in everything a higher power
led, blessed, pointed, pushed and pulled, protected, whispered to
me.
I see now that all has happened as it needed to and it always
will be so. The light of consciousness in which all things appear
points directly to pure beingness, pure awareness, and pure
bliss.
It's when we let our own imaginings and worries control us that
we will have troubles and fears in our lives.
Am I all these dramas and human foibles and fears? Am I a father
and husband and business man? Do I exist as anything outside of
pure awareness?
It seems obvious now: Consciousness is indeed the root and basis
of all. It's where God and everything in every infinite universe
always appears.
It has become totally obvious. I open my eyes and the creation
appears in all its glory. I close my eyes to sleep and in dreams
the appearances spring forth again. Great battles, flying
machines, a giant bear, fireflies, angelic beings. There is no
limit to what may appear in dreams. Now just where are those
inner visions appearing? They are not dancing about in your
bedroom while you sleep. No, they appear within your
consciousness, the very same consciousness that contains your
waking world.
Even in dreamless sleep, there is consciousness without details.
As Ramana used to point out, ‘we say we slept well or
happily.’ Consciousness lying there in a timeless and
spaceless condition of pure potential. Whether inner or outer
visions, they arise nowhere else other than in the light of
consciousness which we are and in which all things appear and
disappear.
I say ‘I’ and imagine myself a separate and
self-sufficient being. Where does this ‘I’ thought come
from to begin with? You guessed it; it always arises in pure
consciousness along with everything else.
So I need not worry anymore. But if I do worry, I know it's just
something pure consciousness is doing now and ‘I’ am
nowhere around.
photo: Orva Schrock
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