Intimacy is the biggest threat to who you think you are. Looking into someone’s eyes all the boundaries melt and there is no question of separation. Who you thought you were is now just a vague distant dream. The only reality is the wide openness that you really are. Seeing beyond the appearance of two, and knowing the wholeness and intimacy of Life itself.
No matter what we do, no matter where we go, no matter what we think about ourselves, no matter how hard we try to be good, no matter how many spiritual experiences we have…. the Timeless, Still, Silent, Freedom that We Are, simply doesn’t care.
We are so quick to assume that there is something wrong with ourselves, and the way it is already, that when we hear about Awareness, we assume that it means that we need to try to become more aware. When we hear about Peace, we assume that we need to try to become more peaceful. When we hear about Love, we assume that we need to try to be more loving. What if there is absolutely nothing wrong or missing? What if it is just a case of having a laugh at all the ideas of how it supposedly ‘should’ be, and seeing that this is how it actually is.
What is the point of living if not to feel whatever is here? Pretending that it is all fine, or that you are tough and can cope with things, is only a way of protecting against the tidal wave that Life can feel like. Sometimes it whispers so quietly, and sometimes it screams unbelievably loudly, but either way, it has a right to be here and be felt as it is. You are Life itself and so whatever is felt right now always has a right to be here and even to be expressed.
The truth is that you are alone. No one can save you or protect you from life, and in fact, death. At first this can seem terrifying to the thinking that desperately holds on to someone, anyone, in the hope that they know what the hell is going on here. But it is a case of the blind leading the blind. You are alone and holding on to someone else is like holding on to your own shirt sleeve.
Knowing that you are only ever alone is the freedom from the painful dependency on a dream, as well as the awful hope that one day you will be saved. No longer expecting to find fulfillment in the other, is the freedom to dance fully with them, and risk losing everything together.
Living the freedom that you are, is about taking full responsibility for how you feel instead of expecting someone else to save or fix you. Acknowledging that truly there is no one ‘out there’ who can ever complete you, is the freedom to really love yourself. You are already everything that you long for, or think you need from ‘outside’ of you. Then every person who appears in your life, is an expression of your own love for yourself.
Keeping up the facade of being ‘someone with a story’ takes so much effort and is so exhausting. You have to keep telling yourself the story again and again, in case you forget.
What would happen if you would just forget? If you would just forget who you are, or what your storyline is? Does Life just stop? Does Life give a damn? The wind still blows and the rain still falls. The flowers still bloom and the birds still tweet. Life doesn’t need your story. Life doesn’t care about your story, or who you think you are. Do you?
In feeling whatever physical sensations are here right now, just as they are, you are feeling the life energy that you are. Life itself expresses itself just like this. Nothing needs to be added, changed or fixed. Recognising this is the radical freedom from all trying and effort.
How do you know that there is anything wrong with you as you are right now? Is it a thought? Is it a belief, or perhaps a physical sense of contraction? Whatever it is, is it really reliable? Can you really know that it’s true? Or perhaps it is simply something happening right now that doesn’t mean anything about who you really are.
Some of us have never really felt like we fit in with the so-called ‘norm’. I used to feel like I must be some kind of alien creature that was somehow dropped on this strange planet – ‘What the hell is going on here?????’
We are taught that to conform and fit in, is the only way to survive in life. So we spend years trying to be like everyone else so that we can feel like we are enough. But for so many people this is such a squashing of our free life energy into a teeny tiny box made of thought and belief.
It takes courage to stand alone in how it is for you, and not believe yourself to be squashed and limited. To courageously acknowledge that how it is for you, is how it is. You don’t need anyone else to confirm that it is acceptable, because the very fact that it is this way, is more than enough confirmation.
Algarve, Portugal