Speaking from Stillness is a fun series transcribing unscripted thoughts while on morning dog walks in my jungle valley. I walk in stillness, then allow whatever arises to get recorded and transcribed. I try to keep them short. The transcript is lightly edited for clarity.
This spiritual path-walking, it’s difficult because there’s a Paradox there, that ‘The more that you seek, the less you’re able to find.’ Now why is that?
Because the seeker itself is an identity. All creatures and beings have some sense of what they are. That’s much more pronounced in humans, who are trying to understand what they are. But there is a sense of…I am tall, I am short. I am male, I am female. I’m a lawyer, I’m an astronaut.
We have identities. And we cling to those identities.
And we want to improve ourselves in order to take actions…to lose weight or gain muscle or deal with traumas or reach the heights of financial power or find that perfect relationship. We’re looking for all these external things that will make us happy.
Because that’s what the world tells us. If you achieve…if you go to school, and you get the good job, and you work really hard...you get the family and the partner and put away for retirement, you will be happy. When the happiness will come, who knows?
Because it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t seem to happen as frequently when you’re in the midst of all those actions…grasping for Peace.
So we look, we act, we seek happiness and joy through wealth or relationships or status or power, through all these external things.
When you begin spiritually-seeking, you start to realize, like all those external things…religion is another…if I give myself to God, I will be saved and go to heaven. Well, you don’t get that till you’re dead.
When you become a spiritual-seeker, you start to realize the folly of all those external things. But the interesting part is, you are still a seeker. You identify as a spiritual-person who has an understanding that I am More than this individual body…but if I just meditate more or say these mantras or do these physical practices, if I just remain in the now-now-now I will get to that place, I will achieve peace and freedom.
It’s about a goal, it’s about wanting to attain…so even the spiritual-seeker falls into the identity-trap.
And here’s where it gets interesting.
There is nothing to attain. There’s nothing to grasp for. It is not possible to act in order to ‘Reach a State’. It is not something to change something about yourself, or your surroundings, or to acquire something, or to become something. None of that is within our grasp.
What the True work is…is to Accept…Fully and Completely…Everything that you are… Now.
We look around a forest, and if you look individually, you can see…Wow that’s a weird outcropping of a branch, that’s weird that fell off, oh look that’s in too much shade, it’s not growing very fast, oh that one’s covered in parasites.
But if you look at it in the whole, the forest is perfect. The trees grow as they will, based on the circumstances they find themselves in. If there’s a tall tree above them, there’s a weird offshoot of a branch that goes in a direction where there is a space (to) reach the sky and get the sun. Or the tree stays small until the tall tree falls, and then the sun is available.
But the key is…everything just happens, based on the circumstances and surroundings of the moment. And Peace comes from…Accepting Everything about yourself.
There is no good and bad…there only Is.
Accepting Everything about yourself, and Accepting these circumstances that you find yourself (in), and Accepting what happens around the next corner…The Now.
So it’s not about attaining or acquiring anything. It is only about full and complete Acceptance of What Is. There is nothing to become, there is nothing new and unique.
Peace is the Acceptance…and the Being with…What Is.
Hmm…even saying that feels good.
Feel deeply what you are, live deeply in the Now,
That is the Great Game.
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I am a Pathfinder, and help Guide Truth-seekers on their Awakening Path. If this resonates and you’d like to investigate further, my website is below. I’m happy to book a free introductory chat to share a bit more!
