Certainty #06

Mother Earth seems agitated, upset, angry— hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, suffering of unimaginable depths.  We send our prays and do what we can.  And I can’t help but think, is it us that is causing this or is it just nature?  
Just Nature.  Hmm, we are part of nature, in relationship with her so no matter your beliefs or scientific stance, we are effected.  Doesn’t it make sense to do all we can to listen?  Not just on the surface of life, listening to the experts or various pundits, though indeed there are things we can choose to do or not do.  
There is a deeper listening necessary, a listening that requires subtly and heightened senses, increased intelligence of every sort.  This listening is found deep inside.  It is the inner voice we hear when we say, “after researching this and thinking about it, THIS feels right.”   Where is that place of knowing? How do we nurture it?    

Certainty                                                                                      September 11, 2017
Who of us does not yearn for certainty?  Proof that our actions are correct, our thoughts refined, our beliefs the truest?  Yet doubt is a good thing, a healthy thing.  On the surface it drives us deeper, it encourages expansion.  Where may I have missed something?  It pushes light into corners and dares us to see.  Still we search for certainty.  But there is a kind of danger in stopping, in believing we have found “it” as that is what causes calcification and hardening of the most frightening sort, killing the very seed of knowing that drives the search.
All of this plays out on the surface of life.  The journey of meditation is one to a deeper knowing, a certainty born of authentic experience, experience that the expansive light of knowing, of all and every conceivable form of knowing, of the means to that knowing, is the source of our very own self.  In deep meditation this spark, the light of consciousness, curves back moving inward and comes to face the light of source, Self. This certainty is not something that can be intellectual given or earned, though indeed it supports every intellectual, emotional and physical manifestation.  What is the truth, the certainty we seek?

We are told when we begin to meditate that in time “wild horses will not be able to pull us” from our daily practice.  We hear this and think OK, prove it?  But it is not for the teacher or any other to prove certainty to us.  This can only be done in the laboratory of our own experience taking place in each individual body-mind.  So we commit to the experiment.  Life in a sense is an experiment itself, it’s outcome dependent upon tools and conditions.  How do we get the most effective tools, create the most welcoming environment for growth to occur?  How do we know what action is best to take?
We enter into meditation and commit for this time.  Add this one thing and see what happens.  For years I sat, and yes there was sweetness, repose right away, but my awareness, so close to the surface was easily captured like a child with a bright shiny object.  But I am an adult, I choose to commit, to go deeper and in that knowing, my ability to go deep into anything and everything is made spontaneously and naturally possible.  Now I have a certainty that I will not abandon my daily bath in the waters of consciousness because I have proof, experience of the most authentic sort.  I live a more steady, efficacious life. I am more skillful in my movement and thus more joyful in engagement.  How this is made possible is the platform for understanding the benefits of meditation.  On the simplest level, space has been made, a “ledge of freedom” that I stand on to use my senses, my intellect to determine how I will act instead of react to my present circumstances.  I am better able to access what knowledge and skill I have and know more easily where to go to get what I need.  This is huge.

It is always our choice.  And choice, where and how we spend our energy be it time, money or effort is our greatest expression of freedom in this world.  To feel we have no choice is to be in a prison of our own making and in a sense, the perversion of time.  Go deep into the unbounded dynamic stillness of your own sweet consciousness.  Then come out into life and go deep into everything.  Be in a healthy relationship with nature, with Self, with everyone and every thing.

Life is too precious, too finite to permit decisions to be made on a surface level.  Go deep and connect to the place where decisions are made and actions taken once those experts have spoken.  Listen to your heart.  Render this place clean clear and optimal because ultimately the decision rests with us.  Certainty of the deepest most expansive sort resides in the Heart.