heartsteps

Spiritual unity is always followed by actual or personal unity; that is, what we enter into conscious possession of in the spiritual life we will, ere long, gain actual possession of in the physical life. Believe that you have already received in the spirit what you desire to receive in the person, and you will receive it in the person in a very short time. This is a law that positively cannot fail. Claim your own in the real world and you will receive in the real world.

This law gives rise to the practice of affirmations, but affirmations as usually employed do not comply with all the elements of the law. To simply affirm that we are what we wish to be or that we have what we wish to possess, is not sufficient. Our spiritual possessions do not express themselves unless there is a strong, positive, personal desire for expression. We must pray for that which we wish to realize, but our prayer should not be mere asking. The prayer that asks in the feeling of uncertainty as to whether the thing prayed for is for us or not, is not a prayer of faith; and it is only the prayer of faith that is answered.

Christian Larson, 1911

"Waterfall" by Kahlil Gibran

Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”

And he answered: “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again into your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you will say, ‘Joy is greater than sorrow,’ and others will say, ‘Nay, sorrow is the greater.’

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.”

Kahlil Gibran

Every truth without exception – no matter
who makes it – is from God.

If a bird got accused of singing too early
in the morning,

if a lute began to magically play on its own
in the square
and the enchanting sounds it made drove a pair of young lovers
into a wild, public display of passion,

if this lute and bird then got called before the inquisition
and their lives were literally at stake,

could not God walk up and say before the court,

“All acts of beauty are mine, all happen on behalf of love”?

And while God was there, testifying for our heart’s desires,
hopefully the judge would be astute enough
to brave a question,
that could go,

“Dear God, you say all acts of beauty are yours,
surely we can believe that. But what of all actions
we see in this world,

for is there any force in existence greater than the power
of your omnipresent hand?”

And God might have responded, “I like that question,”
adding, “May I ask you one as well?”

And then God would say,

“Have you ever been in a conversation when children
entered the room, and then you ceased speaking because your
wisdom knew you that they were not old enough
to benefit – to understand?

As exquisite is your world, most everyone in it
is spiritually young.

Spirituality is love, and love never wars with the minute, the day,
one’s self and others. Love would rather die
than maim a limb,
a wing.

Dear, anything that divides man from man,
earth from sky, light and dark, one religion from another…
O, I best keep silent, I see a child
just entered the
room”

Thomas Aquinas

The world will tell you that success is achieving what you set out to do. It will tell you that success is winning, that finding recognition and/or prosperity are essential ingredients in any success. All or some of the above are usually by-products of success. The conventional notion of success is concerned with the outcome of what you do. Some say that success is the result of a combination of hard work and luck, or determination and talent, or being in the right place at the right time. While any of these may be determinants of success, they are not its essence. What the world doesn’t tell you – because it doesn’t know – is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple actioon. Quality implies care and attention, which come with awareness. Quality requires your Presence.

Eckhart Tolle

And with that breath arrives a new body. Notice in the desires that arise as that new incarnation approaches the dimming of the light that precedes the forgetfulness. Attempt to stay alert through the process of re-entry.

Each breath the first.

Each breath completely new.

Taking birth once again.

Born back into a body to examine what was born. And what never dies.

Taking birth for the benefit of all sentient beings.

The light body inhabiting a heavy body. Re-animating life and the possibility of an awareness so clear it obviates any potential for the kind of still birth that lasts a lifetime.

Each breath the first.

Born to serve and explore. To deepen the mercy of whatever world we find ourselves in.

Each breath so precious, allowing the light body to remain a moment more with its earthen vessel.

Taking birth into this world to discover the healing we have so long sought. And to sing the song we have been learning since we sat beneath the bo tree or hung from the cross or looked into the eyes of our dying child. No one said it would be easy, only fruitful.

Each breath the first, the last, the only breath available, to carry us beyond our forgetfulness into the scintillating centre of the living truth.

May all beings live with death over their left shoulder and kindness in the centre of their heart.

May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings know the great fortune of their great nature.

May all beings be at peace.

Stephen Levine

Gently, gently let yourself float free of the body. Constantly expanding outward through decreasing levels of density into increasing depths of grace. Enter the vastness of being. Rest there in your birthright, your deathright. Accept your inheritance.

Let yourself dissolve into the vastness. Edges melting, boundaries disappearing. Dissolving, dissolving into space. Uniting with the absolute joy of your absolute nature. Space dissolving into space. Light merging with light.

Let go of your knowing, let go of your unknowing, and simply be the presence expanding into the luminosity of its own great heart. Let that which is light follow its well-lit path.

Don’t ask the mind for advice, just follow your light. It knows the way by heart.

Let go of your name. Let go of your face. Let go of your reputation and float free in the vastness.

With gratitude and a single sigh leave your body behind with that life you dreamed once.

Notice, as you expand into that sense of safety, that there arises a comfort so deep and natural you wonder where it has been your whole life.

Let go of your understanding and float free in your intuition.

Enter the space in which your thoughts are floating. Let go into the light. Light dissolving into light. Space dissolving in sopace. Consciousness floating free in pure awareness.

Have mercy on yourself. Let yourself go, radiating out into space. Merging with the Great Heart that has no substance but is as real as you are.

No inside, no outside, just edgeless being in endless space. Space expanding into space. Light dissolving into light.

Rest in being. Float free in your original spaciousness.

And from the vanishing point on the most distant horizon, watch as something slowly approaches. It is the first breath of life.

Stephen Levine

Observe how each breath drawn in through the nostrils of the heavy body is experienced as sensation by the light body within. Notice how each breath connects the heavy body with the light body. Notice how each breath maintains that connection, allowing life to stay one more moment in the body.

Feel the contact between the light body and the dense body that each breath provides. Feel how each breath sustains the light body balanced perfectly within.

Take each breath as though it were the last. Experience each inhalation as though it is not going to be followed by another. Don’t try to conserve your breath to stay in the body. Let it come and let it go.

Each breath the last: Let that last exhalation go. And just go on with it. The last breath of life leaving the body behind. The connection severed between the light body and the heavy body. The end of this life. The final breath.

Don’t try to hold onto it. Let go of your last breath, let the light body float free.

Let yourself die. Let go now. hold to nothing. Trust the process.

Let yourself die into space. Leave your body behind, follow the light.

The last breath vanished into space. Leave your body where it lies and go on. That was never you. There you are shining before you. Enter that light. It is your own great nature. Do not be frightened by your immensity. Release all that holds you back from your ultimate fulfilment. Dissolve your heart into the great heart. Let who you have always been become who you are.

Stephen Levine

"My name is Inigo Montoya...prepare to die."

Look about your home for a safe place to die.

Go from room to room surveying the space and sensing if you were to come home to die where that might be best accomplished. Go to that place and just for the work/play of it, sit there for this meditation. Later, as the meditation sinks from the mind into the heart and becomes more your own, you will be able to die anywhere.

“Just the simple fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.” – Aldous Huxley

Sit quietly and feel the heaviness, the substantial quality of the body. Feel gravity pull this dense body toward the ground. Notice the weight of your living corpse. It often wants to lie down. It cannot support its own weight for very long. It is drawn toward the centre of the earth.

Notice within this heavy body a flickering field of sensation. A vibratory fluxing full of your relationship to the external world. Feelings of hot and cold, of roughness or smoothness, even of up or down, which have long supported the misconception that we are of the body rather than just in the body. We imagine we own this body but it is ours only on consignment. Notice that the sensations in the heavy body are received by something lighter within. Watch how awareness illuminates each incoming sensation and reports on its existence.

Within the heavy body is a body of awareness, a light body that produces consciousness of the external vessel and the world about it. It is that which experiences life in or out of the body.

Sense the lighter body within. Experience its presence as presence itself. Notice that the sense of being present drifts in a timeless awareness that can never be defined but can always be experienced. Only that which can be named dies, the truth in which it floats has no beginning and no end.

Stephen Levine

Consciousness is already conscious. It is the unmanifested, the eternal. The universe, however, is only gradually becoming conscious. Consciousness itself is timeless and therefore does not evolve. It was never born and does not die. When consciousness becomes the manifested universe, it appears to be subject to time and to undergo an evolutionary process. No human mind is capable of comprehending fully the reason for this process. But we can glimpse it within ourselves and become a conscious participant in it.

Consciousness is the intelligence, the organizing principle behind the arising of form. Consciousness has been preparing forms for millions of years so it can express itself through them in the manifested.

Although the unmanifested realm of pure consciousness could be considered another dimension as awareness, inner space, Presence. How does it do that? Through the human form that becomes conscious and thus fulfils its destiny. The human form was created for this higher purpose, and millions of other forms prepared the ground for it.

Eckhart Tolle

"The Wire" by Noel Counihan

On the acorn side of surrender, freedom almost always means what Thomas Merton calls “choice freedom.” It’s about having the means to do what I want, go where I want, say what I want, buy what I want. What the acorn usually doesn’t see is how much these apparently “free” choices are actually dictated by cultural conditioning and the hidden agendas of the lower self, with its compulsive wanting and needing.

Real freedom, according to spiritual teaching, does not mean “choice freedom” but rather “spontaneity freedom,” in Merton’s words. A modern Sufi master, Sara Sviri, cuts to the heart of this with powerful words: “When the heart surrenders willingly to the Divine hold, it becomes free of the manipulations of the lower self. Paradoxically, such freedom is reflected by a letting go of choices.” Quoting an 11th Century Sufi master, she summarizes the classic spiritual teaching: “Man does not become a true servant until he becomes free of all but God.”

Cynthia Bourgeault