Tag: enlightenment

Oh, To Have Been ‘Round the Moon

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

How jealous we all were of the crew of Artemis II. To leave this third rock for even an abbreviated fortnight, to see the world without borders, to be pleasantly news-less.

We think we live in unprecedented times. On one hand, we do, and on the other, these times are grossly precedented. We still fight over religion and land and power and politics, like the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians did. Like the Britons and Vikings did. Like the Muslims and Christians did. Oops . . . do.

The only path to peace I know in the midst of it all is to regularly and meaningfully transcend. Exit the gravitational pull. Step away. The Buddhist Heart Sutra gave us the perfectly concise mantra Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha. The meaning is simple: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. Oh, what an enlightenment.

The most consistent question I receive as an interfaith minister is the question of how we live in this world, how we juggle politics and family, how we maintain bliss in the face of chaos. SHOULD we maintain bliss in the face of chaos. Honestly, I don’t have one go-to answer. I often respond based on how the day feels, what has been shown to me, and/or how the inquiry is couched. I do think we have to be artful with this question — what works one day may not be the next day’s answer.

I do know, however, that the way to be ready for what each day holds is to remember who we are, go into the silence, enter the inner spaciousness where Divine Presence lives in us as us. Succumb to the stillness. Sit still and listen with ears of the heart.

The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote a poem that serves as a good reminder of what is real in the beyond. Here it is translated into English by Stephen Mitchell:

BUDDHA IN GLORY

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet—
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

The Hoarder’s House

~ Deb ~ 4 Comments

There is a Goddess who lives in my Essence, the landlord of my heart. She offers communion, grace, peace, and mercy, and I want those gifts more than anything. 

More than anything? Yes, more than anything.  I know that I know that I know this is true.

But the goddess sits on a small stool in a corner, present but quiet, infinite but cramped, shoulders hunched over, arms wrapped around her knees,

Is this enlightenment?  The Divine lives within. I know it. I recognize her. There she is.  Her presence is undeniable. I have this awareness.

I visit her often. I sit with her, offer her food, pray to her, sing for her, chant her name, light a candle so she can see, light incense to give her pleasure. But she just sits there, patiently, as if she has all the time in the world. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t seem to be upset. She sometimes even smiles at my offering. But, mostly, she just sits. 

I, however, am impatient.  I get frustrated. I get angry. I abandon my prayers and chants. They start to feel futile. I leave her alone for long stretches of time.   If she is just going to sit there, I’ve got better things to do. 

When I come back, (I always come back) she is there, on the stool.  

I throw up my hands.  “What do you want from me?” 

“I want to dance with you,” she says.

“I’m ready!  Let’s dance, for heaven’s sake!”

“Look.”  She motions around the space of my heart. 

It’s as if her single word turned on the lights. I see boxes piled high, thousands of them, floor to ceiling, stacks and stacks.  How is it I never noticed there is hardly room to walk?  

“What is all this?” I ask. 

Again she says, “Look,” more softly this time.  

The boxes are labeled.  Work. Relationship. Past relationships. Political Ideology. Upcoming Vacation. Expectations. Pride. Hurt feelings. Things I love. Things I hate. Traffic. Money. 

The largest boxes have the most specific labels.  The Sense of Rejection When Not Cast in That Play.  Guilt About the Girl in Tenth Grade When You Sided With Her Bullies. Victimhood about Never Being Paid What You’re Worth.  Family Dynamics since the Pandemic.  And one just called: First marriage. 

I turn to the goddess.  “These are . . .”

She nods.  “Attachments.” 

I sigh out loud and figure I might as well get started, so I roll up my sleeves and open the first box.  When the goddess stands, I’m so startled that I stop and look at her. 

“What are you doing?” She asks. 

“Figuring out what needs to go and what needs to stay.” 

“It all must go.”  

“All of it?  But I might need this Work box, and I want to keep the Upcoming Vacation box, for sure.” 

The Goddess sits back on the stool and rests her elbows on her knees, chin in her hands.  The look on her face says it all.  There will be no dancing today.  

“C’mon,” I plead.  “Surely you can’t expect me to get rid of all of this.  This is my entire life. This is my story.  This is who I am.  Some of these boxes hold great loves, achievements, happy memories, great times to come.” 

“None of that is here.  These boxes hold the ropes that connect you to the memories, hopes, desires, expectations, likes, and dislikes regarding what is on the labels.  And the ropes have to go.”

“What about this one?” I pick up a huge box labeled Spiritual Journey.  “Surely this one gets to stay.” 

The Goddess chuckles.  “That one especially needs to go. Listen carefully. You’re not releasing the journey; you’re releasing your attachment to the journey.  Don’t you see? No exceptions.  Not one attachment can remain.” 

“Not one?” I ask. 

The Goddess stands again and walks to me.  She puts her hands on my face, like a mother to a child, and whispers, “Do you want to dance with me?” 

The power of her touch surges through my being.  In that instant, I know that giving her the space to move freely through my essence is worth more than all of these boxes a million times over.  I know it is my greatest desire to make my heart her home.  And I know that the path to peace is found in complete surrender.  

“I want nothing but to dance with you,”  I say. 

The Goddess smiles.  “Turn around.”  

I turn and look.  Emptiness.  Beautiful emptiness.  I feel light and empty and full, so very full of love and joy and peace.  I lost nothing.  I gained everything.  And for the first time, I know what freedom is.  

I turn back around.  The Goddess is already dancing, her golden white dress shimmering in the uncovered light of my surrendered heart.  

Be Your Own Guru

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

Sometime back in the early 2000s, I had that sentence flash through my brain – be your own guru. I thought it was deeply profound and a unique insight. It had arisen in my spirit in an organic fashion, and it seemed to spring from Source itself. Surely, I was a prophet. 

I briefly considered buying the domain name, writing a book, starting a movement, and being the guru that brought “be your own guru” to the people. Briefly. Very briefly.

Come to find out, a person named Betty Bethards wrote a book by that title way back in 1982 (a book I haven’t read, by the way, so this is not a plug, but it could be awesome for all I know). Then I found another book with the same title. And then several books with almost the same title — How to Be Your Own Guru, Be Your Own Change Guru, Find Your Inner Guru. It seems I wasn’t all that special.

Or, perhaps, we were evolving together and a bunch of us were getting the same message: It’s time to take ownership of our spiritual journey.

Evolutionary shifts are often messy, and the leap to being our own guru seems to have its own share of fits and starts. One of the byproducts seems to be some disenchantment with spiritual teachers. I’ve seen several instances lately of people turning away from gurus they once revered. And I’ve noticed that when people reject teachers I don’t resonate with, that is fine with me, but when they turn against those I respect, I feel an internal pushback. I want to parse the ways in which the teacher’s message must have been misunderstood. I want to bring the person back into harmony with the teacher. 

But when I move beyond that initial moment, I start to accept that everyone’s journey is valid, and their rejection of a teacher is what they need in this moment, and learning to listen to our intuition, learning to be our own guru, is often a herky-jerky affair.

On my journey to self-guided spirituality, I’ve learned to hold loosely to those I revere. We’re on this journey to begin with because we’re seeking answers, and when we find someone who seems to have them, we tend to clutch their teachings with a tight grip. We become a disciple, and we want to spread the gospel of our guru. But every single time I believe I’ve found a guru who has transcended this life and the ego completely, I’ve soon been given the opportunity to witness their humanness.  If I hold them loosely, though, I leave room for what rings true to wiggle into my spirit, and I stop wasting the energy of holding them hostage to my delusion of their perfection. 

If we don’t hold them loosely, then when we see their humanness, we tend to reject them, call them a false prophet, and even wage our own little smear campaign. We call them narcissists and money-grubbers. We sneer when someone mentions their name. Our newfound insight into “truth” might even cause us to judge someone else’s journey just because they are currently listening to that teacher. 

Please note, I’m not talking about the true charlatans. Those who have put on a spiritual disguise to collect wealth and power are their own special kind of repulsive. Preying on a person’s desire for spiritual growth is the lowest of all cons in my book. 

No, I’m simply talking about the many, the increasing many, who have had an insight and felt called to share it with the world. Some might even suggest that I am in that number, and in my very small way, I suppose I am. I’ve learned some important lessons on my journey, and for whatever reason, I feel so led to make them public. So, for those who are listening, and I’m glad that you are, I urge you to hold anything I say loosely. Let it roll around in your spirit. See how it feels. Take it for a test drive. If it feels like truth, you are welcome to it, free of charge. If it doesn’t, well, I’m only human.

To Forgive . . .

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

. . . is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. Those are the words of the theologian Lewis B. Smedes. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately and its intimate relationship to spiritual awakening. Whether we are talking about forgiving another person or forgiving ourselves or forgiving our past or forgiving our resistance to forgiving — whichever it may be — what we do not forgive, we have not released.  We’re still attached to it. We delude ourselves into believing that it won’t let us go, but the truth is, we won’t let it go. And our awakening happens when we have completely uncovered our true Divine self.  Trying to step into the pure light of grace while dragging that unforgiven baggage along is like trying to dance in a suit of armor. 

I had some work-related conflict with someone a few years back, and he came to see me just recently.  He had been through some challenging times in the years since I had seen him. He looked different. Softer. Kinder. Humble. He sat in my office and said that he wanted to make amends, that he knew he had been difficult in the past, even brash and unpleasant, and he knew I had been on the receiving end of some of that.  He looked me right in the eye and said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry and to ask your forgiveness.” 

I told him he had it.  I told him that I admired his courage and strength in addressing this, and I told him that as far as I was concerned, it was all released and forgotten. 

The truth was, I had released it long ago. He didn’t really need my forgiveness, because I was holding onto nothing that I needed to forgive. The act in which he was engaging was a way of forgiving himself. It was an act of acknowledgement and an act of reconciliation, but at its core, it was the release of something that had clung to him even if it no longer clung to me. And I was happy to be there to participate in his ritual to set himself free. 

That freedom is what every person wants. That freedom is the goal and result of spiritual awakening. When I know who I am and when all those parts of the ego that feel pain and feel betrayal and feel any sense of separation or distrust or fear fall away like tissue paper in the rain, then I am free, and nothing can infringe on that freedom. 

The spiritual journey to awakening is the act of removing layer after layer after layer of ego until nothing is left to cover the Divine Presence that you are. Forgiveness is the removal of a layer. Forgiveness is taking off the suit of armor. Forgiveness is setting a prisoner free.

The more we engage in forgiveness, the freer we are. The more we live in the constant attitude of forgiveness, the more compassionate and loving we are. The more we practice a daily forgiveness of ourselves and our past and the people who are a part of our life, the more we live in spiritual fullness and joy. 

If you want to be fully awake and fully free, forgive everything.