Finding Astonishment in the Adventure of Your Life
AS LOOK OUT INTO OUR WORD I have been wondering whether in the ever-broadening marketplace of spiritual teachings, personal growth experiences, and the ubiquitous availability of mind-altering substances, we are just transposing our consumerist mindset from the material to the spiritual. From what I hear and read, more and more people are intentionally seeking, and sometimes it seems, collecting, psychological discontinuities through intense practices and mind-altering “medicines” as a new kind of fast-track therapy or shortcut to enlightenment. And there is, I believe, great confusion about transiently induced expansive states as evidence of spiritual awakening or even enlightenment.
N0W, THE SEEKING ITSELF I understand especially when there is suffering, and there is always suffering. Healthy seeking comes from the timeless calling of the soul to evolve and because some of the “medicines” that alter consciousness are time-honored components of initiatory paths. But you can’t circumvent suffering or attain liberation by trying to force spiritual progress. Nor can you effectively address suffering from a predominantly psychological level. Even if psychedelics prove a useful adjunct to psychotherapy for some people, the true key to mental and spiritual health is the quality of your awareness. You must learn to discover yourself, moment-by-moment, with relaxed attention and love.
You are not a fixer-upper investment property that after a quick cosmetic remodeling can be flipped for a great profit of happiness and freedom.
WHATEVER YOU HAVE HEARD OR TASTED OF TRANSCENDENTAL STATES, all of us nonetheless function as separate selves in an ego-consciousness that relentlessly operates in transactional duality. No realization or powerful transformative experience can change that. Knowing that you are not the ego is half the truth, the other half is taking complete responsibility for the ego you inevitably have and can never fully escape. Bridging that tension, blending those two realities, is the path of self-perfecting that both Kathy and I have lived and teach.
Among the most important things we have learned on the journey of awakening is that there is no fast path and, definitely, no easy path.
You must make a deep, consistent commitment to self-awareness consecrated in love. As Kathy frequently reminds, life itself offers us everything we need for our growth and evolution. But this is true only when you have the capacity to turn your awareness steadily, gently, and less conditionally toward any constellation of thinking or emotion that closes your heart. You are no longer entitled to indulge your reactions. You cannot seriously talk about “setting boundaries” except as a kind of pause button. Your enlightenment is the natural outcome of your ever-deepening capacity for conscious relationship to everything you may experience. And there is no shortcut, nor endpoint. The real work is slowing down into the intelligence of the heart. It seems our whole species is terrified of slowing down lest the fears we seem to be forever running from in ourselves overtake us.
The Master Classes are about finding astonishment in the adventure of your life and rejoicing in your infinite potential to grow and evolve. Humanity needs all of us to become consciousness influencers. If you are a part of the new generation of emerging teachers and influencers, or are just trying to find your way, I believe you will want to harvest the depth of our life experience and learn from us what it means to live a relational path of 3rd consciousness anchored in heart. Invite your friends, family, clients, and students. We are all in this together.
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