Take it as it is – Shine your light on this Because it’s all there is, and you’re it – Shine your light on this Therein lies the key, therein lies the beauty, therein lies the bliss – Shine your light on this Amarum Madhurum Shaanti Shaanti Gentle peace There is no beginning, and there’s no end there is no becoming, One moment is gone in, one moment is gone in the next. ~From The Yoga Lullabies CD, Beth Martens 2007
Elaborating...
We can at times be left feeling life is not giving us what we want. More few are those who feel satisfied with themselves, living from a place of gratitude and praise for what they have. Why have North Americans woman taken such a ruthless approach to trying to control their speci-men? Men have resorted to something that makes up for any shortcomings they may have – they stick together. It’s a code that was revealed to me, suddenly making my childhood experiences with men seem comprehensible.
I used to use a fitness facility that is connected to a hospital. It’s not your average show off your haw-haw’s meat market, but I’m still amazed how mean the women are to each other. Rare are the one’s who can smile and have a chat in this intimate environment. Everyone is so worried about how their bodies compare with the other that their teeth are clenched in defense and anger. I’m sure any good they are receiving in a work out goes right out the door when they spit fire balls out their eyes, and seem to actually hate their fellow women exercisers.
Men who are power hungry can feast on this environment. We are dividing ourselves and therefore the conquering isn’t even a sport, rather we are throwing ourselves at their mercy, having already chewed up and spit out our own. How sad for us as women that we can’t learn to love each other and stop focusing on our relative goods and not –so- goods. Take it as it is, because that’s all there is.
What do you have if you haven’t embraced what is? And how many people live their lives so blind to what is? We can see it in everyone else, but we don’t see it in our self, because that’s what unconscious means. We live in collective and individual denials of the basic facts of life. And we see the slow decay of a way of life, but we don’t make the connection to our perception, to meeting without ego, to taking risks for peace, to pretending we know what the solution is…
You have to take it as it is, because that’s all there is. And that “all” is, back to Om Poornam, whole. If you find yourself in quiet moments of complete acceptance and recognition for reality, you are a step closer to having a state of peace in your life, even in the face of life’s many dramatic movements, trials and transformations. People think they know what they want and they do anything to accomplish their goal, at all cost, to them or anyone. But they are really driven by hidden agendas.
For example, after spending more than 10 years pursuing a career in music I discovered at the root of my drive was a desperately sad voice that said, “I just want to be loved.” I cried for a week when I saw clearly how sublimated my true desire had become from a very early age. By seeing what was actually behind my sometimes-manic way of working my music, I grew to a place of having much more discrimination in my actions.
All there is, I am. It sounds like I’m an ego maniac, because we tend to have a very narrow definition of “I.” We are locked by senses into an overwhelming sense of differntiation, not a mistake, but also not a complete picture. Sanskrit philospophy helps unravel this. It refers to five element, tatwa’s, that make up the entire universe: Earth, water, fire, air and space. That means there is only these elements and no more, in millions of varied combinations, shapes and sizes, but nonetheless the same. One could say the water in you is the water in me. The breath in you is the wind in the forest. The fire in the volcano is the same energy digesting your dinner. The most subtle of the elements, space ether, is pervading every level of the tatwa’s , proven for decades by Niels Bohr who demonstrated that matter wasn’t solid and that compared to the size of the moving atoms, there was mostly space. In an energetic way, that table is no more there than it is not there. Except it is.
The more subtle the element, the easier it is to notice its base in oneness. Focussing the mind on the subtle element of ether, one’s attention takes on that nature. Focus on water and the mind will move through emotions. Focus on earth and …we prowl like animals. Integration is everything - that is taking it as it is. Because it's all there is.
Meditation: Breath in. Breath in what is. No filter, no judgements, no taken aback, no running toward, no laws of attraction and repulsion, no frame, no category, no theory, no philosophy, no religion, no what should no what could nor what would, just what is. What will be the result of meditating on what is?
You will see the nature of what is. The idea of what is, dies, and what is, seems to flower and unfold before us, "taking life," as if, in a way we could never have imagined or made up. Next, you will answer a question that plagues humanity at every turn:
“What to do?” If you’ve ever humbled yourself before a teacher, a therapist or someone you figured knew more than you about something, you’ve likely asked them what to do about a particular thing or situation. A good advisor, in my opinion, will never tell you what to do, but they will point you within yourself. The cliché is, all you need to know is within you. Frustrated you want to swear and say, “Shut up.” Or maybe you’re more polite about your inner turmoil and indecision.
It is my direct experience that an unadulterated look at the world informs us, on a cellular level, of what to do. It is not so much a matter of being informed about the world that allows us to be decisive, rather it is the “looking” without thinking, qualifying or limiting our vision. Unlimited vision gives birth to knowledge. True knowledge inspires. True inspiration motivates. True motivation means no hidden agenda, clear movements of life and no anxiety over the relative o.k.-ness of one’s ego identity.
We are so often stuck, paralyzed by a massive state of deliberation, mentally trying to extract out of the sea of what is, a true move. But a true move can only be born of true knowledge, and that can only be born of truth itself. The best decisions I’ve made in my life were done without agonizing.
For example I eventually ended up in India getting one of the most important bits of education I have received, by flipping casually through my university calendar looking for half a credit with which to graduate. That course led to a credit course in meditation for which I otherwise would not have qualified. That course led to a solid connection in India, and that led to a trip that would be the first of eight to study yoga, meditation and Sanskrit poetry. I didn’t have to bang my brains out wondering if “The Religions of India” by Brenda Cantello (thank you!) was the course for me or not. It came easily and in little time. The rest seemed to take care of itself.
There is nothing on earth that is not born of truth – everything shares the same source. However, when we don’t observe simple order of operations and origins, when we bypass the source, don’t tend it, don’t look to it, or sacrifice a moment of our time or attention to the true beginning of all happenings and all its pure potential, then we will feel stuck in the mental bottle neck. It is impossible to drag the truth through the narrow trap of the ego-mind who painfully tries to map out its relative loss and gain plans.
Anyone who plays chess knows you can’t think through every possible action and reaction. Your opponent will go into a coma waiting for you to play out the millions of permutations and combinations will ensue in a small game, never mind a life. Staying in a dynamic flow of life, means allowing another kind of process, in addition to the ego-mind, called intuition – no big news to most people.
But we haven’t been trained to value this kind of knowing that goes beyond what can be thought of. This is the way to get to the truth that applies perfectly under every circumstance, unique to that time, that place, that frame of reality. Because what is is a forever moving and changing scene, there will be nothing that is true in every moment under all circumstances, except truth itself. We may then try to understand or explain truth, to again gain some mental grasp of it, but it is ever elusive.
The truth cannot be mastered, but it can master us, if we allow it. ‘Allow it’ means giving it credit, giving it dignity and position, but above all it means tending it, applying oneself to it, caring for its role in your decisions and outcomes and origins. It sounds esoteric, tending truth. But it’s the most practical possible pursuit of a human being.
Truth is the garden of what is. If you get it, you get the garden. Sit yourself, see what becomes tended. See what gets watered and weeded. See where we end up winding around and heading up the path of most resistance. A path of feast and persistence. No lack of flesh at the banquet. A pack of dogs at the breakfast. No day like the presence, always the essence, always the elements, the water gives wave to the wind. To the space gives Way...
