Now is the time to awaken.
Now is the perfect time.
Times of challenge and fear are the perfect environment for the deepest spiritual work.
Want to know how to use these times to grow, to fall in love with life, each other, yourself?
Pain is gateway home to your highest self, to love, to peace and the experience we spend every moment of every day trying to create.
What do you see when you look around now? Beauty, love, joy, connection? Or fear, sadness, loss, anger?
In times past i felt i needed the right environment to be happy, content, at peace. To be on retreat at my favourite retreat centre in Italy or to be with my favourite people. Or to have time to do stuff i loved like drawing or writing or walking in nature. Or that i needed everyone around me to be ok, happy, well.
Is it possible to be happy and joyful in these challenging times?
I believe it is.
Not that we wont experience pain, or sadness, and loss. We will and we do, we are human beings, pain is part of the package.
But those experiences are just that experiences, passing through, temporary, impermanent.
What i have learnt is that if i rely on my outer environment to be ok, to feel peaceful and safe then i will only ever experience snatches of that peace, moments or glimpses of happiness that are passing through. And happiness that is dependant on something outside of me is fragile, creating the causes with me/us to cling, to want to hold onto that thing that is the seeming giver of our happiness. Whatever that is, our partner, kids, job, health, home. The more we cling, the more we create causes to suffer. The ego is the part of us that identifies with this external world, believing that it is safe when external structures are seemingly solid, and permanent.
How tricky is that. To live in a way that needs everything around to stay the same, to show up for us in the way “our” personality like it to be. And given that we are all unique beings, all having completely different desires and wants we are never all going to be happy at the same time.
I want it warm and you want it cold. Someone is going to be the loser here. Identifying with our ego as the source of our peace is always going to lead to the same place. Sadness, fear, and disconnect.
Whereas when i remember that my inner environment, my soul experience isn’t dependant on my outer environment being all tickety boo what i find instead is deep abiding joy and peace. A stability and love that nothing, can shake.
Our soul or as Eckart Tolle so eloquently states, “the deeper I”, is always at peace, always falling in love. Moment to moment, diving into love with all beings, all experiences. The soul doesn’t need the sun to shine or the economy to be strong, or everyone to be healthy, it simply is, unchangeable, loving, expansive. The soul knows that it goes on, it cannot end, that it isn’t seperate, that is instead part of one great universal energetic connected awareness, which right now is the part of you that is watching, observing, having a human life, it is pure awareness. Without dependance on anything or anyone or any set of circumstances.
The soul is the part of us that always was and always will be, the soul cannot be damaged, or hurt or afraid the soul is truly our essential nature. Our home. Love.
How do we find our way home to the soul? How do we have a direct experience with our soul? Versus living in our ego.
For me it came from surrender, a full acceptance of what is in each moment, no resisting, no fighting, no wishing it to be something other than what it is.
In the place of surrender, when i opened myself up to the fullness of my experience all fear, hate, anger, judgement simply fell away and in its place was space, love, joy and such a deep sense of connectedness with all beings. Truly in this state there is no other.
This space is home, so wonderful and yet so completely ordinary and natural when we arrive there.
After having that experience, living in the place of the ego, that needs the sun to shine, for everyone to have health and wealth, everyone to love me and like me, or society to be fair and kind. This experience feels like sleep, the dream state. And when i awaken in my dream i remember i am not that ego, that fragile being who is dependant on life being fair, or kind, or easy. And awakening to my true nature in each moment is the sweetest joy,
to awaken to my essential nature, my deeper I, my true self, oneness, love, connectedness.
This is the dance of this life, sleep and awaken, sleep and awaken, always the invitation to awaken to the truth.
This is journey is one step, to love, let go and be.
It really is that simple. And it is available to us all, now in this moment, not on yoga retreat, not after the virus and lock down ends, not when we have finished paying of our mortgage. NOW!
In times of hardship, we may find ourselves identifying more with the egoic state as our world is rocked, of course this is natural. It is human to be fearful, and sad. It is inevitable we will experience pain as our soul experiences life in this human form, but suffering is optional. Suffering we inflict on ourselves by the resistance to the direct experience and truth of the moment.
Use this pain to awaken, this pain is a gift, an opportunity to open up and let go and let love in.
Sink into what is your experience in this moment, your fear, your sadness, your anger, feel it all, don’t hide any of it, dont blame it on anyone else, relax into it, open yourself up to it. Breath into it and love it all. Love it and welcome it home. Feel, breath, love and let go.
When we fight with ourselves and push our experiences down inside labelling them as bad, or unfair, or fearful we create a sense of separation, of disconnect with our deeper I, our soul.
The soul is the witness, the observer the lover. The soul doesn’t need it all to be pretty and neat or sunshine. The soul is simply in love with it all.
In this strange time we are having i have been gifted time, to be, to deepen my connection with my soul, my creativity, my family and my friends.
I see so much love in our community, people helping each other, caring for each other and being mindful of each other.
Little gestures of support, offers of help, reaching out to connect, all reminders that we are all one and any sense of disconnect arises only in the egoic mind.
I invite you to identify with your soul, return home again and again and live in the dance of life. Sleep awaken sleep awaken sleep awaken always to awaken to the truth of now.
You all have the capacity to awaken, to live in love with life, and each other, don’t wait for the right moment the moment is now.
We are love. We are one. There is only now.
Dawn Lister
