Ending Suffering Alone

    “We need to be aware of what we are practicing in any moment. Because whatever we practice, we get better at, whether it’s the skillful OR the unskillful.” Christina Feldman

    Sadly most of us (unconsciously) routinely practice avoiding the present moment, opting instead for all manner of distractions, as well as outright dissociation. Something about the present moment gets us to shut down, run away & hide, often alone.
    BUT when we're suddenly hit with an existential bomb - the diagnosis of a serious disease like Parkinson's; or our world is rattled by serious physical injury eg our body crashing against a bus' windshield; or worse, being overwhelmed by a whole series of serious challenges in rapid succession - we MIGHT actually open up to ourselves, those close to us, & possibly mental-health specialists about what we're going through, and share our experience of shipwreck.
    Such shared curiosity & examination of life's most challenging & most meaningful moments is precious intimacy - with ourself, others and life itself, and feels refreshingly expansive, wholesome & healing! Very recently, I had the privilege of deeply listening to two old friends share their journey through major current challenges.

    "To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen 

    “It is the perspective of the sufferer that determines whether a given experience perpetuates suffering or is a vehicle for awakening.” Mark Epstein MD

    “We suffer to the exact degree that we resist having our eyes & hearts opened.” Adyashanti

    Whether we're part of a joyous celebration, OR shoveling a large mound of sand from one spot to another, OR undergoing a searingly painful medical procedure, we're at our BEST when we're fully open to & fully engaged with present moment reality - not judging it in any way, neither trying to hold onto it, nor trying to escape it. This may sound weirdly counterintuitive & counter-cultural, however, the proof is in practicing & experiencing this for yourself.

    Siddhartha Gautama was born over 2,500 years ago, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents. But when he realized that despite his privilege of youth, health, wealth, power & position, he & everyone he loved - like everyone else in the world - are subject to constant change, aging, sickness & death. He was shocked but inspired, leaving all that he had behind (his wife, young child, parents, possessions & kingdom) to search for the cause of suffering and the way to end it. After years of severe asceticism, and meditation, he succeeded, attaining enlightenment, after which he was called the Buddha.

    "The Buddha stated the cause of suffering through his Four Noble Truths:
        • There are suffering & dissatisfaction in the world & in our lives.
        • The cause & origin of that suffering is Craving.
        • The cessation of Craving is the cessation of suffering.
        • The eight-fold path leads us to the end of that suffering.

    This is Buddhism in brief: suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path leading to the end of suffering.
    Buddhism is not about rites, rituals, prayers & incense. It is not a religion, but a scientific investigation into overcoming sorrow at all levels of mind & body ... certainly beyond any religious belief system ... as well as beyond anything science currently offers.
    ... the Buddha made it clear that if you follow the directions, awakening can be achieved in a single lifetime, even in as little as a few days. This is as true today as it was at the time of the Buddha." David C. Johnson. “The Path to Nibbāna. How Mindfulness of Loving-Kindness Progresses through the Tranquil Aware Jhānas to Awakening.” 2017. 

    "The wisdom that the suffering doesn't belong to you will itself get you out of suffering, without you having to do anything." Shri Atmananda

    I stumbled on this insight on my first longish (10-day) silent meditation retreat. My suffering from "meditation pain" felt so massive, that I was certain it couldn't possibly be mine alone, and that I must somehow be helping to process all of humanity's burden of suffering. As soon as I gained that perspective, the suffering disappeared, replaced by blissful ease & joy.
    So suffering is impersonal - nobody's out to get us, we're not unlucky or cursed, etc. Yet we take many things, especially suffering, VERY personally. Learning to LET GO of the sticky mental habits that cause suffering is considered skillful practice ie a practice that reduces our own & others' unnecessary suffering.
    Along the same lines, the sense of being a 'self' that's alone & separate from everyone & everything else - a lone wolf, me alone against the world - is an inherently cold, contracted, lonely, fearful. Our natural state is inherently warm, expansive, connected, joyous.
    We can actually practice residing in our natural state. And when we retract into separate self, we can learn to recognize & release this, and return to our natural state.

    “Suffering is not enough.
     Life is both dreadful and wonderful.
     To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects.

     Smiling means that we are ourselves, that we have sovereignty over ourselves, that we are not drowned in forgetfulness.
     How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow?
     It is natural— you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”                Thich Nhat Hanh

    "Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside." Ramana Maharshi

the days pass slowly,
but when you look back,
you realize how quickly the years have flown by

Michael Caine

 

 

Beyond the Material

     We're hard-wired to survive, as long & as well as possible. Like a possessed workaholic, our left brain obsesses about surviving & winning in this material world.
    INEVITABLY ALL of this turns to dust - all at once as in a fatal heart-attack or car crash, or slowly, incrementally as time & illness take back every bit of our hard-earned physical & mental capacities. Aging is a relentless, increasingly difficult 'school of hard knocks,' even if we're relatively fortunate!
    Our left brain's sole function is controlling the material environment. It CANNOT understand NOR cope with loss of control, at least partially explaining the ever-rising rates of depression, anxiety, addiction, violence, suicide, etc.

    Dying on the cross, “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ' ” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46)

     “True love and prayer are learned in the hour when love becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.” Thomas Merton

    WHEN we realize the USELESSNESS of being lost in suffering, anger, regret, frustration & impatience - we CAN grow infinitely WISER with age AND spontaneously re-connect to our true nature, source & destination.
    ONLY AS our material world & 'small self' evaporate, can we fully appreciate our Divine True Nature.
    Please read / watch Amoda Maa's SUPERB teaching "Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation" : http://www.johnlovas.com/2019/04/suffering-as-doorway-to-liberation.html

    “Emptiness is two things at once:
     the absence of self
     and the presence of the Divine.
     Thus as self decreases,
     the Divine increases.”                             Bernadette Roberts

    "A man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself & pass through that center into God unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself & empty himself & give himself to other people in the purity of selfless love." Thomas Merton, quoted in M. Basil Pennington. "Centered Living: The Way of Centering Prayer." Galilee Trade, 1988. 

 
    “It is the perspective of the sufferer that determines whether a given experience perpetuates suffering or is a vehicle for awakening.” Mark Epstein

"Death is not extinguishing the light;
it is putting out the lamp
because the dawn has come."
Rabindranath Tagore

Fleeting moments of near perfection

Suffering, Peace and Meaning

    It's difficult to appreciate the corrosive effect that our society's dreary materialism has on even those of us who consider ourselves religious or spiritual. What is your default mood? When there's nothing specifically pleasant or unpleasant going on in your personal life, how do you feel - bright, gray, or dark? Even if our own life seems to feel OK for the moment, most of us are seriously disturbed by the war in Ukraine and the environmental crisis. But do you feel hopelessly doomed?
    Imagine, after many years of wanting one, you're finally driving down the highway in your gorgeous expensive sports car, but instead of luxuriating in the smooth, controlled ride & powerful purring of the engine, you're frustrated by the constant weird vibration & annoying repetitive whirring sound from an obvious wheel-alignment problem. You go to get that fixed, and the mechanic finds one problem after another; then the car gets scratched & banged up; the paint job fades; the car is never 'in tune'; it starts rusting; new models make it look strangely out of date; your dream is a chronic disappointment. And this is a 'first world problem' - boo hoo! How about constant change, aging, sickness & death - not just of ourselves, but all our loved ones & our material possessions?
    Over 3,000 years ago, the Buddha left his family & privileged life behind because he felt that he had to discover how to be happy in a world of 'dukkha.' Commonly thought of as suffering, dukkha more accurately refers to a wheel on a cart that's off center - today we might say, 'dis-ease' over the fact that nothing stays even satisfactory, never mind perfect!
    HOW CAN we live the best life possible, in a world that is NOT aligned at all with our individual material hopes & desires?

    “Non-duality ('perennial philosophy') is the understanding that underlies all the great religious & spiritual traditions. If we were to distill the essence of that understanding and express it in contemporary terms, it would sound something like this: Peace & happiness are the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone & everything. The first part of this phrase, ‘peace and happiness are the nature of our being,’ refers to our inner experience – our thoughts and feelings. The second part, ‘we share our being with everyone and everything,’ refers to our exterior experience, that is our relationship with people, animals and things." Rupert Spira "Nonduality, Consciousness, and Ending Suffering" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtlDY3-rE_Y

    A transcript of, imho, two wise, intelligent people - Rupert Spira (RS) and Bernardo Kastrup (BK) - in conversation:

   RS: “What is it that causes most people to question the materialist paradigm? Suffering. If we didn’t suffer, there would be no reason to question our view of the world, on the contrary, we would think the happiness I experience is a confirmation that my view of the world is correct. We would never question anything and that’s why so many people are first open to the possibility that we are discussing here.
    Through the experience of suffering their life falls apart. They realize something’s not working. And it’s not just today that it’s not working, it gets worse the older you get. As Henry David Thoreau said, ‘Most people lead lives of quiet desperation.’ You get half-way through your life, and you realize it’s not working - relationships, activities. You’ve experienced enough suffering to no longer be able to keep it at bay through objects, substances, activities, relationships. You’ve been failed by life sufficiently often to probe a little bit deeper – could there be something about my attitude that is responsible? Might I have got something wrong? And for most of us, it’s suffering that opens this door.
    For me it was, although I had this very early intuition, at age seven, that everything is a dream in God’s mind. Then I forgot that intuition as I grew up. It was suffering that re-ignited my interest in these matters. In fact in my case it was a very particular experience, when my first girlfriend, with whom I thought I would get married, have four children and live happily ever after, ended our three-year relationship in a two-minute phone call. And for the first time in my life I became aware of the extent to which I had invested the thing that I loved the most – namely happiness – in objective experience. This cracked my world. My world had already been cracked by my parents’ divorce, but this was a crack that I could no longer plaster over. Am I going to spend the rest of my life investing the thing that I love most in life – which is peace or joy – in something which is inherently unstable? This brought urgency. I was already interested in these matters, but it became a passion. There must be something wrong with my model of reality.
    What can I know for certain is true? And if I were to start there and hold onto that, and only lead a life that was consistent with that, what kind of life would that be?”

    How the perennial philosophy / non-dualism has influenced their lives:

    RS: “Suffering arises less & less frequently, and it lasts for less & less time. And fewer & fewer experiences have the power to provoke it. Now I would never say that it never happens. I can be triggered in a situation and it can create an emotional resistance in me – that’s what suffering is, emotional resistance. But I notice that fewer experiences have that capacity. They have to be quite intense. So it happens less & less frequently, and when it does happen, when the experience of suffering is triggered, then this understanding kicks in quite quickly, and I’m able to trace my way back to my essential being and its innate peace that lies behind, so to speak, the content of my experience.

    BK: “Rupert radiates peace. … I’m not there. I still have my anxieties. What did happen for me, and I’m extraordinarily grateful for that, because I think that’s what makes all the difference, the banality, the meaninglessness that most people experience as their lives, that is completely gone for me.
    I’m not in profound peace, I have my demons, my anxieties, I suffer – suffer with things that there’s nothing I can do about, some of them physical in my own body, but I never have that notion that all this suffering is for nothing, that life is meaningless, that everything comes to a total end and it’s all for nothing. That I don’t have.
    My life is infused with meaning. In particular, the suffering is infused with meaning. Suffering is a great drive. It’s what keeps us moving in the direction of depth. Otherwise life would remain so shallow. We wouldn’t be asking the deep questions."

    RS: “I think the fruit of this (non-dual) understanding is peace on the inside – absence of suffering on the inside – and love on the outside. And when I say love, I don’t just mean a warm cozy feeling, when I use the word love I mean the recognition that we share our being, our reality, with everyone & everything, in other words, it is the felt sense of the understanding that we are speaking of here. So these two experiences are, I would suggest, the fruit of this understanding – peace on the inside, and love, beauty or oneness on the outside.
    And I have always felt, with you Bernardo, that you share this understanding profoundly, but that the fruit of it, at least on the inside, has been delayed in your case. Why? Because, as you’ve just said, suffering propels us to go deeper & deeper & deeper. It’s the fuel for this investigation, and I think you have a unique role in the world to share this understanding in a way that nobody else can, and rather than a way, in a field that nobody else can – for instance, in a way that I’m not qualified to speak – in the world of science. And for this reason, I feel that the fruit of this understanding, although I see it in you more & more over the years, but I feel the fruit of this understanding is being withheld from you precisely to keep you motivated to do what you are supposed to be doing in the world. And I think, as time goes on, I see it happening in you already, as time goes on, this peace will gradually emerge in your experience. And it’s absence, I do not in any consider to be a failure of your understanding. I think it’s necessary for you to do what you are doing so beautifully in the world."

    BK: “Of course what Rupert is saying instills hope in me. But … I am at peace with my lack of peace. I don’t double my suffering by not being at peace with the suffering. Because if you’re suffering, and then you tell yourself that I should not be suffering, then you just multiply it by two, you just make it worse. Now I don’t make it worse. I don’t have that voice telling me, ‘I should not suffer.’ I am in peace with my suffering, it’s part of nature. I’m aware that life is sacrificial. … I am OK with it. I do suffer, but I don’t make it worse than it needs to be."

    RS: “This is what is meant by 'ananda' in the Vendantic tradition. It’s the peace that lies behind the content of our experience, no matter what. It’s the peace that surpasses understanding. Peace that has nothing to do with what is taking place, so that your suffering is in the foreground, it’s the content of your experience. For most people, the experience of suffering takes up the full picture. But there is this peace behind your suffering, that enables you to say, ‘I am at peace with my suffering.’ And I suspect, that the peace behind your suffering will grow, and will progressively outshine the suffering in the foreground. That’s my intuition. And as you say, even if it doesn’t, in a way it doesn’t matter, because the meaning of our lives is so much bigger than our own personal experience." 

    BK: “Life is not about me. Life is not about any one of us.”

    RS: “It’s sacrificial as you say, yes.” 

    BK: “It is imaginable that if suffering in your life has come to a point where it has become so completely unbearable that nihilism would seem like paradise – a way out of that. There is no point in this whole thing. There is no point to the suffering. It’s all for nothing anyway, so why worry?
    Milan Kundera called it ‘the unbearable lightness of being.’ There is a character in his book, Dr. Tomas, who is sort of the embodiment of this lightness of being – of this nihilism, which gives a certain lightness to what’s going on and that can be alluring to some people, if they are desperate enough.
    Now my own relationship with the core of my being, the world, other people, and life in general is not nihilistic at all. Much to the contrary, for me, materialism is highly nihilistic: there is only matter; whatever insights you have come to a complete end when you die; so, whatever you learn, whatever maturity you accumulate, it’s all for nothing anyway. That’s nihilistic!
    Today I live the reality that there’s tremendous meaning to whatever suffering I have because they are the conduits to insights, and these insights are eternal in the sense of being outside time. Life is what provides the universe with a perspective, a point of view on itself, that it would otherwise not have, and therefore life is pregnant with purpose & meaning. The world of appearances is now a book to be read. It’s the superficial image of a deeper truth. There is a dimension of depth, meaning & significance to the entire world that wasn’t there before. Everything you are surrounded with now is a dance of symbols, symbols that point at something beyond themselves. They point to something fundamental to mind, the mind of the universe, to consciousness. And there is a point to this particular seemingly individual state that we are in right now, in trying to make sense of this. This is the antithesis of nihilism. This is the universe pregnant with meaning. This is life pregnant with purpose. It is baffling that someone would equate this with nihilism."
    "Is Everything Made of Matter or Consciousness?" - Rupert Spira & Bernardo Kastrup in Conversation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQuMzocvmTQ   *** EXCEPTIONAL INTERVIEW ***

Constant change - Bath, UK

What Does It Take?

Are we ready to lose EVERYTHING we can think of?
Yet it's only a matter of time that we DO.
So how do we BEST PREPARE?

      "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." Marcus Aurelius

     Many teachers have said that "meditation is learning to die before dying." In deep meditation we intentionally undergo "ego death" ie letting go of the "small self" - the reductionist model of who / what we imagined we were.

“Love says 'I am everything.'
Wisdom says 'I am nothing.'
Between the two, my life flows.” 

Nisargadatta Maharaj

    “Without being mindful of death, whatever Dharma practices you take up will be merely superficial.” Milarepa, The One Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa

 

    During general anaesthesia for an operation, "I was just going through the feeling of the essence of loss of control, and tears washed down my face when I had to think about it. That this is the essence of dying, to just let go, to dive down without any ground under your feet. That this is to step out of control, like in death. If we let go of the rational control over our own consciousness, we can get somewhere that forms us and that also forms the universe. I acknowledge that this is, in my opinion, a very important state of mind, a very important process for us all.”  Beate M's Near-Death Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE_8E6casn0

 

    "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Matt. 27 Verses 45-46, Bible, King James Version 

 

    "And here I would advise a sort of intellectual humility. Near-death experiences are obviously deeply mysterious. Death has always been viewed as something holy by religions because it is deeply mysterious. Near-death experiences suggest at least that death isn’t just a flame of life that is slowly burning down, but that it is once again a phase of life that is of extreme importance for life as a whole. Even if you can’t see any of this from the outside, but for the ones who live through this process of dying from the inside, it is of extreme importance and a moment of clarity of the consciousness.” Near-Death Experiences and the Mysteries of Consciousness - Godehard Brüntrup in Conversation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSvfoKZnnYs

     "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." Marie Curie

      "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." Joseph Campbell

"I was born
when all I once feared
I could love.”

Rabia Basri

    "On the day her first book came out ― a new translation of 'Dark Night of the Soul' by Saint John of the Cross ― Mirabai Starr’s daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident. 'My spiritual life began the day my daughter died,' writes Mirabai. Even with decades of spiritual practice and a deep immersion in the greatest mystical texts, she found herself utterly unprepared for 'my most powerful catalyst for transformation, my fiercest and most compassionate teacher.'" Mirabai Starr "Caravan of No Despair : A Memoir of Loss and Transformation." Sounds True, 2015.

"All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well."  

Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) English Christian mystic

    “So long as one is merely on the surface of things, they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete. Penetrate into the substance and everything is perfect, complete, whole.” Philip Kapleau “The Zen of Living and Dying. A Practical and Spiritual Guide.” Shambhala, 1998.

    “I have watched people choose growth over fear as they navigated some of life’s most difficult transitions. I have seen how it is possible to approach the challenges of real life with openness & optimism – even with wisdom & joy.” Elizabeth Lesser. “Broken Open. How Difficult Times Can Help us Grow.” Villard, 2005. POWERFUL BOOK!

    “Rapture is not a selfish emotion. It is pure gratitude, flowing freely through the body, heart, and soul. Gratitude for what? For breath, for colors, for music, for friendship, humor, weather, sleep, awareness. It is a willing engagement with the whole messy miracle of life.” Elizabeth Lesser. “Broken Open. How Difficult Times Can Help us Grow.” Villard, 2005.

    "I just had to keep going, even though the cockpit was shaking mightily just before breaking the sound barrier." Captain Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager, first pilot to break the sound barrier

    “On the other side of a storm is the strength that comes from having navigated through it. Raise your sail and begin.” Gregory S. Williams

All of our days,
a single drop of dew
hanging
from a slender leaf.

Chris Thorsen

    “You needn’t worry about anything because this isn’t your real home. It’s just a temporary shelter. Everything there is, is preparing to disappear. If you look at it like that, your heart will be at ease.” Ajahn Chah, “Our Real Home” 

    “Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute & passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” Rainer Maria Rilke

    Especially if you fear death - and most of us do - I HIGHLY recommend this wonderful book - you will feel much better about death AND about life!: Bruce Greyson. “After. A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond.” St. Martin’s, 2021.

    "The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand. They are two sides of one reality. The mind of love and the mind of understanding are the same.” Thich Nhat Hanh

    “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes!’ to your adventure.” Joseph Campbell

 Bill Hicks, 1992 - "It's Just A Ride"
( all over in 2 minutes :-) ! )

Towards a Maturity that Surpasses Common Understanding

     Some of us are sufficiently motivated to work towards a state in which we are deeply happy, quite independent of the usual assumed prerequisites of happiness. This requires dedicated, wise meditation practice, patience & perseverance.

     The longish quote below is from Jim Finley PhD, an advanced, experienced, mature meditator in both Christian & Buddhist traditions. In this talk, he was addressing a Christian audience (hence some of the terminology), but his message resonates with universal, timeless wisdom - see: http://www.johnlovas.com/2020/07/two-levels-of-consciousness.html

     "One sign of spiritual maturity is that a person is in a stable habitual stance of non-violence. They are somebody who respects and even reverences the gift of being a human being. And therefore they do not intentionally do anything to violate that, compromise that, and betray that. They’re like a field with no stones in it. They’re not part of the problem. But they’re there as a non-violent presence in the world.

     Another characteristic is that the person is a nurturing person. They’re nurturing. Realizing how fragile life is, how delicate and mysterious it is, they’re always there, ‘How can I be present to this situation that will help the people feel nurtured, feel met to create an atmosphere of growth and security?’ And so they have this dual quality of being a nurturing person that respects, even reverences the gift of life. And they’re a non-violent person.

     Another characteristic, I think we can look for in ourself, is that the mature spiritual person has a heightened response to suffering. … They don’t live in some kind of ethereal realm above sensitivity to those around them. But a mark of a mature spiritual person is a heightened sensitivity to the preciousness of people, and in that preciousness, they have a heightened sensitivity to their suffering. 

     Another characteristic is that in being sensitive to suffering, they pay the price for that. You can’t have your valet carry your cross up the hill. You can’t be a genuinely caring person by proxy and go send someone on your behalf to be a kind person, while you stay home and grumble. You have to put yourself out there to let yourself be in the presence of the one who suffers. And when you’re in their presence, you feel something of the heat of their suffering. You see it in the look in their eyes, you see it in the world they live in, you see it in the situation they’re in – sometimes pretty overwhelming situations. And you feel that, you feel that. This is why we have to pace ourselves at our tolerance level for suffering. Because if we’re indifferent to it, nothing changes. But if we don’t humbly acknowledge our limits, we move in too close and we drown in it. So how do we pace ourself to be present to suffering – in our spouse, in our children, in our grandchildren, the people on the news? How do we stay open & grounded & present to the suffering of the world and keep a joyful, grounded, wakeful heart? How do we do that?

     And therefore, another characteristic is this. The mature spiritual person is a non-violent, nurturing person, who’s sensitive to suffering, responds and meets the suffering – ‘How can I be helpful?’ – but here’s the key: they live in an inner peace that’s not dependent on the outcome of the effort to help. For us in the ego, we’ve not yet come to mature spiritual awareness. It’s not like this for us, because our inner peace is dependent on the outcome of the effort. It kind of goes like this: ‘You want to talk about inner peace, I’ll tell you what, you tell me that my cancer diagnosis isn’t real, and it’ll go away - I’ll have inner peace. But don’t talk to me about inner peace. And I’m struggling with this.’ ‘You talk about inner peace. I’ll tell you about inner peace – my marriage is falling apart here. And the more I look at it, I don’t know if it’s going to make it. And I don’t even believe in divorce. And it’s crumbling.’ – or – ‘My son or daughter’s marriage is falling apart, or they’re with someone in a hurtful situation. You want inner peace? I’d like to restore things, and heal this situation, and deliver the people I care about because I’m afraid they’re going under here. If you can do that for me, I’ll be happy to talk about inner peace. But don’t talk to me about inner peace.’ ‘You know about inner peace? My home went into foreclosure. We have to move out. I don’t know what we’re going to do. You talk to me about inner peace? Get my home back.’ That’s how we talk. But the mature spiritual person, they feel that too, because they’re a human being. It doesn’t mean they’re not angry. It doesn’t mean that it’s not sad. It doesn’t mean any of that. But rather that their heart is established in the realm of the spirit that utterly transcends the circumstances of this world, even as it permeates through and through and through the intimate hurting edges of life in this world. The realm of the spirit is a realm that utterly transcends suffering. It’s a realm of oceanic abyss of eternal peace. ... This is the peace that’s utterly beyond time and space. But it’s not dualistically other, like we’re trying to look for it, look for it, look for it. This peace that utterly transcends the suffering of the world, mysteriously permeates the suffering of this world. It permeates your heart; it permeates my heart; it permeates the heart of everybody who lives. The mature spiritual person is established in that peace. 

     Elizabeth Kubler-Ross talks about the stages of dying, and the last stage of dying is acceptance. Not everyone comes to the stage of acceptance. They go through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, & acceptance. And Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says that when you’re in the presence of someone who’s come to the stage of acceptance, and you go to visit them on their death-bed, it’s uncanny to be with them, because although they’re still here, they’ve already crossed over, and they’re established in the realm of peace that is not threatened by what’s happening to them. This is freedom from the tyranny of death in the midst of death. And so the one who comes to the acceptance of death is the mature spiritual person. So it’s nice not to wait till the nursing home to do this. Why not try it now? ‘I only have a few hours left, I hope I make it in time.’ 

     Imagine you have a friend who says, 'Might you come with me and visit my wife who’s in hospice?' And you gladly go because you’ve known them for years. Your children and their children played together. You remember when she got the diagnosis; you followed them together through the course of the treatment; there were moments of hope when she was in remission thinking she’d get better, then finding out that it wasn’t. It’s just been an incredibly sad, sad situation. And so you say you’d gladly go. And you go into the room and she’s in the bed. And there’s a chair in the corner – you sit over in the chair. And he approaches the bed. She’s having a hard time talking. And he says to her, ‘You don’t need to say anything, we’ll just sit here.’ And he pulls up a chair and he just holds her hand. You’re watching this. It is so, so, sad. This is sad. And yet it’s not just sad. You can feel it filling the room – the deathless gift of love. We know we’ve learned to love someone when we glimpse in them that which is too beautiful to die, (Gabriel Marcel) and love never dies, because God is love, and God’s love is incarnate in their love for each other. It doesn’t take the sadness away, as a matter of fact the person may have to go through a very bumpy road for a while. But if they let it, what comes bubbling up through, it kind of mellows the heart. And how fragile life is. And when you’re watching them together this way, you almost want to get down and kneel on the floor like you’re on holy ground – like there’s something here that’s incredibly important – to all of us, all the time. And my life would be so much better if I had this awareness every moment of my life. 

     These people I live with every day, soon we will not be living with each other, very soon. We’ll all be gone. Life’s a temporary arrangement. Meister Ekhart says, ‘What is the joy that death does not have the power to destroy, and how might I discover it?’ This is the great question for all of us. How not to let the conditions of our mind & heart be determined by the conditions that we’re going through. What if the only happiness we know is the happiness we can have because of conditions conducive to happiness – my health is good, family is good, my loved ones? I think I’m pretty good here. But if I don’t have conditions conducive to happiness, I do not have happiness. But what is the happiness that’s not dependent on conditions conducive to happiness? Like a deathless love that utterly transcends all of this even as it so mysteriously permeates our body, permeates our heart, permeates our life, and how can I learn to find my way to that happiness? This is a deep thing. … How can I learn to find inner peace that’s not dependent on conditions conducive to peace? 

     ... And how can I find this? When I hear it spoken of, it speaks to my heart. I know this is true. But it’s hard to find it. Why is it hard to find it? Because the gravitational field of circumstances is very strong. We spin and spin, and we spin out towards the edge. And we get caught up in the momentum of the day’s demands. In the momentum of the day’s demands, we’re skimming over the surface of the depth of the life we’re living. And it’s hard to find the off-switch. Thomas Merton once said, ‘If you wait for the world to cooperate, for it to politely step aside so you can become contemplative, you’ll never do it.’ You have to make the decision. Someone once said, ‘To be a contemplative in today’s society, is like trying to make a U-turn on the freeway at rush hour.’ It goes against the stream. But if I don’t do it … I’m disappearing here. And wouldn’t it be great to wake up to what really, really, really, really matters in every single moment of my life – to sink the taproot of my life in that and live by it every day? I think that’s worth something. 

     Rollo May, the existential psychotherapist, has a lovely little essay called ‘The Pause.’ He said if you look at an Olympic high-diver, when they stand on the platform, just before they dive, they pause. And he said the dive is eloquent, because they dive out of the pause. He said if their ego would stand there – all these people are watching me, cameras are rolling – their ego would dive, and it wouldn’t do it. It’s eloquent when you’re grounded in the pause, because then the taproot of the diver’s heart is sunk in a certain blessedness, and they somehow flow with that. Rollo May says also, when people are speaking, when they’re really speaking from their heart, that there are a lot of little pauses where the speaker doesn’t know exactly what they’re going to say next. Notice when you’re having a really intimate conversation with each other, and it’s really happening, you’re right there, notice it’s unrehearsed, it is unrehearsed. Notice when someone’s hurting, and you say something that helps, and you don’t know how you knew how to say that. And so if we can pause, and relax into the graciousness of ourselves, God can flow through that, and little by little, by little that can become a habit. And this is prayer and meditation." 

     "The Peace that Surpasses Understanding" with Dr. James Finley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31dpWE7Nw4 

 

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