Dialogues with Mystery: 2

Listen...I am saying this to you so that you can become "one without a second."  I am saying this to you so that you'll relax--not "stop being attentive" but instead "stop being willful."  Work, attention, and even the very thoughts that pop into our head--these are all laced with force.  You exhaust yourselves by peddling the primordial lie--that you are your thoughts--as if it were true.  Never, more than now, has it been important to rest.  Past and future, after all, only exist in the mind.

I want to tell you that the universe is alive. [bxA]  I want to tell you that hearing the Father's voice is completely possible.  Most do not hear with their ears, but rather they hear with their egos.  They still think a quiet room sounds like nothing.  You have heard it said "to the pure of heart, all things are pure." And now I say to you: only to the quiet will quiet speak.  Only a routine of prayer, fasting, meditation--medicine to match the illness--will open the ears.  Only a descent from the mind to the heart will cause the right dispositions and words and actions to arise spontaneously.  

From the first, forever and always: word becomes flesh. Of teachers, you have heard it said "apart from him not one thing came into being."  Each moment is made of benevolent, creative tensions.  Your agitation comes from constantly wiggling free of this part, from always dodging that part of it.  Before students become teachers, students die, teachers die and teachings die.  In order to find serenity: mount the cross.  Be suspended on the tension.  Become a student of your own scattered pride.  Strike your chest in contrition and you will find the teacher there: he seeks out your own lostness, so that you can face the parts of yourself hidden in shadow.  From the first, forever and always, he has been you: now become him, and find your Self.

I want to tell you that darkness and absence of God: these are both completely kind.  For lifetimes, the wise have felt it as they watched the pleasure and pain of the world dance in front of them. For lifetimes they've either clung or pushed away.  All sentient beings are connected: If the world seems like a prison it is of your own making, only confining until you sit still at its center.  Freedom from consequences comes only by enduring them: we ascend by descending. Become all people, and you will see through one thousand eyes. Become a thousand eyes, and you will see yourself--in all people as in a mirror.  The darkness and the light are one, and absence that you are present to will smile with your own mouth.

So, what of it?  Work and eat, grieve and rest, laugh and let go.  Everything matters, but more importantly, everything matters to you.  If, just once, you die before you die, you'll see you're not who you think you are.  And then you will take up "what matters" and put it down as one does an axe.  You will not be happy. You will be both happy and sad, because life includes both.  You will be, (no, you are) alive.  Bow deeply to the four directions till it loosens you up.  Breathe!