Dialogues with Mystery 11

You have been shown the beginning. Satisfaction isn't the end end of desire, and even if it were, there isn't enough of what we desire for everybody to get enough. You've begun to grieve the massive loss of self, to admit you're powerless. You've been shown the end. Rabbouni has shown you that plain things like bread and prayer and weeping can be celebrations. Because of it, you can see all those around you who are in desperate need of rejoicing.  You have begun to find the others. 

 Somehow that fell short of real serenity. [bxA]  You racked your brain for solutions. It yielded much. You heard things like "Acceptance asks further questions. Can you act compassionately in the face of lack of control? Can you, because you face the same limitations as others, live unconditionally?" As true as it may have been, that wisdom, too, provided no rest.

And then it was clear. Ego still has a handhold because you've not yet begun to grieve what an inadequate medicine Wisdom is for what lacks materially. In the beginning, you'd seen the flaw: you'd created ego as a balm for the vulnerability of existence. You admitted it was a problem but you didn't change the maneuver: you continued, and are still using mental abstraction as a solution for reality's perceived shortcomings.

Reality is whole. You're the one who's fragmented. But I don't want to leave you with the problem, and no "order of operations" with which to find the answer. I don't want to state the destination, and give you no sense of how to work with where you are.

The body is a tool.  Compulsion by emotion comes with different sensations than impulsion by the Spirit.  Compulsion feels riskier--it has bought into permanence, and fears the total loss of self.  And that fear creates a tightness in the chest, a gut tied into knots, an energy blockage we're apt to call anxiety.  Impulsion is just using the gift of sensation to follow subtler and subtler energy.  Impulsion allows for times of totally identifying with the ego, and the times of transcending it.  It allows for all emotions and all thoughts, for emptiness and fullness.

The Gospel is more like the Tao than it is the full throated advertisement of miracles on the lips of a  newspaper vendor.  It is a flow of the universe, and all manifest beings find their serenity by relaxing back into it.  The Spirit is more like a vibration than it is a lightening strike.  You're used to deploying willfulness to get through life, but that's too forceful.  You'll miss all the cues.  Don't pay attention, either.  That's too transactional--nothing will grab you that hard. If you sit back--if you're willing--and just watch the universe, there will be subtler things you're asked to see.  

But for now, just be.  You're learning to cooperate with the way things are, but you've been through a tremendous amount.  Eat when you want to eat, cry when you want to cry, find empathetic people to spend time with.  Nap. Laugh. Breathe.