Breathe
your heart clear.
Cleanse
your gaze
with the gaze
of the Beloved.
Make your intellect
a transparent window
that the Inward Light
shines through.
Burn away your petals
in stem fire.
Right now the world
needs Being more
than doing.
Infuse
each word and act
with essence of wonder.
This is the perfume
that heals the earth.
Never before have I met so many people who feel powerless to change
society, to address injustice and suffering, to make a difference in a
troubled world. I need to share these words from the heart.
Surrounding your body is a subtler body made of breath, glowing like
the moon. Surrounding your breath-body is the space of the mind. This space could be a transparent window, but is covered in the
dust of thought and time.
Penetrate the space of mind, and we find
that it is a fabric woven of subtle energy threads, threads not made of thought but pure feeling. This underlying fabric
of mind is intuition, called 'Buddhi' in Sanskrit. It contains all the answers you need, the moment you need them, without the burden of anxious thought.
If we become very quiet, we transcend even this field of Buddhic energy, and come to rest in the Atman, the most intimate core of the heart. Atman is like a golden sun, the silent radiance of the
soul, so near that it is prior to thought, prior to feeling. Atman is sparkling awareness, present even before the "I" arises.
Atman is the watcher. It never slumbers, even when we dream or rest in deep sleep. Atman does not
seem to act, yet its clarity and witnessing power are so creative that it moves the world. The unmoved mover of our lives,
the Atmic soul propels us through world after world, lifetime after lifetime.
What do we search for in all these lives? We imagine that we search for some treasure in the world outside us - an ideal utopia, the perfect marriage, the glory of wealth and prestige,
or perhaps supreme knowledge in an advanced academic degree. But all these lives are projections of our longing, our dread, our nostalgia, and our lack. Thus we never actually experience
anything new, only the old story re-imagined...
Until at last, in a moment of weariness and grace, we turn the searchlight around to gaze within, and see
the light of the one who sees. This light is what we had been seeking all along. This light is never in the past. It is always new, ever self-refreshed, a destroying fire of ceaseless re-creation.
How does one tap this inward fountain of life? Through meditation. Then we recognize, not as belief but direct experience, that our soul is a ray of God, a
spark of Brahman. We finally understand that there is no greater privilege than to be here on earth, where we may incarnate a living stream of divine love through this earthly body.
The
love-stream flows through you, not from you. You pour it into the world. But this is no longer your world. It is the world, the purgatory, sometimes even the hell, projected by others out of anxiety, anger, and fear. Oh yes, you are in their world, but not of it. For the greater part of you has become a window, letting beauty through. This is what Christ meant when he said, "My kingdom is not of this world."
You are light in disguise, gently dwelling among the people, speaking quietly, touching, healing them. You are an anonymous spring of Presence. And what liberating talismans do you carry for protection? Innocence. Spontaneity. And the impeccable credential of being no one special.
This is your true work, whatever
other avocation you might practice. One may be a mother, changing her baby's diapers; another a carpenter, building a doorway in a home. Another could be
a doctor, a small business owner, or a social worker, moving among the disabled and the poor.
But if your heart is awake, and you tap the unfathomable well of the Atman, it doesn't matter whether you are known or unknown, rich or poor, dark or light, adorned with learning or unschooled: you have become a secret radiance that lightens the
burdens of those around you. Love is the hidden power of your Being.
Picture: Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi
The world seems full of problems. But there is only one problem,
and it isn't in the world. It is our own mind. This mind pollutes the
whole creation when it turns bitter, judgmental, and polarized with blame against an 'other.' What
is the cure? To spend a few moments each day being astonished.
