"Something magnificent awaits us all."
"Yet, it is not so much a thing, as much as it is a remembrance. Yet, this remembrance is not simply a memory. It is like what happens when we lift above the clouds and are stunned by the shimmering beauty of sunlight, unobstructed, radiant, unlimited."
It is like what happens when we forget ourselves completely, as the beauty of a dolphin's leap from its hiding place in the ocean takes our breath away.
Only, in this case, it gives our real breath back to us.
"It is the breath by which we feel the Divine coursing through us as the Life of our life, And the very Soul of our very soul.
This awakening is the province not of religion, for as Carl Jung pointed out, religion is really a defense against what we zany mystic types, having found our way above the clouds of the ordinary world where the dolphin has given us back our real breath, spend the rest of our lives attempting to describe and if we are so called by the Beloved One attempting to challenge anyone daring and willing enough to strap in for the ride of their life to the source of their very Life.
That is, this remembrance is an awakening to genuine religious experience: everywhere, suddenly, all things shimmer in divinity, as though a spell has been broken, as though a dream has dissolved and with it the very dream of the dreamer itself.
Make no mistake about it. Enlightenment is very real. It isn't the kind of thing you can debate, or even choose, for it is the destiny of every soul to awaken. In this, there is no choice.
When we are moved to submit to the Fire that purges us of illusion is the only choice we really ever have. Regardless of all our dreams, our strivings, our judgments, fears, and reasons, eventually each of us must take up this universal pathway and be taken above the clouds of this dream world.
But I do not speak of going anywhere else. For the Real World shimmers, here.
Not as we have thought it to be, nor as we might wish it would be so that our egos may be satiated, but as what alone Is, has Always Been, and forever Shall Be.
There is simply no way anyone can be convinced of this radical notion, nor can we know Reality conceptually. It is not a matter of belief, or of disbelief. There is only one way:
To take up the pathway whereby we awaken from the grip of the Imposter, the false and limited self.
A genuine spirituality is not a bed of roses, at least for the ego! It progressively shatters the roots of fear, of specialness, of hope for getting things to go our way, and of our very resistance against acceptance of Who we really are.
It carries us from myopic intimations of what love is, into Love itself.
It changes everything, everything, for it changes the very seat of the soul itself. And when the seer is finally undone, all things finally appear as they truly are: liberated in joyous innocence in the lap of God.
Imagine no sense of lack, nor fear of loss. Imagine capacities of awareness that the clouds of our ordinary mind have kept hidden, blossoming to reveal the subtleties of all things. Imagine feeling no sense of separation from a single being or expression of Creation.
Imagine a peace so pervasive it enfolds all tears in gratitude. Ordinary mind cannot even begin to wrap itself around the very non-dual, palpable, self-evident marvel that the Mystery of the Divine really is!
Yet, to awaken, we will first come to be confounded, pissed off, and challenged in -ways we could not anticipate. But death of delusion comes on no other road but this.
The journey of true awakening requires a few things in our cosmic backpack: Courage, vigilance, discipline, yes. But more than these, it takes us through territory that can only be traversed with constant forgiveness, constant .willingness, a surrender of all hope for control, and an increasing capacity for laughing at the futility of the ego to ever win!
And above all, it requires this: faith.
And faith — if allowed and followed faithfully (no matter what) is the experiment that becomes the experience; the direct lived experience of a genuinely awakened being.
When it is time, you cannot prevent the path from seizing you altogether. When it isn't time, there is nothing you can do to get on it, or stay on it, for, at the first bit of rocky terrain, fear will seize you rather than love, and fling you back below the clouds, and you will mutter how crazy it was to even think there was a way to the dolphin beyond the clouds.
In the end, the essential requirement of the mystical journey is the willingness to die and be re-born altogether in the deepest bedrock of the soul. The first part of the journey is a journey to the Kingdom. Then, and only then, comes the journey within it. And no one, no one, knows what this is until the seat of the soul is transfigured.
Faith is the willingness to submit to what is unseen, unheard, and unknown. It is the willingness to discover what it really means to let go, and let God.
I hope these parting words confound you a bit. It's necessary, you see!
There is really nothing I, nor any mystic can do, to persuade you of the immediately and directly for yourself. Except, if you make this journey, the one who comes to see the Real World will not be the one who set out to find it! For, to 'see' requires new eyes. A genuine spirituality is the art and science and grace that transfigures the ability of the soul to see, first. And few there be who are truly willing to submit to such cosmic surgery.
Perhaps you will be one of them. Perhaps not."