“We realize openness as the playground of our emotions and relate to people without artificiality…… we open ourselves completely to the entire universe…. with absolute simplicity and nakedness of mind… this is the powerful and ordinary practice of dropping the mask of self-protection.
Everything is perfect just as it is. The nature of all is naturally-present as part of the continually changing pattern…. we are naturally free and unconditioned….we are intrinsically lacking nothing.”
HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Its Sunday morning. Easter Sunday. I’m not a Christian, but I am enamored by annual renewal. Spring brings with it a most profound resurrection. Today, I have little green growing edges.
I’m excited this morning. I’m going to write something, I’ve been feeling for some time, but never written down. I’ve never been sure, I’m not now, yet I can feel this awareness pushing through the ground of my ambivalence and poking me. I am being urged on by Life. I can feel it in the dizzying weight that surrounds me, I am going down as I am going up.
Aging is an on-going spiritual emergence. Just existing, and having Life ripen one, involves a slow renunciation of the world of form. Everything that one has thought one is, slowly evaporates. Letting go happens. Despite one’s preferences, an innocence comes over the mind. The world is re-enchanted, as the body becomes less of a player. Inner life takes up more and more awareness. Some sort of awakening accompanies what is passing. Wrinkles, wisdom and sensitivity arise as youth goes.
This is the way of things. Nature serves. Aliveness instills awareness. Pain and hardship squeeze out the essential. Accident and synchronicity mark the two sides of the same coin. The brilliant illuminates the darkness, making it meaningful, while it consumes the light. The unchanging takes us for a life-long ride. All in all, Life plays out creation through us.
There isn’t much one can do to alter the trajectory of the Universe. Even buckling in for the ride, has its unexpected moments of uncertainty. Strangely, even the most man-contrived vehicle, is in the end — organic. Choice is symmetrical — some combination, of human response and mystery.
I find re-assurance in the role of play. The Universe is playing out the energy that set it in motion, just as I’m finding myself returning to the curious engagement with my environment that made my childhood such a joy. I’m playing so much more craftily now, emancipated by what once seemed to enclose me. Fun, joy and happiness are the landmarks of this playground.
Life is a primary way of preparing spirit for the next adventure. I’m tired of pretending otherwise. I get so distorted with a man-made form of gravity. One might not even recognize that I am an animal made to occupy this garden.
I lived so long depressed. I drank the kool aid. I sank beneath what passed for wisdom and caring. I died before I died —before even — living. I was a good citizen, I laughed at all the jokes, and took my cues from the crowd.
Thank the Mystery I got older. The journey home has been such a rich one, so much disillusionment, and so much liberation. No wonder I feel so dizzy writing these words. Passing through the gates of Heaven looks so much like passing through the jaws of Life.
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