There is an antidote to the madness in the world now. While things outside us, which we have little power to influence, are deteriorating, inside each of us there is the possibility of serenity. This is a story of how that has become possible for me, and of how a variation of that, could be possible for you.
A few months ago, at age 99, my mother died. She left me lots of memories, and part of her estate. It turned out to be more money than I knew she had. Though surprised, it still didn’t put to rest my fear, that my money might run out before I die. A friend of mine helped me realize I was living in fear, and acting like I was disconnected. For some reason I heard her. I knew I had lived differently after my stroke, and that my name “Lucky” came from that time. So, I suddenly got that I had lost what I once knew, and that I needed to return to what had once been true for me.
So, began a period of my life I call “monk mode.” In it, I am recollecting all of the little practices I developed for myself, that contributed to my feeling of oneness with Life (my sense of the ultimate). During the dark years of my illness, when I was losing so much, I recalled that I had been reduced down, so that I no longer felt my life was mine. I was Life’s life. Later, when I lived, I realized it was that shift, that saved my life, and calmed me down. From thinking and believing I owned my own life, that I was losing, to realizing I was in fact living Life’s life. That shift enabled me to live fully as a radically disabled man.
Remembering, that I knew connection, brought a renewed confidence. I was returning to what I had already experienced. So, on election eve, many weeks later, when I could read the writing on the wall, I went to bed disappointed, but calm. I awakened in the middle of the night to a fear storm, but was able to go back to sleep, by shifting my attention to being Life’s life. I was beyond disruption. The assurance of what was within me, knowing that my being depended on identifying with Life, was so much greater, than any choices that the new electee would make. I am beyond his ministrations, and beyond the madness of our times.
I identify with Life. Not everybody does. I take my re-assurance from the knowledge that I am safely tucked under the wings of Life. But re-assurance is available in many forms; non-dual awareness, super-frequency life, manifestations of love, traditional spirituality, and other forms. The quality of inner life is what provides the immunity to what is happening outside. What is crucial is what is within each of us. The madness will go on, many will be hurt, change probably disruption will happen, but each of us is prepared, by the counter-weight of our inner lives.
Joseph Campbell used to say, “There are as many ways into paradise as there are people.” I say, “There are as many ways to identify with a larger reality as there are the willing.” Re-assurance, and immunity, follows.
I hope you can find your version of being Life’s life. Then, this election, will be truly significant.