…as we learn to stop and see in a habitual and sustained way, our eyes are opened to the countless treasures that lie right here within our reach, which can fill our hearts with untold joy and deep peace. – Ruben Habito

right.here.now

Is it really true? Does it pay to always be here and now? Our human minds don’t buy this logic. The truth is that the treasure to be found here and now can only be realized when we genuinely learn how to be fully present. Being fully present means that we’re just being, and experiencing what’s going on. It means that we’re not creating thoughts about what’s going on.

And when we do this and get good at it then nothing but a blissful peace is the initial result. More eventually unfolds which includes amazing creativity and an all-encompassing sense of oneness…

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. – The Buddha

we’re the sky

We’re like the sky. We are the capacity for all that we experience. That includes the objects and events ‘out there’, it also includes our body, feelings and even our mind (we’re not our minds). Within this spacious capacity that we’re calling ‘the sky’ we focus on the clouds and birds, the ‘arisings’ that make up our lives.

And we love to hold onto certain kinds of clouds, the ones we can’t let go, those are our ‘fixations’. And these clouds, our thoughts, our fixations, is what we make ourselves to be. But we’re really the sky itself, that spacious quality of beingness, that allows all clouds and birds to appear just as they are.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

what’s knowable?

What can we know without a shadow of a doubt? We can’t trust the past to our memory or history books. We can only imagine the future. We can’t really know an object such as a pencil or a tree. That’s because we perceive objects with our senses. That same object such as a tree is a totally different experience to an ant or a bacterium. So what is a tree then? We see it as a separate object but the ant probably ‘sees’ it as an extension of the soil…

Emerson, in this quote, talks about a posture of ‘not-knowing’ and equates it to ‘knowledge’. Such a posture is very powerful because only from such a perspective, the one of ‘not-knowing‘, can we truly know the only thing that is knowable.

Give yourself to Him, trust Him, fix your eye upon Him, listen to His voice, and then go on bravely and cheerfully. – Jean Grou

trust him and be of good cheer

God is present. He lives as all that is. That includes our life and our aliveness. To be with him all we have to do is acknowledge his presence, assume it to be present and move through the day in that trust. Life speaks to us constantly, are we listening? We are Life, let’s be aliveness itself…

If Truth isn’t right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? – Zen Saying

what do we really want?

Truth isn’t hidden from us. Life doesn’t conspire to play hide-and-seek. God doesn’t want us to fail. If anything we sabotage our own efforts. Truth is here and now. Our very awareness of self, our beingness, the space that we are and in which all things arise, is the Truth we seek. This Truth is where we are inexplicable peace and unassailable.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. – Ludwig Wittgenstein.

hidden under our noses

Reality is simple and because it’s also very familiar we ignore it. Fish take the water that surrounds them for granted, just like we almost never think of the air we’re constantly breathing. Our True Nature, our real Self, is exactly like that. We live in its midst and move about within it and because it’s closer to us than our breath we recognize it not. What keeps us from realizing and enjoying this peaceful center that we are, is our thinking mind. We’re not our minds.

It is because you did not make yourself that you need be troubled by nothing. – ACIM

I must take care of self?

Here’s the problem: We think we are on our own and that we must figure life out alone. We think that without taking control we would be lost and unsafe. A greater lie has never been told.

We didn’t make our selves, a greater force is at work. 99.999% of all that we see and experience was here before we showed up. We are created beings and our creator takes care of us. Once we believe and accept this Truth, we can be at ease and notice how Life really does take care of us.

God is responsible for ‘me’, period. I need worry not.