“One moment of presence brings more light to the world than a thousand years of “good works.” In presence, all action is uncluttered and unsullied. It is spontaneity born from stillness.” – Tony Parsons
I love it.
Robert Frost says:
“We dance around in a ring and suppose.
But the secret sits in the middle and knows.”
When you know the truth, you will lose your necessity to do things in the old way. You will realize the futility and ridiculousness of expectation, motivation and goals. It all becomes meaningless because you recognize you have everything now.
I think everyone has experienced attainment of a lifelong goal, only to see it is empty and hollow. You realize that everything you were searching for was right in front of you the whole time in the simplicity of say, a dinner at home with your beloved on a Monday night.
Except the difference in presence is that you recognize THIS IS MY BELOVED sitting across the table. Where before that same exact dinner was just ho-hum routine, something to be endured, with a person who was a nuisance or worse yet, invisible. Complacency is the worst place to be. So open your eyes. Look at what is in front of you. An ordinary dinner can transform into the best thing in the world. If you are alone, become aware that you are NOT alone. Those you love are with you. It would be a perfect time to start communicating. In presence, you come alive. You see everything differently. Colors which were previously dull become vibrant. You become aware of tastes and sounds. Your heart opens up and you are filled with gratitude and joy.
It’s like you shed your old skin and uncover the YOU that was there all along, but buried under old ideas, habits, and routines. That spark becomes a bonfire, and all of a sudden, without any warning, you feel a need to MOVE. Your whole body is filled with passion, and your cells are flooded with light and life.
While it is happening, it can dreadfully uncomfortable. Think about it. To lose all your protective layers can be downright scary. But in truth, it is exhilarating. Just let it occur. Let yourself move.
Be a presence, today.
Don’t wait till some future time to start living.
To be a presence is to be a force and this is how healing is accomplished.
You simply come into a present state of awareness, which is now.
This moment is the one you’ve been searching for.
Maybe the reason I know this is because I’ve done a million interesting things and achieved my goals. I’ve eaten in the best restaurants, traveled around the world, and seen all my wishes fulfilled … and nothing beats hanging out with my cats.
I’m not joking. This is a great moment, right now.
No success in the world can compare to a quiet dinner at home. Or a bath. Or a good book.
Joy lies in the simple things that you have previously taken for granted.
You will find, after you have chased after all your dreams and achieved some level of success, that everything you were searching for was right in front of you the entire time but you were so preoccupied with future goals, that you were blind. You missed all the “ordinary” moments which were actually spectacular.
A Course in Miracles transforms the ordinary into the spectacular. Not by changing situations, circumstances or people, but by changing YOU.
There is nothing to achieve. Forget about all your striving and struggling, resisting and persisting, wishing and affirming … to attain some fantasy state in a non-existent future. That is child’s play.
What do you want to become? It is available to you today. The life you are so desperately chasing after is available to you today. The person you want to become is what you are now.
It’s just buried. Let the top layers go by remembering the truth.
There is only the gift of vision. Open your eyes. You are all light. What you have been searching for is available to you now.
Let’s not waste any more time.
Lesson 30 says: God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.
Everything you look upon exists only in your mind, and your mind is the Mind of God.
Pure creation.
So everything you are looking at is an extension of the Love of God. Projection is translated into extension. Everything transforms instantly before your very eyes.
Where before you tried to understand ‘is this the ego? or is this God?” … now you realize that everything is God. There is no ego.
Because God is in everything.
Where is the ego if God is in everything????
If you are thinking there is an ego – either in you or someone else – you are trapped in dreams. You’ve forgotten the truth. You’ve forgotten everything. Stand still and remember:
God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.
There is no such thing as an ego. God is everything there is. There are no separate bodies, doing separate things.
There is only you, coming alive. Recognizing your own perfection in God. Recognizing everyone else’s perfection in God. It’s all you. This is your world, complete in all its details.
It’s all God.
Facebook comments:
WOW!
“I think everyone has experienced attainment of a lifelong goal, only to see it is empty and hollow.”
I was lucky enough to have that realization while half-way through the process of attaining a JD. I am extremely thankful that I realized that being a lawyer was not my calling.
Incredible. I was reading ACIM today and doing my lessons. Afterward I had to ask the Holy Spirit for help with a grievance. For some reason I keep thinking “that I will get there in the future!” I am there now. No goal, no “expected light”, no situation or experience of God that is not already here, RIGHT NOW. I’m going to let go of my expectations of a time in the future where I will “finally get” ACIM. I get it now!
But what is the “you” that gets “discovered”? I’ve only ever had a few transcendental experiences, but always the experience is one of “not I” and discovery is not a term that fits with the experience at all.
If everything is God, then we must also that everything is “not God”, too. That’s a logical conclusion – thus the Nothingness in Buddhism. (Buddhists don’t believe in God.) At our core, there is no separation. No “you” or “me” to be experienced.
Although the ego is an illusion, we do experience the ego and there is no way of denying the experience – try as we might. So God must be in our egoic experience as well.
We get so stuck in a dualistic mindset (“either/or”) because that’s how our language works. But reality doesn’t work in terms of “either/or”. We are and we are not. God is and God is not.
We can’t get rid of our egoic experience, but we can transcend it. And when we transcend it, it isn’t a new “I” we experience, it is something altogether different.