Are you “DEAD”?


So after lots of reflection and awareness and suffering and relief I realized that I was killing myself with certain concepts and beliefs.  Hence the acronym DEAD.

D: demands
E: expectations
A: assumptions
D: desires (the ones that create attachment)

All these things equate to a total lack of freedom inside and outside of me.  When we can love in it’s truest sense (aka without attachment), then we become FREE.  And oh how I want to be free.  As I reflect back on 2010, I see an amazing pattern of DEAD behavior which has created great suffering but great learning for me and for that I am grateful and feel it was all worth it. 
When I take the personal ME and MINE out of it, I see and experience the big picture. How it’s all a big school and the same curriculum but we all have different ways of learning.  So can I learn to let you learn how you need to learn while respecting my ways?  Trusting that in the end we’ll arrive at the same destination with the same beautiful outcome -  freedom and joy.  I also realize that this year began with an immense desire on my part to be FREE – free from rules, labels, limits, fears, distrust, etc.  And all my experiences this year, especially the challenging ones, have helped me become more and more free.  So my “suffering” was not in vain – never is.  It’s the little I / Ego that tells me otherwise when I listen to it. 
How to hear the little I but not be impacted by it? Practice, practice, practice.  Awareness, awareness, awareness.  Discernment, discernment, discernment.  And the list goes on.

These tools are amazingly effective when I use them and staying connected to others on the Path help me remember to use them.  To have sangha, inside and out, I find comfort and truth and power and joy and love.  I remember what the Gita and the Upanashads tell us over and over again.  Nothing is separate from God.  God is in me therefore I am never incomplete or less than whole or in need, therefore no need to demand, expect, assume, or desire.  Simple, right?  Simple but not always easy when you’ve lived your whole life DEAD to the world.

So notice what makes you DEAD and makes you ALIVE!  Because when we can let go of those things that slowly kill our joy, our freedom, we instantly will find what we've been looking for.  We'll find that what we've been looking for is that which is looking.  It is us, it is God within us.  So Hum - I am that I am.

May 2011 bring joy and life and love to everyone who is willing to walk through the transforming fire of life, with all it’s ups and downs.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti.  Peace.

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