Gradual Evolution

Sixth Principle of Personal Transformation > Having All of Life Be In God

Becoming fully receptive to life’s sacredness is often a gradual process, one in which the experience of God’s Presence within life becomes more and more apparent as it manifests through the flow of ordinary events. As fears and attachments loosen, we let go of conditioned attitudes and roles we have felt compelled to play, and become freer to respond to all of life with our true selves. This freedom to be ourselves is defined by our participation in each moment and by the quality of heart and mind we bring to it. Within each moment’s experience, we become free to learn and grow, to change with each encounter, to operate freely and fluidly as the continually evolving sacred beings that we are.

 

I always thought that enlightenment would come in a flash, a sudden lightning strike of transformation and I would be forever free.  When I first encountered yoga and buddhism years ago, I literally believed that this was the case.  Over the years this belief has taken many forms, but it’s been hard to let go of.

I never anticipate all of the work that spiritual aspiration would involve.  I figured that if my surrender was complete enough, I would just leap out of a smaller self identity and into an experience of cosmic wholeness from which it would be impossible to return.  When it didn’t happen, I blamed myself, assuming that my surrender must not have been authentic, or that I must just be too afraid of leaving behind my karmic baggage.  I still get caught up in this thought process, and if I’m not careful it can lead to self-judgment, guilt, and a feeling for failure.

But here I am immersed in the gradual process, the progressive healing of ancient karmic wounds.  “In the Integral Yoga, there is no difference between the sadhana and the outward life; it is in each and every moment of the daily life that the truth must be found and practiced,” says the Mother of Auroville.

So I try to open myself to the circumstances of my life, to the “flow of ordinary events”.  And I try to release self-judgment, trusting that what is unfolding within me and around me is unique and important and perfect.  I’ve come to believe strongly that no good ever comes from pressuring someone else to change their mind or believe something or want something.  But somehow it’s harder to grasp that this applies to myself too.  Pressure to surrender will never succeed in bringing me into alignment with my highest truth.  It’s only through releasing control and struggle that my path can unfold.

Julie Redstone once said to me that the Light does not respond to force with counterforce.  The strength of the Light is in its purity.  I remember being dumbstruck by the simplicity of it, and by the realization that I had always thought and acted as if fighting against my lower nature and the hostile forces was the only way to freedom.  It turns out that embattlement just perpetuates the battle, giving life to an illusion.

Trust

Trust the seeds of Cosmic Truth that have been sewn into your soul.
Trust the raging fire of Love that burns inside you,
the flames that rely upon Life alone from their fuel.
You have been created with a purpose.
A mission  lies buried within the chambers of your heart.
It is shrouded, hidden by the apparent complexities of material life,
ignored for fear that it is not real, a product of your imagination.
It is disguised as a hopeless emptiness.
Only you know the voice of this purpose,
only you can rediscover the long-lost reason for your existence.
And though the journey is arduous and the obstacles many,
your arrival is imminent:
It has been written in the stars.

“For it is the time for the progressive revelation of the power of Love, and all help is given to those who have cast off fear sufficiently to allow something new, even something half-understood to enter their awareness.”
-from Teaching the Heart to Sing, by Julie Redstone

Response of Light

Dear Readers of thelivinglight:

I wanted to share this important message from Julie Redstone on behalf of Response of Light.

With Love,

Matthew

SPIRITUAL FIRST RESPONDERS

Response of Light

www.responseoflight.com

Beloved Ones,

In the wake of the recent explosion of a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, a tragedy in which 11 ‘first-responders,’ mostly fire-fighters, lost their lives, we have the opportunity to ask: What does it mean to respond, and what does it mean to respond first?

In this situation as in many others, it means placing the needs of someone else’s life above one’s own and the necessity of helping them above concerns for one’s own wellbeing or safety.  This is a moral imperative that one is called to by the requirements of the heart.  It cannot be compelled.  It cannot be directed.  It must be awakened.

Similarly, to respond spiritually to the needs of others at critical moments, moments when one’s own life may be chaotic, or busy, or oppressed, involves a similar awakening of the heart that is willing to place another’s needs before one’s own, to hold the other as one holds oneself; to love another as one loves oneself.  This is what it means to be a spiritual ‘first-responder,’ and it must be awakened within the human heart whether it leads to outer action or not.

It is in this light that we have an opportunity, today, due to our growing understanding of the unity of all in the oneness of God, to respond collectively to the tragedies that befall others, to respond through prayer, through meditation, through the calling of the heart.  It is out of this growing possibility, this growing awakening, that Response of Light was born.  It calls to the increasing capacity of the human heart to identify with others, to love others as oneself, to hold all as children of the One.

In the presence of tragedy and in the presence of quiet when life seems to be about ordinary things, the ‘Response of Light’ is to be ever ready to offer itself to all as the need and occasion arise.

Please join us to serve this noble calling of the human and Divine heart of all.  It is an effort whose time has come and whose purposes are blessed.

Julie Redstone

www.responseoflight.com

http://facebook.com/ResponseofLight.

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