There are no Accidents

As I prepare for leading the Fall Retreat on Whidbey Island next month, I am remembering on an even deeper level the nourishment, the heart connection and the importance of gathering together in awakening communities.  Isn’t it wonderful that even though we are separated by space, we are together through the heart?

Here is the wonderful quote that speaks to coming into the theater and finding the terrified part of us sitting on the stage. – all alone!!! – with many parts of us dancing around in a circle saying, “You did it wrong, you are wrong, you are not worthy,” and on and on and on.  This experience lies at the core of most human personalities.  And we are waking up to it and breathing it into our hearts so all beings can be free from this core suffering.

This quote speaks to the knowing that there is no accident we are in the theater all alone, lost in fear and self judgment.  And there is no accident that we are, together, entering the theater and going to be with the little child on the stage rather than joining the judgmental circle that is dancing around him or her!  As Rilke says, “Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

“We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.  And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.  How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.  Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. –Rainer Maria Rilke

And Nisargadatta:
“You cannot know yourself through bliss alone, for bliss is your very nature.  You must face the opposite, what you are not, to find enlightenment.” –From “I Am That”

Be light, Mary