Being Truly Alive

I was searching for a quote in my book, Belonging to Life, when I came across the introduction and I was so moved by it I wanted to share it with you. 

Take a moment and lift your eyes from this book. Receive life, right here, right now. Rather than drifting off into a conversation about life, be here, fully available to the moment it appears out of mystery.  Notice colors, shapes, the space between things, the dance of shadow and light.  Feel the symphony of sensations that is your body.  Hear the music of life as it swells and recedes all around you.

THIS IS IT.

This is the living moment of your life.  Every single experience you have ever had has brought you here to this day, to this moment and to this breath.  Allow yourself to relax.  Let that tension in your belly go and open to a deep breath.  This moment is your home and you are homesick, for most of the time, you live in ideas about life rather than having a direct experience of it.  For these precious moments, let it in.  Allow yourself to simply be.   

As you hold the intention to simply be here, watch your mind take over again.  It will plan, resist, get bored, feel fear, becoming like a veil of clouds that cuts you off again from direct contact with life.  As your attention drifts back into your mind, when you notice you are gone again, bring it back into deep curiosity about what is happening right now.  The past will come flooding in.  Gently release it and return.  The future will try to grab your attention.  Let it go and return.  For just these few moments drink from the nectar of becoming one with your own life.  Yes, the dream of the mind will take over again but moments such as these will transform your life and the life of all beings in ways you cannot even imagine.

*********************

What you are holding in your hands is an invitation to know again the joy, the wonder and the peace of being open to life.  Instead of being here for life, we live in afterthoughts, stories in our heads that cut us off from the living experience. Some of the core building blocks of these stories are fear, anger, sadness, self-judgment and despair. All the while we are caught in our minds, life, in all its vibrancy, wonder and mystery is unfolding around us and within us. It never leaves us. We leave it by drifting off into ideas about life rather than the real thing. As Alan Watts once said, “No matter how many times you say the word water, it will never be wet.”  

This book is not about how to be present for life. For we have never left life. We just think we have. Trying to be in the now is just more struggle. Haven’t you discovered this to be so?  Instead, this book is about how to get to know all of the stores that continually seduce us into struggling with life rather than being open to it.   In this curiosity about what your mind is doing, you will discover how to relate to all the stories in your head rather than from them.  You will learn how to not be seduced by the clouds of fear, self-hatred, resistance, control and despair so that your clouds can thin and you rediscover the living moment of life. You can then use the exquisite tool of your mind rather than being lost in it.  

To cultivate the art getting to know and thus unhook from the stories in your mind is one of the most healing things a human being can do.  For as the clouds in your mind dissipate you rediscover the here and now of your life and here is a doorway.  There is something here that can only be found here. As you clear the clouds in your mind, you discover deep safety, the joy of curiosity, a wellspring of creativity, the healing balm of compassion and the ecstasy of communion with the whole that you are.  You will also discover how to trust life again, even the difficult. In this trust, you can let go of trying to create a life and instead be here for creation. You will also recognize yourself as an integral part of a vast and sacred process, one that is working tirelessly to bring you into full consciousness.  

The healing that we will be exploring together isn’t just for you.  As you get to know what takes you away from life and thus have more moments throughout your day where your mind, body and heart are all right here, you discover a reverence for all moments, beings and things. You will then be able to give to life one the most powerful gifts any human being can, the gift of your undivided attention.  With full attention, you become a place of healing on our planet, for all that you touch and every being you meet is then transformed by the power of your focused attention.  Therein lies the possibility of heaven on Earth. As Vaclav Havel, the former President of the Czech Republic said, “The basis of a new-world order must be grounded in an environment that respects the sacred dimension: the miracle of being, the miracle of the universe and the miracle of our own existence.”  

Take a moment and envision the Earth from space at the time when we human beings were living the youth of our species. There were no people who had become free from the confines of their struggling self so see the Earth completely enfolded in darkness.  Then slowly, over the years see a few pinpricks of light showing up, coming from the awakening beings that were living in the sanctuary of monasteries or secluded in high mountain retreats.  Now see, like fireflies flickering in the velvety black of the night, a multitude of lights beginning to shine out from the dark and those lights connecting with other lights until there is a web of light all around the world. 

This is what is happening on our planet now.  And you are a part of it.  Moments where you unhook from your struggling self and become open to life, right here right now, you become one of those flickers of light.  As more and more people have moments such as these—moments beyond the struggling mind where they are fully engaged with life as it appears out of mystery—humanity itself will be shifted into the next step of evolution, the step of intimately belonging together to the sacred adventure that is life.

*******************

When you are done reading this paragraph, lift your eyes.  Notice the quality of the light in the space where you are – the air surrounding you, the river of breath as it moves through you.  It is different than when you began reading this introduction for the river of life has continued to flow.  Drink from the nectar of this living moment.  For this moment, belong to this moment.  For this moment, belong to your life.  For this moment heal yourself and heal the world.

If this calls to you, come join the course Being Healed by Our Compulsions, starting on March 31st.  It understands that our core compulsion is to struggle which keeps us cut off from the alive, intimate connection we long for with life.

Enroll by March 9th and receive $150 off tuition. Use coupon code: comp4$150 Sliding scale also available. Contact devrah@maryomalley.com for more info.