Awakening most often happens in the mind as a recognition of the absolute truth of emptiness in which a separate “me” does not exist. Whilst this realization is undoubtedly a profoundly transformative experience, living this truth is more of a challenge. It seems that awakening is just the beginning: the embodiment of this awakening is the real journey. The adventure begins, not in the rarified atmosphere of transcendence, but in the midst of the turbulence of life. As awakening descends from mind to heart to body, we are called into an uncompromising embracement of both the ocean of inner stillness and the waves of phenomenal expression. One of the most frequent questions on the spiritual path is “How can we wholeheartedly meet the world without getting lost in it?” In other words, “How can we embrace the mystery and mess of the human experience without getting entangled in it?”
The capacity of impersonal awakeness to be deeply intimate with what is, is a beautiful paradox of nondual awareness. A whole new dimension of spiritual maturity opens up to us when we recognize that absolute and relative are one, as inseparable as the waves from the ocean. Deep intimacy with what is means that we fully meet – as a present-moment reality -everything that appears in our perceptual field. Everything – both dark and light, form and formless, mundane and transcendent – is seen to be an expression of oneness, and so nothing is avoided, denied or feared. When you deeply accept that every experience is an invitation from the beloved, calling you to abandon yourself into the moment, that which is awake in you as love meets itself in everything and gives birth to a radically new way of living.
This video was recorded at SAND14.
