Lessons of Life - Philip Jacobs

There are several lessons that I have learnt from my observations
of life, that I wished I had known from the very start.  The first
is that you can trust the process of life and it's unfolding.
So many times in my life journey, I have experienced deeply
traumatic events that I could not see the purpose of at the time.
These events have ranged from chronic illness and the loss of
those I love, and loss of home. Yet when I look back on the
events from a fuller perspective, I always see how they led to
deeper insight and creativity that I could not foresee at the time
and they also pushed me into where I needed to be in life.  It
was as if I had been seeing the world just through a letter box
and could not see the whole picture.  I have observed this so
often in life, which is why I now trust life's unfolding, even if
I cannot see or understand it at the time.

That leads to my second insight, which is that things never 
turned out the way I anticipate them.  When the future prospects
have looked very grim, at a certain point there has always been
an unforeseen intervention that makes the outcome quite
different from what I would have expected.

The third and most important of my life lessons, is quite
simply that I'm not who I think I am.  It's as if there are two
of me.  One identity I call "Philip." [my identity in time.]
  Philip is a man and an artist and does Philip things, like
designing textiles and looking for dinosaurs and Hiroshige
paintings. But behind Philip there is another identity that
quietly observes the ever changing drama of life, all without
comment. It was there when I was five and it's exactly
the same when I'm sixty five.  Compared to Philip,
this other identity is like the still depths of the ocean.  Like
the ocean it is totally still, even when a life storm rages on the
surface.  This other identity is also always unconditionally
happy.  Almost like happiness just shines out of it, and it takes
great delight in everything it encounters: people, nature, art,
animals, etc.  The art of life I've discovered is knowing that
your true identity is this much deeper unchanging sense of self.
It is necessary in life to play the "Philip" role, but at the same
time to have the background awareness that what you really
are is this great ocean of stillness, which in a strange way also
includes everybody and everything.

Sometimes when life is very difficult it is as if the curtain of
time parts and we become aware of the underlying mystery
that has been there all along.  This can also happen with great
beauty, such as when we look up at the night sky at the
vastness of the night sky.  It is as if the boundary between
"self" and "other" dissolves and we see that we are the whole
universe.

So when you are in the middle of the life dance and it seems
overwhelming, remember your real identity that is always
present as your safe place and true home and that is always
beyond trauma and illness.  It is even beyond birth and death.

Philip Jacobs
Sufi

with thanks to No Mind's Land

and photo too...