Listen now, or lose your life, for what I have to say is what you
have imagined in quiet moments but have failed to realize in
full. Perhaps you were too timid or astonished at the critical
moments, or couldn't find the courage to step through the veil
of your frail life when the door was opened for you.
Or perhaps you wanted to keep your life as your own, and
chose to hold onto a few pennies when you could have had
gold. No matter, for yesterday has passed into the dust of
remembered dreams, and tomorrow's story is yet to be written.
Which is precisely why you and I are now here together...
Stand with me here at the precipice and take my hand in yours,
for I am good company to those ready to depart familiar ground.
If not, then let loose of my hand now and take that of a more
familiar companion. For where we stand is known, but our
next step will not be - nor the one after or the one after that.
So shoulder all of your longing and intent and leave all else
behind. I give you fair warning: The world you are about to
leave will not be there when you return. For nothing truly left
behind is ever the same upon our return. Let us not waste any
more time on discussions or debates; you have surely been
caught in those tide pools too long already. Too much talk
is wearying to the soul and evades the spirit of things.
Longing is the true measure of a man or woman and alone
has the power to draw us out of ourselves and into the vast
air of eternity...
This is as fair a day as any to begin the journey back
to your origin. So lift your foot together with mine and
we will step off the well-trodden paths and into the
uncharted woods where the essence of things lies
waiting for you to open your eyes.
It is time to begin watching your steps, dear companion. For
you have already wasted the goodness of too many days
stumbling along with the unconscious drove. Today I bid
you to place no foot upon the earth without feeling the sinews,
skin, and bone of your feet with each step. How awake you
are to the least of things will determine how awake you become
to the greatest in due time. For in the play of time, the great
manifold diversity of things in the end proves their unity....
I can see in your eyes a fear and confusion. But fear not,
for I do not speak of death.....but of awakening from death,
from sleepwalking in dreams and veiled imagination. Beyond
the veil all is well, and more well than I can attest. Within the
immortality of what you are, there is a contentment and peace
born only of your true identity.
Have you not been told how grand you are, how uncontained,
how limitless? I for one maintain that you are as unseen and
eternal as the space that spans beyond the myriad universes.
I praise the immortal Self - not one self among many, but the
Self within all selves. For everywhere I go, and in each and
everyone I meet, I greet my secret and unseen Self. For I know
each man and each woman as I know myself, none greater or
lesser in essence or worth.
I have no desire or pull toward the gods, nor sacred relics,
nor holy books. For I have waded through the various
dogmas and found them lacking in the essential vision, the
unitary glance that reveals God's hand within every gesture.
Why should we go looking for more than we are, when we
are what we are looking for? Beware of misguided longing,
for it leads in the end to brutality. How much blood has
already been spilled in God's name and how much more to
come?
I bid you, dear companion: Throw off the yoke of belief,
for to arrive at the nobility of truth you must be cleansed
of all borrowed knowledge till you are as innocent as the
day before you were born. You must forge from within your
longing a fiery sword of discrimination, unsheathed from the
past - determined to never again take anything secondhand,
but instead prove true or false each statement yourself.
For truth belongs to neither man or woman, nor holy book,
nor well-reasoned philosophy or belief, but only to itself -
immortal and pure.
Adyashanti
Original title - "Everlasting Inheritance" (2006)
~
Photo - Mystic Meandering
