"There is nothing to change or fix in ourselves or anyone, only to awaken too, to awaken to our true nature and magnificence, that of Love, Peace and Joy." Paul Noiles
Now the problem with a great majority of people is that they are oblivious to this paradox because they are asleep.
Let me ask you a question. When we wake up in the morning, do we make that happen? No, it just happens, we wake up. We might use an alarm clock to help but it is still us, who naturally wakes up. It just happens. It's the same for spiritual awakening. We cannot wish, pray, beg, force, take this course and that, do the 12 steps or meditate ourselves to wake up. When we finally wake up it's not because any person or thing or course made it happen it’s because we are IT -the great Love already.
Here is what I mean:
I had no idea about the awakening paradox for a great majority of my life. Shit, I would even tell everyone how much I wanted to change, wanted to become spiritual, wanted to stop using, wanted to grow up, be a better person and be more responsible. Which at that time was a bunch of nonsense because my true motivate was for my pain to go away. I wanted a quick fix, anything to take away the pain. I wanted it now and so I went seeking outside myself to find the cure. I believed that when I had a beautiful wife, a new house, a better job, more money, lots of success, better sex and a better reputation, more status then I would be happy, not in pain and everyone would like me. Instead of seating still and learning to just BE ------Being is everything.
The real reason I didn’t want to wake up was that my mind was high jacked by wanting quick relief and waking up is the opposite, it is painful. It's painful to recognize I was living a fake life. Shame was the constant voice back then. I was totally asleep. I was insecure, an egomaniac, dishonest with myself, blame everyone, played the victim, poor me, people please, fighting with an addiction and on and on. And so, the real reason I looked outside to soothe my pain was that I was scared to death to look within. You see, it was not my darkness that scared me, it was my LIGHT because I believed I was unworthy of it and the more I tried to escape my pain the worse it became and more asleep I was. The truth was that nothing outside ourselves can ever fix or change us because it's an inside job, we must begin there.
Once my mind had seen through the fear, the false beliefs, the ego identifications and has no more tricks to play, it found peace within itself, in a state of pure awareness. I woke up because Grace entered through a crack in my protective walls and once Grace entered, my walls came tumbling down and bam, I woke up. For some people it’s one brick at a time but sometimes they come down all at once and that was me. It, however, does not matter because when the walls come down we are awake and experience our true magnificence. My mentor told me the more things we do for our spiritual awakening like meditation, self-inquiry, prayer, 12 steps, affirmations etc etc, the more opportunities we have for Grace to enter through one of our cracks in our ego. Not when "I", try to fix and change me because I think I am broken.
I want to leave you with a great quote from an inspiring movie I watched last week called “Some Kind of Difference as Me” on Netflix with Greg Kinnear and Rene Zellweger. The quote is from the homeless guy in the movie:
“We're all just regular folks walking down the road, God done set in front of us. The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain't no final restin place. So in a way, we is all homeless - just workin our way toward home.”
Isn't that the truth. To wake up is to understand that “ALL IS WELL” even when everything appears to be a mess. We are all going home. All the great mystics, no matter what religion, all said the same thing “ALL IS WELL” even thou everything appears to be absolutely a mess. We are always 100 percent spiritual beings, period end of story. And so even if someone does not wake up in this lifetime, it’s alright because we have eternity to finally wake up. ---------
namaste Paul Noiles
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