If the Buddha Got Stuck_ A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path - Charlotte Sophia Kasl [99]
We started our journey by leaving home and venturing forth into the world to find our dreams, which was really about finding the aliveness that we are. We faced hazards and trials as we met up with trixters, sages, and other people just like us wandering around looking for a nameless something to ease their pain or anxiety and give life meaning and joy. We explored a legion of ways to find excitement, happiness, and meaning and were given many promises and suggestions about what would work. Sometimes we got useful pieces of the puzzle; other times the teachings took us off course and they inflated the sense of “I” instead of helping it recede. We may have acquired ideas, possessions, adventures, and knowledge, but something still remained restless or empty and hungry.
Eventually we realize that we are always home; we just forget that the journey lies within us, beyond any concepts of doing and achieving. It is in letting go of our identification with our separate self, the “I” who has been doing all the seeking. As the “I” recedes, we became grounded in essence rather than in our beliefs or images about who we are. We start to experience an unbounded deep awakened love consciousness.
As the past dissolves and beliefs fade, we find ourselves in the wonderous world of beingness or essence. In this place, love, creativity, and kindness are natural. They are not out there; they are in here—they flow within us and between us without effort. From this place we can develop our gifts and talents as contributing members of our community—as a healthy, vital cell in the organism of all life.
I recently sang in a performance of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah to raise money for Missoula’s Habitat for Humanity Organization, a group that helps finance and build homes for low income people. The soloists, conductor, orchestra, and chorus all volunteered their time. In addition, each member of the chorus raised fifty dollars in order to sing in the choir. The excitement was palpable on the evening of the concert. The chorus gathered for the warm-up, the orchestra members pulled out their instruments, and people started streaming into the large university theater—a full house.
As we gathered on stage, I watched the orchestra tuning up and imagined each one of them as a child, having their first music lesson—the scratchy bow, the little fingers on the keyboard, pursing one’s lips to make a sound come out of a wind instrument. I imagined all the vocal training, experience in choirs, or singing at home with family that resulted in this resonant, full-voiced chorale. I then fast-forwarded through countless hours of collective practicing—maybe millions of hours—and persevering that led to everyone walking onto the stage this night.
But now, silence. The mind stops and the music begins. The conductor lifts his baton, and after a vibrant hush we become one orchestra, one chorus, and one performance of this glorious music. A thrill goes through the full auditorium. There are no concepts to divide us, no thoughts to distract us. As each one becomes a channel for the melodies and words, we come into the whole, the play of consciousness where the notes become music. This is the world of freedom—bringing our gifts together to enjoy and give away. No grasping, no holding on. Just bringing our full attention to what we are doing, and when we are done, we go home. But we are forever changed—while the performance is over, the music now lives within us.
Take time to feel the aliveness within you, appreciate the story of your very special life, nurture the gifts you have been given, and bring them into your community. When we are connected to each other yet not identified with our separate selves, our hearts expand into the unified