The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [21]
• Don’t wait for a miracle. It really doesn’t matter how you define miracle—whether it is the sudden appearance of perfect love, a cure for a life-threatening disease, anointment from a great spiritual leader, or permanent and everlasting bliss. A miracle is letting God do all the work; it separates the supernatural world from this world, with the expectation that one day the supernatural world will notice you. Since there is only one reality, your task is to break through boundaries of division and separation. Watching and waiting for a miracle keeps the boundaries up. You are ever at a remove from God, connected to him by wishful thinking.
If you can avoid these pitfalls of spiritual materialism, you will be much less tempted to chase after an impossible goal. The chase began because people came to believe that God, disapproving of what he sees in us, expects us to adopt a certain ideal. It seems impossible to imagine a God, however loving, who doesn’t get disappointed, angry, vengeful, or disgusted with us when we fall short. The most spiritual figures in history were not totally good, however, but totally human. They accepted and forgave; they lacked judgment. I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given some outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it through the choices we make. Seeking can’t get anyone out of the tangle because everything is tangled up. The only thing that will ever be pure and pristine is your own awareness, once you sort it out.
It’s much easier to keep up the fight between good and evil, holy and profane, us and them. But as awareness grows, these opposites begin to calm down in their clashes, and something else emerges—a world you feel at home in. The ego did you a terrible disservice by throwing you into a world of opposites. Opposites always conflict—that’s the only way they know—and who can feel at home in the middle of a fight? Awareness offers an alternative beyond the fray.
Last night in bed, I was dreaming. The usual kinds of dream images were passing back and forth; I don’t remember much what they were. All at once I became aware of the sound of breathing in my dream. After a second I realized that it was my wife, who was moving in her sleep beside me. I knew that I was hearing her, and yet I also knew that I was dreaming at the same time. For a few seconds I was in both worlds, and then I woke up.
Sitting up in bed, I had the strange sensation that it was no longer important that a dream isn’t real. Being awake is more real than a dream only because we have agreed that it is. Actually, the sound of my wife breathing is in my head, whether I am dreaming or not. How, then, could I tell one from the other? Someone else must be watching. An observer was aware without getting caught up in being awake, asleep, or dreaming. Most of the time I am so caught up in waking, sleeping, and dreaming that I have no other perspective. The silent observer is the simplest version of me, the one that just is.
If you strip away all the distractions of life, something yet remains that is you. This version of yourself doesn’t have to think or dream; it doesn’t need sleep to feel rested. There is real joy in finding this version of yourself because it is already at home. It lives above the fray, totally untouched by the war of opposites. When people say that they are seeking, it’s this level of themselves that is calling to them in its silent, untroubled way. Seeking is really just a way of winning yourself back.
But to win yourself back you have to get