-- Paul Tillich
Fears and desires -- we all have them. The question is: How much do we attach to, and identify with, them? Do we cling tightly to our fears and desires, like a starving man to the world's last known pork chop? Or, do we let those mental-emotional constellations pass through us like clouds in a Japanese sky?
Attachment and identification leave us no energy to affirm our "essential being." When our attention is captured by what we are avoiding, what we are chasing, or both, our essential being is obscured, Spirit is a mere word, rather than an ongoing, everyday experience.
As crazy and paradoxical as it sounds, you affirm your essential being by just being. Nothing to do but observe as the fears subside, as the desires, fade. When that happens, what remains is reality, what remains is being. And you are that.
Fears and desires grow because we feed them with our attached and unconscious attention. They are soul suckers. When we move from knee jerk reaction to amused observation, we witness the beginning of a transformation. Worry, clinging, attachment, and suffering, give way to joy.
Whether we create the joy, as Tillich proposes, or discover that we are joy, as the mystics put it, is little more than semantics. The fact is, that through letting go of all but our essential being, joy permeates our world. We become the embodiment of Joy to the World, and life, in all it's beauty and glory, rocks on...
No comments:
Post a Comment