Tag: infinity

All I Need to Know

I have always loved the phrase that many Native Americans use to refer to God and all of life: “The Great Mystery.” There is such wisdom and spiritual surrender in those words, a quiet acknowledgment that the universe and our place in it cannot be fully understood by the human mind. This wondrous mystery is what I experience when I walk alone in Nature or stare up at the stars at night.

Wonder, and joy at the beauty. Yet, for me there has also always been an element of sadness in contemplating eternity and my place in it. As a child I felt great fear when thinking of my life within infinity and the “world going on forever.” It was only in my adult spiritual quest that I came to a deepening and expansion of my awareness and a loosening of the fear. In “accepting what is” I found solace for my sorrow. When I stopped trying to find an explanation for life, the closed doors of my perception opened to the experience of Spirit, my soul’s essence and what is at the heart of all existence.

Even at times of emotional and physical challenge (the death of my parents; treatment for breast cancer), the presence of Spirit has sustained me. There will always be a mixture of thoughts and feelings when I look at the world that surrounds me: love of life as well as grief at its transitory, impermanent nature. When sadness arises, I have learned over the years that the wisest response is surrender: accepting those sad feelings and realizing they are only one part of who I am. It is my human identity that feels fear or grief; my soul witnesses all of life peacefully, without question or judgment. Within that peace, I let everything go and live in the Mystery. I don’t need to know all the answers; I just remain open to experiencing the beauty and wonder available to me in every moment.

I recently had an experience that highlighted this wisdom. I am an avid birdwatcher, and every year I visit Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the spring bird migration. Hundreds of migrating birds come through the cemetery because of its beautiful habitat, and local birders are there to greet them. On one particular morning, after days of rain, I walked inside the front gate and paused to get out my binoculars. A man standing nearby enthusiastically commented on the beauty of the day and how he was certain the end of the rain would bring all the birds in. I agreed with him, and as I started to walk away, he added, “I don’t know much about science or exact bird identification, but I know how beautiful and special each one is.” “And that’s all you need to know,” I replied.

 At that, he burst, quite loudly, into song: “That may be all I need to know….” He laughed delightedly as he finished and asked me if I knew the song. I smiled and said, “Yes, I do.” So he sang it all over again, practically vibrating with joy. We then wished each other a wonderful day, and each went our way. As I turned to look back at him, he was still smiling and singing to himself. What sweet synchronicity in encountering this rather eccentric earth angel who reminded me of the wisdom of life’s beauty. I am surrounded by that beauty with every step. And, truly, that is all I need to know, ever.

Life As Is

How we see life changes over time. When we are children or young adults, it stretches before us in vast waves of possibility and potential. In middle age, we become one with the waves and often forget about our own progress on the trajectory of life. Then as we begin to grow older, we may find ourselves looking more closely into the greater meaning of life and our own lives in particular. A subtle shift in language occurs: “my life” becomes “the rest of my life.” How strange that seems, both to hear and to say. That “rest” could be 30+ years or one year, no way of knowing. Of course, that is true at any time of our lives, but the longer we live, the deeper we feel that truth.

 As I look at my life, I feel both joy and sadness. Joy at the blessings that fill it, both people and experiences, and sadness at its ephemeral essence. Impermanence is the basic nature of life on Earth. Yet, full acceptance of that very impermanence is one of the greatest pieces of wisdom we can attain in our lifetime. At a certain point, we come to realize that all we are given here is rich beyond words. Language cannot fully express the wonder of living with eyes and heart wide-open on this sweet planet. The longer I live, the more profoundly I am touched by the beauty of Nature and the love of friends and family, realizing it is all fleeting and everlasting simultaneously.

Over time, I have come to surrender to life exactly as it presents itself. That is the essence of the spiritual journey I have been on for many years. Initially I was looking for a way to accept eternity, the stretch of infinity beyond my lifetime. What I found, and continue to find, is that that acceptance lies hidden in all the details of my daily life. Each tree, flower, or human soul I encounter is eternal, the entire universe held in its very beingness. When I stand in awe of that living Presence, I “hold infinity in the palm of my hand,” as William Blake wrote. Infinity, once a source of fear and suffering for me, instead becomes a source of liberation.

Humans invented time and space to try to explain the world and our lives. When we step away from that limited view, explanation is no longer necessary. We stand in eternal Presence, and within that is the meaning of life. What I have searched for most of my life is not what I thought it was. It is not an answer to a question, but rather living beyond questions and answers. This is what Ram Dass referred to as “loving awareness.” It is not something that can be explained but only experienced. And the longer you live, the deeper the experience.

Ultimately, we discover there is no end, nor any beginning. Definitions and parameters fall away, and all that is before and within me is life as is, both a miracle and a blessing. Human joy and sadness interweave within that vision. Every single experience is part of life, designed at the soul level for our expansion into awareness of the light that fills us—and everything.

Do You Plan?

Many of us have been, or are, planners to one extent or another—myself included. From an early age (at least in Western cultures), we are conditioned to believe we can somehow shape our future by making lists and detailed plans. When these plans do not work out, we may feel we have failed somehow, but it doesn’t stop us from making a new plan. “Practice makes perfect.” We think that if we keep reshaping our plans, they will eventually work out exactly as we wanted. Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no.

In truth, we are trying to control something beyond our control. The design for your life was put in place at the soul level before you were born. Your soul and Spirit came up with a flexible vision for your life that self-adjusts on its own without any directed effort from you as an incarnated human. There is a natural flow to all our lives, to our collective life, on this planet, and only when we accept and surrender to that do we begin to flow too. Letting go of over-planning is part of that.

The only “plan” that really works is a simple one that just aligns you with your soul’s guidance. “Let go and let God,” as the saying goes. Life has its own wisdom, which often is a mystery to us—until we allow everything to unfold as is without trying to force it. Then the mysteries and magic begin to reveal themselves. Synchronicity arises; miracles occur. Small pieces of the cosmic grand puzzle become visible. And the more you let go, the more you see.

Of course, you will never see it all because that is the nature of infinity. However, when you realize you are part of that infinite flow yourself, no matter what you do or don’t do, then trust begins to guide you. We don’t need to plan every detail (or harbor regrets). Life is just happening on its own, and with a greater openness, complexity, and wonder than we could create alone. Perhaps this is the most powerful lesson we will learn in our lifetimes: Trust that all is well, whatever it may look like. Over time, this truth is revealed, again and again.

Something greater is at play in your life and mine, in all of life. No matter how you or I think things should occur, they will follow their own course—the course of the soul’s design and God’s. You may only see the absolute perfection of that at the end of this lifetime, but if you release your hold on mental to-do lists and the need for certainty, then you begin to experience every single moment as perfect just the way it is. Those other plans will fall away, and you will be left with the wondrous life you were always meant to live.

Blue Sky, Bluebirds, Blue Planet

In the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey realizes that his life is wonderful because of the friends and family he has who lovingly support him through difficult as well as good times. In another touching film, Life Is Beautiful, a man imprisoned with his young son in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II creates a beautiful fantasy world of games for his little boy so he won’t be frightened (or killed). Both of these films hold within them timeless wisdom about focusing on the beauty and love in life instead of pain or fear. In essence, the message is that your primary overview of everything comes from what you hold in your awareness and affects how you experience your life.

Perhaps it’s not always as simple or easy as it sounds, but I’ve found that this perspective helps me live day to day with a more positive outlook. For instance, the temperature may fall below freezing outside on a New England winter’s day, but when I gaze up at the blue sky, the sun is shining and light sparkles off every surface. I can feel its warmth on my face. Further, if I remember that the seasons are always changing, each one unique, I am reminded of the beauty that comes from those changes, and I am grateful for the miracle of each day’s seasonal specialness. If I whine and complain about being cold, I am trapped in a negative experience, which then affects my entire day (or week).

In receiving news about a friend’s health challenge or experiencing one myself, I may initially feel fear and sadness, but if I eventually recall that there is always a soul plan to our lives, I feel comforted and less frightened. Life has beginnings and endings, connections and separations, joys and losses. When I can accept all that as the natural flow of life, my heart remains open, and more than anything else I feel the love that holds everything and everyone together. A friend once said to me, “It’s all in how you frame it.” With every year that passes and every experience I have, I come to see the wise truth of that.

We are all here for a relatively short time on this extraordinarily beautiful blue planet spinning in the cosmos (look again at those views of Earth from space), without a playbook or certainty of any kind, so why not choose to experience that beauty in every moment? And why not feel the love that continuously passes between us—family, friends, and strangers alike? We don’t know why we were born or when we will die, but we know that the sun rises each morning and sets each day in magnificent colorful splendor. A visual representation of the love in our hearts and the light in our souls, available for free on a daily basis.

Look at the sky and in the eyes of those around you. The light you see there will open your heart to the love that flows through the smallest details of your life. Listen to the music of the wind in the trees and the bluebirds and robins singing. The very fact that we are not alone on this journey is a miracle in itself. Together, we are connected to something greater than any one single life. Together, we are the spirit of all life, all consciousness. Infinity magically manifesting itself before our very eyes and ears. As you view it, so it is….

Gender-Free God/dess

God is formless. Everything humanity has created to define God is both true and untrue. We are painting images on an invisible canvas; the colors disappear on contact. Only we don’t realize it. Over the centuries, various cultures and religions have constructed their own views of what God is. Each one differs somewhat: sometimes a male figure; sometimes the Divine Mother or Goddess. Or a multifaceted God with many forms and attributes. These beings become larger than life, seeming solid and “real,” rather than a reflection of our own human images and characteristics.

We humans form-alize the world, turning the formless into specific structures and concepts that we think we understand. Gender, for instance. Babies are assigned a gender at birth. Some languages give every noun a gender (la rue, le soleil; la paz, el tren ). In English, we don’t give nouns a gender but until recently, words like chairman and postman were commonly used, the patriarchal basis for social roles. And of course, many religions have defined God as male: a bearded, all-powerful man sitting on a throne among the clouds. Some religions have both gods and goddesses. All are attempts to make God relatable to humans within their particular cultural framework.

If we delve deeper, if we pull back the curtain, there is nothing there. Or everything. Ultimately, the universe, divinity, and life itself are mysteries. We don’t truly understand any of it. Yet we live it every day, trying to make sense of God and “reality.” The words we use often limit rather than expand our awareness. Perhaps it’s wisest to let go of it all, acknowledge the mystery, and live in a greater peace which allows all parts of life to just be.

Imagine yourself in a movie theater in which an endless series of films passes before you. You watch and react, but when you leave the theater, you don’t take the movies with you. You yourself are not those representations of reality, those people, places, and stories. Such is life. We are born, live lives full of images, experiences, and reactions—and then we transition to other realms, other experiences. On the other side of life as we know it here, everything is more fluid, without definition and boundary. The parameters we have set up on Earth—gender, mind/body, beliefs—dissolve and disappear. There is no “there,” only limitless Presence. And we are part of that. Indeed, we are all of that.

God, Goddess. Great Mystery. Universal Consciousness. Oneness. Every word we have invented to explain life is a story that is both real and unreal. Don’t get too invested in the outcome. It all turns out well. You will walk out of the theater and see infinity open up all around you. If you are fortunate, you may occasionally find yourself seeing glimpses of it now in your current lifetime. All you have to do is let go and accept the fluidity of all things, the gender-free God/dess that is everything, including you. The field beyond belief. Let’s meet there, shall we?

“If God is everything, then nobody is wrong.”—Panache Desai