And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Luke 6:46
We all learn, and fairly quickly, the good, decent, other-oriented "thing to do." And we mostly do it. It is our judgmental mind, our ego's mouthpiece, that is our tripwire. Unseeing, unheeding, we let our ego do our thinking for us, mentally setting others straight as we simply move forward. And our judging is not always in a "gotcha" way...we can be thinking of a beloved, just seeing how s/he can be happier, freer even, if only....
It is a hard lesson learning that even thinking good, or wishful, thoughts for another can be a subtle form of judgment. (Just as, according to Easwaran, avoiding those we don't take kindly to is a subtle form of of violence.)
The almost impossible lesson we must learn is to welcome bad news...personally bad news. It is not easy to thank God first thing the minute we become aware of a less-than-wonderful medical diagnosis, of our financial collapse, of our beloved pet's diagnosis...incurable. That is learning to swim against the flow, the flow of what our reasoning mind perceives as EEEK, No, Please God not this, not that.
What makes the learning possible is our experiencing the rewards of nonresistance. That is when we learn for a fact that we will never have and hold true peace of mind, or a joyful heart, until we cease fighting any and all, until we agree with our adversary quickly, until we resist not evil. These are spiritual principles that our ego knows not of and is not about to learn...for they each and all deny the ego its due. And it is the ego that fights, cannot agree, resists.
As Thaddeus Golas wrote in Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, "When you learn to love hell, you'll be in heaven." Now that's ego deflation in depth.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment