How Long Have You Been Waiting?


Ishvara:

I find that much of spirituality today is a means of escape: an attempt to find bliss rather than face one's conditioning, an endeavor to avoid the difficulty of one's existence by dismissing it as just a dream, or by waiting for the hereafter or the "next lifetime."

So much of spirituality involves a subtle intolerance of what-Is. This intolerance usually takes the form of a method, a technique or a practice that is intended to attain some ideal--an ideal feeling, an ideal awareness, a handed-down notion of how life is supposed to be.

People who spend time at Alaya House inevitably come face to face with their conditioning, and for many, that is a great disappointment. Many spiritual practitioners expect bliss; they want to elude the muck of their life rather than embrace it. When they begin to see the stark reality of the deep programming that has been running their life, they often become disillusioned.
In today's message, Ishvara speaks of how authentic transcendence occurs not in trying to escape our existence or in pursuing some ideal, but through embracing all of our life as experience. This is a continuation of a talk he gave on January 9, 2005, which I have transcribed and edited, and the first part of which I sent last week. Because of the length of the talk, I have divided the concluding message into two parts, with the final part to be sent to you next week. - TG.

Ishvara:

I have come for you: you who are alone, you who are separate, you who are lost, you who are stuck, you who are fearful. This has awoken to serve you, to inspire you into the depths of your being, to encourage you to launch out anew. No matter how many times you have been beaten back, no matter how many times you have fallen on your face, you still have the energy to do it again. You have the energy from the core of your existence to rise from the seeming ashes of your life, the problems, the dilemmas, the fears, and the so-called "mistakes." All of these are experiences. How you look at your experiences has a great effect upon the quality of your life. You can immediately change the quality of your life by changing the way you look at all the experiences.

If you recognize the benevolence of Life, how blessed you are to live as this unique expression of existence--the possibilities inherent within you, waiting to happen--you realize that you have not made mistakes; you have just had experiences. It has been the interpretation, the reaction, that has caused more separation. If you can just bring yourself to embrace the experience, to allow the Is-ness of that and go beyond it, you see that there is something bigger happening. You realize greater connections, which brings about a greater awareness. You might even find yourself loving life, loving those past enemies; you might even find that you have actually been doing a great job: you have been living, having experiences.

There is no place for guilt in my teaching. There is no place for judgment, for separation, for control. These do not exist in what I give to you. I come from the heart of inspiration, the core of existence, to reveal to you yourself, to awaken you again to what you are. You were born as awareness, and you quickly lost sight of that, and you may spend the rest of your life getting it back, but in the meantime you have had experiences, gaining a great knowledge of how energy works, gaining knowledge of how people can be the way they are, and possibly understanding why they are the way they are.

Understanding is liberation. When you understand a situation, you move out of judgment or resistance; you begin to see it for what it is, and that is the point where you can let go and allow. It doesn't mean that you like what has happened. Obviously, you can look at a situation and see the alternatives that might have worked better, but it has happened and you can't undo that, so there is no point in being in guilty about it. The best thing you can do with any experience is to place it into the center of awareness and try to see the connections, the inherent possibilities, the points that were not seen. Gaining understanding brings freedom and liberation: you are not a "bad" person, you just had what the intellect has called a "bad" experience.

No being can be diminished; that is the beauty of this Life. You cannot be diminished. You cannot ever be less than your core existence which remains pure. It is a total gift of Life. It is intact. No matter how far you wandered, how lost you feel, you are important, you are on purpose, you are part of a greater whole, you are significant, you are wanted, you are cared for, you are loved.

Love creates beauty. When individuals are in love, they become quite radiant, quite beautiful. Unfortunately, it is often temporary. However, if you can experience it once, if you are beautiful and radiant for one moment, you have realized the True Nature of your being, because in actuality you cannot become anything you are not. Any experience you have makes possible, points to, the core that is there. When you live in separation, when you live in conditioning, you make errors, you have missteps, which cloud the essence of your being. You may appear to be a "bad" person, but that is only an appearance, because there is no Life outside of the core. There is no existence outside of this core, and this core is the heart of all-that-is, the cosmos, and it is on purpose, it is intentional, and, fortunately, it is patient. It waits. Your true essence waits for the moment to spark, to blossom, to excel, to become.

How long have you been waiting? I know it may be difficult to believe this when you are mired in separation, programs, beliefs and concepts, when you feel lost and separate and alone, when you are in fear for your survival, but don't you see? Those are the very ingredients that can propel you into awareness. If your life is running "just fine," and you have insulated yourself from any negative experience, doing and having only what you want, you don't think about the true essence of your being; you live on the outside. There is nothing wrong with that, but I have come for those who are in need of more. I have come for those who recognize that there is more to this Life than the consensus-reality world, the systems, the structures, the religions, and the practices of avoidance. I have come for those who are not satisfied with their lot in Life, those who know or feel they are missing something.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant


(To be concluded next week).


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