Something That Is Worth Your Whole Life In Attaining



Ishvara:

As you begin to gain the greater awareness of connection, how can you hold a grudge? How can you be indifferent? How can you be in judgment, when you see the Life Force as it is, seemingly happening--often--in spite of circumstances and conditions? You begin to live with an awareness, in presence and being, of the connections in Life, realizing that the time allotted to human beings is very short compared to the standing universe, to that of existence: a mere spot, a moment in all of eternity. You can spend that moment in suffering, or you can spend it in connection. You can spend a moment in the perception of separation, living in guilt and judgment, fear and survival, or you can spend that moment in celebration, loving what-Is, embracing what-Is, understanding what-Is to the best of your ability.

Is there really any time to waste on guilt or shame or judgment or remorse? Is there any time to waste on "What if?", or "should", or "shouldn't"? From this perspective, at times I can see the foolishness of human beings, so caught up into the selfish agendas, the "me first", the "what about me?", "what's in it for me?", losing sight of what actually is. When you live in separation, you live in a realm of consensus reality, conditions, beliefs, and concepts; you live alone. Even in the midst of crowds of people, you are alone. You search for some identity, some recognition, some connection, but the core of your being, the very heart of existence, seems separate, so there can never be any real connection. You fabricate connections; you try to establish realizations. You have an intellectual awareness of possibilities, but unless the heart is there, unless the core of your existence is awakened, you are like zombies walking around, having "sort of" experiences, but no deep realization, no accessing the unlimited possibilities of each moment, so caught up into the what-ifs, the shoulds, the shouldn'ts, so afraid, absorbed in so much strain, struggling to survive, to hold some ideal, some belief, some concept.

It is really to no avail, for your life can be snuffed out at any moment; it can all come to an end. There is so much written, so much striving--to achieve, to believe, to conceive, to prepare--and so little is done to actually live: to live in presence, to live in connection, to recognize the fleetingness of Life, the fleetingness of your own existence, and to come to grips and awareness of all the time that has been wasted in remorse or guilt or judgment or "should have", all the time spent in being self-centered, alone.

When you think about the whole of your life, when you realize how Life works, you can see that there are no guarantees or assurances. There is no promise, because it is left to each of you to find within yourself the fortitude, the awareness, the power, and the connections. Life does not force or compel you to achieve or to fail. Life is not against you, Life just Is. When you can live in the awareness and connection that Life Is, you begin to realize the true source of existence, the true place of being; whatever you call it is just a word, a label.

This realization involves seeing that it is not outside, that it is inside, that everything you need is inside; every ability, every talent, every awareness, every possibility exists within you already. It is like a gold mine that is just waiting to be found. You keep looking on the outside--to books, to practices, and to systems; you keep looking for solutions, for remedies, for healing, and for enlightenment. You keep looking on the outside. Yet all that is on the "outside" is darkness. There is no existence that is on the "outside." All existence is within. When you realize that, you come to see all the programming, all the ideals, all the judgments, the expectations, and the problems, as non-existent. They "exist" only on the outside. You bring them in by belief; you open the door to separation through belief.

The beauty of it is that a door you have opened, you can also close. You can realize that the source of existence is within. You can realize that the knowledge, the information, is within. You access it from within; not through great clamoring or effort or study or learning, but through presence and being. It is a direct experience. When you have learned that you cannot learn Life, you become full of wisdom. You have to live Life; you have to experience it. Of course, one of the tools that is necessary is trust, trusting that it is possible, trusting that there is something within you that is worthy of discovery, that within you there is that place of the universe where everything Is, all possibilities co-existing side by side, moment by moment, waiting to be discovered.

Humans have been notorious for looking outside, looking with expectations, wants and desires, expecting from the outside some savior, some deliverance, the right word, the right concept, the right program, the right religion, expecting that it will somehow bring a gift of awareness. But really the bottom line is the experience, and if you are afraid to experience, you have already cut yourself off. You will live in programs, beliefs and concepts. You can gain all the knowledge in the world, yet still be the most ignorant individual on the planet. Intelligence, knowledge, those things that can be learned, are simply rungs of a ladder that lead to something that is priceless, something that is worth your whole life in attaining.

Written and transcribed by Terry Grant

This has been a message I have transcribed and edited from a talk Ishvara gave on December 26, 2004. - TG.

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