The Way of It

Coming home

is entirely worth it

even if it takes “forever”

At the end of the day the teachers are gone, the teachings are gone, the girlfriends are gone, the children are too busy playing with their friends, nobody seems to be paying attention.

What are you going to do?

What is going to be enough?

What is the purpose of this questioning? It’s an invitation, to myself, to join the silence of what sits with me and take 100% responsibility for my own life. Not 99%, or 99.9%. Any % that I leave for someone or something to fulfill is the hook that I use to keep myself bound to the world of “this and that,” to a seemingly safe world, the world of hope and illusion, the world of confusion and suffering.

Standing at the top of the 100 foot pole? Just take the next step.

What if it was all a lie?

What I think I am never existed in the first place

The blood of Jesus

flows through your veins.

(On the other hand, how could I know?)

The trust that has been placed on me by my teachers

I shall not defraud

From doing The Work on my most shameful and embarrassing thoughts I have been able to see how innocent the whole enterprise of believing my thoughts has been, how there has been no substantive reality to thoughts such as “I’m a terrible person,” “he wronged me” or “I’m ugly.” Making friends with the thoughts that would tear me down has been an incredible journey and as a result I am so much happier and relaxed.

Now, it only dawned on me recently that there was an entire class of thoughts that I was still not comfortable with and that I still secretly wished would go away: the thoughts that would tell me that “I’m better/smarter/more compassionate/more enlightened than others.” Having these thoughts, I felt, was not only wrong but actually proof that I had not learned anything in all these years of dutifully practicing self inquiry of this or that type. My resistance to those thoughts was such that I did not even want to look at them, let alone question them. To push them away, that’s what I’d do with them.

One day, however, I began to notice this very fact and that felt really humbling. I can see them now and humor them, accept that they are there, when they are there. “What have they got to do with me/with what’s real?,” I tell me. It’s such a good feeling, to befriend what is, and what is sometimes looks like thoughts I would label as those only an arrogant person would have.

And is that true?

…

My answer to this question brings me closer to the realization that it is OK to have the thoughts that I have. It really is OK. It’s only a problem if and when I believe them, and I have The Work for that.

It’s a good thing, the workings of it all.