2006

 April: Ways With Life

This cosmic energy field that we are all part of and participating in is always present. When the process is one of making various attempts to connect with it, it seems as if it is somewhere else, and that we have to reach out and open to it, and let it in, and harmonise with it. But the fact is that everything that is happening in the world is coming from it – even madness and torture and suicide bombers, war, anger, conflicts of all sorts, as well as love and harmony and beauty. Everything is, all the time, everywhere, in fact, coming out as an expression or a manifestation from that dimension, but what happens is that human beings have a strong tendency, a predilection, to identify with the expression and manifestation as it works in each one of us separately, individually and uniquely, and then all our manifestations interact with one another and provide the drama that is life on earth amongst those of us who are here on the planet.

Now, when that happens, as it always does – inevitably does – then this identification we have with the manifestation means that we suffer the continuous change and variability of the interaction of the manifestations. You may be feeling in a very good state, your manifestation might be relaxed, you may be working at something that you enjoy, you may be achieving success, you may have a great love affair and be feeling full of joy and gratitude, and then at any moment, as we all know, something can happen that completely upsets that state of harmony, and then you are thrown into hurt and anger and despair, sadness, frustration – and bewilderment, because it seems that everything was going so beautifully and now suddenly it’s not. And this movement between positive and negative, happiness and unhappiness, success and failure, joy and misery, is inevitable because we are simply passive subjects of this constant interaction that goes on and the effect of that interaction upon us – that interaction with other people, with objects, with the elements, with everything that is not us. And then, of course, we all make the attempt to try and establish an equilibrium; we all search for happiness, and we try to do the things that we have learned in our lives bring us happiness and avoid getting involved with things that we know from our experience bring us unhappiness and sadness and negativity.

So that is the normal struggle: to try and direct our energies towards that which is harmonious with us, and as far as we can to avoid that which is destructive to our positive state of being. But this attempt is doomed to failure. We can achieve some success at it as intelligent beings, but from a totality point of view it is clear that this is going to fail, because we don’t have any control over where we find ourselves, who we find ourselves with, and what happens where we are. And so life becomes a tremendous struggle. And what happens is that our identification with this storm that we try and weather most days prevents us from returning to and rediscovering the very basis of that manifestation that we are thrown around by, and then we die without realising that within us we have this powerful and exquisite connection with all that is. And this connection and participation that is part of our reality with all that is, is undying, constant, and as it is, it is free of the possibility of destruction and loss. It is an ongoing, continuous, uninterrupted connection with the essential movement of life.

So when I came around to each of you this morning once or twice, or several times, I began with all of you by taking your hands and moving your arms – which is the freest part of you, normally, because it is with our hands and arms that we reach out to what is not us, so the hands and arms are more familiar than other parts of us, except maybe the heart, with that which is not us – and I was seeking with you, or in connection with you, an energy line in you that was still connected to this universal dimension.

Now, a few times when I did that I had to say to people – and these people will know who I mean – ”Please don’t help,” because as soon as I started to move them – and this is our normal response in life when somebody wants us to do something and we feel we want to help – they tried to co-operate. But of course, what I meant was, ”Please don’t hinder,” (chuckles) because the help that people were trying to give to that interaction was that their hands and arms were moving in the way that they are structured to move in the way that they live their lives. They were not free. There are tramlines that we constantly move down day by day, and so this was the movement by these people – to take what I was doing into the familiar movements and familiar lines of activity.

And also I found that with people who are very busy in life, are very involved in life with the manifestation reality, it was a little difficult, because the momentum of the energy that is moving in their life story day by day is so strong that it is hard for them to let it go. We move in a certain way over and over again and then the movement becomes dominant, and it even dominates our souls. We say, ”This is my life.” So then the way we live becomes the life.

But with everybody, I did succeed, I know, to some extent, in connecting you with this universal energy which you are part of anyway. And although I was making absolutely no attempt to get you to fall over – I was happy if you didn’t, because then the process could go on longer – by the end everybody had fallen over. And what falls over, of course, is the self that is constantly being provided with the daily way in which you draw your energy from the universal dimension which is the source of your life.

If the energy, instead of moving into those patterns, starts to move in another way towards a connection with the One energy, then its supply of energy is cut off and it collapses. So the falling of the body is an expression of the fact that energy is taken away from the process which is engendered in you day by day to be a certain person and to live in a certain way and have certain choices and preferences – your identity, in fact. Energy is taken away from that identity – which has no essential reality anyway, it is just, as Buddha said, a soap bubble – and then the soap bubble will pop, and the identity will, momentarily at least, dissolve, and then you are just simply there. And it is easier to be just there if you are lying down than if you are standing up, because standing up is, in a way, an expression of the ‘I amness’ which is not the true ‘I’ – which doesn’t need to stand up to be – but the ‘I amness’ of defiance, of selfhood, which says, ”Here I stand, and this is me.”

So at first, as my regular students here know very well, this seems like a duality. It seems as if the world, the life that we lead day by day, where we are in our jobs, with our family and friends, in our daily activity, is one world, and the connection with the cosmic space – which is, for my regular students, quiet, peaceful, relaxed, meditative, sometimes emptiness, space, Oneness; these things that they’ve experienced many, many times – this seems to be somewhere else. And so the spiritual work with energy that we do together is one world, and the life day by day is another world, so it seems. But in fact once you really make a deep and true connection with the One energy, then when you turn towards the world, that energy will express itself in the world. Not in the same way, and it won’t have the same quality as it did before, but it has no option in the world other than to join the world and participate in the world.

You can withdraw into a meditative space, as I’m sure some of you have experienced, for some time. It can be done for days. But then the world is not there. The moment the world is there, then something is drawn out of your energy space. But then when you have made this deep connection with the One energy, what is drawn out is very different, because then it’s part of the One energy, and each moment comes freshly out of the One energy, whereas our participation in the world until that happens is not fresh each moment, it is simply an extension of the last moment, which itself was an extension of the previous moment, and so on, back to the very beginning of your separateness from the One.

And when you relax into that One energy space that is in you, then everything is equally true and real. You don’t have to prove anything, and you don’t have to attain anything – though you might. You might well, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to act at all. Being still has equal validity with movement. Nothing needs to be a habit for a state of contentment, you are just at rest.

Now you can hear the birds singing very beautifully. But for the bird, when the bird is not singing, it is the same as when the bird is singing. The bird doesn’t feel it has a job to do, a duty to sing, to entertain us, to express something about spring. It sings or doesn’t sing, it sings and sings and sings, and it doesn’t sing, and it doesn’t sing, and it flies, and it goes somewhere, and it lands, and moves, and you can’t say that only when the bird is busy is it really a bird. And so it is for us. Each moment is equal in its value.

There is still, of course, the capacity to have eyes, and to have something happening which causes that state to bloom even more gloriously. Our aspects which remain part of us can celebrate all sorts of things that happen in the manifestation. But then there’s not that feeling of, ”Oh, I have to get that again! Oh, what happened to that beautiful feeling of celebration and joy? It’s gone! How do I get it back?” and then when you haven’t got it back life seems to be imperfect, lacking something, lacking finding that again.

Normally after having such experiences people spend much energy and time trying to do something that will bring them back to that space of joy that they experienced, but that experience that they had of joy was still part of that movement, the continuous movement of waves, highs and lows, and it’s very hard to induce that happening, that state again, when the world is doing what it’s doing with you and around you. But if you can find the space of serenity which comes with Oneness, then when you have a joyful moment which is especially joyful, and it goes, then you don’t become greedy to have it back again, you don’t expend great energy trying to find your way back there, because where you’re left when it goes is also great, is always good, and if negative things happen, then you feel yourself affected by them but you’re not lost in them.

So this level I am talking about brings a state of serenity where it’s okay when negative things happen. And when you find that, then everything is okay. And I think you will find, if you have that, that even death when it comes, as it will one day, will be also okay.

Many people this morning when I was going around – very gently and softly, actually, but I think quite strongly – found tears coming, crying coming, suddenly, from nowhere. Healthy people, successful people, people who know what it is to be alive and to make something of their lives. Suddenly tears were coming. And the hidden tears are part of the success, are part of the way in which we deal with what we are. If your sadness is an interference with your project in life, or your sense of who you are, then you hide it away, and then when that energy is withdrawn and you’re not supporting that identity anymore, that identity which includes the suppression of these tears and sadnesses, when you move into another space, then you leave that be, and then the tears are not interfering anymore, they are not spoiling anything anymore, they are not destroying that image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you, or the way that you want to see yourself as being strong and not weak and sad to cry about something. Then you can feel a chance to let this energy that’s tied up in sadness run, happen. And what a great relief it can be.

This capacity to connect with this One energy is always present. I have never in my Work, over decades now, I have never met anybody with whom I could not find a way of making a cosmic connection. With some it’s more difficult than with others, with some it’s immediate, with some I have to use a lot of ingenuity or I have to do a long search to find a line that is not controlled by the personality, but it’s always possible, because there we all are anyway.

You can find it in a moment. But often when you look you can’t find it because it’s so quiet, it’s so untenented and untended – which means you are not there with it, it is dormant, it is neglected. But it is still there. And in some, when it moves there can be a big block and a big shut-down and a big resistance to allowing it run through them. This happens sometimes, because it can be a bit terrifying to surrender to that which we actually are – because even if it is what we actually are, it is totally unknown, and the substitute that we have identified with is very much known and feels at least safe for that reason. But once you have made a connection with it, even if you turn away from it, it will haunt you for years.

And then you connect with it. And then when you express yourself again in the world, what you are expressing is your true nature – the one true man or woman within. And then whatever you do out of that feels right. Not right according to any morality, any principles that have been developed by your society or civilisation, not right against any measure whatsoever that’s external, but right in the sense that it is what you are and who you are, for better or worse: this expression of that part of life that you are. A true expression of that.

And then you feel that that’s the biggest success there can ever be, to be what you truly are. Nothing can compare with it. No money, no status, no success of any sort, no achievement of any sort can compare with the feeling that you are at rest in what you essentially and truly are.

Easter Festival, Holland, 15th April 2006