All the form in your life—the conflicts, the struggle, the
shit, the emotions, the symptoms, the heartbreak, the crushed longing, the
dying dreams… the falling apart of hope, the despair, the sense that something
is wrong with you… this is the rich material you have to work with. While it
may seem that the freedom and aliveness you long for will be found in the
eradication of the dark, it is filled with spirit, magic, and meaning.
It is this prima materia, as the alchemists called it,
that is your connection with the sacred. You need not transcend your life, your
problems, your symptoms, or your neurosis to know this. For inside the core of
form is an intelligence that is found only there:
Sadness has something to show you that joy could never
teach. Inside aloneness is a secret offering that can never be found in
connection. Hopelessness, when held and entered into relationship with, holds
meaning that hope is unable to reveal. Multiplicity is just as holy as oneness,
matter just as consecrated as spirit.
It is pure and creative inside the symptom, but this is
something our conventional world has lost contact with, in the overemphasis on
becoming and loss of imagination. But the alchemists and tantrikas and the
unseen ones and the moon, the sun, and the stars have come into form to remind
us…
There is spirt buried inside matter, and matter is ragingly
alive with spirit. Your feelings, emotions, your senses; the colors, the
fragrances, the trees, the mud, and the water… there is no separation between
inner and outer nature, they are drenched equally in spirit.
“What about my passion,” Rumi asks God. God says, “Keep it
burning.” “What about my heart?” says Rumi. “Tell me what you hold inside it,”
says God. “Pain and sorrow,” says Rumi. God says, “Stay with it. The wound is
the place where the Light enters you.”
Before you conclude that there is something wrong and that life has failed you, slow down. We are conditioned to find a problem where there is an invitation. Use your imagination and dream a new dream. Touch the earth. Place your hands on your heart. Attune to the aliveness of the inner body and listen.
Before you conclude that there is something wrong and that life has failed you, slow down. We are conditioned to find a problem where there is an invitation. Use your imagination and dream a new dream. Touch the earth. Place your hands on your heart. Attune to the aliveness of the inner body and listen.
