Sunday, June 11, 2017

Spirit buried inside matter


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.


The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now (we're about 80% sold out as of 27 May)

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in June