Buried inside even our deepest neuroses are the raw
materials of love. In the tantric and alchemical traditions, those
less-than-awakened thoughts, emotions, and raw sensations are the prima materia
for us to work with. They are the secret keys to the sacred world and the doorway
into helping others.
The shit, the piss, the dirt, the failures, the heartbreak,
disappointment, the inability to rise above the holiness of our vulnerability,
the achiness when we cannot do this. These are the holy materials we have to
work with as alchemists of our own lives. This blackness is the substance of
life that shines brighter than a billion suns when transmuted in the crucible
of the heart.
While we live in a world that has forgotten the mystery of
dissolution, it is the nature of all form to arise and to pass away, so that it
may shift shapes into new forms which evidence wholeness. When the forms are
shifting, go into the earth, into slowness, into the body, and into the ground,
and listen. Feel. Sense. Open as best you can. The temptation will always be to
replace the form with something else – urgently seeking some new person, belief
system, identity, or way of being to cut into the hot, rich, textured,
pregnant, groundless void.
This ancient longing for relief need not be shamed, nor approached
with abandonment and aggression, but seen for what it is, honored as valid,
allowed to arise, and metabolized. But the deeper invitation is to rest in the
deflation itself, to descend inside the core of the creative energies of the
dissolution, and take refuge in the intelligence of the naked, the tender, and
the raw.
To slow down, finally, and touch the emptiness with love.
To become an archaeologist of the inner landscape, to see with cleansed
perception the inseparability of inner and outer, and to know the union of
matter and spirit. It is up to you to bring these truths into the collective,
in a world that has grown a bit weary.
My new book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
The next event, The Magic of Being Fully Human, to be held in Ojai, CA on October 14-15.
