on reaching The Top … (07/17/12)
“Ever since Happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.” ~ Hafiz
We’ve been told that Salvation comes after we die … We’ve been told that Enlightenment requires disciplined time & effort … We’ve been told that Awakening is a slow and steady process.
We’ve been told that finding “true Happiness” is a long staircase that we must climb one step at a time; only someday reaching “the top” of real and lasting Contentment.
We meditate and go to church and donate to charities and spend “quality time” with our friends and do yoga — and end up only marginally happier than we were before. The “self help” gurus and pundits tell us that this is just the way it is — that we can attain “the next step” if we buy their next book. And yet when we do so we aren’t really climbing life’s staircase at all — all we are really doing is marking time on the step we have already attained.
Well, I’ve got some VERY GOOD NEWS: what you’ve been told is simply not true! IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
Yes, life is a staircase — we will grow and “progress” and learn. And yet EVERY STEP on that staircase is perfectly Beauty-full, and every step on that staircase has its own portal to Heaven. Salvation & its Enlightenment are here for every one of us — right here & right now — right where you are in this very moment …
Our Awakening to True Self comes to us every time we willfully sacrifice our own desires to satisfy the yearnings of another;
every time we set aside our own fears to soothe the angst of another;
every time we are exhausted or ill or injured and yet choose to reach out and carry another’s burden anyway.
It is these actions that allow us to realize that, while Heaven might very well wait for us “on the other side”; while we might very well “become enlightened” someday, HEAVEN IS ALREADY UNDER OUR FEET, and we are all already Enlightened “angels” walking its Ways …
… and to feel this Bliss,
all we have to do is act accordingly.
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.” ~ Robert Fulghum.
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