On one particular Wednesday morning heading to St. Cloud I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts (next to my own, of course! Lol) called the Good Life Project and the interview was with Susan Piver, a practicing Buddhist and teacher. At one point in a wonderful conversation, amidst a discussion about the heart mantra, a comment was made that popped me upside the head in a way that I have not been in quite some time.
“Our mind is constantly working on limiting the possibilities of our life.”
There it was.
Please understand this is a safety and efficiency measure on behalf of our mind. If it can limit possibilities then it has less to filter for and can get more done in your “normal” life. This develops our current mindsets, belief systems, practices, behaviors, about everything about us that is in existence day to day. Our habitual self. Lets face it, if you had to learn to brush your teeth, or drive a car everyday, or work your computer, that would really gum up your life. This “limiting the possibilities” is a natural and very handy component for our lives.
Until it’s not. Then it is the cause of some problems as we are in a new age that is about dismantling old paradigms and shifting towards our highest self.
Keep in mind the conversation at its basis was about this particular buddhist practice and the stepping into the space of non-attachment and nothingness, that is really connection with all that is. It is the space where nothing and everything exists simultaneously. It is the space of magic. All things that materialize in this world come from that very space and in the Buddhist tradition the practice of enlightenment includes living in this space. The space of nothingness and everything.
As the mantra goes, the Bhudda introduces the concept that whatever you think enlightenment IS, it isn’t. When you land in the “isn’t,” it isn’t that either. Give that a minute. No matter what you think is the place of possibility and potentiality, it is not that, nor is it NOT not that, or anything else. It is the space of “nowhere to land” because the second you land on something, there is thinghood, and it is not that.
In this time, as the LampLighter counsel is telling us, of “walking our changes forward into this world” I encourage you to spend some time focusing on that space of non-attachment, of everything and nothing as they are the same. Let yourself get a bit lost in the discovery journey as you sink into your heart space, the Spiritual heart space and just sit there.
I encourage you to practice sitting in nothingness, without landing; without searching, or manifesting, or focusing on dreaming into your next state of being, but just freeing your mind from its job of limiting your possibilities and perhaps get to know parts of your inner self that you had lost sight of years ago. In that process you are meeting potential and possibilities for yourself and your life that only Spirit has known until now.
Forever the journey, Anne