Good Or Bad, Ignored Or Rejected – Love And Friendship

 

 

 

This little piece of written wisdom was sent to me this morning.  Odd that it was sent today, as if some invisible Messenger was offering me some good advice. Perhaps synchronicity or rather serendipity was at work here, because this piece so fitted the moment. I had just been in a blaming game with someone close to me and I didn’t feel good about it. I don’t know why we play those same old life-games of “blaming” over and over again, knowing full well it benefits no one. Anyway, in posting this on, it provides a poignant reminder that the sun does shine, even when we close our eyes and cannot see the rays that  shine down on us. Eve

 

 

 

 Of course, to live in the world we have to wear clothes and have an identity in order to make our way. But it makes a difference when we can show our heart’s face without any covering. Though we can’t stay this naked, we’re sanctified in such moments to have the ancient air touch our soul. Alex encountered the authority of his own being and the authority of all being on the side of that mountain.

 This inner quality of authority invokes the touchstone of certainty by which we know first-hand that we’re alive. Our inner authority emanates from the nakedness of our soul. Once we remove our masks and opinions, our authority of being resides in whatever point of stillness we can no longer question. Our authority of being resides in the fact of being here, regardless of what circumstance surrounds us, regardless of what we have to put back on to live in the world.

Our awareness of our depth of being is fleeting. Yet just because we close our eyes doesn’t mean the sun has disappeared. And just because we can’t keep the unquestionable fact of being alive in view doesn’t mean that the inherent vitality of life has disappeared. We are more than what happens to us. We are more than what we think or fear. The turbulence we encounter is very real, but underneath what happens to us is the inherent, unwavering fact of life filling us from within.

Under all the tension to belong and fit in, under all the psychological weather, there is a place of stillness that is immune to our submitting and resisting. When we can put down all our reasons and excuses, it’s from this inner plateau of being that we begin to experience life directly again. This sense of utter being doesn’t come from willfulness or determination. It comes when the bottom of our personality nakedly touches the common center of all life. When life-force enters us directly and moves through us completely, our authority of being can’t be denied.

In discovering your own authority of being, you may want to spend time with the great poem SONG OF MYSELF by Walt Whitman. I urge you to read it slowly, and to be in conversation with the places it awakens in you.

And the next time you’re told you’re good or bad, the next time you’re ignored or rejected, I encourage you to practice your inner resolve; not by criticizing yourself or finding yourself wanting, but by climbing to that place in you that is immune to both submitting and resisting, that place of unquestioned certainty about the fact of life, which Walt Whitman confirms in SONG OF MYSELF when he says:

 

…

I do not trouble my spirit
to vindicate itself
or be understood;

I see that the elementary
laws never apologize.

I exist as I am—that is enough;

If no other in the world
be aware, I sit content;

And if each and all be aware,
I sit content.

…

Beyond all vindication and blame, the fundamental truth of our existence—the bare fact of our being—can outlast our doing.

…

Once we remove our masks
and opinions, our

authority of being resides
in whatever point

of stillness we can no
longer question.

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Mark Nepo – From an article in Parabola Mag. issue 41