Awakening sense

satisfaction guaranteed?

If our mind is likened to a hall of mirrors, what's on the other side of the mirror?

Can awakening be there, can Self, the Beloved Oneness, the True Friend be there? If so can we experience that? Such questions lead into spiritual pursuits, and the more pursued the higher the stakes. 

From this side of the mirror such activities seem a gamble. It takes a hardy heart and spirit not averse to risk. Who's to know the upshot without passing through the gates of forgetfulness of self and self's concerns?

For there's no results guaranteed, at least not in ego-mind's language. But self's satisfaction, unfortunately for it, is not the object of the exercise. Actually dissatisfaction is  guaranteed with personality in charge of seeking. 

So what to do? Forget self and self-seeking. Relax, look at your cards, raise the stakes, and play the next round. Forget the odds and guarantees and what winning or losing might bring. Beyond satisfaction and dissatisfaction a surprising development may await. 

Let's be willing to be present as awakening's voice shatters the mirrors. Let's be ready to discover what new spaciousness may reveal itself.   

hopeful and hopeless

When the ego-mind, the personality self, is hopeful it's a hopeless situation. For then the seeds of disappointment and discouragement have already been planted.

But in awakening's realm hope and its fulfillment are one and the same; it springs unbidden from our core. Keeping expectations at bay is then in our hands. 

Optimism's traps can be sidestepped, anticipations sidetracked. What's the acid test? Not expecting something new to happen and not expecting nothing new to happen; definitely not our usual mode of operation.

Awakening's hope makes the speck we think we are become a mountain. This mountain spirit senses lifeblood's current running deep below the surface of who and what we think we are.

It remembers that though a drop it is not separate from the ocean of Self, the Oneness of the Beloved. 

the bottom line

Here's a bare-bones description of the short path in spirituality:

Not to expect anything: not to expect that something will happen, not to expect getting special experiences. This applies to the world as it seems and especially to one's awakening to the world of spirit. 

But just as important, not to expect that nothing will happen, that no new way of experiencing will happen.

The pendulum swings back and forth between these two kinds of expectations. At the midpoint of the swing the verge of awakening beckons.               

The long path? Just keep expecting anything and everything. This may seem the first class way to travel, but one winds up with countless delayed and cancelled flights on the way.

something about nothing

Expecting, assuming, wanting, all feed the ego-machine. How to break out of these recycled expectations? It's challenging yet possible to adopt a new measure, to encourage a greater opening to the world beyond self: not expecting that it will happen, yet not expecting that it can't happen. 

This includes both views simultaneously, not one after the other. it's a way of approaching that pivot point balancing life's see-saw. Could this be having our cake and eating it too?

Between these two poles a golden thread of awareness weaves its way. It can connect all our actions and propel them in the direction of awakening. What could be more pleasing to the Friend, the Ever-Awake expression of our Real Self within?