Radical Aliveness
Just below the surface of our everyday experience already vibrantly alive within each one of us resides the potential of a life lived with an abundance of deep pleasure.
Freely available without question, demand or expectation, hidden in plain sight, a pleasure that does not rely upon us achieving, gaining, becoming or relinquishing anything, but asks only that we uncover what is already here.
Surface and Depths
To uncover that gift, is to slow down, be here, present, intimate, connected with ourselves and life. There is such a depth of beauty that we miss within our modern day focus of relationship with life. Our need for speed, instant gratification or reward, constant stimulus or the avoidance of ‘boredom’ robs us from seeing what is right in-front of us, always readily and freely available. Giving precedence to what appears as the ‘noise’ within our lives, the ‘bright-lights’, the ‘flashy’, we miss what is beneath the surface, what takes us into depth, into the subtle-dimensions that serve as the foundation for the surface level of our lives, and it is in those depths – that a greater depth of pleasure – opens to us, a deeper appreciation of the fullness of life, beyond what we know on the surface.
For many it is normal to stay on the surface, that is what they know of life and for the most part they may be happy there. However, growth, evolution, greater pleasure and freedom all lay within the depths. Remaining on the surface keeps us in our comfort zones, and a very narrow experience of life.
Ultimately we are designed for growth, designed for this intimate, play-filled, creative exploration of life, we are designed to explore the depths, and that means ‘diving-down’ beneath the surface, being willing to embrace the un-known, to say yes to life.
As we open we discover deeper and deeper depths, deeper and deeper subtler dimensions of life, we experience those subtler depths and dimensions as something that is not transcendent of our physical experience of life – but rather as something that is intimately close, vibrantly alive and present – here.
The Great Balance
All ancient wisdom traditions recognise in some way this deep focus of relationship with these depths and what that makes available to the surface levels of our lives. To those who walk within the foot-steps of those traditions the subtle dimensions of spirit are a living-reality, as is the presence of the Divine, all is inter-connected.
For the most part we have forgotten this within modern-day society, we live in dis-connection from life, ourselves, one another, those subtler dimensions, and the Divine, and that sense of isolation, a lack of connection, a sense of me and other, gives rise to all sorts of issues, competition, comparison, fear, control, domination, and an attempt to manipulate life within order that we can somehow feel safe.
Looking honestly at your life, how in control of life are you though? There may have been times when you felt in control of life, where life turned out how you wanted or expected it to ~ but equally if not even more so there are many experiences where life has not turned out how you may have expected it to. To be open to these subtler dimensions, open to life as it IS – is thereby to give up trying to control life, to be in the flow of life and act responsibly in relationship with that flow.
On a collective level we can easily see how many of the global issues that we face come from a place of our dis-connection from one another and nature.
We are not in balance with nature, ourselves, life or others, and that imbalance creates all sorts of ‘disruption’ as we resist the natural flow of life. What ancient traditions refer to as karma or balancing our karma – can thereby simply be seen as a kind of coming into balance with life. Karma is not a punishment for our past actions, it is the ‘mechanism’ that sustains and brings us back into balance with All That Is.
To experience these greater depths is thereby also to acknowledge where we are not in balance with life, to acknowledge, embrace and make amends for our karma, to embrace responsibility for our actions and to come into connection or love.
For when we come from love we restore the balance, the cycle of karma ends.
A return to Love
Fundamental to our experience of well being is love. In the presence of love we feel safe, seen, heard, acknowledged and accepted, safe to show up as ourselves, defences melt, we connect, free from expectation or demand – we relax into an enjoyment of the moment – we let go of it, ourselves or others needing to be a certain way. In giving love we open our hearts, we recognise how it is that holding our hearts closed, holding onto blame, guilt, shame, anger or resentment, with-holding love even though we may feel justified in doing so – only ultimately causes us hurt and keeps us within dis-connection.
To choose love over what our minds may be telling us fundamentally changes our experience of life.
Despite how we have been conditioned to view love. Love hurts, love is dangerous, love makes us vulnerable or weak. This isn’t about choosing our conditioned view or story of love, this is about real love, love that entirely transcends our concepts of love, our projections and ideas of love. This is about being touched by that kind of love, letting that love move through us, a radical kind of love, that doesn’t obey our ideas of what or how love should be.
To live within this way can at first feel wild and unfamiliar. We want a kind of love we can understand, a kind of love the mind can wrap itself around, a kind of love with rules. But that isn’t love, that’s I’ll love you and you’ll love me based on these conditions, which isn’t to say that there can’t be conditions within relationship and yet love remains – expresses through and transcends those conditions.
We have played safe with love, safe with life, and understandably so, our experience of love and of life has been filtered through layer upon layer of ego-ic consciousness which has totally distorted our experience of what love and life truly IS. The question then becomes one of do we want to be safe or do we really want love, do we really want life?
If we are honest with ourselves, keeping ourselves small, trying to keep ourselves safe, living in dis-connection, trying to control or resisting life, has to be seen for what it is – something that only perpetuates suffering.
Surely then it is time to come home to love, to come home to a radical kind of aliveness. Not as a rebellion against the imposed constraints of our modern society and just another ‘method’ to somehow get what we want out of life – but as a coming home to what is truly wise, kind, inclusive, present, grounded, intimate, connected, honest, open, real. A radical kind of love that serves the greater good. The love of our true nature.
The Offering
As a mystic, healer, and artist, the way in which that love expresses through me is to support an ever deepening focus of intimacy with the reality of life as it IS, a deeper kind of aliveness that comes from connection with what is at the heart of life – and all of what that makes available through relationship, creativity, sensuality, sexuality, work, health, abundance, and every facet of our experience of what it is to be human. Connecting the deepest depths of the formless, the mystery, spirit and the Divine with the surface everyday practical reality of our lives here in the physical, deeply grounded, embodied, present, earthed.
How do we open to life as sacred, ourselves as sacred, others as sacred, life as divine, ourselves as divine, others as divine? How does that change our experience of life? What is it to feel our bodies as sacred, to feel God’s Presence, to feel Divine Love move through us, crack our hearts wide open?
Love, Presence, Stillness have a profound capacity to transform our individual and collective experience of life, restore balance, right-relationship, true intimacy, freedom, dignity and purpose. Perhaps they are in fact the only thing that can truly bring true and lasting transformation. Collectively as humanity we have tried ‘everything else’, avoidance, distraction, addiction, control, all of which ultimately lead us back to the answer that has been here all along – love.
