23/06/2024
✨EIGHT WEEKS OF SANGHAT - WEEK 8 : Is awakening about staying awake?
✨Tuesday 25th June 6pm UK, 7pm CET, 8pm Dahab. You can still join and receive all eight recordings....
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ABOUT THIS WEEK'S GATHERING....
"When I get/complete/get rid of x, I'll finally feel/be y...." Even - and perhaps most ironically, most treacherously - we do this in our spiritual practice.
How many workshops, courses, teacher trainings, retreats have I been on, convinced by the marketing that once I've got this certificate, mastered this practice, my life will suddenly be imbued with a magical flow-state and permanent grace?
Do you recognise this in your own life, your own searching for that illusive whateverness that you feel you are missing from you life right now?
So we reach Week Eight in Eight Weeks of Sanghat maybe with some hope, some sense of completion, arrival, and the beginning of something new....
How about this...
We wake up, we fall back asleep....
We wake up, we fall back asleep again....
We wake up, we stay awake a little longer...
We wake up, the same things no longer send us back to sleep..... but other things still do.
What do you tell yourself in that scenario? When you realise you've fallen asleep, reacted to an old trigger, fallen back into an old habit or addiction, are repeating an old pattern? Do you feel you're back at point zero? That the meditation, therapy (or whatever transformation tool you've been dedicating yourself to) doesn't work? That you need a different, better teacher or therapist? What's the point?
Or..... do you simply notice that you fell asleep, drop the story (often laced with harsh self-judgement) and get back to the present moment?
Because every story you tell yourself (and you will be amazed at the creativity of your ego to tell fascinating stories, again and again), you are taking yourself away from THIS MOMENT. Yet THIS MOMENT is all that you have. It is the ONLY MOMENT where you can be awake.
Living in the past in regrets over things you cannot change, reliving and wishing to change past conversations and situations, is living in the past. You are asleep to WHAT IS.
Living in the future, searching for a peace, a joy, a fulfillment that you can't seem to find, or in fear of things not turning out how you think they should, is living in a fantasy or horror movie which most likely will never happen. You are asleep to WHAT IS.
Either way, you are not here, and being awake means being here, now, moment after beautiful moment. Moment after challenging moment. Being truly present to what is, and seeing the stories you are telling yourself are taking you away from that. And once you see that, you awaken again.
So this journey has no end, it is simply another signpost to help guide you again and again back to the present moment. To realise the incredible intelligence of your own being inviting you to awaken, through the discomfort you naturally experience when you take yourself away into fear and fantasy.
Thank you Mary Oliver for the inspiration...