embracing what is

Source: http://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.be/2012/09/the-wonder-of-immediate-experience-and.html

When we experience sadness or grief or anger or shame or confusion, there is often a habitual tendency to believe that something has gone horribly wrong, that somehow we have failed. We become convinced that something must be done – that we must quickly reassemble our lives and scramble to put it all back together. But have we ever considered that Life might not have this bias, that love may be interested in the fullness of being, in the utter mystery of complete experience? And so sadness can be there, or emotional pain, or confusion, or depression, or heartache, or just an overall sense of feeling low or down. And we can for a moment just touch the earth or listen to the birds or have a cup of tea or read a beautiful poem or look into the eyes of someone we adore – and meet that sacred opportunity that is always there to behold this one and only life as the pure manifestation of grace that it is. And we can stop for just one moment and consider the possibility that we are actually being given exactly what we need – right here, right now – to take the next step into love.

We can pause and consider that the journey might actually be about something other than me and my experiences, me and my frenetic exiting of immediate reality to get into some other “state.” We can entertain the wild and crazy possibility that the journey might instead be about falling on the ground and thanking this intelligent, creative, love-infused universe for giving us a precious human body and the senses to love and touch another; and open all the way to a life constructed around gratefulness, humility, and the most utter radical love of *this* state of consciousness, right here, right now, without demanding that it take some other form. This freedom that we so long for does not pour into our lives through the replacement project of one thought for another, one feeling for another, one emotion for another. There is no “secret” here. This freedom is wired into the cells of our hearts, weaved into the strands of our DNA, and is always awaiting our recognition within the center of one, true meeting with any arising experience.

It is deeply possible for us to love ourselves in this way, and to be tremendously kind to our tender hearts. And we can just be sad, or confused, or a total failure, or even allow ourselves to completely fall apart, without needing to replace our experience with something different. Somehow the “me and my spiritual experiences” project is set aside, even for just one moment. Life is too precious for that, for the compulsive need to construct some “higher” or “better” experience. “I can have whatever I want” is obliterated into the grace-furnace of “I behold the ever-unknown and awesome movement of love in all her forms, and recognize the immense intelligence and breathtaking creativity of this most sacred human reality.” And then whatever thought, feeling, emotion, or sensation that arrives is embraced as a sweet friend from beyond, there to show us something very precious about the true nature of love.

- Matt Licata