The Infinite Heart

A Journey Into the Teachings of 150 Great
Mystics, Masters, Poets and Saints

WEEK TWO: Friday

So you were going to tell me some secret about following a spiritual path.

First, I want to finish yesterday’s discussion on Self realization. So, Self realization is becoming deeply aware of the unshakable oneness between your consciousness and the Pure Awareness that you have never been separate from, and resting your heart in that. Regardless of what is happening on the surface. It’s an amazing, beautiful, indescribable shift in consciousness. But it’s only the very beginning. It’s like letting yourself stop the battle with the waves you have been struggling with all your life, and just sinking down into the calm, still, peaceful ocean beneath them. That ocean is bottomless. And the deepening has no end. There is a vast, vast difference in clarity and purity and integration between being a few feet beneath the waves and being far down in the endless depths. Heraclitus said “You won’t discover the limits of the soul, however far you go.” And the seventeenth century Japanese Zen master, Bankei, said “The farther you enter into the truth, the deeper it is.”

I guess I always thought realization was the end. But you’re saying that’s actually when things really get started.

Yes. It takes time and a continued willingness to give up absolutely everything for the integration and deepening to continue. And there can be a strong temptation to stop sinking at some point, to stop at a certain level of surrender, in which you have let go of enough to be constantly in touch with Essence, but you’re still keeping corners, drawers, rooms, compartments of your life for yourself. Places that Pure Being is not invited to fully have. And it will never, ever force you to give up your ground.

Maybe it needs some assertiveness training.

Hardness can never beget softness. But even if it could, Pure Living Softness never has the slightest need for anything to change. Not even our toughest hardness. It is Absolute Restful Meltingness into all that is, just as it is. That’s why– and we’ll go into this more next week– as long as we are trying to change something about ourselves or the world from a place of contraction or hardness, our way of being is different from our most inward Being: Pure, Intimate, Tender, Flowing Softness. So we remain seemingly separate from our True Self, and unintentionally support and perpetuate it.

So, there can be a long period of being half baked. In which you are constantly aware of your True Nature and yet there are still structures in your imperfect mind that want to grasp and push and pull instead of simply fall inward. But if you are vigilant and uncompromising in serving the Greatest Good, when such thoughts arise you will simply let them float on by, rather than attaching to them or shoving them aside where they could build up. And then no thoughts will become a problem. Not even distorted ones.

So thoughts are only as powerful as the grip that holds them.

Exactly.

This half baked thing reminds me of Star Wars, when Luke went off to save the galaxy right in the middle of his training with Yoda. He was kind of half baked and so he got really tempted by the power of the dark side and almost gave in to it. It still seems kind of strange to me to think of someone who’s Self realized still having psychological issues. But it does make sense that their mind and body don’t suddenly become perfect just because they realize and stay connected with what they really are.

Right. And even though your coarse mental and physical structures are not suddenly flawless, Self realization is none the less a radical shift in awareness. You are forever changed. It’s as though all your life you thought you were just a finger, and then you finally become aware of the greater you that had been there the whole time. You become absolutely clear that the center of your being is not found in your finger as you had thought. That if your finger were to become severed, you would not lose any of what you really are. It’s not truly part of what defines you. You had always believed that if you lost it, you would lose all that you were. Now you clearly see that is not the case. You are no less of a being, no less of a human, no less of a person if you happen to lose a finger. But even though you realize you are not your finger, you naturally still continue to use it.

Especially during rush hour. So when you’re Self realized, you know that when you lose your body you don’t lose any of your real self.

Yes, anything that can be lost is not what you are. Anything that you must protect or hold on to is not you. Anything that was born will die. Anything that was created will be destroyed. Your True Nature is the Uncreated. It cannot be lost. It cannot be destructured. It’s always here. You don’t have to try to sort out which is fleeting structure and which is the solid permanence of Essence. If you just let go of everything, you are what remains.

What is Real can’t be taken What is false will not survive
So let go of all your grasping and free fall into Life

You can’t build a wall with water, you must first turn it to ice
That will make it cold and stagnant, is it worth the sacrifice?

What is Real can’t be stolen, what is false will disappear
So let go of all you’re holding and what is Real will still be here
What is Real is always here

My friend, you can never lose yourself. You can never lose any part of the real you. What you truly are is always whole, always complete and always present. It has no parts. So any part you are afraid of losing, be it physical or psychological, cannot be who you truly are! We think we have to be cautious about not throwing away the most precious Treasure as we begin to toss out our garbage. But anything that can be let go of cannot be it! This Pure Nondual Presence is never something other than us. It is our very Center.

But we’re always searching for something separate from us. Some other.

One of the greatest mistakes those of us searching for Reality make is to chase after intoxicating experiences that are, in a sense, side effects of directly experiencing Essence. We seek to constantly experience the waves of bliss that flowed through us, or the quiet mind we may have had. So rather than falling through the Living Door of this moment, we are trying to recreate a past experience that now exists only as a memory. We have an idea of what we should be experiencing, compare it to what we are experiencing, and then we push away what’s in the moment. We keep swimming from wave to wave, searching for the one we believe is the strongest experience of Essence. But the Ocean is found in the depths of every wave. And on the surface of none of them.

But I thought it was everywhere.

Yes, but it is before experiences, more direct than experiences, more immediate than experiences and more intimate than experiences. It is that which is before any sensations, any phenomena, any thing you could be aware of. It is pure, direct, unbounded Isness. With no separation from the Consciousness that knows it. When a ray of the One Sun stops searching outward for some preconceived notion of Pure Light, and simply falls effortlessly back into itself, it rediscovers the vastness it has always been. The early twentieth century scholar and mystic, Evelyn Underhill, wrote “We, deliberately seeking for that which we suppose to be spiritual, too often overlook that which alone is Real.”

So we’re searching for the wrong thing in the wrong place.

All searching is for the wrong thing in the wrong place. Our True Home is Searchinglessness itself.

That’s another one of those words that just roles off the tongue. Like graspinglessness and thrusterlessness and structurelessness. Maybe you could come up with some words that have more complexfullessness.

They’re all just different ways of saying the same simple word: Resting. Letting the inner Heart just stop all the efforting it’s been doing for so long. Regardless of how hard the mind and body might be working.

Even when this mind is trying, even when this body’s working
Even when these eyes are crying, even when this heart is hurting
Even when this mind’s believing the stories that it’s making
Even when the storm is raging, even when this heart is breaking
In the Center of life’s storm is a place so pure and still
Overflowing with Love, asking us to drink our fill

And that Center won’t be unveiled as long as we’re trying to have or keep certain surface experiences.

Right. Those surface waves themselves are not excluded from Essence, but our grasping and resisting of them excludes us.

I didn’t get that.

Any waves you grasp onto, believing they are what you were searching for, will eventually fall away, leaving you empty handed. Every experience that has a beginning also has an end. All that has a moment of birth will also have a moment of death. The temporary cannot become the Permanent. The created cannot become the Eternal. But when your awareness is allowed to just fall into the Pure Awareness that it has always been, then every wave is Ocean. Waves of peace, waves of fear, waves of pain, waves of anger, none of them are experienced as other than the Pure Ocean itself. Pure Essence is the Pure Flavorlessness in which all flavors arise. And so whatever flavor of Existence you are experiencing right now is a doorway to the depths. To be awakened is to be intimately aware of this Infinite Presence that is both the Empty Fullness out of which every wave arises, and the very Essence of the waves themselves. Waves see only waves. Ocean sees only Ocean. When the Ocean looks at waves, it sees only itself.

You know, I guess I’ve had this image that if you’re Self realized then you’re always walking around in a state of joy and bliss all the time. But that would be like limiting life to one flavor. Like saying that you’re only awake if certain kinds of waves arise. And you’re saying that being Self realized isn’t about riding a particular wave of experience all the time. It’s about, whatever experiences you’re having with your mind or body, never grasping onto them. Always just resting in leashlessness. So that all experiences, good and bad, are free to come and go. What matters is just really resting your heart in doinglessness, no matter what’s happening. And then there’s just Pure Being, and your heart isn’t really separate from that.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. You may not always be consciously experiencing the Ocean under the waves, but there is no need to. You have no condition that you must feel what you know in order to continue completely knowing it.

Yeah, I’m starting to follow you. I guess if you keep saying the same basic things 30 different ways, some of it is going to start to sink in.

What we’re talking about is so simple, it’s hard for our complex minds to follow. So trying to explain it is like shooting arrows at a dragon, knowing that most will just bounce off the heavy scales, but hoping a few might actually slip in through the cracks.

So you’re trying to kill me? Against my will? Trying to find the chink in my dragon armor?

You’ve got it backwards. You called me to your lair. You’ve deeply felt that you’ve forgotten something very, very important. Some treasure greater than all your hordes of gold. Something so pure and innocent and untainted and free, it makes all your precious stones look like worthless imitations. And you’ve heard that on the tips of these arrows is a potion that can help cure your amnesia. You’ve asked me to shoot these healing arrows at you. And even if sometimes your dragon mind gets bored or frustrated with so many similar arrows coming your way, they each land in a slightly different place. And a few are actually getting through, into the living flesh beneath the armor.

Well, I guess that puts things in perspective. Then thanks for putting up with my thick skin. I’m probably breaking your arrows like crazy. So you think a few have actually gotten in?

Definitely. But let’s keep sending more your way and see if we can get a few more direct hits, even if your outer dragon becomes bored or agitated or even threatened. When the dragon starts to resist, it can actually be a sign that the potion is starting to do its work. The dragon knows that if enough arrows get in, its outer life is finished. And then, finally, that pure, innocent, love-filled, Light-hearted child within gets to live in its place.

* * * * * *

All right. Let’s go ahead and talk about that little secret of spiritual paths. It’s this: Pursuing a spiritual path is the most certain, dependable way to never reach the end of it.

I don’t think you said that right.

I’ll say it differently. The end of the spiritual path can never be reached by walking towards it.

Thank you, that’s much better.

Allow me to elucidate.

Allow me to go get a dictionary.

It’s not that once you reach the end of the spiritual path you finally really surrender. It’s that once you finally really surrender, then you are at the end of the spiritual path. However far along you are. Even if you were never on one. The spiritual path can only end when you do. Falling continues, Integration continues, understanding continues, deepening continues, the purging and burning and purifying and new growth continues. Effortlessly. But the path is finished. Jessica Powers, a twentieth century Christian poet, wrote “God is my repairer of fences, turning my paths into rest.”

But I thought the whole idea of a spiritual path is that you follow it and do the practices and then you slowly deepen until you’re awakened or surrendered or free or Home or whatever.

Yes, that’s the idea. But it isn’t how it actually happens. Whatever spiritual path you might be on, it can end as soon as you let it. Once you really let go of everything, it’s over. Even if you do it before you ever start on a path.

As long as you keep stepping forward, reaching towards some spiritual goal, the path will continue to unfold in front of you. The goal will never be reached. Each step forward that you take pushes it exactly one step away. One of the most subtle forms of dishonesty and trickiness our consciousness uses is to sincerely be on a spiritual path, always working to reach the end. The subtle pressure of that hoping and expecting and moving towards and putting in our time so that we can get what we want actually ensures that we remain the master and controller of our lives, that we never have to surrender to Pure Being. And it relieves us of our guilt at the same time. After all, we’re walking towards God as fast as we can. It should just be a few more years now. But the moment we are truly, deeply willing to dissolve back into Absolute Selflessness, the True Fall begins. And then if we happen to continue any practices or techniques or rituals, it will not be in an attempt to get Truth, but simply the spontaneous expression of Truth.

So it just keeps coming back to how no matter what you try to do to get there, it backfires. But still, somehow, some people find the key. It’s still possible.

To believe that is to keep holding on to hope. Which motivates you to take another step towards the Goal. To try another key in the keyhole. But there is no way to open the Door to the Divine. No key can ever work. It is a precious gift to be given even a glimpse through that key hole. There is nothing whatsoever that you can do to make the door to Pure Being open. This isn’t a trick that is really a key. It is the truth. There is no key. There is no way to pick the lock or break down the door. Every step you take is a step away. All your effort is in vain. You can never succeed. There is no secret that can be mastered, no code that can be cracked, no trick that can be learned. Maybe such things can help you get a glimpse through the key hole. But nothing, absolutely nothing can be done by you to open that door. Sooner or later, everyone searching for Home must face this reality.

Thanks for the pep talk.

Yes, you can imagine how heart shattering this is when it’s first directly realized. Through Grace, you have had glimpses of what awaits you on the other side of that door. But nothing you try lets you abide there. Nothing! Finally, after trying every trick in every book, you lose all hope. You resign. You give up. You can no longer deny that there is simply nothing you can do. That you are powerless to reach your One Goal, your deepest desire, your Beloved. You cannot do anything to return Home! And realizing that truth, you are floored by your powerlessness and ignorance. You let go of all you thought you knew, and fall into a place of profound unknowing. Total humility. Exhausted from all your fruitless effort, you collapse onto the ground in a spontaneous bow. And you say, not with bitterness, but with clear, tender, sorrowful resignation:

“I cannot do it. I cannot open this door. I don’t know how. How arrogant I was to ever believe I could. Who am I to open the door to the greatest of mysteries? I am beaten. There’s no more hope. No more possibility. No more reason to try. I throw away all my keys. I throw away all my maps. All my preconceptions. They are useless! I give up! I surrender. This failed life is completely Yours. I am not a worthy master of it.”

And sooner or later, you lift your head up off the pool of tears on the floor to bid your Truest Love farewell one last time. To acknowledge that this Mystery is your Master. That you can never have your Beloved. And as you lift your head, you are utterly astonished to see that the bottom part of the door has always been open. There, right in front of you, with out the slightest obstacle in your way, is your Beloved! And that has always been the case! Your Beloved has been patiently waiting for you to simply stop pushing away the ground!

As the full force of this realization hits you, you cannot help but laugh at yourself. At all of your effort trying to unlock the door, when the bottom of it was never even closed! You just couldn’t see it until you bowed down in resignation! Until you were floored by surrender. Now you are deeply relieved and grateful to have finally figured out the secret. Now you finally know how it works. So you start to crawl through. But the very act of trying to crawl lifts you up too high to squeeze through the door. You try again and again, but nothing works. Nothing! This can’t be happening! Your Beloved is right there! Right in front of you! And yet completely out of your reach! You thought you had it figured out. You thought you had discovered the secret. You thought you had finally made it. You thought you finally knew what to do. But here you are, so close to merging with the Living Water of Divine Essence, yet it still remains completely unattainable!

Of course, you try everything you can think of. But it’s of no use. Finally, you realize once again, this time with absolute clarity, that you are completely beaten. You are absolutely powerless. This time, this profound realization penetrates through you so completely, you find yourself spontaneously and effortlessly letting go of all effort. All trying. Of all belief you have any idea what to do. Every last trace of the arrogance and pride that led you to believe you could get there is obliterated. An entire lifetime of searching and trying and hoping is completely shattered. It all falls away. Like old skin that has held on too long. Now you begin to overflow with the empty Presence of true humility. True surrender. Tender, heart-piercing hopelessness. You know there is only one thing you truly want. And that nothing you can do could ever get it.

You are finished– completely finished– trying to get this or anything else for yourself. Who are you that cannot even find a way to be with your Beloved? You have tried to be the master, tried to be the controller, tried to be the one with the power. And now it can no longer be denied you are none of these. You cannot help but bow down even deeper than before, completely surrendered, completely broken open, completely flattened.

“I have tried to own this life, to control it, to rule it, to get from it what I most deeply want, and I have failed. There is nothing left to try. All trying to get anything for myself is over. My life as I have lived it is completely finished. I offer the ashes that remain to the Unattainable Divine Heart. To the Most Real. To my Beloved. Do with it as you will. Use it as you will. Take it where you will. Treat it as you will. All of my dreams, all of my hopes, all of my desires are finished. Thy will, not mine be done.”

You lift your head once more to gaze again at this remarkable, unknowable, untamable, beautiful Mystery. And when you do, you discover to your astonishment that the door that had stood before you has disappeared. The doorway has disappeared, the walls have disappeared, and all sense of separation, of boundaries, of otherness has completely fallen away. There is only the Mystery, living through you and through all things, in perfect Oneness. Your long journey is over. You are Home. Resting in the Infinite Heart of Pure Being. Where all has always been. You are the eyes of Essence, seeing only the Self, no matter where you look. Waves of laughter and tears flow through you, as you wonder how you could have ever believed that such things as doors and walls and separation and otherness existed.

That’s pretty amazing. So the secret is to just throw away your keys and bow down.

Ahh, but then you are still trying to use a method to open the door. Throwing away your keys and bowing down becomes a key that you use to try to open the lock. Techniques and methods and practices can help you find this door. They can help you have glimpses through the key hole. They might even help you get your finger inside it for a while. But they cannot get you through the door. As long as you believe there is something, anything, that you can do to open that door, you are still jiggling the lock. And as long as you are jiggling the lock, it is because you want that Treasure for yourself.

Why do you assume that?

If you truly want the door to God to be opened for God, but you are still jiggling the lock, that means you actually think God needs you to unlock the Divine Door for God! Do you think God is locked in? When you are truly ripe enough for the door to be opened, God is quite able to open it without your assistance. Or insistence, as the case may be.

So how do you become ripe?

As long as you want to become ripe to take Divine fruits for yourself, you can never be. And when you truly want to become ripe only so that the Divine can devour you, it happens by itself. On its own time. And because your personal insistence is gone, it’s no longer your concern how long it takes. You no longer have a need to become ripe. Ripeness only comes to those who no longer prefer it.

What exactly is ripeness?

Ripeness is the natural process by which the hard, dry, tough-skinned, unyielding structure that you have been allows itself to fall to the ground and dissolve into Sweet Living Nectar.

How?

It can’t help but happen when we absolutely agree that dissolving away into Living Nectar for our Beloved is of infinitely more value than holding ourselves firmly together for any reason. Another way of thinking of ripeness is absolute humility. The twentieth century poet, T. S. Eliot, wrote “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.” And the nineteenth century mystic, Elizabeth of the Trinity, wrote “To be plunged into humility is to be plunged into God.”

It just takes humility? I’m like number one in humility. Or maybe that’s humiliation.

True humility is when there is nothing left that can be humiliated. Only those who are truly empty can move through the Door of the Divine. Unripe fruit can never pass through. Only Liquid Nectar can. Ansari of Herat said “Would you become a pilgrim on the road of Love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.” And Bhai Sahib said “As a drop of water falling in the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere… and disappear.” All must fall away in you that is not the very Center of the soul. For only it is of the same Pure Substance as God’s Infinite Heart. So only it can return to That from which it came from and truly never left.

So, as long as you are trying to open the Door, you want what is beyond it for yourself. As long as you want it for yourself, you cannot be trusted with it. And as long as you cannot be trusted with it, it can never be yours.

So really, it only comes to those who really honestly no longer hope to have it or put any energy into trying to have it.

Yes, it only comes to those who instead absolutely give themselves to it.

Which leaves the rest of us out cold.

It is as simple as this: The less you would ever use Pure Liquid Gold for yourself, the more of it you are given. Remember Angelus Silesius: “God is a pure no-thing, concealed in now and here: the less you reach for Him, the more He will appear.”

So surrender really isn’t a technique. It sounds like it’s more like just accepting the way things are. You can’t open the door, you can’t have Pure Being, it’s hopeless, so give it up. And I guess if you realize you really can’t have what’s most valuable to you, you might as well give your life to it, because it is actually of the highest value. It sounds like it’s just true seeing.

Yes, well said. But True Seeing with warm, tender, total agreement. Surrender is having the absolute, uncompromising honesty to clearly see what is of Supreme Value, and the absolute, heart-shattering willingness to say yes to that, regardless of the personal cost. But I’ve taken us deeper into this than I had intended today. We’ll speak more of it next week. So, let’s move on.

* * * * * *

Hang on. Question. You’ve been talking about not using the slightest effort, but earlier today you said we should be vigilant to make sure we don’t grab onto or identify with anything. That sounds like it takes lot of effort, to be vigilant all the time. It almost sounds like effortlessness takes effort.

I know we normally think of vigilance as keeping an effortful, watchful eye on things. But this vigilance I am speaking of is gentle and tender and effortless. It takes no effort, no effort at all, to simply rest in Pure Isness. It does take energy and effort to chase after a cloud, to begin to identify with it, and to convince yourself that you are at its mercy. But vigilance requires no effort at all. It is simply laying down on the cool, soft grass, watching the clouds tumbling about over head, and choosing to remain relaxed on the grass rather than trying to keep up with the clouds, wherever they may be going. And if you suddenly find yourself chasing after a beautiful rainbow, simply asking yourself, “Is chasing after that illusion, hoping for something I don’t have, really more satisfying or true than resting even more deeply on this lush, living grass, feeling the precious pulse of Life flow through me?”

Sounds like the epitome of laziness.

Exactly! What usually passes for laziness is a stuckness that actually takes a great deal of effort and energy to hold together. You have to hold on to everything you imagine you are mired in. That surface laziness is actually an exhaustion caused by all of the unconscious effort you are constantly using. A sloth must use constant effort not to fall of the branch its tail is clinging to. But true laziness, laziness of the heart, is a letting go of all holding, all exertion, all pushing towards, all pulling away. Until what remains is this Pure Moment, coursing with the Living Flow of Essence. Then, whatever is happening in the moment is effortless. Even when the mind and body are hard at work, it is completely effortless within. Like running with the wind along the beach, invigorated by the ocean’s crashing waves. Or like children, exuberantly playing tag on a cool summer night.

You know, I’ve often been told I have a natural gift for the sacred virtue of laziness. But it sounds like maybe I should strive to be even more lazy, as part of my spiritual improvement action plan.

Unfortunately, it sounds like so far your gift has been for slothful, surface laziness, rather than for the deeply restful easefulness of the Inner Heart.

Well, you’ve got to start somewhere.

Trying to be more lazy or less lazy, more spiritual or less spiritual, more vigilant or less vigilant, that’s all just chasing rainbows. It doesn’t matter what kind of rainbow you see, or what treasure you believe may be awaiting you beneath it. Rainbows will often appear to be more valuable and exciting and promising and worthwhile and alluring than just resting on the grass. And so we chase them for days or years or eons, oblivious to the quiet invitation the Living Field beneath us is always offering. Until finally, whether from a place of deep honesty or sheer exhaustion or utter hopelessness, we fall to the ground, and let our hearts deeply and tenderly rest. And in simply being settled in this moment and this place, rather than chasing after an uncatchable illusion, we rediscover the quenching, nurturing depths of the Living Moment. Remember Rumi: “When the soul lies down on that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.”

No matter what rainbow we’re chasing or how far we have traveled in its pursuit, there is always, right beneath our feet, the soft grass of this Pure Moment, bidding us to just fall, right now and deeply rest. We don’t have to wait until we catch the next rainbow. We don’t have to wait until we get to where we think we need to be. We don’t have to wait until we have resolved another stubborn issue or until we have finished more of our “to do” list or until we have meditated longer or our understanding is more complete or we are more worthy or more righteous or more deserving or more mature or more prepared. We don’t even have to finish this very step! The cool, safe, soft grass of Living Essence is always right beneath our feet. Ready to gently catch us right now! No pre-qualifications. No conditions. No preparation. Simply stopping the chase, stopping the trying, stopping the effort. Simply letting go of grasping the tree. Letting our hearts finally become supremely and completely and truly lazy!

Letting go of all our leashes. The big leash release.

The Indian poet, Ghalib, wrote “Let me be clear: however the world’s goblet turns, those who know are always drunk on the wine of the Self.” No glittering illusion is ever worth more than living fully in this Endless Moment, regardless of what wave happens to be flowing through on the surface. The only wave worth being in is the one here right now! This is the only wave we can be in. Yet instead of sinking down into its infinite depths, we usually effortfully tread water, looking around for another wave that looks more promising for us or chasing after those that have already passed. But the only doorway is the one we’re in right now. When the wave of this moment is fully embraced, without the slightest grasping of it or pushing away, we begin to sink through its surface, and find ourselves endlessly falling into the depths of Pure Essence. Back into the Sea of Self. Resting in the Infinite Heart of Being.

This endless falling never requires changing anything about what is in this moment. It only requires allowing what is in this moment to fully be. Allowing what is being born to fully come into being, and allowing what is dying to fully die. And then life is an endless unfolding, an endless blooming of the new and releasing of the old. This is the natural way of things. It is the Living Flow of Being. And it is what we truly are.

There is an endless fountain, arising from within
Pure Nectar, Pure Sunlight, that’s where we all begin
Each Pulse flows outward, into the world of form
It breathes its breath then meets its death, back inside the Center of the Storm

This is the Ancient Way, the Eternal Flow
The Living New replaces you and everything that’s old
The outer dies, the inner thrives, on and on it goes
Like an ever-flowing, ever-growing, ever-unfolding rose

But somehow we start believing these petals are our own
And that if we let them wilt away, our treasure will be gone
So we hold them longer than they were ever meant to stay
And there’s no room for newer blooms, until the old ones finally fall away

Once we let the truth be seen of what we have become
How all that’s left is lifelessness, we want it all undone
But to let the older petals fall so living ones can grow
It’s the greatest price, this sacrifice, it’s the death of everything we know

But this is the Ancient Way, the Eternal Flow
The Living New replaces you and everything that’s old
The outer dies, the inner thrives, on and on it goes
Like an ever-flowing, ever-growing, ever-unfolding rose

We can’t tear the old away We can’t make it leave
But we can feel the deadness, and then let in the grief
And from a place of openness, give up our control
No more grasping no more forcing, simply loving gently letting go

And somehow in that resting, when we let this moment be
Those outer petals start to fall, they are finally free
And for each one that falls back Home, a vibrant new one grows
Only the Nectar stays the same in an ever blooming rose

All right, my friend. I’ll see you Monday.

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