This Is It!

Behold the Light of Possibility coming into the world! And the darkness cannot put it out.

Waiting.

Longing.

When will someone or something come to make it all okay?

When will someone arrive to transform our situation so that we can truly live, fully live?

Waiting for so long.

Longing for so much.

And what appears is a helpless baby who grows in wisdom and love and is executed by the state at the age of thirty-three.

This one who kept the company of prostitutes and tax collectors; who threw out the money changers; who said, “Love your enemies”; surely this cannot be the one for whom we have been waiting and longing.

But if it were, what is the message we hear and know?

“Don’t wait any longer.

No one else is coming.

The fullness of time is now.

We can live and love our lives fully here and now just as they are.”

This message is good and great news indeed, that we can live our given lives, our real situations as a gift, in humility, in gratitude, in compassion, in ecstasy.

Yes, this is good news beyond anything we could ever expect or anticipate.

This is it!

All that is, is good and perfect!

You, just as you are, are accepted and sustained in mystery!

The past, just as it is, is received by history!

The future is wildly open for you to cocreate!

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!

(The above poem is from my book Earthling Love: Living Poems.)

Buddha-Event, Christ-Event

Awakening to deluded mind may also be awakening to enlightened mind.

The Christ-event reveals our delusions and releases us to live our real life. The Buddha-event reveals our delusions, our ignorance about our own suffering, and releases us, unites us with our own perfect nature, our own mind, our Buddha-nature, of being awake.

Joseph Wesley Mathews loved to say that the essence of the human being is consciousness of consciousness of consciousness.

The Jews were waiting for a Messiah, someone to save them from their troubles, someone, a King, who would throw out the Romans, their masters. Jesus arrived on the scene. He said, “I have got good news! There is no Messiah! He is not coming! And I am it.”

How was this Good News? People were waiting and complaining. They were not happy. They were disempowered. They experienced themselves as victims. Jesus said, “Don’t wait any longer? Nothing is going to change your situation. You can live your given situation in freedom, in love, in happiness! Get up, pick up our bed and walk! You are free to live your real, given life!”

Shakyamuni Buddha woke up to suffering, his own and that of all existence. He said that to wake up to the reality of our suffering is the first step in releasing us from our delusion of believing that there is no suffering or that there should not be suffering. The second step, he said, is to identify the causes of our suffering. The causes of our suffering are three poisons in our mind – greed, hatred, and ignorance. These poisons are manifestations of separation from the way life is (TWLI).

When we become aware of these causes, then we can eradicate them as the source and ground that gives rise to delusion. This eradication is found in a path that has eight dimensions – right view, right thinking, right action, right concentration, right speech, right diligence, right mindfulness, and right livelihood. Thus, we ourselves, not waiting on anyone or anything, can transform our lives by waking up to our true nature, embracing it, understanding it, and transforming it. This is Good News indeed!

The concepts of sin and suffering both derive from the nature of separation or dualism. That which was One, has become separated from itself, has become two, is in a state of alienation, of delusion. Life itself wakes us up because life is Enlightenment Itself. Life is Mind. Life is Understanding. The event of experiencing being reunited with that from which you have become separated, Christians call grace, and Buddhists call enlightenment.

I am waking up to and from my deluded mind, my deluded action. I profoundly regret all the hurt I have caused other beings, especially those closest to me. I vow with diligence to take the sacred path of transformation, on behalf of all. As an act of repentance, at-one-ment, with all suffering beings. As I awake, all beings awake – because there is only one being – because there are no beings at all.

The demons that attack me, say “You can’t wake up! You cannot be free! You cannot be happy! You are nothing!” These demons are negativity, paranoia, pride, anger, fear, confusion, in-discipline, laziness, greed, clinging and ignorance of TWLI – the way life is.

The Christ said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” The Buddha said, “The great Earth herself is my witness that I am awake because I am her child and she and all beings are awake.”

Joe Mathews, the Dean of the Ecumenical Institute and the Institute of Cultural Affairs, said that our campaign of Awakenment was more important than our campaign of Engagement. Awakenment will give rise to engagement.

I am awake. I am free. I am grateful. I am happy.

(The above essay is from my book Society Spirit Self.)

A very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours!