You have been walking,

the ocean’s edge,

holding up your robes,

to keep them dry.

You must dive naked under and

deeper under,

a thousand times deeper. Love

flows down.

The ground submits to the sky

and suffers what comes.

Tell me, is the earth worse for

giving in like that?

Do not put blankets over the

drum.

Open completely.  – Rumi

Enlightenment is often talked about as waking up to the reality of what already exists. Part of the reason that simple instruction is so difficult is because we see so little of what’s actually going on. Even our everyday world doesn’t reveal all of itself. We can’t see electrons, atoms, and photons, we don’t see the dance of pure energy. What we see are the larger structures they hide in, such as buildings, people, and trees. We have the gist, but not the complete picture. It’s the same for ourselves and how we think and act, we only see the top layer. The deeper connections, the complexes and energies that lie below and drive our behaviors and thinking remain a mystery. We end up living our lives mistaking the shadows of who we are for all that we are.

It’s no wonder it’s so hard to wake up to the truth. How can we begin to process something we can’t even see, something that feels so foreign and mysterious? And if we are unable to see ourselves clearly, how can we expect to have significant insight into anything else? Thinking we have it all figured out is very different from actually figuring it out. More often what we end up with is contenting ourselves with the fact that our perceptions filtered through mistaken beliefs are reality, this kind of understanding only allows for living a fraction of what life has to offer. The fundamental problem is that this kind of knowing and living at the deeper levels is not straightforward like learning a multiplication table. What’s needed is a different way of perceiving the reality that’s in front of us, we have to feel it. What’s needed is our intuition, our hunches, and vague musings to make sense out of what’s really going on. Unfortunately this kind of knowing is not clear cut, the tools we use such as dream work or meditation don’t lead us to one right answer, instead there are many gradations of how we see and understand ourselves and the world we live in. We are only lead further astray by wanting a definitive answer. In the end so much of what we think is true ends up being merely a mirage. In order to wake up to what’s real we have to trust in something greater within ourselves and get use to living with the eternal questioning. And as Rumi says, we have to suffer what may come.

The deeper we go means confronting the layers below that are more delicate and illusive. These layers can illicit uncomfortable feelings within us which sometimes stops us from looking. It can be hard to live with the truth. In fact the more clearly we see the truth of any given situation the more difficult it becomes, it’s like a mathematical equation. But to stop looking stops us from living. We skate along the surface always wondering what’s missing. It’s us. It’s the person we are down at our deepest fathomable levels. That’s why all the interior work is so necessary. It strips away the layers of what we think we know to let us get closer to the truth of what is actually going on. When we do we are centered in our lives, we are the piece of music or art, we let the stunning words of a poem pierce our heart. At this level everything we see or do changes us, we can’t help but be altered by opening to all that lives deeper within us.

Growing into the roots of who we are is when we come into contact with the ephemeral waters that nourish all of life, an all-pervading essence. It is here, down deep, where we are truly alive. A place that lets us live more of who we are in our daily routines. But it requires energy and attention, we have to work everyday distinguishing what is true from what is irrelevant, that’s how we live at deeper levels.

So keep up the work it’s leading us deeper to the truth.

kb