I thought this was cute. Why not look good for Jesus?

Seems that it would be part of any comprehensive and integral approach

And it is always interesting to explore where I find the genuine truth in this, for myself. Where do I find the genuine truth in looking good for Jesus?

For me, it has to do with inviting guests.

Any content of awareness is a guest, so if we take a visit by Jesus to happen within content of awareness, we can invite it in.

We can do certain (second person) practices, find receptivity of the three centers, and more. We can invite Jesus in as alive presence in its many forms such just alive presence, or its aspect of luminosity, or infinite love, or wisdom, or the fiery heart quality I find when I do Christian practices, or for others, maybe as a vision or a voice, or something else. Or just the good old taste of an open heart at our human level.

And if we take Jesus, or Christ, or the combination, to be a noticing of what we are (that which experiences happens within, to and as), then that is also something that can be invited in. We can prepare the situation, as best as we can. And that guest may come as well, or not.

So by inviting in Jesus as any or all of these guests, we want to look our best. We want to look good for Jesus, inviting him in for a visit.

Of course, Jesus, as anything else, lives his own life, on his own schedule. And that is also part of the game.

One of the things that sometimes trigger irritation in me (when the I-Other split is already primed) is people blindly acting from contraction… people who are tense, wound-up, seem hunted or haunted by something, and are blindly caught up in it, blind to what is happening.

(This is obviously a shadow-projection. At the very moment I see them as blindly tense, I am describing myself as I am right there and then.)

And as usual, there are some valuable gifts in here…

When I am blindly tense (which includes seeing it in others and being bothered by it), it is an invitation for me to more clearly see what is going on. The discomfort in it nudges me to do something about it, and the only way that really works, in the long run, is to investigate my own reactions… to identify and explore the beliefs behind it, be with whatever comes up in an heart-felt way, tracking the process behind it, and so on.

So again, what seems like an annoyance when I don’t notice it as an invitation, becomes a great gift when I do.

It leads me right to my own blind spots, inviting me to see more clearly what I previously was oblivious to.

I have just picked up The Book of Job, translated and with an introduction by Stephen Mitchell. Before I get too far into it, I want to explore what comes up for me around the topic of suffering now:

• Life happens. Everything is living its own life, and comes and goes in our lives as guests. This is true for the physical world, and also for our experiences. Even our experiences… everything we may take as ourselves such as our thoughts, choices, impulses, actions… even all of those are guests, living their own life, coming and going on their own, and on their own time.
• An experience of suffering comes from the clash between life + a belief. Life is one way and it should be another way, according to my stories about it, so there is a sense of something being off. If the clash is mild, there is stress, and if the clash is stronger, there is suffering.
• Suffering can be seen as an invitation…
  • To deepen into who and what we are. To deepen into our shared humanity, to allow edges to round off, to see that we are all in this together, we are all in the same boat, to find in myself what I see in others and recognize in others what I know from myself, specifically, to recognize the suffering of others as my own, allowing for a receptive heart which invites action.
  • To allow and be with our experiences, as they are… allowing the resistance to them to fall away, seeing that it is the resistance, or rather the identification with this resistance, that creates the experience of suffering.
  • To see what is already more true for us. To investigate our beliefs, see if they are true, what happens when I hold onto it and if it wasn’t there, and explore the truths in all of its reversals. And seeing that the truths of its reversals, all together, is what is already more true for us, and also reveals the inherent neutrality of the situation.
• And then finally, to find a genuine appreciation for what is, as it is…. not as an invitation for anything, not as something that will get us something else, not as something to manipulate… but for its own sake. To appreciate, and even love, what is, as it is. As life… as God expressing and experiencing itself.

In alchemy, this is also the three phases from nigredo (the misery) through albedo (working through, clarification, differentiation) to rubedo (the fruits of the work), and then back to nigredo again to explore a new facet of it.

To continue the guests analogy, and combine it with my experiences with the group yesterday…

We can see experiences as guests, coming and going on their own, living their own life.

And we can explore how we relate to these guests.

The ultimate hospitality is that of Ground, which already and always allows any experience. It is the nature of awareness to allow any content, and it already and always does that. There is no way for it to do anything else. Awareness inherently allows any guests, and their coming and going on their own time.

But when this host takes itself to be a guest, it forgets about itself as the ultimate host. There is now a sense of a separate I, an I with an Other, and there is inevitably a struggle with some or all of the guests, in different ways and with different intensities. We try to invite some and discourage others. When they arrive, we try to encourage some to stay and others to leave.

And we can also try to manipulate guests in different ways.

We can see them as stepping stones to something else, a tool for achieving a particular goal, something to transform into something else, something to transcend, something to dress up to make appear as different than what it is. In short, we don’t appreciate them for what they are, as they are. We want them to be different, or to be a tool for us to achieve something.

In our external life, manipulating guests this way seems cynical and even neurotic. And it is no less cynical and neurotic when we relate to our experiences this way.

It is all being caught up in manipulating what is, being caught up in the apparent solidity of I and Other, of seeing as solid the wanting of things to be different.

A simple example is suffering (life + a belief that it shouldn’t be that way). We can try to discourage it from entering. When it is there, we try to ignore it or make it go away. Or, if we see ourselves as a little more sophisticated (although we are not really), we can try to manipulate it in different ways. We can use it to develop compassion, to find peace with it, to allow beliefs and identities to fall away, to deepen into our humanity. We may not (overtly) try to make it go away, but we may also not be quite happy with it as it is. There is still a lack of appreciation for it as it is, for its own sake.

That appreciation for it as it is, for its own sake, comes when Ground notices itself as Ground. There is a recognition that this appreciation for any guest, for any content of experience independent of its particulars, is already and always there. It is only clouded up by the surface drama sometimes, created by a mistaken identification and a sense of I and Other.

(more…)

Sometimes, it can seem that life is conspiring to keep us from seeing more clearly what is already more true for us, but the reversal holds as well…

Life is always and everywhere inviting us to see what is already more true for us.

When I hold onto a belief, I make a story with only a relative truth appear as an absolute.

And life invites us to see what is already more true for us in several ways.

Dissonance between what is already more true for me, and the belief

First, through the dissonance between what is already more true for me, and what I try to make appear true through the belief.

What is already more true for me is what is, without the beliefs. This field of awake emptiness and its content, which is no other than the awake emptiness itself. (It is far simpler and more familiar to us than what these words convey.)

And what is already more true for me, is the grain of truth in all the reversals of the story I try to make into an absolute truth. Somewhere, I know that these too hold a relative truth, just as the one I picked out to somehow be more true.

Life showing up outside of the boundaries of my beliefs

Then, through life showing up outside of the boundaries created for it by the belief. The story I believe in says the world is or should be a certain way, and that I am or should be a certain way, and life & I show up differently. Again, there is a dissonance.

Life presenting me with the reversals of my initial story, and their grain of truth

And finally, through life presenting me with all the reversals of my initial story, and the grain of truth in each of them. And these reversals may come up through others, or even from myself.

Dissonance as an invitation

In each of these cases there is a dissonance, and this is the invitation for me to see what is already more true for me.

There is the dissonance between what is alive in immediate awareness and the belief. There is a dissonance when life shows up outside of the boundaries defined by my belief. And there is a dissonance when life presents me with the reversals of the initial story, and the grain of truth in each of them.

This dissonance, which can be experienced as stress or even suffering, is - as Byron Katie says - an alarm clock telling me that it is time to take a look at my beliefs.

When we take it that way, the dissonance becomes a trusted friend, our most reliable and unfailing teacher. It becomes the greatest gift.

If we don’t take it that way. If we stubbornly continue to cling to our beliefs, trying to avoid dissonance through changing our circumstances, it just prolongs and deepens the suffering.

Life as our greatest friend (or not)

In that sense, life as it is is our greatest friend, and also our tormentor when we don’t notice the invitation (or don’t know what to do with it.)

Of course, it is really we who are our own greatest friend… when we respond to the invitation, and it is we who are our own greatest tormentor… when we don’t.

And going one step further, there is just the one field containing both.