Inner Life of the Outer Limits

There was a time when give me "liberty or give me death" was the rallying call to arms. These days, give me greed and more is what seems to get most of us out of bed in the morning.  Consumerism is at an all time high.  There is nothing more exciting than going to a store to buy more of what we already have.

And yet, the more we have the more we want.  We are consumed by the unstoppable need to have more and more.  The rich get richer and the poor pile into the Goodwill stores looking for the cast offs.  Neither seems to have a way to reevaluate what truly is missing.  An objective observer might tell you that this is all the result of marketing.  Yet, the inherent need for more does not begin in the marketplace.  It begins much more visceral than that.

We seek an unknown. Our quest is far a flung and out of reach.It is that elusive reckoning which causes us to wonder the imponderables.  Where did we come from and why are we here; where are we off to when we leave this improbable place? The cold sweats at night only elevate the mystery.  The sudden illness and the inexplicable accident, the lottery win at 79 instead of 29 makes it all too strange.  We are strangers in a wasteland of troubles that drink and drugs and sex seem to keep at bay.  Some of us cling to religion, others gamble with fate and still others seek the high road of righteousness, hoping to please the devil we know and outwit the one we don't.  But, where has it all gotten us, except stumbling in the dark looking for the door of salvation.

There is an old saying..."go within or go without".  When I first heard this adage, I thought it was clever and a nice turn of phrase.  It was only after stumbling around in the dark for many years, did I realize what the meaning was.  In truth, I struggled with that sitting quietly thing and waiting for the voice of god to answer my questions. I had little patience with silence and it surely was not golden.  Frustration and inconsistency always led to more of the same.  Eventually, I learned to be still.  OK...for short periods of time, I mastered the minute by minute not moving thing and got to let go.  The peace and glow of inner grace pulled me deeper into a hidden world of inner space.

The first time I did this, I was a mere 12 year old girl. I knelt on a wooden floor with my eyes closed.
I was forced to kneel there as penance for an unspecified amount of time.Without warning my body fled the room and I was wider than the universe.  And just as quickly, I was a small tiny speck of nothing.  I boomeranged back and  forth between the inner and outer worlds of unlimited space. At the time, I was truly unaware of what had happened to me.  It was years later that I understood the power of my inner life.

These days, going within is more grounded in my soul and I feel that the bridge between the two are within my grasp at any moment.  I seek to make them seamless on a daily basis and I find that this has led to one of those impossible questions to be answered. The "who" am I becomes less mysterious the more I touch the inner life of my spirit-soul-self.  Practicing the "fellowship" of the two becomes the walk and maintaining the uninterrupted flow between them is the focus.  Everyday is created as the template to merge the miraculous.

With love and deep respect.

Esprit