The cup is broken before it is made. It is created anyway.
We are stardust at the same time we breathe. Ever-changing formless.
All is won and lost over again. It is good.
Welcome gain and loss equally. They are the same.

The ultimate letting go:

dropping firmly into the present moment

releasing the concept of soul and any owned identity

forgetting all you believe about God, that you may learn anew.

Effort

Life is not about results, but about effort made — they say.

This may be true, but this effort is not pushing. It is love, ease, strength in softness.

When everything changes and nothing has changed.
When everything else changes, yet still all remains —
Then what?
What am I to learn from this?

Look at what has not changed.
Follow each new path as it arises, but know what it is
to return to center.
Open to the peace and freedom, even if appearance
is not what you might choose for yourself.

Find the part of you that has never left, and learn it well.
This is your home.

It is stillness, peace, softness, love, bright joy
lightness of heart.

It is you.

dependence

Do you need someone or something to move forward? A belief or condition? If so, walk away from it to discover your own beauty. If you don’t know how to let go, ask to be shown then have the courage to follow the path revealed.

Face what is immediately in front of you. Do so with love, gentleness toward all beings, a steady heart. Let each quality flow through you in abundance. Do not be shaken by vicissitudes of emotion, thought, energy. Find your strength in ease and grace. A new way of living that you have not yet been taught - you must now teach yourself. Model it in your mind, follow through in your heart. Hold strong, accept your faltering, and know this is not a wound but an opportunity to shine. Discover who you can be. 

You see a lack in yourself and pinpoint a form in the outer world to fill the void. This is the opposite of how God works. Only when you live from a place where the gap does not exist (or at least, know deep within that it will be filled) can the form appear.

Ease

The hardest work is to live with ease. We know how to strive, how to push. Time has come to learn to stand strong in ease, despite harsh winds that may suggest life is anything other than softness. When it is hardest to be tender with life, it is most essential to do so. When tenderness in thought, word, and action comes easily we are called to deepen the practice further.

To undergo complete transformation requires welcoming an unending process that touches every aspect of living. Constant discovery and releasing hold of all we have unknowingly held dear, that we may welcome what is most valuable of all.

Next Steps

After so much effort to soften, release, step through the veil — what next?

Learning to let God flow unfettered through every aspect of life.

Sinking into joy, abundance, freedom. Still holding to nothing, but doing so with ever-increasing gratitude, love, and joy.

What was once desert becomes jungle and ocean.

Embodiment of virtues is a process of unfolding ever-deeper layers of the soul. We spend lifetimes coming to new understandings of each virtue, deepening our practice each day. As we do so, we arrive at a progressively deeper integration of the soul into the surrounding world.

As we allow this unfolding, the understanding of who we are as ‘soul’ also shifts — becomes fuller, brighter, lighter, more expansive. An integration of spiritual and physical arises that is experienced as clearly centered in the body and grounded in Earth/Universe, simultaneously fully aware of the Unchanging/Ever-changing aspects of Self and Is-ness that hold and move every aspect of life.

Truth

Lies, withholding information, and explanations are never necessary and always ego-based.

Ultimate Truth requires no ‘directing’ of an explanation. It asks only for recognition of what is apparent, trust in the inherent beauty of all things, and humility to acknowledge what is given us to see.

Any thoughts or opinions you have about the way another person lives their life are arising for you to address in your own life.

As I deepen presence in each moment, I am drawn to continually simplify this life, creating space for it to expand, ripen.

Desire as Having

How easily we misinterpret the language of the soul! How little we understand our true nature.

For example, we often misdirect the soul’s language as a desire for form. The greater the desire, the more we seek. So, we seek and accumulate more (more things, more people, more accomplishments). Maybe you only crave God — but we apply ‘forms’ to God, too, and reach for them in the same way. When we discover the forms do not match our desire, we tire of the search, apathy arises, and eventually the cycle begins anew.

The cycles end only when we turn toward deepening the experience of what we already have. In fact, the desire itself is part of what we crave. Sink into that, discover what it becomes. Whatever it is you think you seek, desire only appears when you already have. In this way, desire may be translated as soul-level recognition, gratitude, enjoyment. This is a way of dropping into God/Consciousness.

The strength of desire increases as you more deeply experience what you are already given. As this happens, the form adjusts to match. Eventually, attention drops away from form almost entirely as the true nature of life becomes visible.

After releasing…a new wall remains.
Then, what once felt empty begins to feel full.

The newly visible hardness demands another cycle, which can only come as the heart welcomes what Is.
Intense simplification away from word and thought, into the most basic—
Grounded and utterly present.
Un-’known’ but fully aware.
A new way of releasing, not of what is ‘wrong’ but of any sense that right or wrong exist.
Releasing the moment before and yet to come. Stepping closer to now.

This is achieved with the greatest ease, which is why we struggle so to attain it.
Once you reach it, no other effort is required.