Alight here and let the darkness go

I have been living for some time in an intensity or fullness of living that - to me - is very similar to the process that I associate with the ‘journey’ of a Mayflower Camp - or from any similar commitment to sharing and learning life with others in truth.

In Camp - or perhaps I will now say in a commitment to shared be-ing in relationship, the fruits of taking the journey that it offers are a profound sense of connectedness within that is extended and reflected without. A spontaneous capacity for joy. A very present appreciation of being alive. Freedom from compulsive thinking. A natural generosity of spirit.

To open the door isn't actually complex or difficult. But when such a spirit is in us we are forced into new responsibilities or to shut down.
From now on I will just speak in terms of my own experience.

The liability of such awakened relationship is that I suffer acutely if I ‘lose it’ by trying to impose the control or mindset of separative mind upon experience.

This would sometimes occur via a sort of unguarded curiosity where I don't realize that what I am attempting does not work until I get feedback that reveals to me that I am actually being obstructive. Then I tend to drop it and re-member myself in the present flow of relationship. This sort of thing is like seeing immediately how life flows or constipates according to the consciousness we hold. It is possible to set myself up in this way by trying to script what the world or others should be and then getting upset when they are not or do not. But that too is part of staying awake and being present with myself with the world.

Loss of joy mostly occurs when fear and guilt from my past are activated and experienced as if re-occurring - or about to re-occur. This often seems to be other people or experience impinging on me or others. I dont see that I have set myself up. I may see others as behaving badly or things not going how I want them to - and project my own shadow intentions onto the situation. At such times - if I take the bait - I cannot then of myself discern the true from the false; the real from the remembered past and the imagined or anticipated future.  I am caught in a trap. I will believe I am present and justified in my perceptions, but it is a painful and problematic experience from which I seek remedy because it is intolerable.

I am already in a conscious intention to learn and live from a self-discovered-in-relationship rather than a self-getting-from-relationships, I do open into relationship. There cannot be a loss of joy if one hasnt first experienced joy. None of what I say will make any sense to one who only sees relationship as something to exploit for private or indeed mutual private gain. If people were to come to a camp without letting life in then they can not experience anything other than their judgements and definitions from the past because only opening into relationship presently connects directly with reality at all. This of course is about human mentality at any time or place.

In the camps I have held or attended, or in any commitment to relationship in being, I have always had at least some times where I felt gutted, excluded, cut off from joy, utterly bereft, or an empty meaninglessness or deeply felt fear. Heavy stuff. All these compelling realities become meditations because they were held within relationship - which is present by faith and at times by the present extension of love or attention from others or indeed from serendipitous events. But the living of it is experiential - not theoretical - and is often messy in ways that our closet self abhors and resists. I might add here that extending love is largely unconscious or spontaneous automaticity. Anyone inspired by joy extends love. "Love" has been remade in man's image but that is merely a concept and a construct. The reality of love has not altered in any way as a result of man's imagination. Your direct experience can find its own words if it needs to.

In life, we can often spend days, months or even years in grievances or feeling hard done by or just lost. This is largely because the culture is predominantly one of suppression of symptoms and we inhibit the movement of love. The intensity or rawness that I opened this writing with is the seemingly accelerated process wherein coming through grievance into miracle of clean and renewed joy may occurs in moments or hours.

Here is the journey-process of healing. A journey within myself that I have to make if I am to regain joy instead of a disposition that is tending to shut down into judgement, exclusion and blame. The temptation to guilt is sometimes terribly strong, but the immediate cost is loss of living relationship within myself as well as without. When hitting difficulty I may attempt anything that seems plausible - depending on the nature of the experiences I am having. But I would often find myself going off into nature and in essence, attempting to face, enquire and empty myself at a radical level. Often in wordless prayer that seeks but one thing; to regain a living peace. But such a prayer may not come until I have exhausted all other ‘options’ - and myself in the process. The fruit of such a journey is to discover the absence or undoing of the problem-bound self in the regained clean and clear joy of inner-connectedness and outer innocence.

There is no process to receiving but recognising and undoing the blocks that are obstructing present joy often needs some process in time. Joy is a spontaneous felt wholeness of be-ing that is not dependent on externals but on alignment of mind with Mind.

Such a journey cannot be learned, conflicted “I” always has to make it afresh. This is because it isnt so much a doing as a surrender of doing. Not so much a strategy or formula for solving problems; but a recognition of inherent futility in the problem’s perspective.

The essential dimension to this journey is “joining with” - into living relationship. The need for it is my conflicted state of mind in which I suffer not only loss of awareness and communion with this very living reality, but the usurpation of this by a falsity that actively seeks to protect itself and sees all things in it’s imagination such that nothing is accorded relevance unless it fits pre-set problematic criteria, and nothing will be allowed to reach it that would be seen as threat.

The one thing that seems to block this journey of healing is the belief or acceptance of (anyone’s) guilt as reality. In this is private judgement of blame or unworthiness solidified and made Reality. Capital R Reality. When such temptations are yielded to, I become powerless to invite or initiate change and indeed will fight to maintain and impose my conviction. Though I may feel vindicated and justified, I will not regain well being because I am unconsciously but actively excluding my wholeness. Until and unless I become willing to look within with fresh eyes and open my mind to change.

Living through such experiences over most of a lifetime has brought me to recognise and accept the difference between the false and the true in myself by virtue of not living as if a separate and unjoined mind. From this comes the next step; to let go of the false and embrace the true. This step is not without fear and like the first step is not achieved by self-will but by a willingness to be given the means as they are needed.

Now must I be as vigilant in protecting my peace as before I was in protecting my judgement. Such that judgement cannot find a welcome in my mind as a weapon but only as a mapping of my own private internal mindset.

The intent to maintain privately held separative judgemental reality can take any and many forms. It can adopt perfectly socially normal behaviour - because most of us are mostly engaged in trying to protect a split mind by projecting a split or conflicted world. So we have consensus judgements according to our various family, cultural and human perspectives. While we may be more of less unconscious of this activity of our mind, it remains actively obstructive of well be-ing in ourselves and our community.

I have simply come to point where I have had to separate from that which separates. To not do so costs me more than I am willing to pay. In making this choice I have seemingly lost my marriage and livelihood, the community in which I have lived in faith and fellowship for many years, and indeed my capacity to live from and as a compartmentalized self. I say seemingly because I am regaining an unconflicted presence in being alive that offers a true foundation for sharing and living life. I am in a new classroom here and learning by living with. In the very way this writing describes.

To hold to the embrace of the living universe - the gift and communion of life in which and of which we have our actual being - is in many ways to step off of the map. Such a presence is anathema to any who actively will to hide in darkness - or private-self judgemental realities. For it does not share the foundation from which their thought systems stem.

Though they may make much noise or more, they cannot make such a self real, and I will not forego the quiet loving extension of love’s recognition in order to conform to demands that are expressions of an unwillingness to look within this very moment - with eyes released from the past and a willingness to let vision in.

Humanity sleeps. In dreams are victors and heroes born, adversity engaged and challenges overcome. But none who dream but have fear stalk them in shadows and hope turns to despair. The odds are actually invincible because human mind is split against itself. The experience of being ground down or devastated by loss or undone in fear, maddened by guilt, can ripen us to question the entire basis of our experience.

None will look within who fear judgement upon themselves unless they have some cause to bring to question the case they hold against themselves or their brother. In any moment of experience where you do have light and share it - you have such a cause. Though it may seem lost when you get lost, every witness in your life to love's presence is part of your dawning sanity.

There is no case against the truth of you or I - whatever we may have seemed to have been or done. Can this be true? In the shared reality of Love's creation is this Truth. It isnt information to be applied within the framework of private realities. Only by taking the hand of another in rejoining in shared be-ing will we regain the perspective that is vision. Only with a present and grounded vision will we be able to respond to the call for healing with true help. For the absence of actual and direct connection with reality is the inevitable recycling of insanity. "Stop the world, I want to get off", expresses a truth felt in many in our world today - but expressed with humour. To make it also a practical statement of release say "I stop making my world in the image of my past all by myself, I want to come back into the giving and receiving of love's reality for I am not at home in what I have made and am willing to learn what love would have me be and do".