Awake My Being

Excuse me,” said an ocean fish. “You are older than I, so can you tell me where to find the thing they call the ocean?”

“The ocean,” said the older fish, “is the thing you are in now.”

“Oh, this? But this is water. What I’m seeking is the ocean,” said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.

Stop searching, little fish. There isn’t anything to look for. All you have to do is look.

(Anthony de Mello, The Song of the Bird; The Little Fish)

Awake my Being To Who You Are, To Who I am, To Us

There is a ceaseless search for something more than we already are and we never become.

Why must I endlessly pursue what makes me unique? Maybe because it feels like something is missing.  After all, in this life, I am constantly focused on what I (or we) don’t have, what needs more, what didn’t work, what isn’t perfect, what needs to be different than it is. I see the lack outside, so I see the lack inside. Or is it the other way around?

There must be more. So I will search.

What if We Already Are What We So Long To Find?

We have all watched numerous trends come and go – ways that human BEings define themselves as different from the rest and consequently, meaningful. We use the arts, fashion, language, gestures, music and idioms to help us differentiate from “the other.”

Our prophets, scientists and philosophers throughout history have searched for some reason beyond our organic nature, to exist. For many years I played with the notion that although I was somehow connected to God, that in this world at least, my aliveness boils down to replenishment, recycling, reproduction, rest, and my final repose. Could we (I) be that insignificant?

And if so, why do we thirst for knowledge and share a human curiosity for the unknown? How to biological cells know love so deeply that speech is useless and only devotion remains?

Is the answer an either/or?

Either life is magnificent and we dance with a Universal and unseen purpose, or life is purely a chemical cellular structure that multiplied into being for a short space of time

or both.

The Holding

There is a holding; a space between the alternatives. We can, at one time, be biological in time and space, and ever and always in consciousness.

“I am” already in the center of being – both in my limited body and my endless ongoing. “I am” full of the Light I relentlessly seek.

Our force, will,  knowledge, dedication, devotion and hard work – seem to matter so little when we pretend they matter so much. Instead, unlike the little fish, relinquishing our ego fantasies we can recognize the Ocean that buoyantly lifts us; moves and feeds us,  generously and safely surrounding us.

I slowly see (and often don’t) that it is not achieving or accumulating more. Rather, the beauty I seek is in relinquishing my struggle for meaning by acknowledging that meaning existed long before I was aware I was here.  My life is a tangled holding and waiting for the misty fog to lift bit by bit, so I can see the ocean clearly and all that lives within. What freedom, what trust, what a dance!

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This Silent Memo Card is a Note to Self and A Prayer to Love

This particular card was created as a gift to share with people you want to inspire – and yourself.  I find putting them in small frames and placing them in places I see all the time, keeps the concepts in my attention and reminds my wandering mind of my soul’s purpose and delight.

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