The Purr

…Exploring this cycle of Remembering and Forgetting in my own life, I realize the impact that having cancer has had on my ability to pull myself out of delusion. Cancer is not at all glamorous, sexy or exciting. It is a seemingly endless retraining. It is a retraining of the body, but also of the mind and of the way the mind holds its experience. Cancer offers a haven for despair and despondence, for giving up. There is the strong energetic pull of the cancer toxins themselves, and also the play of my emotions as they relive their memories of being wounded, and feelings of loss, and of imagining what could happen in the future. At the same time, the cancer brings its own gifts. It creates an inner chamber where all those conditioned and habitual responses are highlighted. And because they are highlighted, my awareness of what is going on becomes stronger. The whole thing gives rise to a pregnant space, a potentially open space, where profound transformation can occur. But whether that transformation will actually occur all depends on the response, on my response, to the illness, on how I hold the experience of having cancer and what it can do to my body and my soul. I always loved to hike in the mountains. There's a special mountain in Yosemite that is the second highest in the West. Because of its height, it is well above any level where oxygen is plentiful. And, to make things harder still for the hiker, the ground is constantly giving way because it is composed, not of solid rock but of small pieces of broken talus that you are constantly slipping and sliding down. I often said, “Three steps forward and two steps back when you are climbing Mount Dana.” This is exactly the way the spiritual journey sometimes feels to me. And I am clearly not the only person who feels this way. A few days ago, I came across this poem by one of the strongest and most amazing Sufi teachers I know, Hazrat Inayat Khan. It's a long poem and I'm leaving a lot out, but I'll put the juicy stuff in. He says - “Riding the horse of Hope, holding in my hands the reigns of Courage, clad in the armor of Patience, with the helmet of Endurance on my head, I started on my journey to the Land of Love. A lance of stern Faith was in my hand, the sword of firm Conviction buckled on, with the knapsack of Sincerity and the shield of Earnestness, I advanced on the Path of Love. With my ears closed to the Disturbing Noise of the world, my eyes turned from all that was calling me on the way, my heart beating the rhythm of my ever Rising Aspiration, and my blazing Soul guiding me on the path, I made my way through Space. I went through the thick forest of Perpetual Desire, I crossed the running rivers of Longing, I passed through the deserts of Silent Suffering, I climbed the steep hills of Continual Strife. Feeling some Presence in the air, I asked, “Are you there my Love?” And a voice came to my ears saying, “ No, still further on am I.”” I understand that this whole business of spiritual transformation is no piece of cake. But when even a powerful and awakened master like Hazrat Inayat Khan has difficulty staying within the light that illumines all our souls, I have to ask – why is that so? Why is it so difficult for all of us, even masters of transformation? Why is it so difficult to stay, solid and immovable, secure in the vision that we are the love and the illumination, the clarity and knowing, the essence of the truth that we seek? How is it possible that we can be so clear, so aware, so present in one moment, and then, inexplicably, in the next, fall, tumbling from the grace we were sure would hold us forever? Why is it all so strangely skewed toward Forgetting? Why is Steadfastness - that instinctive, unwavering immovable certainty of Knowing - such a difficult thing to sustain? How is it we can lose the center of our being and instead, act out the most ludicrous behaviors that we know are not who we are? Behaviors that we know reflect a distorted perception. Yet, we find ourselves acting from them as though it were the most natural thing in the world. And worse, defending them as though they made sense. And then, suddenly, almost without warning or cause, we wake up to the reality of who we truly are. And, with a deep sigh of relief, allow that awareness to flow into the neglected nooks and crannies of our true sense of self. The answer can only become clear when we understand what it is that Consciousness is trying to do with this whole experiment of first creating humans, and then giving them such a complicated journey to negotiate. Traditionally, we are told that Consciousness is whispering in our ear, “I was a hidden treasure, longing to be known.” And somehow, it is through that light of longing in our eyes that it does come to know itself. It is able to engage with this business of manifesting, of embodying into physical form, through us. It moves into constantly deeper, and constantly more creative levels in its quest toward an evolving, ever- changing, ever transformative manifestation. But it is not a passive reflection, a passive discovery, a passive seeing. It is only through action, by stirring things up and creating interactions - realities touching other realities and exchanging moments of truth that somehow the new, the never before imagined, can emerge. With this interaction a true need can be met with an honest discovery. It is only by ending passivity that a pathway toward a creative re- structuring of an old reality can come into being. So how does such a path of action occur? By trying, failing, falling down, picking ourselves up, and trying again. Through this courageous movement we create a trail of revealing moments, of breadcrumbs through the forest, of moments that illumine, tell a story, offer clarity. If we remained in a beautiful bubble of passive delight in the truth, how would we discover unthought of possibilities, undreamed of rearrangements, the surprising twists and turns of an open, receptive creativity, of the quantum potential? How could we create something new except in response to a clear crisis of the old? When we feel a deficit, a defeat, a weakness - it must be confronted to be creatively realigned. If we did not fail, fall down, become confused, lost, and then pick ourselves up and search all over again for truth, how could such a transformation even be imagined? It is only when our response to life fails under pressure of reality, it is only when we hit bottom that we begin to search for the way back to the summit. It is only when despair becomes intolerable, that we open to discovering a path of renewal, a path that is aligned with the deepest longing of Consciousness to discover itself, to transform and evolve and interact as love and creativity and compassionate re- patterning. For, in fact, it is indeed through the light of that longing in our eyes that Consciousness comes to know itself. It is only through this confrontation and this movement that the sea of potential transforms itself and becomes an embodied manifestation of a solid reality we can trust and act upon. But again, it is not automatic. I, for one, have fulfilled the task of becoming confused, lost, falling down and failing, quite thoroughly. Again and again, I lose my way. Having succeeded in becoming lost, I can advance to the next step in this play of the soul's journey. And that step is to become found. And to become found, there is one act, one movement that must happen. And that act is to simply stop. To sit down, to claim our place within the gap, and then, once there, to listen. This is the gold buried deep within the ground of confusion. When we listen deeply, with an open heart, what is it we hear? It is simple, it is profound, it is glorious, and it is ours. It is the purr of the universe. It is the quality that grounds us in our Knowing, our sense of who we are and who we can become. When such a master as Hazrat Inayat Khan, who has such clarity, power, and wisdom, can say that he has lost hope, seeing even his blazing soul diminished and darkened, I too can feel myself in his experience. I too, can hear the voice that leads us on saying, “No, you are not there yet, one more mountain.” But I hear it with an understanding that goes deeper than disillusion, loss of hope and diminished courage. I hear it within a silence that is the center of all being, of all creation, of all longing, and urging, and intention. Within a center that contains a purr. When I am dozing in my easy chair and my cat leaps into my lap, settles himself, and begins to purr, in that moment, I experience on another, embodied level, this deep modeling of the stillness that is the creative matrix of the One. This purr is the entryway to the Quantum Field - the space of moving into something not yet seen, or experienced, or molded into form. But once it is brought forward into our perception space we can feel this moment, deep within our being, as a moment of Conscious Becoming, as the way the New is conceived, and is born. And this quiet moment of stillness in the gap is so important to this birthing moment, because it inspires us to a renewed burst of courage, of willingness, of seeing and searching for a way through. It spurs us to forget that we have done this so many times before - how can we possibly be at the beginning all over again? Why can we not arrive? We forget all those mountains we have left behind, and how they have changed us, how they have prepared us for this one mountain ahead. In the silence that we sought out of our despair, we can feel the desire of Consciousness to create, to become. The sensitivity possible in that Silence ignites the fire of recognition. Now, when the path is darkened, and the flame is flickering, and the last lamp is blown out by a cold and bitter wind of disillusion and despair, and the Voice says, “No, you are not there yet, my friend. Sorry, but you have not arrived at that Unshakable Knowing of who you are, not yet.” And when I discover that this mountain is larger and grander than the one before, this slope steeper and more rugged than any I have ever seen, I simply rest, and listen for the purr deep within. And as I rest in that silence, I can know that this is precisely the plan, this is the manner in which the universe grows and learns and creates itself, through its beloved children, who make the pledge to keep on, despite all evidence that this is a preposterous business that will never end. A problem that has no solution. No solution apart from the search. Those loving, courageous, curious children who get to their feet one more time for a journey they hope will be the last, that they hope will result, finally, in an arrival at the destination they have been promised, and feel the presence of so deeply in their soul. And, once again, we discover that, around the bend on this trek up yet another slope of this impossible mountain, is a lake of such grandeur and magnificence and superlative beauty that we forget how upset we were, how disturbed, how distressed, how we blamed god and all the misleading promises and false hopes and downright lies that we feel were fed to us, and that resulted somehow in our willing participation in this unfair and preposterous world. This world from which our souls feel so estranged, a world where despair and disillusion are such easy destinations. But, with this step into Silence, everything stops. With this single step of courage and faith, our hearts hear, once again, the purr of the inner language of love, and of Remembering, and of a joy that wraps us in a gentle embrace, and, once again, we are home. So, next time you feel the despair and the despondence and the defeat, think of it not as a failure of faith, or weakness of character and spiritual moxie. Think of it as a gift. Think of it as the plea of Consciousness to have a willing partner in the search. A search it can only take on through you. Because you are its embodied lover. You are the one who can turn its dreams and imagined potentials into solid, manifested realities. You are the one who can bring the quantum field to life. It is not a weakness to feel lost and defeated. It is a signal, a request, to take the next step into Silence where we can feel the intention that brought us here, the intention to create, with others in our hologram, a new world, a world that arrives with such a blaze of clarity in our imagination that it must come from our co-created intention. We can get stuck, ruminating and chewing our cud of despair. Or, we can give thanks for the appearance of that despair. For it turns the screw one more time in the creative hub that is the unending patterning of new worlds and new realities. It fosters and nurtures this amazing, blazing, blossoming world of sentient life interacting with itself to become who we are - the tender, sweet, responsive lovers, whose willingness allows so much more to be born. So, my fellow co-travelers, embrace this loss of faith with all the feeling of rightness with which we embrace the joy and splendor that explodes in our hearts when Remembering reappears. Forgetting is not a demon. It is an angel in disguise. Love to you all. Keep on truckin’ on. For I need your steady faith to hold my own process - for my healing, for my journey through the fog toward clarity, and so I can feel my way toward the Silence that holds us all.