May all beings be at peace, may all beings be free of suffering, and may all beings remember who they are. You know why we have a difficult time living in the present moment because we're waiting, we're waiting for something to happen. Oh, I can't wait until I get rid of my mask. I can't wait to go to the bookstore again, I can't wait until I go to Paris, I can't wait until I sell the church. I can't wait for everything to get back to normal.
I mean, all of this has happened just so we can get back to normal, whatever that is. What am I learning? What are my lessons here? Patience is a big one. I noticed this in doing Zoom broadcasts and in church when I was giving talks here when there was nobody out there, we have a connection with one another that goes beyond the intellect, goes beyond the physical world, beyond the five senses. It's absolutely amazing, if we sit in the quiet or even in a talk we can get a sense of one another's presence with one another beyond what we could ever even imagined a year ago. I don't want to lose that.
If I go back to a time when I don't have to wear a mask and this building or whatever building we happen to be in is filled with hundreds or thousands of people I don't want to lose the fact that we can be connected. We are connected beyond the physical, beyond the intellect, beyond my five senses, beyond what my senses might teach us, that we're connected all the time. I don't want to go back to when I forgot that, when I didn't even know that was true. As long as my mind and my heart are filled with waiting, nothing is going to happen. The space has already been taken up.
Did you ever wonder why we keep learning and forgetting the same things all the time? I mean, there's not a whole lot new on the spiritual path. "We live in the now, live in the present moment, blah, blah, blah. Do this, do that." I get there and I do that for a while, and then I forgot and I wake up again and I forget. Do you ever wonder why I keep waking up and forgetting, being aware, and then being unaware? What's the matter with me? I'm more intelligent than that.
I know I'm getting older, but my memory is still a little bit better than it used to be. What have I learned about living? What would it be like if I remembered that all the time? My life would be nice and wonderful and calm and beautiful and all those other good things, but it doesn't seem to happen that way. I'm not exactly sure why, except maybe that's part of our contract here on planet earth that we will keep going through the cycle of waking and sleeping, being aware and being unaware, remembering and forgetting until we don't have to do it anymore.
If we can learn this one little truth, "Instead of beating myself up for falling asleep, why can't I just be grateful for waking up again?" That's a simple, truth, a simple awareness. For me this could change so many different things. It's not bad that I fall asleep and I wake up. It's just what it is. I'm not in control of that right now, at least not yet.
So here I am huffing and puffing, doing everything I possibly can to try and transform a situation that I really want to change. It's only when I get tired enough of hitting my head against a brick wall that I remember I could have prayed about that. I could have asked for help. Ask and you shall receive. I'm too busy waiting to receive, to ask. I forget. Do I pray as soon as I see a calamity crop up in my life, or I'm in fear, confusion, or separateness? I wait until I've done all of the grunt work necessary that I think is important. I collect all of my resources and then say, okay, well now I can pray about it.
Myrtle Fillmore, one of our founders created this absolutely wonderful, beautiful prayer. I am a divine child of God. I do not inherit illness. Do I remember that? Or do I spend all of my time and efforts making doctor's appointments and make sure all my prescriptions are lined up. I have forgotten the most marvelous prayer and the most marvelous truth that's presented to me right now in this moment. That doesn't mean I ignore the doctors and the pills and everything else. It's not about pushing all of that stuff away, but where do I go first? How often do I forget that? I do it all the time. I forget who I am. And of course, when I forget who I am, I forget who you are.
Do you ever wonder where all of your fears and prejudices come from? They come from this frightened little part of me. That's who I think I am when I'm in that particular state of mind. And when I'm in that state of mind of limitation of judgment, I'm pushing you away. I forget that marvelous statement from Mother Teresa: "The reason why you are not at peace is because you have forgotten we belong to one another." Not that we're responsible for one another, not that we're all connected. We belong to one another. Get the sense of that. We belong to one another. What would it be like if I remembered that? One time Jesus was asked "Who is my neighbor?"Of course he followed through with the wonderful parable of the good Samaritan, which essentially says everyone is your neighbor. We belong to everyone, everyone belongs to everybody else. If you leave anybody out of the picture, it doesn't work.
Most of us won't have the opportunity to perform heroic acts during the difficult times that we are in right now. But what would it be like if we took five minutes a day to hold those we disagree with, those who are in pain, or those in our lives that are struggling in light and love and the truth we know that they are? We don't realize this because everybody has freewill, obviously, but everything we touch, everything we express not only affects us and that limited space around us. It affects all of creation. Everyone and everything gets touched by that, whether it's a negative thought or a positive one.
We belong to one another, that's a truth. But that means that everything I do, everything I sense, everything I feel, and everything I think affects every individual affects the whole universe. Imagine, if we step back from that, just for a moment and realize what a powerful choice we have. This thought, this anger, this prejudice, this judgment, this joy, this gratitude that I'm holding onto affects every being. Every aspect of creation is affected by that.
What is going on outside of me is really what's going on inside of me. Whatever you see outside of yourself as a reflection of what is going on inside. And yet it's so easy to point the finger out there. It's them. It's the Democrats, it's the Republicans. If only they would do this or that. No, it's me. A judgment is another way of forgetting. Every time I make a judgment, I can stop for a minute and say, "What is it about me that I need to transform, that I need to heal?" That would stop me, or at least prevent me from beginning again, into that kind of negative activity that affects all of creation.
I don't deal with change very well because somehow I think the change makes me unsafe or vulnerable. The reality is that change or transformation makes me even more safe than I possibly could be. What would it be like to transform love? That's what the whole St. Francis prayer is all about: transforming hatred into love, transforming all of those negative things that we might be holding on inside of us, transforming all of those things into something positive. What would it be like if I realized that this particular moment is filled with possibility?
This is an element I think we miss. I know I've missed this in my prayer life, that I have a desire for something, or I'm praying for something like world peace or something like that. As wonderful as that sounds, I'm praying for that. I'm asking that to happen. I'm putting that in God's hands, but you know, what's missing? What's missing is me opening myself up to the possibility that that could possibly be true. "Oh God, let me have world peace, but I really don't think it's ever going to happen in my lifetime." What do you think that does my prayer? What does it do to my energy? "Oh, please. I would love for this to happen, but I really don't think it will. Somehow or another, if you can overcome my negativity, maybe you can make it happen."
Magic is not just in our desire to have something happen. The magic is what happens from my opening myself up to the possibility. That's really where our power and truth is. That's kind of taking my little personality self and pushing it as far as it can possibly go. I open myself up to the possibility of the truth: that no only can this happen. This will happen. This is happening.
The miracle can't happen unless I open myself up to the possibility that it can happen, that it will happen. It's not some airy fairy idea of living in the present moment and everything will be fine and nice and wonderful. And birds will be singing in rainbows in the sky and all kinds of other stuff. Openness, openness allows me to be open to the truth of who I am and that will allow the new heaven and new earth to be able to manifest. "Do you believe I can do this?" Jesus asked the man, and the man replied so wonderfully simple. "Yes, Lord. I believe, help now my unbelief." I believe you can do this, but I'm not quite there. Stop my doubts. Jesus didn't say, "Well, sorry, I can't work a miracle then." So beautifully put. I'm not exactly where I think I need to be, where I think I should be, where I think I ought to be. But here I am and I'm opening myself as best as I possibly can. In this particular moment, I am opening myself up to the possibility of peace, the possibility of love, the possibility of miracles, the possibility of transformation.
Those questions we forgot to ask while we were waiting. What do I need to learn today? What have I learned from this? What's going on? What is the purpose of my life? If I knew with certainty I was going to die tomorrow, would I be able to say that I fulfilled my life's purpose? Or would I be scrambling around to do something else?What's stopping me? What is your purpose in this moment, in this present moment?
This present moment is the lens through which I see the world and I can choose to make that clear or cloudy. Is my reaction to this present moment the judgment of past mistakes, wanting to hide or wanting to wait, or is it a moment of creation? It's not always going to be fun in an emotional sense. Sometimes living in the moment is going to be painful and difficult. I don't pretend that that's going to happen that way. Sometimes living in the moment is asking me to experience my sadness, my fear instead of turning it into anger and reactivity. Sometimes it is asking me, in the midst of my sadness, if I'm willing to open my heart to that as best I possibly can, that I can also open up to compassion.
Sometimes the moments are quiet ones. I know a lot of times with my grandson Fin, we don't talk a lot. I'm not the proverbial grandfather who's spouting off words of wisdom every two seconds. The majority of our time together is very quiet. I'm sitting next to him while he is playing football on his X-Box or watching a Star Wars movie for the umpteenth time or discussing one of the deepest problems of the world, whether or not in the Harry Potter books The Half Blood Prince is better than something else. And yet the times we have together are so precious to me and I hope they are to him too, even without words. Margo and I can spend hours in a car without saying anything.
I'm reminded of the words of Robert Frost when he said a friend is someone I can walk a mile with without saying a word. They don't have to. It goes beyond thought. It goes beyond the meaning of the outside world. It could be just a little precious moment of my cat crawling up on my lap and going to sleep, knowing that I'm probably going to move in five minutes anyway, but taking advantage of the five minutes that are already there. Would that we were so wonderfully inclined to say, "I know this moment is going to disappear, but I'm going to enjoy it for the, for the time that it's here. I'm going to allow myself to be in warmth and peace and light just for this moment. Even though I know it's going to shift, even though it's going to change."
A few days ago, I was having one of those days and I told Margo this, "I don't know why this happens, but every once in a while, it seems like the bottom falls out. What was nice and good and wonderful a moment ago has turned to ashes. My heart was open a few moments ago right now is slammed shut. And I know that there's joy in life and I know there's wonder in life, but I can't seem to touch it right now. I can't seem to let it touch me."
So how can moments like that be light-filled? How can they be beneficial? Or do I stuff them in a dark corner and try and forget about them? As someone expressed a while ago, "What would it be like if the only things I had today were the things I was grateful for yesterday?" That question always haunts me because it's not about being fearful that something is going to be taken away from me. It's simply asking to open my heart in gratitude to what I have in this moment. Even if it's pain, even if it's sadness, even if it's difficult, even if it's struggle, because each one of us knows we're still here. Each one of us knows if we look openly enough that even the most critical things in our lives, the most difficult moments, the most difficult times have sometimes been moments of enlightenment, growth, stretching, evolution, and healing beyond what the mind might be able to imagine. The grace and the gift of this moment, even when we're working on ourselves and we're trying to become grounded, it's constantly changing.
How can you allow yourself simply to be in the flow of life? A wonderful example of that, that I'm going to close with is just what we're doing right now. You have given me a gift this morning and other mornings that you've allowed me to share it with you. The gift is that I have had to be in the present moment with each word and thought, because if I am not fully present to that, then neither are you. You have gifted me with allowing me to do that but you've also gifted me with being in your presence. There is no way of describing or holding on to the preciousness of that moment. Will it change? Yes. Can it remain a healing part of my life? Yes. Can it remain a gift I give you and you give me? Yes. Can it be a gift that we give to one another? Listening, openness, healing, grace, life, peace.
May all beings be at peace. May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings remember who they are.
