I am indebted to Nelson "Madiba" Rolihlahla Mandela who inspired this
conversation.
There's no mistaking your first experience of yourself, your first
experience of your true nature ie of Self. You're everything.
You're nothing. You're ... everythingnothing ...
The moment of experiencing your true nature ie the moment of
transformation for the first time is really one of Life's
most unfathomable, most miraculous gifts to human being.
You could say transformation, in this sense, is a matter of
grace. You could also say it's a matter of luck. But if
you did say it's a matter of luck when you had the experience, it
probably wasn't transformation. It's true that transformation may be
something you come upon randomly, unexpectedly, while exploring other
options. But luck? Not likely. Grace? That's more like it.
The thing about coming upon transformation as a matter of luck is
unless you already had an opening for it, unless you'd invented a
possibility for it, you'd probably miss it, you'd probably
not reach out to grab it immediately with both hands as fast as you
could. It would pass you by like a stranger on a ship in the night. For
me, the element of grace rather than luck is pivotal. You
reach for transformation, you're a stand for the
possibility of transformation, and Life obligingly allows
you to have it - but only for as long as you're a stand for the
possibility of it. When you're no longer a stand for the possibility of
transformation, it has no context in which to show up
ongoingly so it disappears.
Whichever comes first, transformation or a context for the possibility
of transformation, the synchronicity of both showing up
together is best described as grace. When I say "grace", I
assert grace is a quality which shows up when human and
divine intersect. And although the descriptor "divine" may
be overloaded with too many concepts, with too much already
always listening to be accurate, to be really useful,
saying "grace shows up when human and divine intersect" is good
enough for jazz.
Grace isn't luck. It's not even "good fortune". If you reduce
grace to luck or to good fortune, you're not being
responsible for it. If there's one certain, surefire way to
kill the culture in which transformation thrives, it's to not be
responsible for it. Transformation simply doesn't work as a one
time change like an accomplishment or like an
attainment followed by resting on one's laurels. In
terms of living life transformed, not being continuously responsible
for transformation is deadly.
So you're everything. Therefore you're called to be responsible for
everything. That's scary. It's terrifying, in fact. But what's
worse is you're nothing. That's truly horrible. In one sense of
the word, in one particular perspective, "you're nothing"
is an extreme put down, the ultimate invalidation.
Grace gives a context for transformation. And you've owned it. You've
taken responsibility for it. You're transformed now. You've transformed
your life. You've seen you're everything. You've seen you're nothing.
First, there's aghast. But after all, this is who you
really are - your experience confirms it. So then
there's
exuberance.
If you have the presence of mind to allow grace, you can go on
through to
exuberance.
But first you have to be willing to encounter, to deal with, to go
through and to go past aghast.
You have the thought it's too much to take. It's not what you thought
it would be. It doesn't even require your consent! You're
aghast when you discover, when you experience you're really
EVERY-thing. It's too huge. It's too
vast
to take it all in. You're aghast when you discover, when you experience
you're really nothing. You're too small, you're too
insignificant in the face of Life. You're meaningless. Now you
start to get the true perspective on what you've been saying you're
afraid of. It's this:
You're not afraid of being out there. You say you're shy. You're
not shy. There's no such thing as "shy". You're
not afraid of failure. At best, failure is a concept not
an experience. There is no "is" failure. No, what you're
afraid of is being who you really are: you're
afraid of nothing. It scares the living daylights
out of you.
You're not afraid of what's out there to achieve. You're
not afraid of falling. You're not afraid of anything, really, as much
as you're afraid of being who you really are. This doesn't have
anything to do with not playing to the status quo, with not
being who you're expected to be. This is about your own
personal experience of what happens, of what it's like when you first
get close to becoming who you really are, when you first get close to
fully opening to, to letting in that what you are as a
human being is EVERY-thing, that what you are as a human being
is nothing. To let that in, you have to give up what you've
already always been being, and it's terrifying. It scares the
bejeesus out of you.
And it's not just you. It's each and every single one of us.
Well? Which is it? Are we afraid of being EVERY-thing? Or
are we afraid of being nothing? And, more perplexedly, if
everythingnothing really is our true nature, why
are we afraid of it, or either, or anything at all?
Werner
Erhard
says "The gates to the temple of truth are guarded by two dragons:
paradox and
confusion.".
It's a
paradox.
And it's confusing - at least at first it's confusing.
We're, quite literally, afraid of nothing. That's not the same
as being unafraid of anything. The emphasis is in a different place.
It's very subtle: we're afraid of nothing.
We're afraid of the EVERY-thing we are. We're afraid of
the magnificence we are. We're afraid of the nothing we are. We just
won't open to it. We just won't let it in. We're so intent on holding
on to a few paltry crumbs in our clenched fists that we won't open our
hands to reach for the whole loaf. Desperately we hold on to the measly
crusts we got. In so doing we miss entire bushels of loaves.