I saw a post the other day that really got my attention; a six-hour online kensho intensive. WTF? I got me thinking and wondering why we are in such a hurry for awakening and so determined to prolong life. Odd bedfellows I agree and yet the two are indeed connected.
I have spent a fair portion of my life, 43% of it in fact, searching for Truth, Awakening, God, Enlightenment, Kensho, Samadhi, The One, or whatever else you may wish to call that which many of us are driven to seek. I have sat with great teachers around the world. I have taken and led many a weekend workshop. I have visited many sacred sites from the pyramids in Egypt to the dizzying heights of Machu Picchu. I have had the profound blessings to experience many sacred shamanic ceremonies. I have had bodywork, breath-work, and therapy sessions. I have coached people in both life and in death. I have journaled, meditated, and fasted. I have done emotional trauma release sessions, encounter groups, and past life regressions. I have written books.
In other words and more simply stated I have done a fair bit of personal growth work and along the way I have learned a few things that I believe to be true.
There are no quick fixes
There is no way to escape death
There are no shortcuts, and
There is no way out.
Over the past fifty or so years our society has designed personal growth workshop upon weekend training to online gatherings that promise enlightenment in just six hours. This drive for nirvana, for heaven on earth, for awakening is a powerful urge for oneness – union or yoga.
Over the same period of time we have created all manner of pharmaceuticals and medical techniques designed to keep us young and to stave off death driven by another powerful urge – survival of the species.
But what happens if all our creativity regarding both awakening and sustaining life is absolutely useless, aside of course from is giving us lots of great distractions to avoid our ‘real’ human life and our ‘real’ human death.
What happens if our very life is the greatest workshop in the world and if death is the best technique for lasting enlightenment?
What happens if it takes a lifetime to burn off our karma and that by living a full human life and attending to living it well we are actually preparing ourselves for our ultimate awakening – our own graceful and conscious death? Didn’t Malcolm Gladwell say that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill?
In our hurry to awaken and our deep-seated fear of death are we not simply avoiding the very things that are guaranteed to wake us up?
Live your life intentionally, put in the time with gratitude and reality. Embrace your death fully and be thankful for each day.
Leave the quick fixes for awakening or longevity alone; they may in fact be the biggest reasons that as a culture we are actually devolving as human beings.
Just thinking out loud…
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