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You don't have to make any effort to be free.
Freedom is letting go, and letting go is freedom.
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Lately I have noticed myself feeling extremely content and at peace. Not that that's unusual, really - I'm generally pretty happy, positive, not too many complaints. But this is a more fundamental contentment - and reading these words from Andrew Cohen brought this present state of being sharply into focus - I am content because I am no longer looking for anything.
Are you a seeker or a finder? This is a very important question. If you are on a spiritual path, have you found what you are looking for? Or are you still searching? If you are doing a spiritual practice, are you doing it to reach a goal or are you doing it just because you think it's a good thing to be doing?
Or are you doing spiritual practice from another position altogether--the position of being a finder? Being a finder means you are one of those rare individuals who has unequivocally found what they are looking for, and are now doing spiritual practice only because they want to continue to develop.
I can't pinpoint the exact moment that I became aware of this shift to another state of being. No longer striving, I realize that I already have the life I want, that I already know my greatest gift and can give it freely without reservation. My path now is, as Cohen says, to fully participate in that life and to continue to develop that gift. The path and the goal have become one.
I don't know if this state will last or for how long. But that's okay. Right now I feel no bias towards either being or becoming, but am satisfied to let both dimensions manifest in their own time. I believe that they are as inseparable as form and emptiness, and that as aspects of innate awareness, they are both always already present. I need do nothing but nurture a deep, unshakable trust in the process.
If you are a sincere seeker, then it's important that your spiritual practice be imbued with a life-and-death commitment to your own liberation here and now. The short-term goal must be to get to the other side of existential doubt. You want to free your soul from both the ego's suffocating self-concern and the outdated and spiritually unenlightened values of our modern and postmodern culture. First and foremost, you need to do whatever it takes to free yourself. Why? So you will finally be available to participate, consciously and wholeheartedly, in the greatest gift you've been given...which is the life you're already living right now.
If you are no longer a seeker but one who boldly claims to be a finder, then that means you no longer have any doubt about who you really are and why you are here on this Earth. In your own direct discovery of and awakening to Spirit's true face, existential doubt has died a sudden and irrevocable death, liberating an infectious confidence rooted deep in your soul.
... as finders we're no longer doing practice in order to experience a spiritual epiphany that will convince us of something we don't already know. Now we're making the effort to evolve because we're in love with life and are committed to unlocking its higher potentials through our own development.
But of course that's not enough for Andrew Cohen. We have to co-create Heaven on Earth. No small feat to be sure, but he does give us some pointers. He describes the usual "outside-in" approach to spiritual practice which starts from an intellectual understanding of our selves and we move along a spiritual path because we think it makes sense to do so. In contrast, his "inside-out" approach begins with our direct experience of the Truth of Oneness - our path (and our goal) being to align the various dimensions of our being with that Truth.
To create this Heaven on Earth we need to make our relationships with one another our highest spiritual practice. We need to cultivate what he calls spiritual self-respect, which always includes respect for God or Spirit - for that which is higher. And of course we need to commit to putting our inspiration into practice, so that we will simultaneously create and reap the heavenly rewards. He concludes:
The life we have chosen to live and our relationships will become an ecstatic cauldron of creative ferment. Because Spirit is both freedom and creativity, our own empowering realization of spiritual freedom will give rise to an unusual capacity for creative engagement. The truth of God will emerge again and again and again through our own ongoing love affair with the possible.
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Read the complete article in the Huffington Post
HERE.
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