[from Marsha – Someday when you are able to quiet all your “wants”, iIt might be fun to just look around and see what’s going on. Here are some thoughts from a workshop called Going Forward which is on the website.]
Now life is goin’ on on this planet. It’s been goin’ on for who knows how long. You didn’t start it. You didn’t arrange for it. You didn’t know how to run it for even 10 minutes; and it’s still goin’ on. The marvel of a human being or a calf or a cow or a pig or a dog — the marvel of that existing here is a pure material thing as far as anybody can analyze. That it gets up and it walks, it talks, it eats, it sleeps, it reproduces and all these things is a marvel beyond our comprehension. So I think things are in pretty good hands; but we don’t think so. We believe we know what ought to be.
Now people come to me and tell me they want to follow the spiritual path. Well I agree with all of that, but I’m not gonna use all those fancy words because then you get serious all of a sudden and make things important. Spirit moves this piece of meat and bone and does things that are different and unusual and can go from one side of the country to another. It can build houses. It can tear down houses. It can cook a dinner. It can throw the garbage away. It can do all sorts of things — jillions and jillions of things; and I have no way of knowing anything about what’s going on, so if I recognize that that reality is here. It can throw a ball up in the air and catch it — that was Spirit did the work. The meat can’t do it because if Spirit is gone from this meat and bone — anybody want to tell me it can pitch a crayon up in the air and catch it? Or we say very reverently, here lies the remains….. (laughter) …as though the remains was the real important part. All we gotta do is clean it up — take the garbage out — the real thing has already departed.
Now what that “real” is is invisible as far as lookin’ at it; but I can sure see it everwheres. I look in those eyeballs there — there’s somethin’ lookin’ back at me. And I look at a piece of meat that there is no life, Spirit, there and there’s nothin’ lookin’ back, right?
So we’re dealin’ with Spirit — Spirit talks to Spirit — Spirits doin the talkin’ here — Spirit’s doin’ the listening and everything that’s goin’ on and we got a bunch of weird ideas that we were handed from infancy and didn’t ever recognize we grew up. We don’t come up with sayin’ look, life is runnin’ this show; and I’m gettin’ to experience it — this awareness bit which is a function of life. You know the body is a motor function of life; and the awareness is the awareness function of life — what we call mine is the awareness function of life is not a ‘thing’ by itself. I think it all goes out when you don’t have the body anymore, but Spirit goes on. Spirit is neither born nor dies, but Spirit is a partner; and I get to watch it and live with it and work with it and be experiencing it constantly and seeing it in every conceivable place around here. And so the Spiritual path is recognizing that Spirit’s doin’ all the work; and Spirit’s runnin’ the thing; and that I as the awareness function is getting to go along for a free ride and experience it as long as I don’t interfere.
Now what is there for me to interfere about — only that I think I know what ought to be. Now I don’t even know how to build one hair — one tiny little cell. I don’t know that while I’ve been standin’ here talkin’ there are several billion cells died and several billion more has been created in this body — billions of ’em. Now all that happened. I am totally unconscious of it, but life’s runnin’ it; and it certainly knows what it’s doin’ and Life is Spirit and we’d kinda like to go along with it if we wanna call it the Spiritual way.
Let’s see how conscious we can be of what it is that’s workin’. And we can get away from all this “not I”junk which tells us it knows what ought to be — really that’s all not I’s ever say. I oughta have my way right now. I oughta have all my rights taken care of. I oughta have you out of the way ’cause you made me stump my toe. I ought to be better than what I am. I ought to please everbody; but man she’s hard to please. And I quote some authority which is another piece of not i comin’ from somebody else that I ought to – well, that’s all it is is second-handed not i. That’s what an authority is — just second-handed ought to be’s. I have quit trustin’ my own and listen to yours for a while.
And so today could be a discovery day to just watch Life and all it’s doing around and through us.