Experiments in truth

"Believe me when I tell you, after 60 years of personal experience, that the only real misfortune is to abandon the path of truth. If you but realize this, your one prayer to God will always be to enable you to put up, without flinching, with any number of trials and hardships that may fall to your lot in the pursuit of truth." -- Mahatma Gandhi

In studying all I can of what the Mahatma left us I've come to guess that what he meant by "truth" is what we attempt to point at in our practice with words like intuitive knowing or clarity or center or here/now/this. We cannot grasp That Which Animates us, but we can sense the Presence and let that intuitive sensing guide our steps. In practice we are always attempting to be present enough to sense the wisdom, love, and compassion that animates us, letting go everything that pulls us away from that awareness.

As long as we believe the ego is who we are, as long as we take the ego personally, our lives are limited by that misperception. Identification with the ego makes the ego the authority in one's life. Whatever the ego wants, does, says, and feels must be attended to immediately, urgently.

When we step back into awareness, viewing the ego as what it is—a karmically conditioned illusion of something existing separate from the rest of life—we can begin to learn broad life lessons about the suffering that results from an identification with ego, but we no longer need to believe any of it has anything to do with ourselves. Nor to we need to take any of it personally. This disidentification is the birthplace of compassion for all humans. From this vantage point it is easy to see what in a person springs from authenticity and what has its origin in a mistaken identification with egocentric karmic conditioning.

In practicing with the above I've come to what I call the "ingredients for a satisfying life." They are:
1) Dedicate your life to something you consider worthy.
2) Celebrate your contributions.
3) Have That Which Animates you as your most intimate relationship.
4) Know how to give your attention to what you choose.
5) Keep your word to yourself .

More about these soon.

In gassho,
Cheri