TRUTH . . . HAS NO FAVOURITES
(continued)

I do not write as one who has not seen miracles; I have. But a lifetime of experience has taught me that we cannot get God to pull all the right strings and order the world to our liking. He will not jump through our hoops. Now we live with enigma and paradox the Not Fair Syndrome has lost it's grip on our lives.

There are storms in life. Severe storms. Some of them last a lifetime. Some things we shall never understand, but if we are weak enough to live in dependence upon the Higher Power we shall find we are strong enough to survive happily one day at a time. We shall even learn to smile through our storms, albeit faintly at times, and trace the rainbow through the rain.

Another helpful 'Christian' told me that we are not meant to survive, but to triumph gloriously. Wearing the shoes that some people have to wear continually, to survive is to triumph gloriously. Even so it is good to arrive at a place where we can increasingly say, 'I know how to be up, I know how to be down, to be appreciated or humiliated; I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content'. That is my paraphrase for what a fellow called Saul of Tarsus, or Saint Paul to us, is reported to have written two thousand years ago. And it is true. He learned it and so have I. Nothing 'out there' can harm us, only our reactions and silly wrong thinking, at which I have been an undoubted expert; but no more. I am walking, or gently jogging, alongside myself, observing and smiling as I unlearn all the absurd performance-orientation I was taught from the cradle.

Does that satisfactorily answer everyone's questions about my current performance? I shouldn't think so for a moment. But let me conclude by stating that I do not measure my performance now. Ever. Except when I forget! Then I finally smile again and go on living in the awareness of the moment, but without measuring it. My altimeter is out of action. I may be skipping on hills that are alive with the sound of music, or languishing in dungeon despair (to neatly accommodate Julie Andrews and John Bunyan in the same sentence), but it doesn't matter. Nothing does. All is well as I have abdicated my responsibility to succeed.

In recent months I have slipped effortlessly into the enjoyment of tangible silence and stillness with a sense of the spaciousness around me. An awareness of my inner life, my Being, has overcome a hitherto unruly mind. The ego-me has been subjected to a higher power. The mind-noise and constant background static is under control. There is peace in the presence of the Other. I suppose some would just call it meditation, but the effortless experience that has visited me does not need a label, unless it is perhaps . . . sane living!

Alongside my practical experience some books have helped me immensely. Most notable among these have been Awareness by Anthony de Mello and The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. The understanding of these men has enabled me, and many to whom I have recommended their writings, to move into a new dimension of living. Once again it seems the timing was just right as we were ready to hear.

© Maurice Smith 2004

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