I no longer have a personal prayer. I have the prayer of aligning with that which is — the impersonal flow of the divine that starts beyond space and time. We live in the experience of the illusion, and we forget about the divine. The clouds of thought disguise who we really are. As Hafiz so beautifully wrote:
You are God hiding from yourself.
Remove all the “mine” — that is the veil.
…
You are God in
Drag!
Waking up to this is the direction I want to look in.
Not only are we God hiding from ourselves, but we also become attached to the hiding.
We say we want to suffer less, but we are often unwilling to let go of our position that prevents us from experiencing happiness and freedom.
This is of course, innocent. We are not hiding because we want to. We hide because we are afraid. We hide because we forget that we are not this fragile, separate self that can be destroyed in the blink of an eye. When we forget this, and we protect who we think we are at all costs because that looks like it is all we’ve got.
This is exhausting and has us behave in irrational ways. How can it not be irrational to try and protect a self that does not exist?
Who you are does not need protecting. Who you are does not need to be prayed for. Who you are does not need to wake up or be improved. Who you are is beyond any concept that can be understood, yet you know who you are in the depths of your being. You recognize truth. You feel it.
It is primal. It is instinctual. It is real. It is unchanging. Out of this primordial essence, the individual idea of you is created, but this idea is a pale comparison to your true self. This pale comparison is naturally insecure because it is not real. It does not exist outside of thought. There is no foundation in identity so any attempts to bolster the confidence of the imagined self are futile.
The simplicity is SEEING the imagined quality of our individual selves and remembering who we are beyond our thoughts of identity is freedom.
Look to that which is real and true. It is alive inside of you.
The distractions of day-to-day life will call you to look elsewhere. There is nothing wrong with this, but when you are suffering, rather than getting frantic and trying to fix the suffering, look to who you are beyond your experience. Rather than trying to fix the individual components of your day-to-day existence to make life more comfortable, look in the direction of the love and compassion that are your true nature.
We fall into who we are when we let go. Let go of what? Let go of identifying with our ideas of what is right and wrong. Let go of our attachments to concepts because they are not what is.
The practicality of this is that when we no longer have the self-importance of our ego as our organizing principle, we open up to experiencing what is true. We experience our innate safety and wellbeing that lies beyond the appearance of our personal psychology. We show up differently because of the certainty of our wellbeing. If I am fundamentally okay because who I am is not this fragile made up ego that gets destroyed moment to moment. If who I am is God in drag, I am going to show up differently in the world. I will approach my human experience with more freedom, open-heartedness, and generosity because there is nothing to lose, and I will actually have something to give that is infinite.
Anytime you experience discord, you have forgotten who you are.
The answer, therefore, is to look within and to remember the truth of your being. This is not passive. The empowerment that results from a fearless love is unparalleled.
Your impersonal nature is God.
You are not separate.
You have everything within.
The gift of consciousness that allows you to have a human experience is not a punishment. It is not a fall from grace. It is a game of hide and seek. Can you enjoy it?
The hiding and the seeking.
The being lost and being found.
The forgetting and the remembering.
All of it is love expressing itself through the human condition.
We all do our best to express the love that we are in the best way we can.
We are all innocently doing our best bringing forth our essence into the world.
Remember this the next time you have an argument with someone or find yourself mad at yourself.
The words, the feelings, the experience are the rainbow of experience all sourced by love. Nothing is separate from this one source. Everything is an expression of it.
Our freedom comes from seeing this and feeling the truth of it.
Would you rather have your judgments or would you rather experience the knowing of who you are. You can’t have both.
I go back and forth, and my intention is to remember who I am and drop my judgments in favor of an empty mind that lets my imagined self soften and become more translucent so what is real can be shared and experienced more easily.
When you are hurt or angry, remember you are afraid because you have forgotten who you are not because of what your judgments tell you is the source of your suffering. Seeing this clearly helps the remembering. Everything starts from there. You are love! How many times will you remember this today? How many times will you forget this today? It doesn’t matter. That is the game. Can you enjoy it?
If you would like to listen to the Rewilding Love Podcast, it comes out in serial format. Start with Episode 1 for context. Click here to listen. And, if you would like to dive deeper into the understanding I share along with additional support please check out the Rewilding Community.
Rohini Ross is co-founder of “The Rewilders.” Listen to her podcast, with her partner Angus Ross, Rewilding Love. They believe too many good relationships fall apart because couples give up thinking their relationship problems can’t be solved. In this season of the Rewilding Love Podcast, Rohini and Angus help a couple on the brink of divorce due to conflict. Angus and Rohini also co-facilitate private couples' intensives that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is also the author of the ebook Marriage, and she and Angus are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about her work and subscribe to her blog visit: TheRewilders.org.