Frannie Rose
Spiritual Teachings
One Simple Voice
Finding Our Way Back Through the Woods: Losing The Presence
Frannie Rose, 10/2/09
Its funny how the path fades as mind situations come passing through your life. All of a sudden you find the path blur into the greenery and you don’t know where to place your feet. If you walk straight ahead, you might miss a detail that your mind feels is important, so you veer off the path and stumble into the woods.
As you walk off the path, the sun is slowly veiled from your sight. The sky fills with clouds and the world darkens. It is then that you must watch your feet very carefully, for the mind tells you there are fearful ends you will meet if you step here, or step there. And as the woods darken, your eyes can no longer see the path you left behind. Sometimes it feels as if there is no turning back, you will never find your way back to God. The mind - magnet pulls ever harder, showing you the crisis from an imminent point of view. You feel there is no other choice, you are limited and bound to this walking with one foot carefully in front of the other, instead of the skipping, jumping and flying through the air that your heart so loves to do.
The path you leave behind is bathed in sunshine, blue skies and warm breezes. There was a gentle flow in that moving forward, sometimes uphill and sometimes pleasantly past the most wondrous of colors. When you leave this path behind you, every step becomes a hardship, a decision to imprison your soul. As time away from the path continues, the chains upon your arms and feet make you weary and exhausted.
Why do we leave the path behind us from time to time? Why do we lose “The Presence”? The answer is so simple and yet so profound. Because we have to lose our way, to find our way. If we don’t find our way back through the greenery with consciousness, we cannot remember how to get back on our path and stay there.
Every time we lose The Presence, we learn more about what we allowed to take us away from God. Often it is the "acting out" of the ego that brings us to an unhappy or uncomfortable place. Sometimes it is greed, or not practicing as needed. Other times it is knowing you did something very well, allowing it to go to your sense of self.
Reflection is used to find where we veered off the path and the illusions we were caught up in. Spending some of morning practice time reflecting on the life situation that took you away from the path is often what is needed to realign with the path. Use this time to look for important lessons that were learned in this process, which can be very meaningful to your further journey. Reflecting is really backtracking and can be the most valuable of processes to increase our conscious awareness of the trappings that keep us from the freedom of being, and the transformation that can occur within our lives.
When one loses The Presence, the first step is in the knowing that they have veered off the path. It is this consciousness of knowing that is the awakening of the true Self, the Observer. A simple glance at beauty through these eyes can burn through the layers that your ego has created between the true Self and the world of God. Watching this beauty, beholding it, and nurturing it is the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Bringing your Self always to the Center of Creation, the Center of Beauty – the reason for being, God.
How do we find our way back to the path of The Presence? We do so by finding the Center, the reason for being within the greenery as soon as we are conscious we have veered off the path. We look for the Light gently shining on the Infinite leaves of Infinite greens. We look for the deepest color in the rainbows. We glance toward the sky and remember its Light. And in the middle of all these beauties, is always God. God is at the Center, and God will always call us back to the path, if we have lost our way.
“You have to lose your way to find your way”, has always been my mantra. With awareness one comes back from the greenery with many new and valuable lessons – some of great depth and meaning. For the key is to know when you are lost, you will be found by the beauty, by the Center, by God.
Do Our Wants Come Between Us and God?
As we journey through our lives, many begin to feel emptiness.
This feeling of lack or something missing is the sure sign
we are being pulled by God, to journey deeper within our hearts.
In truth, our Essential Purpose is to walk hand in hand with God as One,
with only one will between you.
Emptiness is the sound of the heart path calling.
It is dependent upon our sense of
Self, which is connected with God within us.
This Self is filled with the Unmanifested, God’s gifts to us.
The will of our hearts or our destiny, is aligned with God’s will, and the present moment.
The mind labors at creating and sustaining thoughts and perceptions
according to its need to
self- perpetuate. With thought comes the “mind’s will”
(your perception of your will) based upon our sense of self or ego.
This will is dependent upon things outside us, to come to us.
In this world of form and things, there is much that weighs down our hearts,
leaving little chance for God to rise up into our lives.
If you picture a body of water, whether it’s a lake or the ocean,
it is easy to envision a heavy rock pressing down any life form.
The rock would be a metaphor for your mind and your ego;
the life form would be exactly that – God within you
and the gift of life He gives you.
Now a mind would say –
“Well God is capable of the infinite, so why can’t he escape
your heart and enter a heavy mind?” And from a mind place, that makes perfect sense.
But the mind is limited, and God is infinite and so it is that God cannot fit into a limited space.
Human beings have devised the perfect way to keep God out.
We do this by staying in our minds and weighing down our hearts.
You have been there, when you feel “burdened”, or “weighed down
with thought” or with “a heavy heart”. It happens to us when we push our hearts deeply down
with loaded minds, and do not realize where we are making our decisions from.
Our minds become over-active feeding the ego.
The ego feels a great
sense of self. This ego keeps us motivated
to continue doing what we are doing, because we feel a sense of success –
but as we continue to do so, we begin to lose touch with our hearts.
Over time, getting what you
want, fills your mind while pressing down
your heart, trapping it deep underneath.
And as your heart feels it wishes to be free from the burden, you begin to feel like you
wish something different. You feel as if what you were doing isn’t bringing you the
feeling of satisfaction or the outcome that you desired.
This feeling is your heart speaking of its wish to be free.
Very meaningful words have been spoken by Bhanta Henepola Gunaratana, in
“Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness” that state: “
It is said that there are only two tragedies in life:
not getting what one wants, and getting it.”
In truth, the things we want are only desires of the mind and ego.
The good feelings they bring are as transient as the world of form,
because wants are merely thought forms anyway.
The things we want are always desires from outside of us – that are dependent upon
other people or other variables to become real. They do not originate within us,
nor do our hearts have any function in the outcome. And so
we travel down a “mind path” to have these things for our very own.
Our egos feel a sense of self when we obtain them, creating“separateness”
between our minds and God’s wish for us (our destinys). These are transient though,
as wants go by the rules of the world of form, and its passing nature.
Our
wishes are quite different than our wants. They originate from within us,
from deep within our hearts. Wishes are always aligned with God and our heart’s journey.
Wishes can be present fromthe time of childhood and can come to fruition
at any time in your life when your heart is uncovered.
When a wish comes true, it is not of transient nature, as a wish will lead one
closer to heart and God. There is no separateness to a wish.
When you wish for something, God speaks through your heart.
You are One.
Are you choosing to be separate from God?
When you function from mind and ego, ego is heavy and smothers your sense of God.
When you function from heart, heart becomes light and floats to the surface -
you and God are aligned, united and without separateness.
You walk as One, you feel as One, you choose as One, you live as One.
We allow our wants to separate us from God and our hearts.
We allow a transient purchase or temporary life-situation gain to be the reason for our lives.
But when we live from our hearts,
wants and desires are merely that – and known
for their transient nature. We do not wait for them to fill us up nor do they satisfy us.
We have an awareness of the importance of the emptiness we feel within our hearts.
It does not go unnoticed. We learn that if we become aware of it and walk through it,
this emptiness will bring us closer to God and His infinite gifts.
We have an inner knowing that emptiness is there for a reason.
It belongs to God and brings us closer to God.
Your heart cannot expand and rise to hold the infinite, if it is trapped by a heavy mind.
Keep your mind empty and keep it light. Allow the heart to rise with the Unmanifested –
the gifts from God: Love, Peace, Joy, Faith, Generosity, Gratitude, Compassion, Kindness and Goodness.
Then you have much peace and goodness to share with the world.
And these are the gifts that you give to the world from God within you.
This is the magic carpet that your deeds ride on.
This is the Essence of your being –
the God within you, shared with the world.
Frannie Rose
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