Von Saul & John Smallman
Time is two edged sword.
Waiting is not something humanity enjoys! Prior to building the illusion and burying yourselves in it, you were experiencing the magnificence of eternity where there is no waiting because there is only now.
Time is a two edged sword. It is the part of the illusion that effectively hides or disguises the eternal now moment by making it appear to be only momentary instead of everlasting. You can remember past times and experiences, and you can dream about or imagine future ones, but your experience of now is only fleeting when it is enjoyable, and can seem interminable when you are in pain or are suffering. It is in fact what is frequently described as “attachment”.
Letting go of attachment, of needing specific outcomes or results in time, as the Buddha taught, relieves you of suffering and anxiety. You will still experience pleasures, pains, and boredom as they occur, but you will not feel driven to hold onto them or to avoid them. You will feel at peace knowing that they will pass and be replaced by other sensations. In time, in the illusion, nothing lasts, everything passes.
When you hold on, are attached to anger, for instance, pleasurable sensations that you could be enjoying pass by unnoticed, or even intensify your anger, as in that state your ability for enjoyment feels blocked. Trying to make enjoyable sensations last by holding onto them – attachment – destroys them, turns them, as it were, to ashes, and frustrates you, causing suffering.
You cannot control the illusion, it just unfolds, but you can and do contribute to it continuously because you are involved in it. Sometimes it will seem that your contributions are good because an apparently satisfactory outcome occurs, and on other occasions the reverse is true, causing you confusion and consternation. It seems that you followed the rules, obeyed the laws, and that everything went wrong! Events that you could not have foreseen, events of which you could never be aware changed the expected outcome.
To experience peace and contentment it is essential to let go of expectations. To experience desires and needs is normal, but a decision – and it most definitely is a decision even if you are unaware of it – that you cannot be happy unless a specific object is obtained, or a certain outcome occurs ensures that you can never be at peace.
Peace is your natural state. When you are not at peace, like most people for a lot of the time, it means you are attached to outcomes, outcomes that you cannot control. When you investigate your attachments honestly, which is not easy, you will find that they are mostly fear-driven needs either to be right or to be better than or to be special. But we are all one, no one is better or more right, just different – which is fine, that is as it should be – and yet in the illusion we have bought very firmly into the need to divide and separate into good and bad, us and them. Then we fight them to show them how wrong they are, how they are offending God, and us, and that they must be corrected, judged, and punished – preferably by us! We know that when we defeat them and win, all will be well . . . But it never is.
So let go, accept life as it occurs, and learn the lessons it provides, instead of rebelling against them. Each one is a step on the way to peace. It is as though you were immersed in cold water, and each time you learnt a lesson the water became a little warmer, until finally you and the water are at the same perfect temperature, and you can no longer identify where you end and the water begins. You are at one with the water, in complete peace and contentment. And this simple allegory, although comforting for you while you are engrossed in the illusion, cannot convey even the slightest notion of the infinite peace that you will experience when you awaken into full consciousness, as you inevitably will!
With so very much love, Saul.
Datum: 24.01.10