Darkness is Your Candle

"What hurts you, blesses you...  Darkness is your candle"  ~Rumi

We find ourselves wanting to be left alone.  And the more we want to be left alone, the more intrusion there seems to be.  We want life to just be smooth, and clean, and easy for once.  But the more we keep waiting and hoping and wanting that, the further away it seems to appear. 
We also find ourselves in a perpetual game of seeking, capturing, and holding pleasurable situations, looking for a final end to the painful ones.  This also is met with a huge struggle, and lots of heartbreaking disillusionment. 
There is another way.  It is Rumi's way, or rather, the way of all those who dared to wake up and live with the fire of true life.  Only this way honors the brokenness, the darkness, the terror as the greatest  ally to living in truth. 
If you truly are an adventurer of the soul than you are severely interested in what hurts you.  This means that 'real waking up'  is not a fairly tale, nor is it a grim story with a happy ending.  It is the end of the end of the end. 
Here, where all you have is your pain, and sadness, and anger as truth....here is where you can use your pain as a bucket of cold water on your sleeping self.  Here is where you can be startled from your sleep by the alarm of your own discontent.  This is the most reliable information we have for waking us up.  These are truly our most supportive friends on the path of being real.
Everybody celebrates joy and pleasure.  If one were to take just the smallest fraction of that gratitude and apply it to your pain, your whole life would up-end itself.  You'd find yourself on the floor, with sleep in your eyes, but damn it---you'd be awake.

Seeing What Is, A Poem

You've seen all there is to see,
Now you may see what Is.
Here behind a mask
there is your naked Face.

A flower is not what you think it is.
Nor is your self.
Drink from the flask of Reality,
and be quenched.

To see This,
open your eyes.
You are not in the dark.
Sing a song with me,
a song with no words.

Stop moving for a moment so you can see,
before you miss everything.
See This.
You've wasted enough time,
now the snake bites.

Time is running out,
open your eyes.
The flower bends over, the petals begin to weep.
Here.

Before it's too late!
Look.

Using Disappointment

If we are paying attention, disappointment is one of the best things that can happen to us.  Normally, we spend tremendous energy avoiding, dispelling, and overcoming disappointment...only to be revisited by it in some other way.  To use disappointment is to welcome an intense humiliation that burns us all the way through to what's true.  Disappointment as a feeling is only the surface experience, that's usually as far as people go. 
But, to allow yourself to be be fully dis-appointed is to fall from the place that you thought you were, and to discover your true appointment as Nothingness.  You are appointed to that which is always your Self, and all self-appointing leads to disappointment.  To see this as a gift rather than something to be feared, we begin to see things in their true form.  We begin to see that our pain is the doorway in. 
To be fully and completely disappointed, without dwelling on the thoughts and emotions of disappointment, is to reveal yourself as you are in wholeness.

The Perfect Teaching

This moment is the perfect teacher.  Whatever you need most for you to be awake and free  is provided as a teaching in this very instant.  We are often looking for teachings that help us to feel better about ourselves, all the while neglecting the obvious teaching that is right in front of our face.  As we begin to see that every moment is a profound teaching, we come into accord with things as they are.  Life begins to make sense because we are actually interested in what's here, rather than fantasizing or resisting what is. 
It may seem that this moment is painful, it may seem less than fulfilling, but if we look honestly it is not this moment that is disappointing.  It is the fantasizing and resistance that make this moment seem less than enough.  The perfect teaching visits you as you need it.  If you need a hit of bliss, you'll get it.  If you need some pain, you'll get it.  Trouble is, you aren't in control of the teaching that you need.  We think we know what we need---we have no idea about what we actually need!  Only Life knows~
Can you hand over the reigns of imaginary control and allow life to teach you finally?  Can you let go of what you think you want to find out what Life wants for you? 
We are very accustomed to believing that we should have some say, that it should feel fair, that life should move on our terms.  Is it true?
To be humbled and shocked by seeing our insistence that life teach us in a certain way, and to open to what Life is actually teaching right now, is a sublime insane joy.  It is an end to fantasy and resistance.
The perfect teaching is in your midst,  let it have you.