Choose a Path that Demands the Whole of You

 Sarah wasn’t feeling 100% the other night when she was coming to a session.

I said to her:
“Be kind to yourself tonight in the session”

And she said to me:
"Well... it’s a bit difficult not to, in the sessions.
I’d literally have to put cotton wool in my ears and go deaf,
and belligerently refuse to listen to anything that’s being said."

It’s true, no?

I’m pleased to hear that.
That it’s a given —
that guidance to approach ourselves with kindness in the practice.

It becomes a way to approach ourselves —
which is simply another aspect,
another facet of everybody else.

Then you’ve single handedly changed your world

I didn’t say the world did I?

Just your world.

Wherever you go, that is the case.

And that —
Is about as good as you can do.
In fact, trying to do beyond that,
Might just turn out to be unloving.

Your world will do just nicely
What you can influence.

---

I asked myself a question the other day…

 I like to ask myself this question,
and the wording changes over time —
but essentially the question is:

“What would you regret not doing more of?”

My answer was:
I would regret not having loved as much as I could have.
I would regret not having shown the people around me enough love,
because I was too up my own arse, too busy and too contracted. 

Whatever it was that I was
when I wasn’t loving —
which is just about everything else, isn’t it?

I wouldn’t beat myself up over it,
but it would be a shame.

I don’t know how it is for you —
but it’s really healthy for me
to clarify what’s actually important
and what will matter in the end.

Because then
it clarifies my path.

It clarifies my internal work.
It tells me — really quite categorically —
what I need to be doing
and what I don’t need to be doing.

I really feel like, on the path,
it starts off quite vague,
and quite wide —
and it's supposed to feel like that initially.

But after a while it narrows down,
until the clarity of intention becomes so acute
that we can only do
what is actually in our heart to do.

Anything that’s outside of that —
somehow, we can’t do it anymore,
because it’s just become so absolutely clear to us
what is actually important
and what’s not.

---

Rumi said:
“Seek the path that demands the whole of you.”

He was an amazing character.
An unbelievable outpouring of spirit through one human existence..
It was like he reached a certain point
and he was triggered by his master,
the lid on his canister got taken off,
and it just poured out of him.
All of the time.

You just couldn’t stop him.
Everything he said was quotable.

They called him a poet,
but he was a lot more than that.

The words were coming from such a depth.

Seek a path that demands everything of you.
That demands you to go to the very core of your being,
and inspect yourself
until you can only be in alignment.

And for Rumi,
the path was love.

He said,
This is the one path that will have you,
if you try and take it on,
because it’s so exquisitely demanding.

It says,
Whenever you close yourself off — that is not love.

That is a demanding path no?

When you move into envy — what happens?
When you move into want and desire — what happens?
When you move into judgement — what happens?
When you move into hatred — what happens?
everything that is opposed to love — closes.

And everything that is love — opens.

Try that one.
That will definitely demand the whole of you.

 In the end…

Love will literally eat up all of you.

Isn’t it beautiful?

---

The less we do
The more love is there.

We do less of the envy
Less of the worry
Less of the comparison
Less judging 

Just do less of all this stuff and love becomes more and more present.

The yogis said,
“It’s not something created — it’s always there.”

But what you’re doing
is creating the space
for it to occupy.

That’s it.

You might end up doing nothing at all, you never know.

Thank you for being here
and allowing all that to happen.

Namaste.