Sometimes with the day-to-day ups and downs, it is hard to see evidence that anything is changing or shifting as a result of one’s practice. So that makes it all the more miraculous when you catch a glimpse of what seems like transformation. It feels like I've been getting one of those glimpses lately.
Toward the end of last year, a series of assignments in the Yearlong Retreat focused on True Nature – bowing to our True Nature, resting in the awareness of our True Nature, etc. I had a really powerful experience with those assignments. It was challenging for me to go straight to an experience of myself as True Nature, so I would look at what I projected onto members of Sangha and my pets, the utter goodness and love, and then expand that to include me.
And what feels truly miraculous is not just that I was able to experience that, but that it’s still with me. It’s like this doorway opened up. And the experience just quietly goes along with me, and every so often I remember it’s there, and I look over and touch back into the awareness of myself as that love and goodness. In some ways it’s a small thing, just a quiet knowing, but that “knowing” changes a lot of things. When I’m in touch with that knowing, it’s like I've stepped outside whatever self-hate might be going on.
And maybe that’s how spiritual transformation happens, in small, quiet ways that change everything and open your heart. And maybe (speaking from personal experience) they make you cry with the gratitude for this Practice and this Sangha, and for everything you’ve been given.
Gasshō
Laura N.