Dear Fellow Travellers on the Path
we are entering the darkest time of the year and are thrown on to ourselves more than ever with all the various regulations and regimentations in the different countries.
So it seems even more important to keep the connection to the inner and to the eternal light. To clear our inner from fog, turmoil and fear creating a space so that the flame can burn bright and strong.
Here are some words from Michael for contemplation, some inspiration and support:
Just to Be
All that we know or think we know about human beings comes from human beings, and I ask the question, can human beings know really about human beings? We assume that whatever human beings discover about human beings, including spiritual teachers like me, and all the things you guys know from what you do in life, we assume that what we get to know is true – aha! – and the next step that is true, but beyond our acceptance of that fact, I ask the world, everything that is human in the world I ask, really, can a human being know about human beings? Or are we kidding ourselves?
I mean, isn’t everything that we say about our situation as it’s known on this earth beginning from a false place? Of believing that we can know what we are and who we are from within what we know about ourselves. But we can’t get outside ourselves in order to know or see or observe what we are, and everything that we know about anything, not only about human beings but trees, animals, birds, rivers, mountains, isn’t this bound to be prejudiced by our perspective which we assume is objective but which is not?
Nobody seems to realize that, everybody assumes that whatever we work out as truth is truth, but it’s just a human truth.
You can only see the whole picture from outside the picture, and if you’re part of the picture then you’ve only got your perspective on the picture, because you’re also yourself part of the picture and you can’t in a way include yourself in your perspective. At any point in a circle, you stand there and there’s something behind you and that you can’t see unless you turn around, but if you get out of the circle, if that’s possible, then you can see the whole circle.
Can one get out of the humanness and still remain human? Even if you take what is, I think, appreciated or understood by most people, that somehow if you get enlightened then you leave your humanness that you’ve lived all your life behind to some extent… But it’s still a human attainment, even if it’s the peak of human attainment it’s still a human attainment, and it’s still humans who are recognizing it as a peak attainment. I mean, who says that an enlightened person is the peak of possibility? Either other people say it, or he or she says it in relationship maybe to other possibilities of achievement by human beings, but in the end the whole idea of achievement is human, it’s measured according to human beings’ views of what achievement is, in a way almost inevitably and eternally locked up in a human perspective.
So my conclusion, or one of my conclusions, to what I’ve been saying is that we nevertheless experience. That is the one thing that is undeniable, that we experience, but the moment we begin to name our experiences and build castles with them then we’re limited to our ability as human beings to do so. So that would make the peak human experience to just be, but it doesn’t mean that that then is any sort of complete answer as to what a human being is in reality.
Often in my seminars it happens that we are sitting for a whole hour and more without me offering anything else. There is a statement from Zen Buddhism, that ‘One does not sit to get somewhere,’ like people do when they meditate, ‘one sits because sitting is it.’ In a way, apart from it being true in many ways for me, it’s true because as soon as we make a step from that place we start to calculate, and it’s a human being that calculates and a human who’s calculating about oneself or human beings in general.
So all this going on in the way of philosophy and economics and creativity and spirituality is a play. It’s a play by beings who can play, human beings can play, but what a human being is is outside the play. So if that is the truth, that you can never really know anything apart from who you are and who your fellow beings are, then of course all attempts to bring some believed truths to human beings brings nothing but disaster – communism, fascism, Islamism, democracy, capitalism, it never works. Some fail less badly than others but none of them work because nobody knows the truth, and I’m saying the nearest, I think, we can get to the truth is to just be in the moment, and breathe and feel your heart beating and your body flowing and the life force in you. You can play all sorts of games from there but the games are in front of you and the truth is behind you.
Maybe all that what I’ve said connects with the view that the wise people of India have come up with, that life is a Leela, the Sanskrit word meaning ‘play’. This we can do, and in fact this is what we’re always doing – whatever we can do and whatever we do, it’s play. We play with the way we see things, but the way we see things is not the way things are.
So in that sense we continue to offer the possibility to be together in silence and with music, to listen to a talk from Michael and to connect with each other on a very deep level in the Michael Hours also on the Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in December. The last evening will be the 22nd before the Christmas and New Years holidays.
Quite a few people have expressed what a precious gift it has been to be able to at least meet in this way.
You can use the same link which was valid in November. If you haven’t got the link yet you can write to info@michaelbarnett.net and we will send it to you.
Sending you all Love and a golden Light for these special days ahead …
Mishka
