The Diamond in Your Pocket

“However your daily life presents itself, whether it is a life devoted to monastic duties or a life in the midst of the world, every moment is an opportunity to realize who you are. True investigation reveals that whatever prior limitations you feel keep you from who you are, however grand or lowly, they are nothing but concepts, concepts that when not maintained by mind activity cannot cause suffering. These concepts can be liberated so that you, as you are, can shine fully. This is the invitation extended to you”.

Gangaji  www.gangaji.org

At The Light Tree we are continually learning and practicing how to be more present with the essence of our True Selves. Our journey together has brought us to the teachings of various practitioners. Apart from our weekly meditation group with Jewel, we continue to meet regularly. Christine and Marcy recently journeyed to New Mexico to join Nouk Sanchez and Stacy Sully in retreat. Now it is Annie’s turn to go away for a few weeks. Before leaving, she wanted to share this passage from Gangaji, one of our favourites.

In this passage from The Diamond in Your Pocket, Gangaji writes about the distrust we have of love…..

"But love is not a person. Love is the individual, collective, and universal soul. Love is God. Love is truth, Love is beauty. Love is peace. Love is self. To know your self, to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love. …..

What is the worst that could happen if you surrender to love? What we seem to fear the most is the broken heart. Yet the very unwillingness for the heart to be broken is the broken heart. The tragedy and the irony is that in order to avoid a broken heart, people live in a state of broken-heartedness. In the willingness to have the heart be broken a million, trillion, zillion times, true love is revealed.

Let the whole world break your heart every instant of the remainder of your life. Then this life can be lived in service to love. It does not mean you stay in abusive relationships. It means only to stay true to that which is always true to you, and that is love. Anything else is a story...

The great good news is that love is free and it has not gone anywhere. In all of these aeons that you have been hiding from love, love is still here, it is still open, it is still waiting for your commitment, still waiting for you to say, "Yes, I give my life to the truth of love. I vow to let love live this life as it will, for better or worse, for richer or poorer."

 With love, Annie