What’s The Secret Essence Behind All Life?
By: Peter Middleton
Tags: Mystery, Self Improvement, Growth, Self, Spirituality

What’s The Secret Essence Behind All Life?

Photo by Manyu Varma on Unsplash

Religions allude to it; spiritual teachers point their finger at the moon. What is the mystery behind life?

The ever-present essence that life springs from, the progressive energy that pushes all things forward, the space of possibility contains the seeds of life.

As you can see in the picture, many rituals play with the elemental. Dancing around the sparks of creation. Embers swirling in the air; a mask calling the spirit into the human form. Specific energy that drives us forward, push us into courage, transcend our pains.

The mystery of life is an exploration into surrender and embrace of the unknown.

“Let’s keep our minds open and explore these diverse experiences and perspectives. No matter whether we’ve already travelled in the unknown or this is our first time, let’s learn from the inhabitants of this place — the “poets and inventors of fables,” ~ Steven D’Souza & Diana Renner ~ Not Knowing — The art of turning uncertainty into opportunity ~

Not knowing is counter-intuitive to the modern western narrative, we’re so obsessed with knowing; rational, logical, numbers, goals.

Not knowing is assumed to be the opposite of rational control; ignorance and foolishness. These things aren’t desirable; it’s no wonder that we live in a materialistic market-driven society where consumerism is idolized as a ‘patriotic’ act.

“I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong. I asked wisdom and God gave me problems to learn to solve. I asked for prosperity and God gave me a brain and brawn to work. I asked for courage And God gave me dangers to overcome. I asked for love and God gave me people to help. I asked for favours and God gave me opportunities. I received nothing I wanted. I received everything I needed.” ~ Hazrat Inaayat Khan ~

Not knowing can be a beautiful and connecting experience. It is surrendering to the present moment, connecting to the spirits in us that want to express. Desire is an unmet need, exploring that and choosing to respond in the right way will evolve you. Without this exploration into our inner world, we remain shackled to the subconscious need to play any and every desire out on situations and people.

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” ~ Eckhart Tolle ~

By partnering with your desires, you can become a part of the universe; unfolding in the way that it must. You are progressing over time; achieving harmony and balance with the natural order.

It’s no surprise that people crave connection. It’s wired into us, our body-mind works in that way. You can pretend that you don’t need anyone, don’t need anything. All you are doing is using the suppress function of your nature. Those needs will come back into your life, and they’ll come back in a mutated unhealthier version of the original; run through all the shit that is programmed into your shame and suppression circuits.

The shadow will come out of you if you do this.

The inner world matches the outer world.

Our inner thoughts and beliefs create the environment and reality that we exist in because it’s our drives and actions that define our physical world.

Lynne Twist, in ‘The Soul Of Money’, talks about the three beliefs that underlie western capitalism:

There’s not enough More is better That’s just the way it is

These thoughts define every aspect of who we are because they are the underlying beliefs that permeate and colour all our other thoughts and actions.

Starting the reshape these underlying beliefs gives you the knowledge that you are enough, that quality over quantity brings fulfilment, that things can be different if we are the change that we want to see in our lives.

Gay Hendricks talks about the upper limit in his book ‘The Big Leap’, this is a ceiling in our body-mind where we don’t feel comfortable transcending.

The brain is wired for comfort, not change. It’s wired to repeat the familiar because that’s what allowed us to survive when we were foraging in the wild. It allowed us to avoid dangerous spots with predators or other tribes who might kill us. Interacting with people outside of our tribes was uncommon. We are wired to be suspicious of people we don’t understand. Hence racism, and national borders.

“We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.” ~ Pema Chödrön ~

Luckily, in the modern times, we have learned how to harness our heart’s ability to connect and communicate love; the brain’s ability to regulate our system so it can function efficiently, and our gut’s intuitive knowing.

It is possible to make almost anything familiar. You have to get intimate with uncertainty, mystery, courage, surrender and embracing life’s magic.

You see, expanding your paradigm needs to be an active process. It can’t happen in the comfort zone.

I joined a reiki circle last night. It was for the younger members of the reiki community; that’s generally considered around the age of thirty. Reiki encourages sitting in the mystery because you call in universal energy for the highest possible good; you don’t have to know what that means, you have to trust that it will be.

We talked about the concept in the reiki precepts ‘just for today’. We talked about the difference between ‘now’ and ‘today’. How today seems to denote the passing of a complete cycle. Today includes the passing of the darkness and the light. Yinyang. A complete and harmonious passing.

We also talked about how the day encourages us not to shame the feelings that we feel, because each feeling is natural and human. Yet, thinking about the day, we set our sights on not holding onto those emotions.

So you can see the precepts encourage you to align to a big picture that is connected and spiritual, living in kindness, gratitude and love. Do your work honestly.

Align with the idea of connecting to something bigger, a vital part of the mystery of life. All religions have this aspect, what is described as healthy shame in Healing the Shame that Binds You.

Knowing we are but a part of a bigger wheel seems to promote the cultivating, nurturing and nourishing aspects of our nature. All our neuroses fall away, our problems don’t feel as big and overarching.

Rituals seem to be connecting to this through a process; dissolving into elementals; dancing loose the egoic strongholds; convening with the divine and infinite energy; feeling timeless; feeling eternal, becoming a divine presence within your body, connecting more fully to your body, learning its expression and harnessing its gifts.

“ When we utilize these techniques of relinquishing the negative and surrendering resistance to the positive, sooner or later, we come into a sudden, comprehensive awareness of our true dimension. Once this has been experienced, it will never be forgotten. The world will never intimidate us again as it once did.” ~ David R. Hawkins ~ Letting Go ~

When you surrender to life, you tend to find that answers are waiting for you beneath the anxiety and scarcity that you exist in. There is universal wisdom; people who have lived the same situation that you have differently; possibilities to evolve your practice and thrive.

Giving your fears to burn in the fire and our spirit to be reborn in the embers. Understanding the nature of water and how that resonates with the feeling states. Understanding the eternal nature of our connectedness to the earth. The decisiveness of metal, and how it cuts through pain, how nutrients in those metals, found deep within the earth. Nourish our bodies, the fluidity of air.

Our relationship with the divine tells us that we need others; we need something bigger than ourselves.

How do you connect to the mystery of life?