Heavy drops, carrying more

than they can bear, fall from no-

where, bending leaves already

sagging, and one by one,

the leaves let go.

They drift to the earth,

each quiet as a master

juggler missing everything so

completely that he realizes

he is being juggled.

Surrender is like this.

Not giving up, but

missing and letting go.

 …..Mark Nepo

There is a story by Mark Twain about a man going to heaven. When he arrived, he was given a pair of wings and a harp, and for a few days he used the wings as a way of moving about, and plucked on the strings of the harp trying to get some celestial music out of it. Both were pretty much of a bother, and finally he realized that in heaven you don’t actually need wings to go anyplace; and simply by desiring heavenly music, the celestial musicians appear and commence to play. So he put down the wings and the harp, and began to enjoy himself. Similarly, we sometimes limit ourselves by preconceptions of purity and happiness. We burden ourselves with unnecessary wings or halos or harps thinking that happiness consists of having certain things or acting in a certain way. When we leave aside our limited views it is possible to open up to deeper experiences of joy……Joseph Goldstein

Awakening calls forth a transformation in both our interior and exterior lives. Please don’t think this transformation is about having the perfect life, the perfect job, the perfect mate, the perfect marriage, or the perfect friendship. This is not about perfection; it is about wholeness. It is not about having things exactly as we want them, but about having things exactly as they are. When we allow things to be, a sense of harmony develops; the gap between our realization and who we are as a human being gets smaller and smaller. A seamless continuum begins to emerge between realization and expression, awakening and its actualization……Adyashanti