It Is Said the Gods Envy Man …

If you knew without doubt who you really are, that you are magnificent beyond your capacity to imagine, are this which is never born and will never die, that you are not you but This that Is, how would that change your experience as a mortal?

Knowing, life goes on. Experiences, both fun and not so, continue. The body ages and loved ones sicken and die. Your tribe leaves you, one by one, and you remain. The world changes, appearing to be in its death throes, and it seems no one really cares. As more and more depart this plane, you think back, remembering the ones who took their leave in their youth and mark them lucky … and then you smile at yourself, shake your head at your foolishness, and deep in wonder, marvel at this life you’ve lived.

What a ride. What a freaking amazing thing life is. You know that you wouldn’t trade a moment of it for a bit more comfort, a little less loss. You understand that grief is part of the package, that loss is built right into the design, that without it, life wouldn’t be as rich, as raw, as rare. Being aware of what’s really going on doesn’t dampen the experience at all. In fact, it exponentially increases the aliveness, the sensations, the body’s willingness to feel, the mind’s ability to let it in, the soul’s ripening through the journey.  

Not knowing you try to block it out, to close down the avenues of sensation. The lack of awareness of who you are naturally results in resistance that prevents you from feeling what you came here to feel. Knowing there is no death doesn’t dampen the experience. Not knowing, you automatically blot out death – the little ones and the ones that seem like a true end — and lose the aliveness. This That Is self-corrects, always offering a resurrection but absent the experience of who you are, you are repelled by the new experiences that arise to realign your inner compass, and continue on your way with your beliefs intact. Not knowing shuts down life to a trickle of what it is capable of being.

To feel it all – the joy and laughter, loss and sorrow, to let it move you, transform you, inform you, to accept it all as it is, to let it be as it is, to quit trying to improve upon the design, you need to understand what it is, what you are. If not, the possibility cannot be realized. Understanding shifts the core mechanism. It’s not a doing, it’s a recognition.  It’s an unlearning, an emptying of what you believe, and even that cannot be done, but is done to you when you are ripened sufficiently by life’s futility.      

It is said the gods envy man. To live a mortal life, to feel the sun on your skin, to walk through a dense fog bank, or wake before sunrise and drink in blasts of color as the glory unfolds, to feel a puppy’s wet nose on your hand, a lover’s passionate embrace, what’s not to envy? Or maybe, rather than envying man, God simply becomes man, takes form, becomes a world, a cosmos, is creating creation out of himself, the ultimate magic trick.